Full Throttle Leaders Podcast- Brooke Duffy

All right. Uh, hello everybody. Michael Falato here from Full Throttle Leaders, our podcast. Also, you might know me from Full Throttle Falato Leads. It's my automation platform to do email, LinkedIn, and roundtables and do top of funnel. I started these podcasts because I really wanted to learn more about people one-to-one. Versus just the roundtables I do. So I do both. And today we have Brooke Pollack Duffy. She's a GTM advisor, is a fractional CRO, CMO type person. How you doing, Brooke?

Well, thanks. How are you?

Good, good. Tell me a little bit about your journey, how you got to do this fractional approach and what got you to say, you know what, I'm going to hang my own shingle now.

Yeah, sure. So Where it all began, and I won't take you through every detail because we'll be here for a little while, not to date myself, but I sort of fell into the role of helping to thread together revenue functions, sales, marketing, account management, customer success, and sometimes even product. I just, you know, got very lucky when I was down in New York City. I got poached by TV Guide magazine who created a role for me to really help them drive more advertising revenue. By threading those functions together to operate as one team to drive business. So, I, over time, took a lot of different positions and got the itch for startup and went into some different startups. And in all of those roles, I was reporting into a board of directors. So, I've reported to a board for several, several years now. And every board that I've reported into, there's been at least one board member who's asked me to come in and help advise or consult with other companies in their portfolio. So, all of it didn't happen very proactively or on purpose. It was very serendipitous. But essentially, I was doing that and kind of decided to go out and really do it on my own full-time. I think there's enough of a market for fractional leaders and advisory work in the go-to-market space, especially for B2B startup and scale-ups, which is really what I specialize in. So that's, that's kind of the long and short of the journey.

Would you say that it's mostly tech companies that you work with?

Yeah, I am primarily B2B SaaS and service companies. So industry agnostic, you know, I've been in some really fascinating industries that are wildly different from each other, but at the core of it, it's B2B SaaS.

Um, Rujie, how many clients can you handle at once, or do you have a team that you basically say, you know what, I'm going to project manage this and you guys behind the scenes help me out with the deliverables.

Yeah, it's a great question and it's not a straightforward answer. If I'm truly fractional, it's probably only a couple that I can handle myself at a time. If I'm doing advisory and consulting work, then it just depends on what those projects are. So some companies I'll go in and do deep dive assessments that take roughly about 6 weeks, and I can handle and juggle a fair amount of those on my own. Had over that period of time. So it, it's really dependent upon what the work is. I do have a network of people that I will bring in as well, which is great because if business is coming in and I don't have capacity, I can certainly reach into that network and say, hey, I have this great project that I want to bring you on to, and, and to your point, kind of project manage it as opposed to me executing all of the work alone.

Is there specific solution you work on more than others? Like for me, I do go-to-market, top of funnel, set up the whole, hey, I'm gonna get you meetings. Do you focus in on any of that or do you focus in on after the meeting comes in, I help you with a game plan or are you focusing on how do you close the business?

Yeah, so I go across the entire bowtie. So if we look at, you know, the traditional funnel revenue winning by design, had flipped it to create a bowtie, which is the whole second half after a contract is signed. That's the customer journey. And I really do consult and advise across that entire journey. Typically what happens is I'll go in and do an assessment because growth has stalled. And what the company doesn't know is why. And so sometimes there is a lack of focus on existing customers and retaining, right? So the problem is really with churn, and that's why the growth numbers aren't improving. Sometimes it's that there's not a leads coming, not We don't have enough leads coming in at the top of the funnel. I'll help, you know, grow whatever piece of that bowtie really needs to be developed and build processes and teams around, you know, wherever that gap is the greatest. So there's no real one place that I specialize in. It's just sort of where growth is stalling at any given moment for an organization.

What do you— what tech or what strategies are you seeking? Are seeing that are working well to get sales qualified leads through the door right now?

Yeah, well, you know, I think a couple of things that I see. So it's not necessarily a tech answer, but in the startup scaleups that I support, I see a lack of focus as sort of the biggest hurdle in getting solid SQLs in the door and through that funnel. So it's really about understanding who is your ICP. I actually just released a Substack article on this topic. Really, really important at that stage that they're not, you know, just going after anything, which startups, that's how you start. You, you put it out there and you hope somebody wants to do business with you, and you get really excited when they do. Um, but at some point you need to know what business is better business for you to go after and to actually win and then grow with. And it's not going to be everybody, and you can't scale if that's That's the reality. So, to me, it's not necessarily a tech. It's really the focus, a clear ICP, clear vision, right, from leadership down of this is who we serve and why and our purpose and who we don't serve and why. And making sure the team understands that so that they can go and do all of the things, right? Whether it's driving top-of-funnel leads or having really effective sales conversations or negotiations, with the right players.

Yeah, I noticed when I do this podcast or roundtables that I'm not selling anything, right? I'm saying, hey, do you want to be on a podcast? We'd love to have you on, or the roundtable. We want to talk to you, but I need to talk to you first to be on the roundtable. And I get things like this, like we get to talk. So I noticed that when I work with my clients, that becomes a really good way of getting people to chat with you without selling. Giving them some compliment, but then taking it back in the sense like, I still need to talk to you just to make sure you're the right fit. Have you done any of that type of approach to get, to get leads?

So me personally, like in my business, not per se, but certainly in the companies that I'm supporting, a lot of it can be that approach. I also think that what the function I serve, I'm often having those conversations not with prospects, to get business, but with the team members to understand what they're hearing, right? What are their conversations? What's working? What's not? And that really helps us inform strategy and tactics to be effective in selling.

Do you like working with a particular SaaS tech company that's in marketing ops or sales enablement? Like what's your forte of what you like working with and what Like, I've worked with procurement software and I was like, this is gonna be rough because procurement don't want to talk to anybody. They don't, they don't want LinkedIn and you cannot call them or email them because they're gonna sit there and ghost you.

Yeah. So I don't know that I like have a preference from a likability standpoint, but most of my experience is actually in that very complex enterprise sale. So complex industries with complex stakeholders, um, with long sales cycle, extremely long sales cycles sometimes. Times, uh, procurement definitely involved, right? So that's, that's been most of my experience. So I'm actually very comfortable in, in tackling that type of, uh, sales, sales process and, and sales client. But, you know, I'll take any other one too. I, I get a lot of excitement out of being able to see a company grow, no matter who they're trying to service and what problem they're trying to solve.

Do you find that You work with CEOs better, founders better, a CMO that's looking for a CRO. Like, what's— what's— I mean, obviously could be depending on personality, but what do you think?

You know, to be honest, it's definitely personality dependent, but most of my work has been with founder CEOs, and they can be some of the most challenging to work with. I say it all the time. I have deep respect for them. It's really hard to build a business, and they went out and did that, but then it's, it's their baby. And so they become very protective of it. They want to kind of have a lot of control over everything. They get nervous about making decisions. So it can be a real challenge. But because I've done that so much, I'm very comfortable. And I think it's amazing to see sort of how their mind works and getting them comfortable with, you know, changing their approaches in order to scale a company.

Tell us one thing or two things over the last 12 months that worked awesome, like you're gonna repeat it, and then say, or give me something like, I did this 6 months ago either for myself or my client, I'm not naming names, but I wish I didn't try that, but I learned something.

Okay, something that's worked, well, you know, just me personally, I will tell you that for my own business, Something that worked very successfully recently was simply reaching out and asking. So, and it wasn't for, uh, an opportunity, right? I was reaching out to a network connection that I actually used to report into. He sat on a board of mine, and I was reaching out to connect on, um, sort of the, the PE side. Most of the companies I support are backed by PE firms, so I wanted to pick his brain a little bit about things, and it resulted in a couple of clients that I'm, you know, working with and still working with today. And it's been a conversation that I've brought up with a lot of people because plenty of people come to me and ask me advice on getting started being fractional and this and that. And I think, you know, going to the known entities and just whether you're asking to have a conversation or asking, you know, for an opportunity, you can start there, right? So don't hesitate for the ask. I think something that doesn't work well, so It's actually— I don't know that I've like really figured out how to tell this until you're kind of in it. I think I'm still working through that, but I definitely have had some clients that weren't good fits for me, and I'm really getting very comfortable with, right, like, you know, a good fit. Well, and you, you learn that, right? And sometimes you have to go through it before you learn it.

They want to scope creep all the time.

Yeah, it's either scope creep or as much as they want to grow and do these things, they're really not gonna lean into the changes needed. They won't fold me in, right? So there's been plenty of times where I'm like, I really need to get into the organization and meet with the team, not be sort of this external name that people don't know in the company. I need to be in meetings and see what's going on and really help you. And holding me at bay like that just isn't good for anybody because I can't really diagnose things well and I can't solve problems well that way. So yeah, I mean, there's been plenty of that where I've taken on something thinking it was going to be great and it really didn't turn out well. And it's because they weren't ready for me, right? Like, that's just the reality.

I had a client that was good. They paid on time, but they just sent me all their marketing material. Says, here, here, here, here, make something out. I'm like, that's not how it works. This has to be a joint approach.

Yes, exactly.

I got to buy in. If you don't care enough to do all this, and then if it doesn't work, you just point your finger. It's like, no, I want to say, listen, we both talked about this, we both talked about that. It's 3 months in, here's the KPIs, OKRs. If you're not spending— if you're just spending money with me, it doesn't make me feel comfortable.

Yeah, exactly. And that's a hard reality, right? Because when you're out there trying to build your own business, you want the the revenue yourself, but it's not good, right? And I'm— I've walked away from things for that reason. And I think it's really important to make that decision.

Is there an average retainer, like $5,000 to $15,000 or whatever for you? Or what would you say your, your average retainer is for yourself?

Yeah, I mean, my average is, is probably around the $10K mark, but it really, again, it depends on what I'm being retained to do. Advisory is much different than being retained as a fractional, right? So that's going to go less than, and fractional will go more than. So what I try to do is really work with each client of mine to scope out really what matters for them in their business, what those deliverables are, what my engagement looks like. So it's very clear, you know, how many meetings am I in a week and what is my availability? And then I price it based on those efforts.

So I'll leave this with the last question and then we could just give a way to connect with you. What is your favorite new piece of tech toy, I guess I'll call it, that you are like, this is good, this helped me?

Oh gosh. So, so this isn't new. Um, oh gosh, I'm pretty sure. Okay, so, so I don't— it, it's relatively new. I'd say it's new in the last 5 years and I don't even— I haven't been using it as of late, so I can't even tell you how it's evolved over those 5 years. But when it first came out, somebody introduced me to something called Crystal Knows, and it's a fascinating platform that you put anybody's LinkedIn profile into and it spits back exactly how to talk to that person and sort of what their personality is. So I, of course, tested it with people I know to really see how accurate is this, and it was wildly accurate. And I think That's really helpful. You know, we forget that at the other side of a B2B sale, there's a person and you really need to speak to that person. And, you know, when you're selling to that person, it has to, it has to be about them and their problems. And so you have to relate to them. And I think back in the day, B2B sales was a lot of meet people in person. Nowadays, you know, we are doing this. But it's really hard to get prospects to do this. So they're doing their own research. You're trying to reach out to them and everything starts to become very generic and it feels impersonal and unexciting as a result. So any tool that can help you to understand your buyer better, I think is a really exciting tool because that's what's going to sell is your ability to meet people in a very personalized communication so that they really feel heard and that, you know, you can solve their unique problems. There's a fun one.

There's a CRO that's now starting his own company called Pete Zenidis. That's his name. He started GTMHeroes.com.

Okay.

It's that he's building exactly that with the DISC profile, how they'd like to be talking to, what's their personality. You know, it gives you tips because so many people use one playbook. For every approach. It's not. The deck needs to be specific to that person. Sometimes the role, same thing. So you should check that one out because he's a, he's a good friend of mine. I worked with him at Jobvite and Monster, and now he's just starting his own company.

I'll definitely check it out. Be sure to send it to me.

Yeah. So these last 2 minutes is how do you get a hold of Brooke and how to get a hold of me? Go ahead, you go first.

I mean, the best ways to find me on LinkedIn, um, you know, I'm very easy. It's the backslash Brooke A. Duffy, uh, so the typical LinkedIn, uh, URL and backslash Brooke A. Duffy, Brooke with an E. And that's definitely the best way. So send me a message. I, I'm frequently on the platform.

And again, I'm Michael Falato. Full Throttle Falato Leaders is the podcast. Full Throttle for a Lot of Leads is what I do, which is the automation approach. And you could definitely go to fullthrottleforalotofleads.com. The Full Throttle Leaders is on my YouTube channel and you'll see that there. So I'm going to play a little video of what I do and about, it's about 30 seconds and then we'll say goodbye. Thanks, Brooke.

Thank you.