Really listen to your customers

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In this podcast series, Grant Gregorian and I interviewed guests on their journeys as consultants. We discussed all that it means to be a great martech consultant from setting up their business or joining an agency and how to find new clients and keep their existing clients happy. I hope you enjoy the interview. Today's guest is Andrea Lechner Becker, CMO at LeadMD. Andrea, did I pronounce your name correctly?

You nailed it.

Woohoo. Thanks. Thanks.

Yeah.

So Andrea is joining Grant and I today to talk a little bit about MOPS consulting and her experience in that world. How long have you been with LeadMD? Let's start with a little bit of your background.

Yeah. So I've been at LeadMD almost 9 years. Before that, I worked at the Phoenix Suns as a— God, what was my title? An email database coordinator, which basically meant that I was in charge of loyalty and ticket sales on anything electronic. And so I learned how to use Eloqua in that job. I, before that, I was probably, I don't know, 26 when I started there. Before that, I didn't even know marketing automation was a thing. I had used a combination of FileMaker and Constant Contact.

Nice.

In previous jobs. And the idea that I could set up an automation that when people clicked on something or opened it, I could send them something else or segment them in a different way that wasn't through spreadsheets and manually sending emails was a total game changer. My little brain, my little 26-year-old brain blew up.

Yeah.

And so I learned how to use Eloqua in that job. And then I found out marketing automation consulting was a thing, which, you know, at the Suns, I did a bunch of different kinds of things, but I really loved databases. I loved being able to segment based on very specific intricate things. And of course, you know, when you're marketing basketball games and concerts, like that's super fun, right? You get to really think about, you get to think about the psychology of somebody who goes to a Garth Brooks concert and also only attends like the Pacers-Suns game. You know, it's like, what is this person doing? You know, who are they? How do I target them?

You can really visualize who your buyer is. Yeah.

So, um, so it was really, really fun. Um, and then I don't know if any of you have ever worked in, uh, sports entertainment, but they pay like crap.

Like pennies. Yeah, I've definitely heard that. Yeah.

And so, uh, and I mean, they get away with it because obviously it's such a fun gig and you get to go to the games, you get to meet the players.

Like, it's— Well, and you have a cool story to tell at happy hour. Everyone's like, oh cool, you work for them. That's awesome.

Yeah, it's a great podcast intro. And so, and so yeah, so I really fell in love with the idea of marketing automation in general. And then I realized marketing automation consulting was a thing. So the Pedowitz Group actually did work for us at the Suns. And I realized by talking to Jeff that this was his whole job, right? Is to— and the job of all of his consultants was to do projects like I was doing every day.

Mm-hmm.

Well, that sounds fun. I want to do that. Jeff didn't hire me. I don't know. He didn't like me or like my skill set or something. I don't know. But, but so then I found LeadMD, which is based here in Phoenix, which is where I'm based out of as well. And so I really just started. I think LeadMD at the time was, you know, Justin Gray, his brother, and maybe like 2, 3 other guys. So I was, I was the first woman and, you know, Justin Gray's brother Ashton taught me how to use Marketo, which is the only platform that we supported at the time. Taught me how to use it in like a week. At the time, if you're a Marketo user, it's so long ago that programs had just been released.

That's about when I jumped into— I remember using it for like a month or two and then programs came out and I was like, What is this?

Yeah, and so it was basically my job to figure out, 'cause I was asking all the sorts of questions that I'd been able to answer very easily at the Suns. Like, okay, I send this email out, how many tickets do I sell off of this? And I was able to do analysis on how long people were keeping these emails in their inbox. It's an amazing amount of time is the answer. Like people would click through on an email for the circus that I sent them 8 months ago to buy Suns tickets. I don't even know what is happening in that workflow, but it happened. So I was just used to all of this analytics. And then I came into B2B and nobody was doing that. And I was like, wait a second, if we send this email out, like, how do I know if it impacted this million-dollar sale? And it was like, well, that's, you know, I mean, that's complicated. And I was like, yeah, but like, that's our job, right? Like, as marketers, I have to be able to tell my clients, like, isn't my client gonna ask that? And it was like, they're not really asking that yet. And I was like, well, I'm going to be ready when they do, because it is going to happen. Right?

Yeah.

So my first year at LeadMD was basically just creating what we wanted to, what we thought marketers should be doing. Right? Like it was really just looking at what analytics they should be doing. And that's where really any of the things that we've grown as a consulting firm to support in terms of You know, our implementations of Visible, as an example, right? Like, that was based off of a frustration that we felt in and of ourselves of not being able to give our clients the reporting we thought they deserved out of just Salesforce and Marketo. And so, you know, that's where I started talking to Aaron Byrd, the old CEO of Visible, about, like, the questions that our clients were asking that we just couldn't answer. And so it's super fun, right, to be like on such a on such a cutting edge of a technology and a discipline like marketing operations that you can impact and influence the, the, the, the, what is it called? The, the product roadmap of products that you're using every day. Like, oh, what a great time to be alive.

Yeah. But how many people are at LeadMD now?

We're— oh geez, full-time employees, close to 50.

So you went from 5 guys, maybe 4, to 50. Can you— so, you know, a lot of people who are thinking about consulting or agency world, and that's one of the benefits is that there's more than, you know, you're not alone, that there's a team. Can you talk about the dynamic of the team between 5 And now 50, and you've been there through that whole journey. So what's the culture like at 5? And you're the only woman. I'm sure that means something. And then at 50, what's it like now? Can you talk through the pros and cons or how it's changed?

Yeah, absolutely. I think when you're a consulting firm of 5, I mentioned the Pettowicz Group. I think Jeff was in the game way before EliteMD was, and he has a great network. He is a super smart dude. And so I think we always set them up as like they were— and I do think to some extent, you kind of need an enemy, right? And I have nothing personally against Jeff. Again, I think he's super smart, great guy. But we were like, we can do better work than them. Like we wanna win deals against them, right? And like, so we definitely like had this kind of like gritty, we're small, but we're powerful. And like, we can swing with the big boys kind of attitude, even though we probably couldn't, right? Like—

Yeah.

Like for sure, we didn't always know what we were doing. We didn't have people that were, that had as much time in the seat as Jeff did, you know, like we definitely were like, swinging above our weight class a little bit, right? And so when we'd land a customer that was in the Fortune 500, like, we'd take half Fridays off. Like, that shit was cold.

Yeah.

And that's sort of the culture that you have when you're like really small, right? Like, people are working like crazy and it just is, it has tons of energy and you only have like 4 personalities. So to some extent, you know, you're gonna hire people that are exactly like you, that think really similar to you and have that desire. At that point too, I think, I don't think we had anybody over 30 that worked for us. You know what I mean? Like we were super scrappy, small, young, really excited. Like, you know, we didn't have families. So we like drank all the time. Like, you know, I mean, it just, it was really, really different. What happens when you get bigger? Like there's this point that kind of happens, I'd say probably around, $5 million in consultancies where, you know, you've built your business based on like 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, whatever, really smart people, right? Just being amped to be around each other, to share ideas, to like focus and grow this thing. And then this thing happens around the $5 million mark where it starts being like, you know, we need more people. We need more scale in training those people to do this job. And, and we were kind of talking before we even started that, you know, in, in a MOPS consulting firm, you have, you have the actual skill set of being able to do these things in technologies and be able to consult people on the right approach, consult them on a tech stack, consult them on how to create decks that present what marketing is actually doing in terms of revenue. influence or acquisition or whatever, right? Like you're coaching them on all of those things. But when you're a consultant, there's all of this other stuff that you have to learn around the business of being a consultant. So there's the concept of billable hours and there's the concept of, you know, listen, like at, as LeadMD, like we've invested in our approach to these things, which has allowed us to scale, but customers still have to pay for that, right? Like just because I can now get this thing done in 10 minutes that used to take me 2 hours, It would take them 18 hours to do it. So charging them 4 is fair, even though it takes you 10 minutes, right? Like, like there's all of those things. And there's just that, that like training people and educating them on the business of consulting that starts to feel like, oh, you know, like the— as you get more people that you're bringing into your organizations, all that stuff starts to feel really— Heavy.

So is that, is that literally how we should be thinking about it? So as consultants, if we— because that, I mean, that is kind of a trap a little bit as your experience and expertise goes up and as you figure out how to do things better. Like, you're right, what used to take you 4 hours or maybe even 10 hours could literally take you 10 minutes. That is absolutely true. That exists in real life. And so in that case, Like, you can't increase your rate, you know, whatever that number is, 400 times, because then nobody will hire you, you know. So how do you— so the example that you gave is like, okay, we figured out a way to take that 4-hour thing and do it in 10 minutes. But like, for sure, we're going to charge for the value, the original 4 hours. But internally, the cost is now 10 minutes. Is that like some of the, some of the ways in which you can kind of start to earn more and kind of benefit from having specialization and benefit from having experience and expertise?

I would certainly say yes. I do think that transparency with clients is very important. Like, I have never hid from a client that I have invested heavily in In one, figuring all of this out, right? And two, training people who have it figured out. So like—

That's why they came to you.

Exactly.

'Cause you wanna be like, you wanna tell them like, hey, I've done this before, like a million, I know exactly how to do this, I'm really good at this. So that's part of the value that you're getting.

Right, and I think, you know, at the end, at the end I say like, I'm going to bill you what I think this, what I've seen historically that this has the value of. And if you don't want to do it, you can feel free to do it on your own. Right? Like, that's the great thing about this, right? Like, I think this thing is worth $2,000. Okay, Andrea, how long are you going to spend on it?

Yeah.

I don't know. And it doesn't matter because it has a value of $2,000. And, and the fact is, is that if you tried to do this, it would cost you $20,000.

Right.

Because not only it would take you that amount of time to do it, but the things that you would screw up along the way and have to go back and fix, And the potential repercussions of that on your audience, right? Like most of the things that we do touch your customer. So like, yeah, you can go create your own subscription center. For sure you can. And if you already know all of the questions to ask as you're creating that subscription center, you know how to build those things out in the system of record, you know how to not get sued for GDPR compliance, like cool, you don't need me. Mm-hmm.

Okay.

I don't care. You know what I mean? Like I've just, I think The skill set that we bring from having done this thing a million times, it has a value way beyond how long it takes. So for sure, to your point, like if you're new to consulting, the worst thing you can do is bill exactly what you spent on something. You have to really think about what value that has for the client. And that value is to some extent, how long would it take them to do their—

Are we talking like price things? Like, would you then recommend like packaging things? It's like, hey, this is, you know what I mean? And then having that.

Everyone loves a package. You know, I mean, I think, I think for, for any, you know, I think certainly when you get into things that are more creative, right? So like, if we're going to create a sales playbook for someone as an example, like that has a ton of work in it that's, you know, what we call go-to-market work, right?

Yeah.

And so that means interviewing people. It means figuring out what your sales team looks like, right? And like, there's just unknowns to stuff like that that are much, much more difficult to package. I still think you can get away with Creating, you know, I mean, the big tip that I'd say if you're like selling your own services is what salespeople call bracketing. So bracketing is the exercise of saying, this is between $10,000 and $20,000. How does that feel for you?

Right.

People will tell you, oh man, that's like, that's cheap. Oh, oh, did I say $20,000? Well, it depends on what you need. You know, like maybe I don't understand your ask if it sounds cheap.

Right, right, interesting.

So there's just this, there's all these like little ways that you can maneuver around.

Yeah, I like the bracketing on the pricing side where you're giving a range and then you're kind of like figuring out what the right, is it the upper bound or the lower bound of that? But I think it's probably also just as important to then have it on the backend in terms of like you bought a package that includes up to some boundaries. Yep, this is flat, but up to, and here's where it runs out. This is the end of it. And maybe even the minimum of some sort. It's like, at the very least, you're gonna get these things.

Right.

And at most you can squeeze out this much. Like maybe it's in terms of hours or time. Like we'll have 3 months and that's it. After 3 months, we're done or whatever.

Yeah.

Well, and I think the other thing, you know, just from the original question of like what changes between when you're, you know, 5 people and when you're 50, You know, one of the biggest things is just the support for conversations like that, right? Like, like, if, if either of you have ever sold a project where expectations didn't get misaligned, I, I'm in complete envy of you, right? Like, I don't know that I've ever worked a project where some— where my customer's expectation was perfectly what I delivered from start to finish, right? Like, the, the, the process of consulting around this kind of thing is fraught with areas of missed expectations, people pushing the boundary, people just forgetting, right? Like, it's not always malicious either, for sure. I mean, people forget that you said up to 3 programs all the time. And they're like, okay, then I want to do this one. And then I want to do this one.

Yeah.

And it's, you know, someone has to have that conversation of like, no, we said 3. And you're at— and somebody also should be having the conversation of, Okay, you have 3 programs, we're at 2, what's your last one? Right? Like doing all of those sorts of things. But that's, you know, asking one person to project manage something, sell something. It's a lot. And execute on it. And also think both very granularly and very high level, right? Like it's very hard to be working with a client on optimizing their landing page design and then say, Wait, who are we driving to this? What kind of customer is this? Like, like, who are we even talking to? And like, does this messaging make sense? You know, like, it's just, it's, it's hard to do all of that at once. So I think what you find in very small consulting firms is people that are Swiss Army knives. They can do a ton of things, like really pretty good. And then as you get to that $5 million mark, you start seeing that You know, you need people that specialize in one thing or another, like project management. You need somebody to come in and do that strategic consultation and inform some of those middle pieces. And then you need somebody that's just like really, really baller at Marketo or Salesforce that goes in and does it.

Would you say that that's partially what people should think of when they think about what they want to do? Like, you know, I want to go into consulting. I want to— okay, maybe I want to join an agency or maybe I want to go Solo, like if you go solo, to your point, you're doing everything. You're doing bookkeeping, you're doing sales and marketing and project management.

Gotta do that upsell, cross-sell.

Upsell, cross-sell. Yeah, you're the SDR and whatever. Whereas maybe if you join LeadMD, right? I mean, depending on your role, obviously. But if you join LeadMD, you can get pretty specialized. You could be the person who's just doing Marketo Very specific market or just doing visible or just, I'm a project manager and I have tough conversations every day. And so is that true?

Yeah, that's absolutely true. And I think, you know, when we were in that between, I mean, I guess even at like the 5-person mark when I used to go out and recruit, 'cause that's another job that you have to do if you wanna own your own consulting firm or you wanna run your management team, you have to consult, you have to go recruit other consultants. But the thing I used to say is like, you are not gonna find a, a more knowledgeable, more passionate group of Marketo users on the planet. Like, we see more Marketo instances than— and this was at the time. Now there's plenty of people who see a lot more Marketo instances than us, frankly. But like, I mean, at the time it was like, if you want to, if you want to be a Marketo superstar, you work for me and I will teach you everything that anyone knows. Because again, at that time too, like, You know, I'm working with all like Cheryl on nurture programs, right? Like how nurture programs look today. Like I influenced that with Cheryl. So like, you know, you're just, I, at the time we were so focused on Marketo that like, yeah, that's how I used to sell it, right? Like come here and I will teach you everything you ever want to know about working in Marketo.

That's a great ringing endorsement for your recruiting there. Like come join, come join the rocket ship.

Well, I mean, I think it's, and you know, I'm, I really am not, I I don't mean to be arrogant at all, because now you have so many Marketo shops that you can live that same dream. So I think, and that's like, what a cool opportunity for people that want to come into consulting. You don't just have us anymore. You have Digital Pie, you have, all my competitors keep getting acquired, so it's hard to know what name to give them. But you just go on LaunchPoint and Marketo and look up service There's a ton of us. There's a ton of people in the Midwest.

It's a matter of time, Andrea. It's a matter of time.

It is interesting too because I'm from— I'm in Portland now. I'm from Seattle, so there's Pacific Northwest agencies that I'm very familiar with and fond of, but then as we're meeting people through this podcast, I'm learning about agencies in the Mid-Atlantic or in the Midwest or the Chicago area. It is interesting that there really are so many out there.

Yeah, there's plenty. you know, now you're in a position, if you have a little bit of a Marketo skill set, that you can probably find just a ton of people. And again, like, we're always all hiring. Like, we just hired somebody yesterday. Like, this isn't a skill set that is— it's not— it is in high demand. I should just get to the point, right? So, you know, then you can worry about things that are You know, more interesting, like culture, and you can make sure that the leader is somebody that you really feel passionately about. And maybe even like your friend from a MOPS community that you've just been slacking with or LinkedIn-ing with, you can now work with them. You know, I mean, I think people have just really cool opportunities out there right now.

Yeah, I agree. I think it's such a fun career to end up in. I feel very, very happy to be in this little community of people. My last question for you is your current Your current role is CMO, so you've transitioned. You're no longer consulting and client-facing that much. You're actually leading the marketing organization there. What is that kind of transition like, and does that suit you? Do you miss the client-facing side of things?

Oh man, I'm going to tell you. I had this moment where I— when I— so I took a bit of a hiatus. in 2018, I didn't work at LeadMD for 7 months. And that was the separation between like, I was in delivery and then I became CMO. And I came back after my graduation. I came back and I was like adding things to my 1Password, right? Like all of the tech, all of the logins that were now just for me, right? Like I was used to having a ton of logins in 1Password for all my clients and all the stuff. And so now I'm just adding like 45 logins to like, and like 5 of them are just to do a webinar, right? Like I need all of these things to do this one thing. And I started actually having to execute on stuff. And I will, I'm 100% not shitting you. I was like, I told people the wrong fucking thing, like all the time. Like this is totally unrealistic. Like this is not that, like that's not ever gonna happen, right? 'Cause I think, when you're a consultant and you can kind of look at things and say like, oh, well, yeah, like you should roll this out and you should train your team and then you should hold them accountable. Like all that's super easy to say. Did you hear me? It was easy, right? Like, and it sounded like, oh yeah, shit, that's what we should do. But then you actually have to start doing it and you're like, oh my God, is this hard, right? Like—

Yeah.

It all sounds so easy and then you get into it and it's so hard. So like a lot of what I do, even with the consultants that we have now, is I try to bring I try to bring empathy to the real-world marketer for them. So like, they will say things to me, like we went through my Google Analytics at one point, right? A few months ago. And they were like, where are your goals? Like, why aren't your goals set up? Right? Like such a consulting thing to say, right? Like you should set up goals. And I'm like, yes, I'm aware I should set up goals. The problem is I have to actually set them up and then I have to be honest with myself.

They have a package for that.

Yeah.

But it really is like, it's like, okay, I have to set them up. And then you also have to keep in mind that like, I have to report on them. Like, am I really like, what am I going to do differently once I set up those goals? And, you know, like, I'm a team of one. So like, I have to also just bring a certain level of like, just common sense to stuff, right? Like, like, okay, I get that the Zoom webinar registration page is like ugly. Okay, I get it. It's ugly. I'm also one person. So I have to decide if me going in and creating a really pretty landing page is going to increase the number of conversions there to a point that's worth my time, or is it not? Right? So like, that's the nice thing about being a consultant is you can just, you know, preach the dream, right? Like, there's always things you can be doing better. And like, here's what I think they should be.

Yeah.

And then you get into the actual seat and you're like, Fuck that. I mean, it's just not worth my time.

Yeah, I mean, that's part of consulting is part of the empathy part of it is listening for the context of the appetite, you know, or their realistic expectations of what is, you know, should be done at that organization at this maturity level, that size, their budget, whatever. So that's fair. And to bring to the team that empathy and kind of the voice of a marketer. I think that's super cool.

Yeah.

And like a real voice, right? 'Cause like, it is hard to get your clients to tell you stuff like that. Like, you know, and just even like the approach of like, why don't you have goals set up? I'm like, first of all, I don't like the way you ask that. You know what I mean? Like, you're insinuating that I'm stupid. Like, that's how it feels to me if like you're saying that to me, right? Don't say it like that. You know, like, let's work on some different approaches because that's a little smarmy and I'm not really liking you very much right now. So it's just stuff like that, that I do think, you know, it's a really fun job. I'm very, very blessed to be, to have the job of marketing marketers to marketers. Like, I don't know, it's pretty baller. So very cool.

It's pretty cool.

Yeah.

Well, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us. This was so great. We learned so much.

Good, because I just will ramble. Yeah.

Thank you very much.

No, this was great. Your experience of being at a small agency, bigger agency, and all the things that you mentioned about project scoping, it was, it was super cool to learn about. And thank you for listening to this episode of SMTST podcast. If you like this episode, please rate us on the platform you're listening to this on. The ratings help make the podcast better, make it easier for other people to discover it. And also be sure to subscribe. And if you haven't already, join the SMTC by going to joinsmtc.com and join as a member. It's free. We'll look forward to hearing from you. Bye.