Demand Gen and Ops Working Together with Janelle Amos

Hi, I'm Michael Hartman.

I'm Naomi Liu.

And I'm Mike Rizzo. And this is OpsCast, a podcast for marketing ops pros and rev ops pros created by the MoPros, the number one community for marketing operations professionals.

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Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by marketingops.com, powered by all the MoPros out there. I'm your host, Michael Hartman. Flying solo today, so we'll get Naomi or Mike back soon, I'm sure. Joining me today to talk about how demand generation and marketing/revenue ops teams can work together better is Janelle Amos. Janelle is founder and chief strategist of Elevate Growth, her marketing and demand gen agency. Prior to founding Elevate Growth, Janelle held several leadership positions in demand generation, revenue marketing, digital marketing, and general marketing. In addition, she is an advisor, podcast host, and speaker. So Janelle, thanks for joining me today.

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to dive in.

Yeah, this is going to be fun. And so we could tell like we are covering both Dallas and the Fort Worth areas, right? Or sort of.

Yeah.

Yeah. So we've got Texas. Texas, uh, is reigning today.

Texas represent.

That's right. All right. As long as you're not a, you're not a TCU person, are you?

Well, my best friend is, so I kind of have to be. But personally, okay.

Because I'm an SMU guy and that's like, it's hard for me to, hard for me to deal. I'll give it to you.

We got no beef.

That's right. All right. So you've spent most of your career in demand generation and you worked with multiple marketing operations teams. And I think that's really why we want to talk today. But so let's just dive right into it. Like what from your perspective distinguishes the best MOPS teams that you've worked with? And maybe the other side, right? What are the, you know, what are some of the things that, that you think you've learned over the years that demand generation folks could learn about how to work best with marketing ops and martech teams?

Yeah, I'll take your first question first in terms of how I found the best marketing operations teams. And from my experience, It's been those that can somehow connect the day-to-day tactics to the business goal. And so, instead of just keeping the tunnel vision and kind of the blinders on and powering through, because there's so much work to be done on an operation side of things, the list is never empty. But it's always important to communicate and advocate how it impacts what everybody else is doing in the organization, because it does. In my opinion, it's the backbone of how companies operate either successfully or detrimentally. And not a whole lot of positions fully comprehend that implication. And so, the best marketing operation folks who can communicate that, in my opinion, you know, really set them apart from the rest.

Gotcha. When you say communicating that, are you talking about like what they're doing, how they're supporting the teams? Is it like just that they show understanding of the way the business works?

It's understanding of how the business works and the implications for it. So, a great example would be data. If you have bad data, the company cannot operate. The implications are marketing can't send emails. The implications are you can't segment lists. The implications are your reporting's going to be crap. The implications are when the executive team has the conversations with the board and they're asking, great, what levers are you going to be investing in for the next quarter? If you're reliant on data and your data's off, and when you go back that next quarter and you come back and you say, just kidding, our data was wrong, we wasted an entire quarter, you know? Like, the implications are big. And operations teams need to communicate that and advocate for the work and say, I need throwing this number out there, $30,000, $60,000 for support to clean up our data. Here's why, and connect it to who they're communicating the business case with.

Right. Yeah, it's interesting because I think data is one of those ones, especially, let's set aside like reporting analytics, like almost backward-looking stuff, but like just in the day-to-day, like I always think about this, like the value of data is Well, the danger of not having good data is just a simple thing like, hey, we want to target our best customers, right? However you want to define that. If you can't do that easily because the data's a mess and upstream processes or whatever, that's like, it makes it really hard to be effective at doing anything and it slows everything down. And then over time, if you don't address it right, degrades trust in the data, degrades trust in the team, and that's not where you want to be. Right.

That's a costly implication. Turnover, replacement, retention of employees. I mean, those, you know, those add up.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So if you were, if you were talking to other demand gen professionals, like how would, because I do think, I suspect, like if I was imagining what some of our listeners might be imagining, right? Like, oh yeah, yeah, I get it. Like it's all on us to go figure out, like understand the business. They don't understand what we do either. Like how, like, How do you, like, what would you help, how would you help demand gen folks who maybe actually don't understand how their MOPS teams can be leveraged to do that better?

Ask. That's the number one thing that I've always, one, tried to be in my role, and two, try to encourage others to be, is curious.

Yeah, I love that. I agree. Like, I'm a big fan of that too. Like, I, And I think it hit me a couple of different ways in my career. One was like a weird one, which was when I was early in my career in marketing and I was at a big company and they were doing their— I happened to come in a week where they were doing one of these customer panels where there's someone who's facilitating a conversation with a bunch of customers or potential customers. And then we were back behind the— I can't remember, was it one-way glass, two-way mirror, whatever? And I was like, I was like wanting to scream. I'm like, what are these people doing? And it made me realize like, oh, I need to actually be more curious and listen. So from customers, that's one. And then the other is working with different people, both being curious. But one of the things I got benefit from, and it was sort of forced at one company, different company in this case, where everyone was required. And I was like, they got rid of this too. And I was like, why? had to go spend like half a day every, like twice a year with someone in another department.

Mm-hmm.

It didn't even have to be one you worked with normally. So like in this case, big event company. So like the people who actually did production on our events, right? I spent time and it was really, really helpful to understand how the rest of the company worked and not make assumptions. And I always enjoyed it when people were like sit and shadow With me too. Did you ever— have you ever done anything like that beyond just asking questions?

Yeah, and I actually recommend it too. You know, just if you're a new hire at a company, go and sit with other people on your team, cross departments, see if you can shadow some of the executives depending on your role, and just learn, be a sponge. And then the insights that you can take from those will be able to mold how you can be more successful. You'll get insights like how to communicate with individuals, what it actually takes to make something come to life, you know, how long it takes in a process or what specific bottlenecks there are. And maybe you could find some quick wins, maybe you could find some empathy for how long it takes some teams. You know, a lot of learnings can come from it, but you've got to take the first initiative and just be curious.

Have you— do you recommend— would you recommend to our listeners who are marketing folks to try to do that? Not only do that with people internally, but also maybe be able to sit in on like customer calls or Prospect calls?

I will say, if you ever get a chance to, yes. A lot of companies that I have found very, they like to gatekeep who are on those calls.

Sure.

So it might not always be possible, but if the opportunity is there, certainly there's so much you can learn from the front lines. If not, then ask if the call can be recorded. See if you can get, you know, the Cliff Notes from ChatGPT. Right. And, and just learn. I think a lot of insights can come from just the recording. Of course, it's not going to be the best if you're not in the room asking questions, like reading the emotions and behind it. But if you can take one step forward, then certainly, you know, you've got to learn on all different departments and avenues and especially your customers.

Yeah. I mean, the way I think about that one in particular, why I asked is that kind of goes back to that example of being behind the two-way glass or two-way mirror, right? Or was it like part of what was frustrating to me is I felt like they weren't using the right language. But then I realized in the middle of it, like, actually, we're not using the right language because if we're not matching what they're saying or doing, how they think about these, then that's actually on us, not on them.

Mm-hmm.

So, and then that made me better. At the time, I was doing a lot of like search marketing stuff too. So when I was working with our product marketing teams, um, I was I was better consultatively with them on how to improve the results of what we were doing, right? So having that customer language understanding. So I can imagine if you're doing a full campaign, right, content's going to be important.

Yeah, and I always say, just because I'm a marketer and we're talking to other marketers, marketing 101 is tailor your message to your audience. And that's the same thing when it comes to advocating or communicating internally as well, is who are you talking to, what are they gold on, and how can we work together to be successful?

So when you said one of the things to do is maybe be the one that asks the first to try to connect the dots with these other teams and maybe sit with them, Do you have any advice? Like, there's gonna be some people who are totally comfortable with that, right? No problem asking. And others who maybe will feel like, oh, I don't wanna bother these people, or I'm uncomfortable with that. Like, how— any suggestions for how to just approach that kind of conversation?

Yeah, I think in any role, to really be fulfilled, you have to have one person who's willing to be your advocate. So, if you don't feel comfortable going to another department or even somebody else who might be more senior to you, I would find your advocate and help them be your champion. So a great example would be if both demand gen and marketing operations report to the CMO, then if you're intimidated to talk directly to the operations person, but you're, you know, best friends with the CMO and, you know, you guys have a great working relationship, I would advocate to the CMO and ask, hey, you know, I want to be curious. I want to learn more about how to partner better with the operations team. Could you help facilitate more open conversations? between maybe the entire team, between me and the operations person. This is what I'm hoping to get out of it. Let me know how I can best support. And then you get into the room, right? And then afterwards, you can do a debrief with the CMO. And you can ask, what did I do well? What did I do bad? Where can I improve? And you can take those key learnings as well as your, you know, I say first-party feedback.

Yes.

From meeting directly with the operations person and learn for the next time.

So in that case, you're actually asking the advocate not only to help broker the discussion, but actually be in the room, virtual room, whatever, as a part of that to help facilitate that communication too. Is that what you're saying?

Maybe. It would depend on the situation, right? So if you would feel most comfortable in having that person in the room, then I don't see any harm, as long as they understand that their role is to facilitate. If you just need the introduction to get into the same room, then you can say, cool, I got it from here, thanks. It just all depends on the comfort level. You know, seniority level of the individual and kind of what support they would need in that aspect.

I think that's a good idea. It's somewhat obvious now that I think about it, but I hadn't actually thought of that as a tactic, and probably because I'm comfortable— I'd be comfortable going and asking directly, right? So it's like—

That's a good question because not everybody is comfortable, you know? So—

Yeah. Let's say that you get that meeting scheduled. Like, how have you seen it work well or not work well when you, like, let's assume that's like the beginning of some sort of connection, hopefully. Like, how would you approach or how have you approached structuring those, keeping them going?

Yeah, great question. I would recommend those to be recurring. So whether depending on your company culture, weekly, biweekly, It can be weekly, monthly, but you need to have something on the calendar going forward. The objective initially will be to understand. Let's understand what you're gold on. Let's understand what keeps you up at night. Let's understand how I can best help. And then thereafter, we can start working on mutually crafting strategies and plans together to achieve what we both want from outcomes. And then thereafter, on our recurring meetings, we talk about how we're pacing towards those, anything else that we're facing externally, any other bottlenecks now that we've implemented some of those. But on both parties have to remain curious and open, and sometimes things don't always go the right way. The two of them could have a hypothesis, put it in market, and it flop. That doesn't mean that you're both bad. That's marketing, right? So in that next call, it's not you did this wrong, you did that wrong. You know, da da da da da. It's listen, this flopped. What are we going to do better next time? And then you objectively have that conversation.

Yeah. It's like looking for lessons learned. So I've had similar things to that. And one of the things that I've struggled with, I think, over time, especially over time, the longer it goes, is just kind of keeping track of all the different things we've talked about and having like tracking of that, making sure we're doing it. So I know there's probably a lot of people who would sort of gravitate right to some sort of project management system. For that, I tend to like spreadsheets, just easier for tracking that kind of stuff. Do you have a preference for like how you track those things? I know it's pretty tactical, but—

I'm going to apologize because I think somebody just knocked on my door and if you guys can hear my dog in the background, is it too noisy?

It's real life.

That's real life. Okay, here we are. We're authentic. In terms of how to best track that, I would say do whatever the culture of the company is. Is, you know, acceptable in a spreadsheet if it's in a dashboard.

Okay. So one of the thing challenges I have with these ongoing conversations like that is just tracking what we've talked about, action items, all that kind of stuff. And I tend to use spreadsheets. I know a lot of people probably would think about using a project management system. To me, it seems like a little overkill, but very tactical question. But like, do you have a preference for How you do that or what do you, what do you like to do?

Yeah, normally a working Google Doc, you know, that you can set the meeting agenda, you can scribble on some notes, and then every week it's one live working doc that we can keep track of conversations, you know, next steps, etc.

Yeah, like, I mean, I like having a standard agenda too, so I just— it's, it's always good. Um, One of the things when you and I talked before that you mentioned that I really want— you mentioned in these relationships, sometimes it's good to— I think the word you used was hero, like be a hero for the other person or the team in some ways. Can you go a little deeper on what you meant by that?

Well, us as humans, we're very defensive. And when somebody is—

I don't know what you're talking about.

When somebody starts poking a little bit in a way, I don't know, where you're insecure or you have some past trauma, things start to— your hairs start to spike up a little bit more than just an average, hey, how are you doing, coffee talk. And so what I would recommend others is if you're put in a position to have an uncomfortable or a hard conversation would be to frame yourself in a way to be the hero. Um, and not necessarily, or excuse me, like even make them the hero and have you be the sidekick because you're—

Right.

You're not trying to take the credit. You're not trying to one-up. You're not trying to show that you're better than them. At least I would hope not. Um, but at the end of the day, we both have to get over this hurdle together. So let's objectively communicate the elephant in the room. You know, let's eliminate all the feelsies of I feel like, or, you know, you know, all the, all the sensory words. And really just get back to the facts of, you know, I've observed X, Y, and Z has happened. I would like to have X, Y, and Z be a result. You know, how can we have a conversation to mutually get us there?

Yeah, I'm— I'll— I probably shared this before on other episodes, but I'm a big fan of, um, there's 2 books, similar titles. Uh, one's called Crucial Conversations, one's called Crucial Confrontations, and they kind of Provide frameworks for those kinds of difficult conversations that you were mentioning. I mean, I know that one of the things I try to do if I'm dealing with someone where like maybe that I've reached out, started this meeting, it's still like a resistance kind of thing, like they're not totally bought into it, is it's almost like a negotiation ploy. Like, would you be willing to try this, right? Like, get them to say yes to one thing, even if it's a small step. Right, where they've otherwise been resistant. Have you ever, like, have you ever run into that where you've had, like, really someone who's a challenge to, like, to get them to work together on something? And have you worked through it like that?

Yes and no. Yes, certainly faced individuals who, you know, when you ask an open question such as, would you be willing to do this? No, like entirely unworkable. But in that situation, this goes back to having an advocate. You know, or having been in a role where you can then say, you know, disagree and commit. Like, we've got to do something. We can't sit here and iterate forever. So, let's disagree and commit if we're not on the same page. And that keeps the go-to-market motion moving.

Yeah.

It doesn't keep in, you know, they said, we said, who said. It's just, all right, cool. I disagree. Like, I think we should go a different way, but, you know, we're both here to get a job done. Disagree and commit.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of— that's not the phrase I've used in the past. I always use the word consensus, right? And usually applies more in a, maybe a larger group than just a one-on-one kind of thing. But I always— it has the same sentiment, right? Everyone has their say. We make a decision and we all go support it. Right? Like, that's, that's our job. Which then leads to downstream, which is if it works or doesn't— like, if it doesn't work, right? If you were the one who said, I was advocating for alternative X and we went with Y and it didn't work, like, it's all your fault. Like, you don't get to go blame people, right? Your job is to then go figure out, well, what should we do next and learn from it?

Yeah.

So there's a little bit of grace involved with that. So When you've done that, um, yeah, disagree and commit model, right? How has that played out?

Um, good, honestly. Um, because it's gotten us in a room where we could communicate trust. Um, and if we got to the point of disagreeing but committing, that's all we needed, you know? And then the outcome is let's see if it works. And then if it does or if it doesn't, right? And going into, if it does, then it's, okay, cool. What idea would you like to try next? If I agree or disagree, let's commit, you know?

Yeah.

Then if it doesn't work, then it's, all right, now we learned. What would you like to try next? So it's kind of a twofold either way, um, and building rapport. And if you do that enough times, then you have that rapport, you know, peer to peer to where you, we can have that open discussion going forward of like, We'll regroup again, disagree and commit, and we'll see. We'll let the data speak for itself.

Yeah, I think for those of our listeners who have not tried something like this where it feels like they're always butting heads, right? I think if you can try something like this, disagree and commit, it will become way more natural, right? It's because it's not easy at first, especially if you're the kind of person who is uncomfortable with conflict, right? So, because sometimes that's what it feels like, because you're right, people do get defensive. And that's—

we're human.

It's probably the default state. Yeah.

I will say though, I'm not quite sure what level your audience is right on, but I feel like having that mentality is almost essential to break into senior leadership executive level. You know, I mean, I've been in rooms where executives are yelling at each other, and at the end of the day, they walk out and they're handshaking. I'm like, it's just, it's part of the gig. Like, it's not personal, you know? Is it uncomfortable in the moment? Sure, maybe. But like, it's business. And I'm not saying it's, it's business or it's okay to just yell at other people. It's not. But like, the reality is a true executive team is not gonna agree 100% of the time. And the whole point is to build a team. that has diverse opinions and experiences and welcome a conversation on how we could be different and challenge the status quo. That's a team you want to work for.

Yeah.

And so, I think at some point, you know, to your listeners that are listening to this, is you have to at some point be okay with being in a room like that if you want to be in the next level. It's just part of the job. It doesn't mean that you have to be unethical. That doesn't mean that you have to be a terrible human being. That doesn't mean, you know, this and that. It just means that it's It's part of the job. It's not personal. And it's an opportunity for you to share your perspective on navigating a business.

Yeah. I mean, it's, I 100% agree. I coach people. And one of the things I like coaching kind of is people who are like soon to be or in one of their early roles as a people leader, because that's one of the lessons I always tell people is like, you've got to get comfortable with uncomfortable conversations.

Right.

The one they think about is with the people who work for them or report to them, but it goes all directions, right? It was with your boss, with your peers, you know, with your peers' boss. Like, you've got to get comfortable with that. Otherwise you're going to get like, it's going to be really, it's going to be a terrible experience.

Well, you're going to get plowed over from those who don't have that level of comfort.

Right.

Right.

And I'm with you. Like you brought it up a couple of times, so I just want to like So I am totally fine with passionately fighting for your position as long as it doesn't get personal, right? If it gets personal, that, that's crossed the line, right? Right. If it's your idea, like, I don't agree with your idea, it doesn't make any sense to me. Okay. If you go to the next step and go like, you're an idiot. No, no, you're pushing. Like, that's not That's when my defense mechanism— I know I would go up. Like, I would be like, okay, now it's on.

Yeah, I think if you're in a room where you have to defend your experience or your role, then I would say you're in the wrong room. Because I've been fortunate to have been in rooms where the executive team is like, I have no clue what you're talking about, Janelle. Or, no, I disagree entirely with that, but I trust you, so prove me wrong. And I'm like, Bet, you know, and then you go and you build that rapport. But it's, there's gotta be a level of trust. There has to be a level of, you know, mutually wanting to make it work. And if that's not there, then I would say you're probably in the wrong room.

Yeah, no, I think you're right. Like, to me, that trust piece is really, really important. And I see, I see, I actually see a lot of ops teams put in marketing teams in general, like put in all these gates for like getting things done, right? Particularly like review and approval processes that I, to me are often, when I see that, I often go like, there's a trust issue at this organization, right? It's not about like, do we trust people who do good work and make, you know, and then own the outcomes? And if you don't, then that's when you start seeing these things like, You know, 4 levels of review and approval, multiple iterations of the same thing with like small tweaks. It's like, no, that's not the problem.

Yeah, that's a great perspective.

Yeah. So, you know, we've talked a little bit about like this process of building kind of a good working relationship and rapport and all that. With a peer and maybe the peer's team and your team. Do you think it matters that much if it's— let's just keep it to ops and demand gen, right? Do you think it matters if it's demand gen who starts it or ops starts it? Does it like, do you think it's worked better one way or the other?

I don't think it matters from a role standpoint. I will say whichever one is the newest to the org should be the one that facilitates it.

Mm-hmm.

So, if the ops has been there for 6 months and the demand gen person is brand new, my expectation would be the demand gen person to facilitate that because you're stepping in curious, you're stepping in trying to understand the lay of the land, you're stepping in trying to understand where the bodies are buried, you're stepping in trying to understand strategy, right? There's a lot that you should be learning. And if connecting with people who are already in the day-to-day is not a part of that, my expectation is that that demand gen person probably won't be successful. Same thing if the tables were flipped, right?

Yeah.

Management person was there, the operations come in, they should be asking what's worked, what's not worked, where are the bodies buried, what problems are you having? Is it data? Is it processes? Is it technology? What's important for you in the next 30, 60? All those things. So role-based, not so much. Whoever's newer to the org.

That's an interesting one. Because I think I almost have the opposite reaction to that. Like, I would think the person who's got— been there longer would be— should be— take a little more responsibility for that. I see where you're coming from, and maybe it's the nature of— I've— could be because I've worked a little more for like mid to large size companies more than small companies. And, um, I mean, my limited experience with small companies, yes, I think I would agree, right? The new person is like, should be jumping in and building those relationships. In a larger company, the reason I think of that is I think about when I've hired people at large companies, like I spend, like I hire people expecting to be able to do the details of the job, but I don't expect them to know necessarily the organization. And I spend a lot of time just like teaching them that and like then It's like part of my job is like facilitating those connections for those people. And I think of like, think of it the same way, like the person who's, you know, understands the organization better is the one who should take that first step. Does that make sense?

It totally makes sense. And, you know, here, disagree to commit, right? I don't necessarily agree with that. And here's why. If we flip it from an org standpoint and say, you know, a CMO is hiring a demand gen person, my expectation is that the CMO would then be like, like, okay, here's, you know, who you should be doing and connecting. Here's your onboarding and holding your hand and those type of things. But when it comes down to you're the senior leader, if, if I were a CMO stepping into a company and I don't facilitate conversations with the team that I'm inheriting, or much less the rest of the executive team, people are going to be like, you know, what are they doing? So it just comes down, in my opinion, is how you want to be perceived. Are you perceived as a strategic leader or are you perceived as a doer? If you want to be perceived and making an impact at the company, I think it's mission critical to be the one facilitating those conversations and showcasing that you're capable. If not, then you're easily going to be bucketed, which in my opinion, you don't want to be, into they're junior, right? We have to handhold, they're too green. And if you're not, Green or junior, then, you know, you better act like it. Show them who's boss. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. No, I think like, even if you're not and you don't, like, this is, this is one of those uncomfortable truths, right? I think perception is reality, right? So if you're not doing things to change that perception, then you, the perception is going to be how you're treated too. That's kind of what you're saying, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, makes sense. Yeah, fair enough. Like, um, yeah, I don't, like, I don't even know that there's a right answer. I think maybe these are like not even two sides of the same coin, right? I think both can be true, right? Like, sure. Yes. Yeah. And I think that's like, maybe that's where it is. Um, so let's say that kind of connection doesn't happen, right? What do you think the outcome is going to be if those, if those some, like one one person, one team or another doesn't, like, start that interaction?

Well, I think there's several implications. Number one is you will be operating in silo, which is detrimental to a go-to-market. Go-to-market has to have multiple cross-departments working in unison. And if one department can't even do that, how are you going to roll that out across multiple? 2 is the sooner that you can break down the initial barrier between human to human and really get on somebody's I don't wanna say good side, but like good working side, you know, where you want to build a team and do good work and you get excited about things. The longer that it takes for you to get there, the longer that things start to get in motion. Um, it's gonna be a lot of friction or it's gonna be delayed timelines, um, delayed processes, and it's just gonna constantly feel hard or take longer than it needs to.

Yeah.

And so the implication, in my opinion, is detrimental to the business.

Sure. That's— yeah, no, that idea, like, there's going to be— again, goes back to your point about, like, people get defensive, right? It's gonna, it's gonna lead to that friction and frustration and finger-pointing, and then that's naturally you're gonna get the reaction. And then, yeah, I can see nothing gets done, right?

But I don't feel like we should approach it in a lens of Saying that the other is wrong. I mean, we're talking about 2 totally different roles, you know, there shouldn't be, you know, my way or the highway. It's at the end of the day, demand gen and ops have to work together in unison, lockstep. How do we get there? That's the conversation to be had.

I, I could not— yeah, I mean, I think there's a I didn't mean to imply that that's not the case, right? That, that shouldn't be the goal. I'm just saying, like, I think maybe it's, it could be one or either side could be resistant to the whole idea and that's when, like, then it's gonna devolve and that's not like that. Yeah, you're right. It's like, then it's detrimental to the business.

Yeah. And you know, I'm gonna call you out. It's not about you getting defensive. It wasn't anything you said. You know, it's just the conversation for the podcast and interpretation for the, the audience and listeners. It could go multiple different ways, right? It's just my opinion, your opinion.

Yeah. I, well, I think, I think you're, you're hitting on something I've said too, though, which is like, there's not always, I think people get caught up in using words like the right way or, um, it's correct. Like, I, I think, I think Especially in the lens of marketing. I mean, so much is, to some degree, some of it is luck. Some of it is, you know, you know, you need to know your audience in this case really well to make the mark. But it's, I guess, still like, I go back to my search marketing days, right? I could probably go back if I really wanted to and go like, I know there are cases where I thought, Like we were going back and forth debating about one word on a search ad, for example, right? And they basically had the same meaning and like, well, duh, let's just do a test, right? And let's see what happens. And I think I, my, the one I thought would perform better was right half the time and half the time it wasn't right. And there's no, there was no pattern to it really other than it just happened that way. And I think that was again, like an eye-opening thing when you go like, Like, this is— I don't want to discount how important our work is and like, you should care about your work and be invested in it. But at the end of the day, like most of the people who are going to be listening to this, their job is not going to like affect someone's life, right? Like, I have a friend who literally is a neurosurgeon, like his job, it's another level. And like, I think it's easy to lose that perspective about So this idea like, this is the right way to do it. Well, maybe, but maybe there's lots of different right ways.

Yeah. And I think the, the best thing for me, and, and I'll say this time and time again, was turning into a consultant. Because essentially you're able to have that conversation objectively and backtrack to where you make it somebody else's idea. So for example, we're talking about, you know, your search ad and we wanna say, cool, we wanna have the best performing search ad that there What are all the different avenues that we could get there? Okay, cool. You don't know. Let me help you map it out. We could do this, this, this, this, this. We could have this word, that word, this word, that word, da da da. And I lean to you and I say, which one do you wanna do? And you say, you know, I don't know. Um, A, we'll do A and B for easy.

Yeah.

You say A, and I'm like, well, you know, we could also consider B. We can consider C. Is there a reason why you're not considering the other ones? And I would hear you out and I was like, you know, we could also, Do an A/B test and we could better understand just objectively, you know, because it's always good to have different creatives in market and you know, it's our first time running a campaign to the audience. We'll let the data tell us. Your idea is let's do an A/B test. Awesome. Thumbs up. Let's move forward. And it's not who said they said ego, you know, defensiveness, whatever. It's we want to get the best performing ad. The best way to do that is statistically, you know, companies who run A/B tests for the first initial da da da da da, you know, see results X, Y, and Z faster. Yeah, I truly believe that's the best way.

I love it. I love it. Right. Let, let, let people believe the idea was theirs. And yeah, these are all like, so I go back to Brandy Sanders was one of our first guests and many of our listeners may know who she is, but she said something that still sticks with me now going well past 4 years, like 5 years later, which is she was saying in the context of for ops people, but I think it's true probably of anybody in corporate world, is that, you know, we should be— you should learn to play chess and learn human psychology, right? Because—

Mm-hmm.

Right. And that human psychology part is what you're talking about, right? Like how to influence people. And it probably sounds to people like people— there's going to be people who have this adverse reaction to that idea, like it's it's slimy or dirty, but it's not like— and it can be, right? But it doesn't have to be, right? It's like, if it's— if you— if your goal is to improve that relationship and have, like, have outcomes that are good for everybody, then it's, it's a just a tool that you're using as opposed to some sort of sleight of hand.

Well, I think it's all about intention. You know, there's good humans, there's bad humans, and at the end of the day, whatever somebody's intention is is what I'm going to hold true to them. And so if your intention is to truly craft the best search engine ad that there is, then, yep, you know, let's collectively work together to get there. It's, um, my intention isn't to make you seem like you don't know what you're talking about, to make you seem like, you know, you don't have any experience. Like my objective and my intention here is to get us to the end goal, right? And I think at the end of the day, that's all we can hold humans accountable for.

Um, yeah. And on that note, well, I think the, the flip to that though, And this is something I try to do is like, don't assume intent as well. Mm-hmm.

Right?

Because we all have our own preconceived notions about things or our own lived experience. And we tend to attribute intent to people. And sometimes, and I'm sure I'm guilty of this too, like sometimes it's because I like, maybe it's a day where I'm really tired. And so they said something that normally wouldn't have triggered me, but it did. So I'm like, oh, they're just trying to piss me off. And so often we are off base. And like, the— what I've tried— what I try to do on my better days is to— if some— especially if something is like, it hits me and I'm like bothered, like, okay, what is it that's bothering me? And if I have the opportunity in the mo— like, and it's safe or whatever, like, I will actually ask something to understand. Like, yeah, you said this. This is what it sounded like to me. Is that what you meant? And it's, it's really like striking to me that that often clears the air before anything. Sometimes the answer is yes, that's what I intended. And then you can deal with it. But if your assumption was wrong, right, then you can also clear that up.

Yeah, that's a great approach.

So, um, yeah, well, this has been Fascinating. Like, I would, I think, I think, um, if I think about the lessons from our conversation here is like, A, like reach out, try to build that relationship and try to do it in the context of everyone. Like we're trying to do good for not only us, but the business overall. Right. And then like go into it with trust as a part of it. Like, I want to trust you until you, I mean, people can lose trust. You can lose trust in people for sure. Mm-hmm. But Um, don't go in with that assumption that you're not gonna be able to trust somebody, hopefully. Anything else that I missed? Major components there?

Oh, I think it's great. You know, I think just know that humans are made to be defensive and assess people's intention before you create an actual, like, persona of them and label them in the back of your brain as bad. Sometimes that means having a hard conversation and that is hard. I'm not going to sugarcoat that, but the outcome of those normally help in the long, long scheme of things.

Agreed. Agreed. We're kind of up against time here. Any, any last thoughts before we, we wrap up?

You know, if you want to be great, at whatever role, whether you're demand gen or operations, I think it should start from within and look at ways to find an advocate. You know, plenty of successful people have mentors, and whether that's internal at your organization or external, I would just say never give up and always strive to be 1% better every day.

1% better every day. I love it. Love it. Well, this has been fun, Janelle. Appreciate it. Thank you so much for doing this. If folks want to learn more about you or keep up with what you're doing with Elevate, what's the best way for them to do that?

Yeah, I appreciate you having me. This is— the pleasure is all mine. You can follow me on LinkedIn @JanelleAmos. You can follow my podcast, Demand Gen Made Simple. And if you want to say hi, you can send me a direct message and we'll chat.

Awesome. Yeah, we'll have to put some notes in there, put our notes, a link to your podcast too. So I know you've had some great guests out there. So I think we'll wrap it up there. Janelle, thank you again. So much fun. And thanks also to our listeners for their ongoing support. If you have ideas for topics or guests or want to be a guest, you can always reach out to Mike, Naomi, or me through LinkedIn, through the Marketing Ops Community, and we'd be glad to talk to you about it. Till next time, bye everybody.

Bye.