Bill Gallagher interviews Rolly Keenan, CRO of Tegra, about moving from CMO to CRO and aligning sales, marketing, and customer success. They discuss RevTech, Salesforce, quote-to-cash processes, and why unsustainable SaaS growth fails without repeatable systems that still leave room for human judgment.
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Oh, I'm screwing it up. Or almost maybe. I'm gonna save it. I missed the start of our show. I got distracted by something in the house and totally was blowing it. I'm so sorry, Raleigh.
That's all right.
So, hey, today our conversation is really. Well, actually, I don't know how to describe it well enough, but it's really that your title, your topic is CMO to CRO and it's the intersection of these things. So I'm gonna let Raleigh take it away and talk to us about it in just a second because I am totally behind the gun on this thing. I completely distracted and not fully present. My name is Bill Gallagher, Scaling coach, host of the Scaling at Business podcast. You'd think I didn't do this very often, The way the ham fisted, unprepared way I jumped in. And to be honest, I would have taken a little more time here except we have the like scheduled spots and it would just bounce us off our live spot. So.
Sure.
So I came in and decided to fully embarrass myself in a very public way. Raleigh Keenan is our guest today. Raleigh, head of company that deals with the intersection of revenue and marketing and all these things. And I'm going to let you talk to us a little bit more about the extent of that and then we'll get to the heart of it and I'll pull my shit together. Okay.
You want me just to start?
Yeah. Talk to us about, tell us about the business first. Because on the surface those are things we recognize. But your particular angle on it. Right. Is the thing that we don't have.
Sure, sure. I'll kind of start with the business. I am actually the CRO for Tegra. Our business is around basically consulting around the technology, around revenue. And historically it's been martech. Very common way to refer to all the technology around marketing. But sales tech and Martech have kind of merged or they're starting to merge. And so we can just call it Revtech and. And so that's the business that we're in. And when we had been together as a management team for a little over a year, we had these management meetings where we would gather in an Airbnb for a few days and hammer out decisions. And we sort of came up with the idea, let's write a book about our perspective on how really every company should be rolling up under a revenue leader. Instead of having sales, marketing, customer success, customer support, and all these customer facing functions that were all very separate and all should actually be rolled into a CRO. And so the book itself is a perspective of I have a lot of sales management talent kind of background. The other two leaders have technology, marketing and operations background. And so with all of us together, we have, we said we've got a really unique sort of position on this because we've seen all these clients, not just integrity, but in our own separate careers before we came together, like what are these little things that all these different places are doing? Right. That if they all did them, they did all of them, it would be. It would be, you know, world changing for business. And so that's what we wrote was, you know, how. And we felt like the CMO was probably the best prepared person to take on that role.
Yeah. So that's a really interesting perspective and it's very. This, this issue or concern is really common, really familiar to us. And so let me share a couple of the things that I think are we would hear from our CEOs if they were live with us right now. I hear a lot of times, okay, this guy is the close. This VP of sales is the closest thing to CRO in our world. And they're not really CRO because they just really are about a sales leader. And they're only thinking about it throughout the fairly narrowly in terms of sales management. And they don't know how to manage marketing. And to be honest, looking at them like they barely understand what's happening in the world of marketing and they're not thinking about that. And then they're like. And clearly like customer success and things like that, that, like onboarding that beginning of thing, that's clearly somebody else's world. Those guys don't understand that. And once it's written up, they just want to be done with it. The notion that all those things should be wrapped together under a CRO and that there's somebody who understand it broadly enough to manage it is that isn't the CEO is I think, a little novel.
Yeah. And you know, we actually talk about that a little bit in the book especially because, you know, if there's anyone on our management team that fits that kind of description, it would be me with a lot of sales expertise and background and you know, head of sales kind of thinking. But. And it's true like that that's a, a quick move of, you know, what. What's going on with revenue. They're looking at their sales leader, not so much at marketing. They kind of look at marketing second like, okay, now that I've talked to the sales leader, let me. Now let me talk to the CMO and, and see how they're maybe supporting what this head of sales is talking about. And so it's a natural thing to, to say, well, if I'm going to have a CRO, it's got to be that person. You know, they're already in charge of sales. But the reality is if you, if you have to kind of break that at the very foundation and say, look, say selling things, getting money from people, whether it's consumers or in business, to business requires all kinds of talent in terms of the people in the organization. And over the last 25 years, that's changed a lot. So, meaning when I work some of my favorite brands that I deal with, I've never talked to anyone. It's all digital and, and even in B2B buying situations, I barely talk to anyone. It's all digital. And that's not how it was a long time ago. You know, when I started selling a long time ago. I'm old now, but when it started, there was a lot of human interaction. Well, now it still happens, but it's broad and there is the element that the head of sales and the people that work for them, that talent is necessary to move, you know, if in B2B in particular, move deals across the finish line, negotiate all those things. Yeah, but there's also a lot of digital interaction. There's a lot of things happening after a sale. You know, there's a lot of, you know, when you're, when, when you're doing forecasting for a venture capital, you know, some guy on the board and you're trying to show how it's going, you know, you're trying to get someone to buy your software, you're not going to make money for like 18 months. And so the, the idea that sales is separate from that ongoing support and the ongoing customer success is ludicrous, but very common because we have all this momentum from all these years that this is how it works. There's a head of sales and that person runs, that head of marketing runs out. But if you really kind of break it into like how someone buys and that interaction, it doesn't make any sense anymore.
In our world, one of the things that we deal with is the intersection of various functions. The common function of the company, sales, marketing, operations, that kind of thing. And the intersection of those things are the common core processes that run a business. Some of those are very similar in a lot of businesses. And one of the most common ones is something that would be called somewhere between quote to cash. Right. And so I've got a proposal or an offer or something like that that becomes a contract that then gets fulfilled, success, onboarding, delivery, whatever it is, invoice, collection, that whole cycle. Right. That touches a lot of those things and starts somewhere around a marketing qualify, some kind of a qualified lead or like that. Right. That's, I think, what we're talking about. The person that owns a variety of those touch points that is driving the revenue engine of the business.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean it's, it, it's multifaceted. It has different talents involved in it, different teams, it has technology. You know, it's a lot. It's a lot. And it's different than it, it's evolved very quickly.
Yeah.
And it requires a different kind of outlook.
So before we tell some of the stories and stuff to bring it to life, you share some stories about volleyball and a variety. Before we get into that, give us a little bit more detail on what is Tegrada, kind of what do you guys do, where does it begin and end, that kind of thing.
So what we do is help sales and marketing leaders basically connect their business strategy to their technology. So a little bit of what I'm talking about sort of in the background of this description of CMO to CRO of, you know, it's great to have, you know, a plan of how we're going to fit into the market and what are we going to do and who are we going to reach out to and who's going to buy and how many people are going to buy. But you actually do that technically. And you know, our experience with clients has been they can't. They're trying, but they can't. So we're are. We're consultants around that. We're highly technical, we're really good with data. And then we connect that sort of final mile of okay, what's the strategy? And let's connect it to all those things.
So you're connecting the tools and things, running that into one seamless thing. So there's visibility and continuity to the management from the beginning of marketing through fulfillment collection.
Correct.
Huh. But not. It's not an ERP or, or A.
It's the opposite of ERP in a way. So ERP's back end.
Yeah.
So think of us as just front end. So all the technology and everything facing the customer, erp, accounting and also not Salesforce. Salesforce is part of it. Yeah. The difference between us and what you would see with like a Salesforce consultancy or something like that is if I was in that Business. I. My company would be a few hundred people because every project I did would be three years long. My projects are like three months. So we're working on. We're working with Salesforce every day, but we're not the ones, like, trying to get it up and running, you know, from zero, which is a whole different business.
Yes.
So. All right, well, let's go into some of your examples and that kind of thing. Why are we talking about volleyball?
Well, I can't get out of a. I can't get through any business conversation without telling a volleyball story. That was kind of my career beginnings.
Yes.
And. And I realized all the volleyball coaches were broke, and I didn't know that until I got into it. And so then I got out of it as fast as I. I knew a lot of the players were broke. I just didn't know that coaches were too. So, you know, my story around volleyball was basically talking about sustainable revenue. So just referring back to where we started this conversation about, you know, the sales leader. Most of. I mean, this may be the same for a lot of folks in my position, but most of the CROs, heads of sales, heads of marketing I talked to are in. Are in SaaS. I mean, 90% of them. Right. And.
And a very large number of the companies we coach today that are growth oriented are SaaS.
Like, there's a credible allure of it. It addresses a lot of things people need today. It's a hot category.
Yeah. And. And, you know, just for just a funny, funny comment, like, and they're running out of names for their companies. Like, I just saw like, five new company names today. I'm like, we are running out of names. That name makes no sense. Okay.
How many of them were.IO so.
But I really, in many ways, referring to SaaS when I tell this story, which is of unsustainable sales. And, And I get it. My sort of asterisk disclaimer here is I get it. A lot of companies have no interest in sustainability. They're trying to burn as much money as possible, sell as much as they can, and get bought. I get that. So putting that aside, like, put that aside and just think about, like, business, you know, in a little longer term way. You know, my. My story about unsustainable growth was when I worked for the Olympic teams, and I was straight out of college very young, but I was put into all these, like, kind of cool situations with, you know, when you're the Olympic, when you're the NGB for. For a sport, the college coaches the regional coaches, the youth development, they all kind of come to that, to you. And so I was in these meetings with the best coaches in the country, you know, some of which have been coaching for decades. And. And we had a coach come from, you know, basically at that time, the number one Division 1 school women's coach in. In the country. And I just knew of his record, right? I just saw his team play sometimes on television, whatever. But he. He was a nightmare listening to what he did because he's sort of. Sort of teaching us in kind of a session what he does. And, like, my background at that point was like, heavy biomechanics, motor learning, exercise fizz. Like, I was. I knew a lot. I was kind of the science expert for the teams. And I'm listening to him going, this is all wrong. Like, I don't know. I don't know how he's winning games. And, you know, so I paid. Then I started paying close attention to what he's doing, and I started asking questions to people that knew him and basically came to my sort of research conclusion that he was muscling his way through getting his team to win. They were scared to lose. They were worried about, you know, getting, you know, all kinds of criticism and potential, you know, an abuse, really, and that's why they were winning. And, you know, as soon as he, you know, he was an old guy, so as soon as he kind of stepped aside, that team completely fell apart. You know, none of them wanted to play. I bet you if I were to look at those players, probably they all stopped playing, I bet. Just didn't want to play anymore. So, you know, there's a way to force your way into winning and selling. And I watch it all the time. And I do this because I'm looking at slack. You know, I'm watching slack messages in. In a group I'm in of heads of sales heads. And I'm just like, man, they're just muscling their way through sales. And for them, it's a profession. Like, I muscle my way. I leave, I do it again. I'm gonna leave. And they're kind of leaving a lot in their wake because they're selling, and there's no sustainability. And in a sense, when we're talking about this whole idea of putting revenue under an umbrella.
Pause one second. Because this is so, so, so common. And I can think, like, Let me rattle off three examples, right? In my world, CEO, we're working with several generations, another country, lots of employees, that kind of thing. His grandfather really started the business and, you know, in a different culture, a different time, that kind of thing. He was kind of a strong personality.
You might call him a bully.
Before I knew him. And then the dad had also been a fairly dominant personality. And now the new CEO was super decisive, take charge, that kind of thing. That's really great at getting a lot of things done. But in the background, he was concerned about sustainability, about legacy, about succession.
Will that work again?
It's happened now for a couple generations. Will the next generation take that over? Should this business go on? Should it stay, you know, within. In some countries, the family business and family continuity is.
Is really critical.
Less common in the US but we.
Work all over the world and.
And then I also think about my daughter's soccer team. So she played soccer like a lot of kids in the US Very early on, and in her first year, her. Her coach was just over the moon, excited about the game and that kind of thing. And he, he, like, really worked that team. Like, we don't see a lot of kids, coaches. And they, they had an undefeated season.
Right, Right.
Like, awesome. And he was really excited. Except they're like seven.
Right. Whatever.
I don't remember actually now what age they are. I should. But.
Yeah.
But she and many of her friends never wanted to play again.
Yeah, totally.
Like, awesome for you.
You had an undefeated season. Like, I'm sure that you thought about that your whole damn life. And now you have a bunch of little girls who don't want to ever play again. Some who were totally into it, and maybe they went on to, you know, be whatever.
But.
But that's a terrible cost.
Yeah.
When we think about it. And I, I remember ahead of sales, who came in, in a company and sold in such an aggressive fashion to win at all costs and meet their numbers.
They.
That they were missing the quality and sustainable thing. And they ended up with a lot of very unhappy customers who'd been pushed and prodded so hard. And, you know, I can still feel that one.
Yeah. And I've got five kids, three of them big soccer players, one of them football player. My daughter, the youngest, is a volleyball player. Like, I've watched that as well. And, you know, most of the time you're fighting against other parents because, you know, they, they, they do want the short term. You know, they're the vc. Like, they do want that cash quick.
Give me the win.
Yeah. And they're not thinking how this kid's gonna feel in high school. Right. But yeah. And I only did maybe because I was a former coach Like I, you know, I was probably the only. They probably thought I didn't care. I never bothered the coaches. Right. But yeah, it's, it's, it comes down to, you know, the, the fact that brute force, you know, I call it hand to hand combat when I talk about it. So the hand to hand combat in sales, you know, in some industries you kind of need that and, but you don't just need that. You know, there's, there's just some like overly competitive, old school kind of industries that yeah, you do need that strong, you know, sales leader and really aggressive people. But you can't do it at the expense of everything else.
Right.
So it's not as if it's completely wrong, it's just that it can't be, you know, what's in front and leading the charge for the company.
So I hear that. And applying, I think now is the need for, for looking at multiple perspectives or aspects. So if we're tracking our acquisition cost and our time to close and things like that, are we also tracking how valuable and how long the customer lasts? Right. What is the turnover? Right. If we burn them in like my example, or do they also leave in 12 months? Right. With a bad taste in their mouth? Yeah.
Well, and there's some like, inconvenient reality to that. So think of it as, you know, do I want them to leave in 12 months? I mean, you would think that the obvious answer is no, but maybe you do want them to leave in 12 months because maybe the service that you have really should be not that long and have a cliff that you fall off of. And so maybe you should be spent having your organization spend time on what's in month 13, you know, but in most cases you do want them. That's the whole point is you want them as a customer and you don't want them to leave.
Right.
And you know, time to close and those kind of things. The, the, the message that we were getting out with the book is right now those things are tracked, measured, but do they matter? Because if I'm in sales and I get a lead from marketing and we'll leave out the incredible sequence of events that happen to get to that point. But let's, I get, let's skip ahead to I got the lead, but this person is not willing to spend a million dollars and I have to have an average contract of a million to hit my goal.
Yes.
Marketing has given me people that are only willing to spend 100 grand, not a million.
Yes.
So what am I supposed to do? Well, Right now, nothing, because I'm in sales and I just muscle my way through. I'm gonna force people into whatever I can. But in a CRO model, the idea is that like, if that starts happening, it's not a wait till the end of the quarter and talk about it. It's an immediate. We're all on the same team here. Hey, what are you doing? Like, what's the message you're giving? Why are we getting people that are not even ready for the deal that we're just the only thing we sell? You know, it doesn't matter that you gave us a lead if it's not gonna work. And until those teams are the same, then they're just going to kind of be like, well, I don't know what sales is going to do with that.
Yeah, I think really, really useful to think about that long term success. So what is the whole picture balanced, the whole view of all of that? So talk about the other one that you shared is a chain coffee shop, right?
So, sure, yeah. So this one is kind of, I, I think the most unintuitive thing that I learned when I was in management consulting. So I did learn something from management consulting, believe it or not.
And you have to put in long.
Hours and what flyer miles and, and the, and the, and it's, it's the most useful thing in terms of like running a big business, I think, which is that you really do need. The end of the story is, and then I'll tell it, is that you need to have very flexible ways at which you get to your outcomes in order to maximize your outcome. And so the story goes with retail stores and this story can kind of resonate if, you know, for all of us because we all go to retail stores and go to the big chains is if you have a store, let's just use Best Buy as an example since it's close to me here. If the person at the register has to read you a script to offer you magazines, you know, at the end of your purchase, hey, would you like to subscribe? They did that for like a year. It was hilarious. I don't know how many magazine descriptions they sold, but if I have a script, I say the same thing to you at the register every time. And then when you came in the door, that guy said the same thing to you every time. And then the sales guy in the cell phone area when he saw you said the same thing he says to everybody. And it's because the way they're managing the store is, hey, every store does things the same way. And that's how we manage quality around here. So they sort of treat it as if it's an assembly line and it's not. And guess what? You get the worst, most variable. If you look at it on a bell curve, you get this fat bell curve end to end. So you have people doing criminally bad on the left, like so bad they should shut that store down. And then you've got people, a handful of people who are just like rocking it. Like, how are they doing that? They're doing 10x the sales or profit of the criminally bad stores. And then in the middle you've got people kind of all over the place. And the actual way to fix that is not to standardize stuff. You can standardize what rugs you buy and light bulbs you buy for the store. You can do that. But the people stuff, you have to have an outstanding general manager, whoever, whatever you call the person who leads that location who can say, yes, here's, here's kind of my purview. Now how am I going to get to my goal? And if they're in, you know, Menominee Falls, Wisconsin and fishing is really big there, he's going to sell tackle, he's going to, he's going to sell worms, you know, over by the guns. And he, you know, he's gonna do some stuff that the other Best Buys are not doing. And because that's his location and he's not gonna stick to. Well, here's how we interview people. And here, no, my, my population here is, is a much older population. And they don't, they don't like that. And they don't want a script coming at them when they come in the door. They want to like, hey, how you doing? How's, how's your cousin? I saw them come in here, you know, like give freedom to that. And guess what? That store will over perform because of that. And so the reason that story was, story was actually in the book was because we have our steps to kind of move from CMO to CRO. And the idea is that every company is different. And you can't just say here's exactly how you do it. But we can give you kind of a guide, some guideposts. And then you say, well, here's what my company looks like today. Here's how I'm going to go about it. And that's how you actually succeed. You can't just kind of run a script and say, well, this is exactly how we're going to do it.
You Know, I love this. And it's the intersection of both worlds, right? Because we work with companies regularly on having them start their sales playbook and having them iterate on common, consistent practices for things that lead to predictable results. Right? We don't want to reinvent everything all the time.
We.
But you also are dealing with human beings who like, give me the playbook, but then let me call the play and let me know what situation is so I don't get somebody on the phone and says, tell me how I can be of excellent service today. I'm like, that's written by some moron. It's just obnoxiously phrased by a person who doesn't really talk to real people all the time. Weird, right? Instead of saying, hey, how can I help you? Or what are you looking for? Like, with humanity and curiosity and thoughtfulness. And so. And then from there we're like, okay, this is a person who's trying to make a decision, or this the person is trying to check out, or, you know, this. Like, there are some common things and then we can go to those repeatable things, but we aren't doing the like, automaton, robot, like, nonsense. And it's interesting that you use Best Buy as an example because there's a company that has really transformed recently. And we had Hubert Jolie, the CEO, talking about the transformation of that. And the thing that he talked about a lot of things, but the thing that really came through a lot in his conversation, excuse me, was the humanity, right? Dealing with real human beings with real thoughts and feelings, with actual brains, right? And who could apply and work smart and like, bring some of that. So they did other things like fixed compensation and that kind of thing too.
But sure, sure, it's complex and, and you know, I'm simplifying it to make a point. But, you know, there's, there's also an element of, you know, no, not everybody can sell cell phones for you, so don't rotate everyone into that role. You know, there's like, there's some tenants that are, that are scientific and you can back them up. But, but some of those, some of those sort of like guideposts are also like, don't over script things. You know, there I, I did this thing for my alma mater about how to ask a good question. And, and I have figured out kind of my sort of pillars of how I do it. And one of them is that I care a lot. So I don't know how you can fake that, but like, I care a lot about anyone I'm talking to. That makes it really easy for me to say good things like, what would you like me to do? You know, because I do want you to tell me that I'm not just saying it. And they can tell. Like, I want them to tell me what they would like me to do next. Right. So there. There's some humanity and then, you know, no doubt about it. You know, Best Buy, any big retail chain is. There's complexity there that has to be made.
For a little while, they looked all but dead, and it looked like they were so cooking. In fact, I was recently in a Best Buy like three or four times in a week period, outfitting a new office studio. And I was really struck by how well taken care of I was when I was in there. I needed to get a bunch of stuff. I had to figure it out. I wasn't just going to order it on Amazon and that kind of thing. And I'm like, oh, wow. But it didn't used to be like that.
Right.
It used to be much anyway. So that's useful to think about the intersection of common systems, repeatable processes with actual flexibility, humanity, and thinking.
Yeah. I think you just got to figure out what are the facts, because there's not a lot of them. Make sure everybody knows those and then let people work around those.
Yeah.
So you've already touched on this a little bit, but I know you've got some additional stories to share when the math doesn't work, right. You're. You're sitting in front of VCs, they've all sharpened their pencils, salivated, and imagined the ways things could go. But it's all a lot of wishful thinking based on a lot of guesses.
Sure.
Yeah. There's, you know, one of the stories in the book is about a CEO I worked for that, you know, I think he just got. He got enamored with a particular. I guess call him a consultant, a particular person, a consultant to him that said, hey, selling's easy, man. Like, it's just math, you know, kind of the call 10 people, get seven appointments, get three commitments, and sell one of them, you know, or some. Some. Yeah, yeah. And. And so he had this whole thing. So I kind of showed up, like, to kind of take over North America. And I looked at it and I was just like, well, I mean, this is great. If your very first number is right, which is, you know, 5, 000 CEOs, I'm gonna get on an email list and just blast them. And we always get this many that show up and, and that's going to equal this many. I'm like, hey, you know, who am I to say? I just got here, show me. And right away I was like, are you kidding me? Like, this guy's CEO of his house. Like, he's not CEO of anything. And your average deal size is actually $1 million. He doesn't have $1 million. And if he did, it wouldn't give it to you. And there's not a single CEO that, you know, you would call a CEO on any of these sort of webinars. He was funneling them to a webinar. And, you know, so there was zero dollars coming out of it. It wasn't like we were getting, you know, less than we wanted. It was zero. Because there people were just like. Because the guy's content was really good. So people wanted it. But the people that wanted it were either running their own business in a small town somewhere in Kansas, or they were, you know, 19 years old and they just started a job at some big company and they, they couldn't wait to change customer experience in the next 30 years of their career. So they're on this webinar, but they're CEO of Johnny Strategies. I mean, so it was like content was amazing. Like he had people like writing in, saying that they changed their lives and like around culture change. Awesome. But it was not a business strategy. So, you know, he was too often when you're counting MQLs and you know, leads and deal size and you know, who am I selling to? Who's. Who's my decision maker? You got to be real careful with that. And it's like bad news for the VCs or bad news for anyone who just thinks it's math and who thinks deal making, whether it's electronic or face to face, they think it's just like we're both computers, like trading information and then we close the sale. Like it's bad news because you actually have to figure out what is going on. And, and you know, my short sentence example of that is sometimes you have to be really good with the manager in IT because for whatever reason, that's how all your deals close. Is this particular manager or this particular administrator in IT is the one who cares the most about what your technology does. And when they get on board and they go to the cio, you close. Yes, but you're thinking, I got to get to the cio and so you're ignoring the manager. So like, sometimes it's just inconvenient, but you have to actually figure out how it works.
You know, it's a great example. And as you're telling it, I'm reminded of a funny but obnoxious. I remember my early 20s, you know, going out to drink with my buddies and trying to talk to girls and that kind of thing. And. And one of my friends is a little aggressive, a little obnoxious. Not really, really bad, but. But definitely like, you know, a little out there. And. And I remember watching him go up and say something obnoxious and cliche to an attractive woman in nightclub or bar or whatever. And then. And then it went down in flames. And I see him sort of blow past me like he's on to the next one. He's like, hey, baby, it's a numbers game. He said something like that. And he was. And then I'm like, what? And he's like, yeah, one down, nine to go.
I'll get one.
Right?
It's funny because the, you know, the sales business development discussion inevitably devolves into a dating analogy. And, you know, my. My dating analogy is, you know, has played out a few times extended from me, where someone will ask me, you know, I have the younger cop. I'm the old guy now in every meeting. And, you know, the younger colleagues will ask me kind of on the. On the side, like, you know, what's a good pickup line? You're good at asking questions. What's your pickup line? And I'll say a good pickup line is, why are you here? And I said, ask that question and then ask it over and over with diff. Inflection on different words for the rest of the night and that you just need one. So the numbers game, in my example, just, you know, pick the person who you think is probably going to be worthwhile and then ask that question like, ten times over the next, like, you know, hour in different ways. And then you got it. Because that's the most caring. That's the most caring question ever.
I think, though, the emphasis got to be on the caring in my friend's example. Um, I don't know whatever happened to him, but.
But he's at some bar somewhere right now.
But it was very memorable.
And I thought, wow, I. That's not my game. Like, that's not my approach to life or anything or the rest of this evening. But I. But I was struck by it. I'm like, wow, that was a little. And it was so blatant where I think many played the game. It was just unapologetic. It's like okay, next. And what I've come to think about that over time is, yeah, but unless you're like, on vacation somewhere, they all know each other, right? They all now see and smell that you're a jerk.
Right? Watch out for that guy. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it'll follow you around. You're right. Unless you're in some other country for a weekend or something. But.
And I think that's true in that, like, oh, it's all a numbers game kind of thing. You know, you burn through an email list endlessly, you keep hammering away with your stupid automated marketing routines until somebody hates your company. And they don't just hate your company in private, they hate your company publicly. They hate your company repeatedly to their friends. They're like, oh, my God, I just got another email from that company and I cannot unsubscribe them. Or, or, God, they've, they figured out my text now and like, you know, like, whatever it is, like, how do I get them out of my feed? I'm sick of seeing that guy, you know?
Well, if you're a small company, you're in big trouble too, because. And maybe, maybe you've seen this as well. I've had a Gmail account since Gmail, like, was invented. And, you know, people that I just signed up for are in my spam. They're not making it to me. And I know why. Because of, you know, Tegra's capabilities. I know exactly why that's happening. And they don't have the resources to deal with it. So they're running whatever campaigns or whatever, like a total waste of time and effort. It's not getting to me ever. And they're actually people I want to buy from. I remember I was in there looking to see if somebody's calendar invite accidentally went into spam. And I was like, I forgot about that company. I love that company. Like, I never marked them as spam. But there's some technical things that if you screw up, you're just going to start going into spam. Right? Yeah. And, you know, so there's companies who might even have, like, genuine caring, you know, thinking around how they build those marketing campaigns and how they're going to reach out. And they don't even know that none of us are seeing them because there's also bots on the other halfway on the way to me that are clicking on all their links to see if they're, if they're good or bad. So then that company thinks, oh, Raleigh clicked on all my links. You know, he's really? He's engaged, he's really interested. So there's a bunch of stuff that happens technically along the way that's just too bad.
Yes. That reminds me of Shout out to our producer in the background. Lucy, schedule me to disable or update some of our old marketing automations next week. There are some legacy stuff we have there that just needs to be killed because the vast majority of our really good business is really referral based and we do really well on the whole. But it's largely because of the generous human things, not those automations that we do well before we run out of time. Some recap to things. There is an awful lot of like connecting the different tools and things like that. Really important on the technical side. There's also getting real about the whole picture. I heard you say that a bit like how do things actually happen? What's really going on? What's the world of it then being flexible and human about all of it even as you're automating it. Those two intersections of all that stuff. The company is revenue or the URL. The link we're sending you is not Tegra toss but is revenue takeover.com revenue takeover.com the book CMO to CRO is the book title and it's all there on the screen in front of you. It'll be in the show notes as well. Thank you so much for joining us today and talking all about the work and the thinking and stuff. There's a lot of good thinking there. Reminder to everyone if you want to get in touch with us or find us for that kind of thing. Scalingcoach.com our email where you can send us some spam is info scalingcoach.com and we will probably read it unless the bot gets it first, but info is our email if you need to find a coach in your area. If you want to get in touch with one of our guests, like I don't know anything like that. That's the one we monitor. Info@scalingcoach.com Big thanks to Lucy Summers producing our show, getting things ready. Stalling for me when I space out and show up late like this like I did today coverage. And thank you Raleigh for being gracious as I recovered my F up. Big thanks to Vern Harnish, author and creator of the Scaling up framework itself and to the folks at Podfly Productions, Alby Burge who gets our audio produced, I Couldena who writes up our show notes to McGowan who proofreads everything. Thanks again everyone. Keep scaling. We'll talk to you again next time.
