3 Decades, 5 Marketing Truths and The Power of Perspective with Greg Coticchia and Bryan Scanlon

This is the Share a Voice podcast presented by Look Left Marketing. In each episode, we talk to the smartest B2B leaders to tackle the most pressing marketing challenges. Here's your host, Look Left founder and principal, Bryan Scanlan.

Our guest today on Share a Voice is Greg Coticchia. He's a 6-time CEO, 4-time founder, author of Start Your Startup, marketing and business professor at Carnegie Mellon and University of Pittsburgh, He's been my client at least 3 times, and most importantly, he's a friend and mentor. Welcome to the show, Greg.

Thank you so much, Brian. I will tell you that every time we interact and we get the chance to work together, I learn as much from you. You're one of the best in the business. Thank you so much.

Thank you. That's very kind, Greg. We have been through at least 3 tech booms and busts together, and it now feels a little different and disruptive. And I thought we have decades of perspective and I thought we'd look at some B2B marketing truths, or at least the ones we believe still hold true. And maybe they're changing for the better. Hopefully this doesn't turn into Statler and Waldorf yelling at AI to get off their lawn. I think we can jump in and see if we can maybe find 3 to 5 marketing truths that we still believe are have stood the test of time?

Yeah, let's start with, first of all, and I know it's commonplace to talk about it in terms of particularly for product people as jobs to be done, but the world still starts with a problem and that's not going to change. I don't care how you solve that problem, whether it's through AI or some other technology or even some non-technology, but in the B2B world, it's going to start with a problem. The second thing is, yeah, there are different ways that we have figured out how to message to that problem in terms of an outcome that is a benefit that actually solves that problem. And that's not going to change either. Humans are still going to have some involvement in the decision-making process, and they are going to have to be responsible, and they're still going to hear that, right? We can see today, particularly in our political world, that despite the technology changes, how we message things and how the optics around things are still incredibly valuable and really important. So messaging is not gonna change, problem's not gonna change. And finally, we have to still understand a little bit about the value proposition that we deliver. It has to be a differentiated value proposition. It has to be something that makes us wanna move differently than we do today. People used to refer to it as a tipping point, but it has to be 10x's, they used to say, more than the current as-is situation in order to make you move.

Yeah. It's really interesting that I've been doing some work in financial services lately. They have big technology budgets, but they also have incredible processes that have been built in and these habits. And to your point, it's like, it's good enough. It's not a big enough problem in some cases to deploy the technology, even though it would solve it. And I always remember One of my first interactions with a Gartner analyst and the company I was working with was literally talking about the features. We remember the things in the Wall Street Journal, right? The feature charts and all of that. God bless them. The analyst held up his hand. He's like, nobody cares about your blinking lights. And they want to know that you understand their problem even better than they do. And this notion of you understand my problem and to piggyback on your notion is You're really a partner in that, in that notion, because otherwise it's very transactional. And I think marketing gets that way. Give me your email, give me your click, get me a lead because I'm going to show the chart going up every quarter. But this notion of being a partner— one of our clients was really nervous about a meeting with a CEO coming in because he said, man, he's been testing our product and finding all these problems. Like, all we're doing is rewriting stuff. And I remember the CEO, who reminds me a lot of you, said, No, this is wonderful because he stuck with it. He believes like we're helping him with his problem and we're partners. So I think the problem solution partner thing is absolutely, I think you're right, is not changing. Today's like founders and CEOs are really smart and they're technically smart and technology doesn't stand still. It's always better. And I often think that they get bored. They want to try something new. And the thing that stands the test of time is you got to give the message time to work. They have to hear it over and over again. And to dovetail to what we said, that message better be tied to that problem. But this notion of repetition, or I've already said that, we need to say something new. And yes, I get it. There's news cycles and we see it in our daily life of I've got to get the news cycle with the new thing and flood the zone with it. In business, that just doesn't work terribly well.

I can tell you a business that I'm involved in right now is providing software and services around health healthcare clinician burnout. And even people that are not in this business, and I, before I joined it, I had some idea that our first responders, and particularly nurses, are burned out. It's not something that I think any of us would be surprised to hear, but it actually even almost reminds me of the early days when you and I were working in cybersecurity, Brian, where most people had an antivirus or a firewall and that was like good enough. And they knew a little bit about security and how much security's enough. And to your point, I got sick of the message, but it has probably been 13, 14 months in and we are just now getting inbound leads that are asking for appointments from our ICP and target audience. And I would say probably 30 or 60 days into it, I was sick of hearing the message, but it takes that long. And our digital marketers would say to me, Greg, you gotta be patient. It takes time. You gotta invest. And people don't have patience anymore. They want the microwave answers.

Yeah. And you may not catch them. Think about your LinkedIn scrolling and all of that. Just because you've pushed it out once doesn't mean that it's reached them in any way. And to, to your point, it's always like, no matter what they say to you, like you kick off with the problem and you remind the world of what you do very quickly and succinctly. Because the world doesn't remember. They've talked to your competitors since they last talked to you. They've talked to other people. They've forgotten. They certainly didn't read anything you sent them. You've heard me use this analogy before. It's people move like Tarzan. They swing in on a vine, which is the last thing they did, and they grab the next vine and they both influence each other. So they bring all this baggage in from the last conversation.

Yeah, particularly in the framework of what you asked about B2B. Is that because the world has become more consumerish and we have more of these digital experiences in our lives in terms of buying, the corporate executive board with 59% of the buying experience is over before you touch a salesperson, et cetera, et cetera. I think we often forget in B2B that it is not transactional. Yeah, it is complex. There are user buyers and influencers and champions and saboteurs and economic buyers and decision makers and It's political and it's attached to careers. And these decisions are not simple. There's not one buyer. And I think we tend to project our own buying experiences as individuals and our households in that consumer transactional behavior. And we forget when we go to work often, even with all the technology and AI and all the other stuff, that it's still not a transactional purchasing experience.

Absolutely. It's the people. They're not DoorDashing an infrastructure system. And often in B2B, people are very proud of what they've built. We've actually worked in some companies that have been around for 10+ years, and people get really proud of what they've built, and it can be hard to change, and you have to do that. And in fact, we— I was just listening to— sometimes we listen to sales calls and to learn how to like to market, because you're hearing directly the feedback, the questions that people ask. And a lot of times people will say, why will I bet my career on this?

And that's really important. That's a great— and people forget that, that when you choose a vendor and you choose poorly or you choose wise, if you choose wise, your, your capital politically and career-wise can go up. And that's what happens when you're making, or you're leading, or you're influencing these choices in a B2B setting. It's different than if you had chosen home and you bought the wrong dishwashing soap.

Yeah. You can just DoorDash more. Right. Just, yeah, exactly. I was talking to another CEO yesterday and he said, yeah, people talk about greenfields. It is not green for very long. Like the second you start doing stuff, you're building debt and, and debt has pressure and people, it's defensive. And to your point, I love the notion of finding champions because champions are hard to find. The other thing that I think hasn't changed that's still really powerful is a point of view. I often hear so many people, what I'll say depends on who I'm talking to. And I don't disagree with that at all, but to your point, 59% of the buying decision's already been made and you haven't talked to them. How do you know who you're talking to? Your ICP is a little bit bigger than you think. And so at least on that front-end marketing, to have a point of view, to make it interesting and to share that point of view on how that problem might be solved and to, to really point of view is personal. And I think sometimes companies are like, we don't want to rock the boat. And I'm not arguing to grab a chainsaw and start running around or doing anything crazy like that. But this notion of we believe that there's a way to do things and to modify that point of view when you learn something new. I think we've been in situations where your best customers, and in my case, the best clients actually push back on you and you're like, oh, that's a really good question. I know, but we've always done it that way. It's the inverse of the marketing. It's why do you do it? There's something there, you know, in security, the point of view starts at something larger. You're protecting people. In your current thing, your point of view, there's care for healthcare professionals. They require care and burnout. That, that there's a real problem there, but this having this kind of point of view, I think can really help distinguish you and be willing to engage on that point of view.

Even if people disagree with you, I think that point you're absolutely right on. I agree. And I underscore that point of view, even if they disagree that you're provocative, if they're thoughtful and you've made them think differently about that problem that we talked about earlier. Now you've got to the point where it's, wow. And it goes to my point of differentiated value proposition too. It's like that point of view could be underscored in the product or service that you're delivering in terms of that differentiated value proposition.

Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. I'm going to toss out one, which I actually learned from you.

I hope I still like it.

And it's this concept of like forward motion. You could say it's momentum, but it's the concept of kinetic energy. So if your company is doing well and it's selling, I'm not saying companies that maybe have to retool themselves and marketing changes then, but this notion of, I said repetition earlier, but forward motion is really important for companies. And don't be afraid to try this. Let's go forward. Let's rethink this. Let's make sure that we are putting out, whether it's a cadence of news or just some a cadence of something, but just this notion of momentum, every bit of motion kind of builds. And we're not saying just do stuff for the sake of doing it, but this notion of, I think from the outside looking in at your company, they need to see that things are happening. Because we've worked mostly in companies that are not public. They don't really know how big you are. And a lot of buyers ask questions like, are you going to be around in 3 years? All of this stuff. And that forward motion, when the company is doing well, is just reminding the market that you're doing well. But I've always thought of that because the first time we worked together, it was like, what's next? And my first was like, we just finished that. And that's the notion, like markets and competition is brutal, right? If you pause, someone else steps in. And I learned that from you because it was always like, what's next? Let's keep going. And I call it kinetic energy. Yeah.

No one who's ever worked with me has said that I don't have a high degree of urgency. That could be a flaw as well, as I've learned as I've gotten older and held up the mirror to myself. But, but look, hey, even in some of the things that I do in terms of coaching CEOs, all these methods, whether it's Make Big Happen or Entrepreneurial Operating System or Scaling Up or anything, it's really interesting. One of the things that is a tenet of all these systems in terms of running a business is having a rhythm, having a cadence.

Exactly.

And if you don't have that rhythm and cadence of holding people accountable and doing things and getting things moved forward, you don't get to your goals, those lagging indicators that may be revenue or number of customers or whatever it is. And you gotta get the leading indicators to match those. And so staying on that rhythm and cadence and always getting, as you said, moving forward is so essential. And I think it goes to the earlier part of what we were talking about, Brian, which is people see you and people are still tribal. They want to be with winners. They want to associate with winners. They want to associate with the guys here. And they say, wow, that company or that product or those people seem to be doing well. They just put out their momentum release. They just put out their new feature release. They just gained this new vendor. It's like they say in Fiddler on the Roof, because you're rich, they think you're smart or whatever. And that's part of that. Getting that message out there is so important.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's this notion where you don't want to make it up, right? You don't, you're not, it's not a, a veil. The worst thing you can do is put up the smokescreen, right? If you're in that situation, then you're dialing back your outward stuff because you have to fix critical things. This notion of not being afraid to like just try something new. And I increasingly find we fall into habits of what we do. It's like, oh, we, what are we doing? But it's also the why. I know we've always done that, but what's the what's the one new thing we could just add? We call it plus one at Lookleft. Like, what's the plus one here that we're gonna try? And everybody realize it may not work, but we're gonna try it. We're gonna plus one it and see what happens. In our case, once you plus one it, or I think once you plus one it in a campaign or a program, you prove it and then you can plus seven it 'cause you just roll it out across the board.

I commend you for doing that. I've often reflected that the time I was growing up, and folks may know that I live in the city of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh in the '80s lost 300,000 people to manufacturing and the sort of jobs and all kinds of things. It was devastating. And by sitting on its laurels and doing what was habit and what it was good at, it lost its edge as a community, as a society, as an entity, and as a city. And it took a long time. And for those who lived through it, we transformed ourselves and leaned in. And now we're an ed and meds community like many others. And it's a story of transformation. But leaning into that, going back to your issue of cadence and rhythm and taking risk plus, whatever you want to call it, is really important because what you have today is going to end. It will end. And you always have to be looking forward.

Absolutely. What one tangible takeaway from today? What's the one thing they should go do right away, Greg?

Make sure you know the real pain or real gain you're solving and who you're solving that for. If you don't do anything else, if you do not have clarity around that, you'll fail.

Great advice, Greg. It was great to catch up with you.

Thank you.

This has been the Share of Voice podcast presented by Look Left Marketing. Subscribe today at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more B2B marketing insight, visit us at lookleftmarketing.com.