#38: 6sense CMO Latane Conant on growing 100% YoY for the last four years, winning through operational excellence, account-based marketing, and more.

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1, 2, 3, 4. Exit. Exit. Exit. I'm excited. My guest is Latin Ikon, and she is a CMO at 6 cents. And she's somebody that I've wanted to have on this podcast for a while. I dropped the ball probably four times on scheduling and that's how it works. And you miss someone for a while. And then a couple weeks later, I actually got an email in my inbox saying, you should have Latin on. So she's here and it's good to see you. How are you?

I'm awesome. I'm just living the dream here in Chicago.

I love a Chicago interview. I'm on the east coast and so it's night. Whenever I have, like, whenever somebody actually can do a podcast before one o' clock my time, I'm like, okay, somebody's got to be not on the West Coast. So what's the makeup of the six Sense, like team? Or did you all have an office that you're going to? Or is the team fully remote?

So we've got a mix. I would say from a marketing and selling perspective, we're pretty much everywhere. We've got a couple hubs, like a hub in New York and one in Austin and one in San Francisco. But, you know, it's interesting. I was at Appirio before and our whole value prop was that we ran in the cloud. We were, you know, less than 1% IT infrastructure and of revenue, and we believed in totally remote work. So when I was interviewing one of my value props before, it was cool to be remote, was I plan to run a remote team, 100% remote team. And, you know, I'm not going to get just local talent. I'm going to get the best talent in the world. And that's something that I believe in and I know how to do. And so I kind of joked that I bamboozled Sixth Sense because I think they really wanted me in San Francisco, but I had no intention of moving. So I'm like, oh, no. I'm all about this remote thing.

Love that. I love that. Most people wouldn't say that. I love that. Have you been traveling more lately?

Yeah, a little bit. And it's been nice to get back. Like, I feel a little like a caged lion. So I'M I need to get out and about again.

Did you go to Saster or anything?

I went to Saster. That was good. We just had our breakthrough conference, which is our customer conference. So that was in Scottsdale and was totally awesome and really energizing. It's interesting because as a planner of events, you have this PTSD from COVID where you would plan an event and then it would get canceled or maybe people wouldn't want to show up or was it going to be a super spreader? And so we almost underestimated. Well, we did. We underestimated the demand and had to shut off registration, which I guess is a good problem to have.

I feel like there's like a sweet. I feel like there's like a sweet spot right now because a lot of companies are like, because of the economy. So a. Like, everybody's kind of over, like the not traveling for Covid. Even people like me are like, I'm traveling next week for the first time in a while. And I was so burnt out on travel that I'm like, I was like beating the, like, I'm not going anywhere for two years, like, thing. And I was like, I'm not going anywhere. And I'm like, sneaky, very excited to go, like, which is rare. And so I think a lot of people are like that and so. And people feel like, safe and going, and so they go. And they've been wanting to go. But then there's also the other side of, like, a lot of companies are cutting budget right now. And like, the companies that are doing events, I think there's. There's not as many. It's not like. Don't you feel like two years ago, like, pre Covid, it was like, man, there were so many events, like, how do we know which ones to even go to? And now I think it's back to like, they become more of like a rarer thing, which is cool. It's cool to have that in person connection, I think.

Yeah, it is. It's funny though. You almost have like, I've never had social anxiety until now, and you get very. A lot more overwhelmed than before. It's strange. You know what I mean? Whereas.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, oh, yeah, let's do this. And now we're gonna go for a drink after.

I know. I feel like by the end of the day, I feel you're just wiped. Oh, yeah. I'm still not shaking any hands. I only fist bump. Like, just. Yeah, like, why do I need to touch your hand? Seriously, I don't need to touch your hand. Okay, so Sixth Sense, six Sense has become, I would say, one of the bigger, more successful companies in the B2B SaaS space over the last four or five years. Right?

I would agree, yes.

Can you just give some context for where the company is at? Maybe just any history on your growth as you can share it?

Sure. I've been at six sense four years. The CEOs, Jason Zintac has been there five. And we have grown 100% year over year the last four and a half years. So, you know, substantial growth.

Can we just pause on that for a second? 100% year over year growth every year for the last four years.

Yes.

It would be so fun to be in those management meetings.

Yeah. It's funny because I like stress so much about our board meetings and my husband is like, I don't understand why you're stressed, like, literally.

Well, it's like, you know, I'm sure there's plenty of problems, but I think like, at least from what I've seen now and granted, like, I'm not a CMO anymore, but I see lots of companies. I'm like, the adage in sports was like winning. You never hear about like the team chemistry being bad on like a team that just won the championships. Like, you don't hear about all the internal issues. And so it's like, nothing makes a happier locker room than winning. And I think the same is true in, in SaaS and like, especially in marketing where there's like, look, at the end of the day, if we're growing 100% year over year, like, how many problems do we really have? And so, like, especially when it comes to marketing, like, I just feel like probably congratulations on what you've done, obviously, but you don't have to deal with a lot of the bullshit of the company that's not growing. And marketing's under the, you know, the scrutiny. So I just to appreciate that is pretty cool.

Yes and no. Because I would say one of the reasons that we are successful is we operate extremely paranoid. And at the end of the day, I think the strength of the marketing team that we have here is execution. So I have a saying, like, ideas are easy, execution is everything. And so we are operators, executors, very, very data driven, extremely paranoid. Our best quarter in sales was probably my worst quarter because you're always looking out at what's ahead. And I think that's the neat thing about being in marketing is you have an opportunity to future proof bookings because you can see patterns Much earlier. And once your sales leader is at the beginning of the quarter doing the oh, we're 3.5 times target and the pipe we're sitting on, there's not a lot you can do. I mean there's some in quarter pipe plays you can run. Yeah.

Oh, that's so true.

Not a lot. And so I have to be thinking about 2/4 out, 3/4 out and what are the dynamics we're seeing and where do we need to invest for the future. And so that's where I mean my team jokes about my dashboard because I look at it seven to eight times a day and in pinging people and what's going on with this conversion And I noticed this asp and how come, you know, website traffic, it looks like it's down this week versus I mean I am like a cuckoo banana, that's what they call me. But I think that's kind of how you have to operate.

I have a bunch of follow ups that I need to ask you now. First is you mentioned this line is really powerful and I want to repeat it so people like double click on it because this is. I shared this lesson recently. It's a lesson that I wish I knew earlier but you said there's only so many plays that you can run in quarter and anytime I got in trouble with the marketing plan was exactly for that reason, which is like. And I shared this recently which like the number one way to hit the number this quarter is almost like to have invested in that channel like six months to a year ago. Right. Can you talk about that?

Well again to me it's all about being very clear on your metrics and getting that as soon as possible so that you can see trends and patterns. So if you're always changing the goal post and how you measure and there's no perfect measurement. Right. And so sometimes I think what can happen is people are like, well now let's measure this and now let's measure that or let's change the definition of win rates and blah blah, blah, blah blah. I mean my revenue ops guy knows I'm like Corey, do not change the stage definitions on me because in your trends are off, right? And you don't know do we have a problem or is it because we change the definition or blah blah blah. And every now and then you have to and it's fine. But to me the tighter you start to like lay out those key leading indicators of the future and trend and track, I call it finding the red.

How have you done that? It seems like to execute at such a high level and to have all those things, it's like you can't just do those in the marketing vacuum. And so like, can you talk about the relationship that you have with the, with other people across your org to like have that standard view of marketing?

Yeah. So I think transparency builds trust. I have all of our metrics visible for anybody in the company to go and see at any time. Like this.

Where is that?

It's in Salesforce and it brings in data from 6Sense and other other sources, of course. And you know, you can just see what's our top of funnel. So how much? What's icp? Webtrap. So at the highest level, is this.

The dashboard that you sweat over? You're saying, is this the same dashboard that you're checking seven, eight times a day?

Yeah.

Cool.

So at the highest level, because I think you can get caught. Top of funnel is the hardest to assess and you can get it down these rat holes of like, oh, well paid search and domain authority and you can get all crazy and all that stuff is important. Right. Those are functional KPIs. But the end of the day, like, I don't care if you did a podcast or you changed the way we do search. We need to get our ideal accounts and contacts to our website. We trend. We overlay our ideal customer profile onto Google Analytics and can see, like, if I need to double revenue, I need to get double the number of ideal accounts to our website.

Yeah, I love how you have that broken down because it's like we do, we overcomplicate the shit out of so many things. And you're like, you just described what the purpose of marketing. Like, hey, our job is to get our ideal accounts to our website, period. And even though you sell to the enterprise Latin, you still care about driving website traffic. Can you talk about that?

Yeah. I mean, that's your storefront. No matter what. Right. People aren't going to buy from you without coming to your website. They're going to come to the website at some point.

Right. Even if they have like a field meeting tomorrow, I'm gonna like, I'm gonna go to your website and like just check you out. Right. Aren't you?

Yeah, exactly.

That's a cool proxy. Like, so, because I think you just gave somebody, you gave people something really useful, which is like a lot of people are like, well, how do I start measuring this? But you're like layering on the ICP over the web traffic might show. Yeah, we're not getting the sales Meetings and conversions. But at least do we have the right people walking into our store. I love that.

Yeah. Because if you're not even doing that. And that's your top of funnel. North Star top, top of funnel. Right. Because if you're not doing that, start there. Right. And then once you're doing that, if it's like, okay, we're still not getting meetings, then it's like, then there's other red areas that you would look to. Like, okay, we, for example, every quarter, at the end of the quarter, we take every one deal and we look at their click path. So I can optimize my content and stuff like that. So I know, for example, which is interesting, I can go on these rants where I'm like, I think webinars are boring. No one wants to do webinars anymore. Right. And I have all these opinions, but that's all it is. It's like my opinion and whatever. And so then we'll look at the data and it's like, actually, enterprise accounts love webinars. Our commercial segment. Nope. They want. How to. They want. Show me the demo. How do I get started? Content enterprise. They want to hear customer webinars.

So you're looking at, you're analyzing your website. Are you doing it for all deals? And you're seeing trends.

Yeah.

And so does your team present that and then you all make a strategy decision based on what that's telling you?

Yeah, we look at it and then we just are kind of like, okay, what's the start? Stop, continue. Because I'm easily bored. And so like abm, I'm like, I don't want to talk about abm. It's so boring. I'm so over it. But everything, you know, that's our top keyword, latvi. Just because you're bored of it doesn't mean.

Well, I think it's also hard to assess, like, when you're inside of the company, you're sick of it, because that's all you talk about. But then like from an external world, for someone who might be buying that, it's almost like they can't hear it enough. It's hard to separate that.

Does everyone know it? And it's like, no, they don't. You know, and so it's just like taking the guesswork out of understanding your market. And yeah, we want to be thought leaders and we want to be talking about the next thing, but I think there's that balance of, like, you got to be in tune with your market, so that just helps Ground us with being in tune with the market.

So what else is in that dashboard? I want to get this from you, but because I. So you have this dashboard. Everybody in the company can see it. That's great. You love it. What are the key things that are in there for people?

Okay, so the next thing, so great, we're getting people to the website. We want to get them to a 6QA, which is a $0.06 qualified account because that triggers a workflow for us. And what I love about the 6QA is it takes into account account fit, which is important. I don't want to work accounts that are not the most winnable accounts for us. It takes into account Persona fit. So it weeds out if it's, you know, interns or students or whatever or job seekers. It looks at a cross buying team. So it'll look at like, are there three people coming to the website or two or, you know, it takes into account the patterns of the buying team and then it looks, you know, back at historical patterns and can say statistically speaking, the recency and frequency of behavior that we're seeing across the buying team means this account is ready for outreach. So it's like I want to get people to the website, then I want to get them warmed up enough that they're ready for outreach, which is indicated by a 6QA. And then the 6QAs trigger a workflow of, you know, a certain SLA. It's almost like in market for us is the same we treat like an inbound. Basically there's an SLA for a response time. We have to reach out to at least three Personas. There's an activity threshold to indicate that we've worked the in market account. And so website great. That's an indicator. Doesn't mean we've won anything. We still haven't gotten a meeting. So these are just indicators. Right? Are we read yellow green on getting people to the website? Are we read yellow green on getting enough 6 QAs to keep our AES and BDRs busy and filled with in market accounts. Great. Then again, we still haven't gotten a meeting. So next is a stage zero. A stage zero for us means they have committed to a meeting. And so I reverse engineer basically how many stage zeros we need every single month. And I create a quota for stage zeros. It's across all pipeline. Like I don't care if it's marketing or AE direct or partner. I know we need to have this many booked meetings to make our numbers in future quarters. Then we track stage one, which means the meeting occurred. And then stage two is qualified pipeline. And I'm looking at conversions and ASPs and cycle times between each of those three pretty maniacally. Because if. And then I look at win rates, because if our win rate dips, that means my pipeline assumptions aren't accurate. Like, I've got to actually create more pipeline, if that makes sense. What happens is all of the ASP and conversions on the dashboard flip, red, yellow, green. So if I look at it and the conversions are all green, I know we're good. If I look at it and start to see red conversions, I'm like, oh, shit. Like, we got to go and address these problems. And we're always doing this. I think people focus on, like, the absolute number too much. And the absolute number is sort of a symptom versus the disease is usually in the conversions. And it can be all kinds of things. Like, we had Project Panic two years ago. Project Panic was our stage one to two conversions dropped. They're usually around 50%. And they dropped to, like, I don't know, 40s. So we declared Project Panic and we were like, what is going on with our stage ones? Not qualify? Are we setting up bad meetings? Right. And so we went through all of these things, and what we found is we just weren't nailing the first meeting. Like, the pitch deck wasn't great. It wasn't differentiated. Like, we needed to really focus on nailing the first meeting. And so Mark and I and our PMM team went crazy thinking about, okay, what's the pre work for the demo? What happens in the first meeting? What are next steps? And we retrained everybody on that. So it's not always, like, do more. I think sometimes in marketing we're like, oh, something's low. We got to do another campaign or another goblet. So let's send some more emails or launch podcasts. And sometimes it's like, let's just make sure we're, like, optimizing what we have.

That's an amazing. I wanted to let you go because that's amazing insight. It speaks to, like, the ability to be able to track it to that level. And I was going to say exactly what you said, which is, yeah.

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How much do you hear? We gotta do more. We need more stuff. And you just found like actually no, we, it's. I would much rather have that problem to fix. Like we have these people interested in a meeting and, or on a meeting and they're not moving from there. That's a much different problem to solve. So that was great. People are gonna love this interview. I already know it. And I'm over here scribbling like a madman. Lots of things to follow up on. Seems like from the way that you're talking and this sounds like the business, it seems like you have a, you have to have a great relationship with. You mentioned Mark. Is that your sales counterpart? I don't know if there's a CRO or VP of sales.

Yeah, Mark. Mark is our head of sales.

Okay.

Sanjay is our head of customer success.

I'm a booty headed monster, which is great. But even to be able to do what you said, like the amount of companies that I have talked to or see that are like, well, the problem is that the VP of sales or whoever, they think the deck is great and they think it's on us to bring in. It speaks to like, you have to have an aligned group to be able to work on those things productively. Right. Like, it has to be a whole company thing. It can't just be like, well, conversions, dropping this area of marketing. Go fix it.

Yeah. And I think that comes from our CEO, the operate paranoid. And I think for me, early on, what's interesting is Mark and I, like, literally started on the same day. I remember we were scrambling to prep for our like, first board meeting. Like, we had been in the role like a week and Jason was like, you're gonna present to the board. And Mark and I were like, oh, shit. He's like, so I think there's like some just shared juju from, you know, starting at the same time and et cetera. But, you know, I come from sales and sales, we love data. Like, don't give me opinions. Like, we want great. Sales leaders are supercomputers. They want data, they want patterns, they want to know, you know, if you want to have a winning sales team at scale. It's all about winning patterns and tapping into winning patterns. And so if you can bring that to the table. And I didn't go to Mark as part of project Panic and say, dude, you know, the first meetings stink. And to be honest, that's on me. That's pmm. Like, we create the decks, you know. So I just said, I think we've let people down. Like, I don't think it's strong enough. It's kind of boring. And we got up the game, so let's do it together in that.

You also talked about when you're looking at where pipeline comes from, this is such an important Note for people. You said you don't care if it's.

I don't care.

Let's talk about this. I don't care if it's marketing sourced or AE Direct. And holy smokes, this is why, like, marketing is not that hard. We make it really hard inside of companies because of all these internal politics. How many companies do you know? I'm sure you advise other companies. Whatever the reason this pipeline thing gets all freaking messed up is because the marketing is like, well, if it's generated by a sales rep, that is a different outcome and that is their goal. That's only usually their goal because the comp plan is there's misaligned incentives between sales and marketing. Like, if you really want to be successful today, you have to have one plan, which is revenue, and that leads to pipeline and sales and marketing together are working on the pipeline number. And like, as you smartly pointed out, you don't care because great. If we can hit our whole pipeline number by AE Direct, I guarantee you that Latin, you would probably do it and say, cool, let's shut down everything else. Like, can you please rant on that for the kind listeners at home?

Yeah. I just think that if you're just looking at the dynamics of pipeline based on marketing source channels, it's sort of like looking at your business through a keyhole. And I think if you want to be the steward of pipeline, which I would encourage CMOs to be, you want to be looking at the dynamics across everything and understanding like assumptions. And so here's an example. Like, for us, there's some seasonality to marketing. And so we always do a spiff in the summer around AE Direct. And Mark and I took reps on a trip and said, you know what? Like, and I think Mark agrees it's not bad for AES. Like, it keeps them fresh, it keeps them hungry. Now, it's not always the best use of their time that they're prospecting all of the time. Right.

I see that as a marketing, like, I think it's so smart the way you put it that way because I see it as like, you're the marketing leader, you're creating a plan for revenue. You know that one of the things you need to do in the summer is you're literally, your campaign is not do more webinars in July. It's, oh, get with Mark and create summer Spiff where we're going to take reps X place. Like, that's how you do it. It's not like, oh, go increase digital spend by 20%. It's like this type of thinking at the. Just seems like you're able to operate at that level because there's not a lot of bullshit on metrics internally.

Yeah. And like, the thing about there's no silver bullet. Like, like, if I could just increase digital, if I could just increase Google search spend, this would be easy. I'd just do that all day. But every single channel has a diminishing return at some point. So you just have to be looking at, like, this doesn't work that way. It's not like you can be like, july, I'm going to spend double. And like, it takes a while. And I mean, you guys all know this, so, yeah, you have to be, I think, playing the chess game across the board and making assumptions about, like, how you're going to hit the number.

This other thing you mentioned is Project Panic, and I love that you called it Project Panic. Because one thing that we talk about a lot is just like, how marketing teams suffer this incremental thinking. Like, we think incrementally and that's what's going to get us out of the hole. So, like, oh, we're missing on Pipeline. We default to like, let's go rewrite the freaking nurture emails and let's add another AB test to the website where, like, it seems like very clearly what you all did two years ago was like, big problem in Pipeline. The way to fix it is by blowing this whole thing up and completely rethinking how we do that.

Yeah. But we knew exactly where the problem was. So that, I think, is key. Right. Because a lot of times you don't know, like, I think that it's hard for sales and marketing and customer success teams to isolate the problem, so you end up doing a bunch of random crap. And so the faster you have this operating model with the trends and everyone can see this is very red. This is exactly where it's very red. Let's go and fix that. It makes it a lot easier when you can isolate. And that, I think, is what helps Mark and I. When Mark calls me, I usually am like, yeah, I'm looking at it. What should we do? We're not like, oh, shit, stuff's not working out. I wonder why. And you know, like, no, why? And that's the hardest part. I mean, that's where I think a lot of people go sideways.

Like, that's also more mentally rewarding. Even though it's stressful, it's like, oh.

I love fixing stuff.

You're solving the problem. You know, what the issue is and you're trying to creatively think, like, what can we do to fix this problem?

Yeah.

One last question around this stuff and then I want to talk about your book and stuff like that. So four years growing 100%, it's hard to do this. But if you had to boil it down, looking back, what are some of the top plays that you've done that have been instrumental in doing that?

I mean, I think there's some of the things we've talked about just in the way we obsess over our metrics, the way we're 100% account based, the way we use data and insights like maniacally. So just good, you know, we have.

Good hygiene and you're 100% account based. But I think typically when people hear 100% account based, they're like, they think it's all outbound type stuff. And it's been cool to hear you talk about how key the website is to that. And so you're doing, I'm sure you're doing lots of inbound marketing. Right? You're creating content, you're creating videos, doing webinars content. It's not that you're not doing that. It's just this maniacal focus around, like, who is the universe of people that we care about?

Yes. What are the most winnable accounts? So I think efficiency is like sales efficiency is everything. Like, that's why the win rates are so, so, so critical. So like for us and low fit inbound goes through a totally automated process because I think ABM is as much who you work, what you work and what you do as what you don' don't work and don't do. So I would say the fact that we're very aligned at the exact level on our ICP and on the most winnable accounts is a big part of our success formula.

Yeah. So this organizational and operational rigor that you all have.

Yeah. And what's interesting is I just was talking to someone yesterday and she's like, oh yeah, I did our ICP and I did it like two years ago. And I was like, two years ago? Ours is always changing. Like we're like, I mean, every quarter we're like thinking about that and optimizing that and optimizing it based on the number of AES that we're going to hire. Right. Because you have to have enough accounts for them. And so that's another thing about future proofing bookings is I will take a segment of what we think will be future icp. And I start warming it up before we add it to target lists.

How do you do that? What is warming it up?

Oh, all kinds of stuff. Like, we run, obviously, targeted display. We have an AI like kind of BDR outbound motion that we run. We create custom content and web experiences. So I want to be able to prove I can get these accounts to our website and I can get them to 6QA and we can get a meeting before we then go and assign that type of account to a territory.

And you have the ability to do that and spend time and money there because you have this system that you feel like is not playing catch up every quarter. Like, it all kind of connects, right?

Yeah, yeah.

I think just there's so many marketers who are like, warming up the accounts for segments that we don't even sell to. Like, I have a hard enough time, like, just focusing on who we do sell to today.

Yeah. And that's why knowing your penetration is important. Right. Like, I know for us on our target account list, coming in the second half of the year, we had already gotten 80% of them to 6QA. So, yeah, we're going to get the final, you know, ones to six qa. But obviously we need to be looking at expanding those target account lists. So those type of things. You know what I mean? So, like, when you start to track your penetration within segments, then you also see, okay, I need to add more. I need to get more warmed up for sales.

Is that target account list just kind of all based off of the revenue goal? Like, and just conversion rates all the way down? Like, how do you define that initial scope of those accounts?

Yeah, I mean, we. We're trying to get. I mean, we want every AES territory to have the most winnable hot account. Duh. Everyone does. Right. So we're using 6sense to find them an atom, and we're using the scores and fit model to be able to declare that. And then there's a certain number of accounts that people can realistically own. Another kind of interesting thing that we do, which I think has been a game changer, is when I first started at 6 Sense, I'm like, let's go all in on the 6QA, which is like, we have this platform that we sell, so let's go all in on it. And what we found was, so we're like six QaaS. That's what we're doing everything based on. And what we found is that because. So 6 sense is a huge universe of accounts and contacts versus your CRM. Like, your CRM might be 10 or 20% of what is in like, 6 sense is the whole universe of B2B, right? So what ended up happening was we had these criteria for fit. It wasn't a list of, like, when people told me their ICP is a list of accounts, I'm like, because it's changing. Like, Maybe that was 200 employees yesterday, but now it's. It's 500 employees, right? So it's this dynamic always on thing that's out finding these accounts. Okay, so that's pretty cool. But then if you marry that with a defined target account list, you pass these things to sales, and they're like, this isn't on my list. I might not get paid. I'm out. And so what we found was 50% of our six QAs weren't quote, unquote assigned. And so they were, like, just falling on the floor. So we went to actually a dynamic model for portions of our territories, especially in, like, our commercial segment. It's like, why should they even get a defined account list? Like, it should be three calls and a close, and we should just be teeing up the most winnable accounts. Now Strat is different. They have a more defined account list. And, like, it's not like Strat accounts are rotating in all the time. Right. It could take a year, but depending on the way that segment operates. Now what we do is dynamically, like, bring accounts into territories as we're seeing new 6QAs.

Let's flip over and talk about your book. You wrote this book first two years ago, which is a title I love. No forms, no spam, no cold calls. Amen. I added the amen. And in it you have just. Basically, I feel like if you like the stuff you're talking about, this book will be right up people's alley. Especially, I love this part about, like, giving the marketing team a way to play offense versus defense. But you just updated the book. I want to give you a chance.

To talk about it.

Yeah, so I never thought I would write a book. I was an accounting major because I never wanted to write a paper in college. You know, then I get to six cents, and it's me and one other marketer and, you know, unique content. So I'm like, I guess I'll write some blogs. And what they found was, I cannot write a blog. I can do a chapter. So I kind of had to start writing. And then I declared that we were going to do this project Bold Moves, which was the no forms, no spam, no Cold calls. So we did this internal project where I'm like, if we can do this better, these are our criteria. This is how we're going to run our go to market engine. And we're getting after it and it's working and I'm advising and sending people decks and I'm like, I need to write this all down. So that's kind of where the genesis of the original book was.

So the project boldness moves was like a, was an internal thing. Like, hey, we're do marketing. I love that. I just think it's so important for marketing to be able to like to have a point of view on how are you going to do marketing. I think like that's a. One trait that I see common among successful marketing teams is they're not just like kind of doing stuff. They have a philosophy on like, hey, what type of marketing? So your thing was like, we want to, here's how we're going to do it. We want to do no spam, no cold calls, no forms. And then you did this internally.

Yeah. So the underlying philosophy is we believe that if we create a differentiated prospect experience, we will win more often. And so it's all about the prospect experience. And so then when we started to look at the prospect experience, we started to see, gosh, it kind of sucks in B2B. And so how do we use data, how do we use insights, how do we be much more relevant, how do we be frictionless? And maybe in the short term we don't get a form fill, but in the long term we see 50 some percent win rates. Right. And so that was kind of, the philosophy was like, if we can change the game on the prospect experience, we'll win. And oh, by the way, this is probably something that more and more people should do. And so then the no forms, no spam, you know, it's. I use this V2MOM framework and it's like values, you have values. And so that just helped people think about like, what is spam? Like doesn't mean you're not going to send an email. We send emails. You know what I mean? But what constitutes spam, right? Or you know, we have forms if you want a demo or you want to meet with us. Right? So what is appropriate to use a form and when is it not? And so we sort of defined out, you know, what's a cold call versus a warm call. Like if six QAs come in, we call, but we're not going to call random people. Right. So it just sort of like defined out what that meant for us and our values around that. And then just always try to. The number one thing is, what is the prospect experience? What is it going to be? If it's not going to be good, we're not going to do it. And so that was sort of the philosophy. And then, you know, we got it out there. And I don't really like to read business books. I like to read fiction. And so I was like, if we're going to write it, it needs to be like, not a bunch of pontificating. Like, let's just make it a playbook that people can freaking use. You know, like, they say you write the book you wish you had. So I'm like, I want pictures. I want, like, templates. You know, I'm like, I want to talk about the stuff that didn't work. Everyone talks about what works. You learn more from what doesn't work.

And, well, if you're willing to put it in there, definitely. I feel like a lot of people say that and then like, they go to write the book and they're like, well, we were not going to put that in there. So it's cool to hear that you executed on that.

It gave our legal team quite a pause. They're like, what if our competition. I'm like, you know, we got to play the long game.

I think especially in your space. This is just a good example of the meta lesson in marketing, is like, you're a software company selling to marketing and salespeople, and you're basically publishing the playbook of how you do things and you use your own product to do it. It's just like the ultimately wrapped package of good marketing, I think.

Yeah. And for our customers. Right. Just because you buy the car doesn't mean you know how to drive. So we gotta make sure people don't run into the mailbox.

You know, how have you used the book, by the way, inside of the org? Because I always like to hear how people do this because it can be such an asset from a sales standpoint. So I'm curious to hear how you've used it.

So obviously all our employees get a copy of it and we have a certification that when you start, you go through to get certified on the philosophies and which is important because it is the philosophies of, like, kind of how to use our product to the fullest. We have an external certification and so tons of people have gotten certified, which is kind of fun. We did like these book club in a box where we send you Know, if people wanted to run a book club for their team, we would send them, like, all the materials, and I would show up and do, like, an ama. And the original book came out during COVID so it wasn't like we could go to trade shows and, like, give it out, you know, so it's all been kind of digital, and it's just spread on LinkedIn, and I think, you know, people recommend it. But what I found and the reason for the revised version is A, things change, you know, needed to make some updates. And then B, everyone kept saying, this is great, but for me, I need help with six sales, and I want to do this, but can you write a chapter for sales and from the sales perspective? And so the new version has a chapter from Mark giving. Like, what did he think when I wanted to do no forms, no cold calls. Like, how does he see this as a sales leader? And, you know, why is he successful under this approach?

Was that feedback that you all heard, or did you. How did you come up with this idea to add that section in?

I kept hearing, I can't get sales on board. I can't. And the book, if you read the book, it's definitely coming from a marketer, right? So I just was like, I need a sales voice that if nothing else we can say, read this last chapter. Because ultimately, the book is a catalyst for change, you know, and I don't really care about copy, so we give all the money to charity anyway. It's just a rallying call and a catalyst for change with the plays and the framework so that people can be successful, like the playbook. And so it is sales and marketing together. So we wanted to have that point of view in it. And then I learned a couple things, or there were a couple areas in the book that I didn't think I thought I hit on. But as I was talking to people, I realized they didn't totally sink in. So some of the stuff around Pipeline planning that we talked about earlier, I hit on. And I have our template for how we create the quotas, but I don't think I did a good enough job. Really exciting. Explaining how ingrained it is in how we do everything. And this point of view that I look at, all Pipeline, I guess I kind of thought everyone did that. And I've realized that's not the case.

That's what we talked about earlier. Exactly what we talked about earlier. Everybody's like, reading that. Be like, well, that's. Most people don't have it that good. Like, that's what you should strive towards is to have a team that can look at it all together. But yeah, it's interesting how you hear from so many people and they're like, nope, that chunk of pipeline operates over here. We don't work with them. And that sometimes hard to give advice from that because it's like the fix of that is such an internal political thing. It's not like a tip in a book that you can easily give someone, you know.

Yeah. And I don't know, maybe I just looked into it, but. Because when I first took over at Appirio, you know, I come from sales, so I was just like, this is how we're doing it.

Yeah. No, that honestly might be why. Yeah, that's an interesting observation. And I forgot about that. Like, your background in sales is like.

Yeah, who cares if it's rep source?

Doesn't that still count?

Yeah, like, I just want to see the wind wire blow up.

And I'm guessing that like you all get comped and bonus on company revenue, not, you know, marketing goal versus sales goal. Right?

Yeah, exactly. So that I hit on more. And then, you know, the other thing I didn't hit on enough is the workflow. Like, and I think this is why people get wrapped around the axle with intent. Like, just because you have an account showing intent, you still don't have a meeting. You've accomplished nothing. What is the workflow that gets triggered? And I think that there's this execution gap that I see time in, time out. So I talk about the importance of having SLAs around working those six QAs, what it takes to work. It's not going to be two emails. Sometimes it is, and that's cool and that gets everyone really excited. But you're still going to have to work the six QAs. And so what does that look like? There was just some detail that I felt like I probably need to add. So I added that to a kind of a bonus chapter.

Cool. I'm happy to have gotten the chance to grill you for a little bit because I learned a lot and I already know the feedback that I'm going to get from this episode is people are going to ask when you're going to come on again. So I'd love to do it again and do more because this is the exact type of stuff that people are interested. So make sure you go and connect with Latin on LinkedIn. We'll put all our info in here. 6sense is 6the number 6sixsense.com. And then I just found it. So you can easily find it too. But if you just type in like Latin econon book or no forms, no spam, no cold call six sense book, you'll find it.

Thanks, Dave.

Yeah, yeah, thanks for doing it. Enjoy the rest of your day. Good luck the rest of this quarter and I'll talk to you soon. Okay?

Okay, Bye.

Bye. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of the Exit 5 podcast. If you're in B2B marketing, you want to grow your career, you should also go and check out everything that we have over@exit5.com we've got articles, we've got videos, we've got templates. Plus we have a community. A community of over 4000 B2B marketing pros. Whether you're deep in your career and want to connect with your peers or just starting up and you want a place to go where you can see what people are talking about, get smarter about B2B marketing in your own time to grow your career and help grow your company. Go and check it out. It's exit. Exit5.com you can get on the email list there you can join the community. There's 4,000 marketers in the community. We have a job board. We're always adding new stuff. It's really becoming the number one place you can go if you want to grow your career and learn more about B2B marketing outside of what you're doing inside of your company every day. So check it out. Exit5.com and I also want to make sure I give a shout out to.

My friends at Hatch.

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