The Secrets of Selling to Marketing Operations Professionals

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. Tune into each episode as we chat with real professionals to help elevate you and your marketing operations career.

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by the MoPros. I'm Michael Hartman. I'm joined today by my co-host, Mike Rizzo.

Hey everybody, this is going to be a special one.

Yes, this is a little bit of a different one. I'm not sure if our audience or the majority of our audience is going to like us or hate us, and I suspect it's going to be one of the two and not much in the middle. So today we thought it would be interesting and we've got some kind of— I have some, at least some real-time kind of experience lately, but we're going to talk a little bit about how can vendors, so those people who are trying to sell to us in marketing ops, How can they do a better? How could they improve their chances of getting through to us and getting our attention and going through that process? So, like I said, we may regret this, but here we go. Mike, you ready?

I am ready. I was just still trying. I was still actively trying to recruit somebody to join us in the last minute just to like get the salesperson's perspective.

Oh yeah.

We'll do another episode. We'll see. We'll see how far we can take this.

This will be this. So this will be interesting. I know. So if those of you who are listening to this. Definitely, whether it's on the LinkedIn posts that will go out with this or just somewhere in the in the the MoPros community or the Slack channel or whatever, definitely I'm going to want to hear your feedback about this. What did we get right? What do we get wrong? What secrets we should we have kept our mouth closed about? Like all that stuff, right? We need to we're going to need to get all of that feedback. But as but but truly, I think this is one that would I think we would all like to improve our experience with. And I'm sure we've all had really, really good experiences and we've probably all had ones where we're like, I want to shoot this person.

Oh yeah, without a doubt. I mean, I literally before, it's funny, like right before we started recording this, I told you, Michael, I was like, yep, just wrapped up a demo call. And so, you know, I wanted to sync with the team real quick. And the first thing I said to the team before we decided to record this OpsCast was, that is an example of how not Ouch. The whole team was like, yeah, it was hard to follow.

And I totally zoned out.

And I was like, yeah, I was very like, it was very methodical and I almost fell asleep. It was bad.

Ouch, that hurts. Well, so I think I've got a real example. I actually like on my own was doing some research and I reached out recently to 2 different vendors, kind of 2, they're sort of 2 big competitors in the space I was looking at. I won't talk about who they were, Because it doesn't matter, but it's it's really striking the examples here. So one submitted a request and still almost two weeks later haven't haven't heard back from them, and that's after doing the hand raiser form, right? Contact me. I'm interested in talking to somebody in sales. I finally submitted a second request today, basically saying, "Hey, look, I've already asked for something. Can you send something to me?" So first off, like if you're not responding to people. You're gonna lose business.

Right. And this is a problem that we hear about all the time. Like, actually, it's one of our jobs. This touches on something that's super interesting, right? Like, we're gonna go on a tangent on this just for a second. But like, our job as a marketing ops, rev ops person is to ensure that the lead gets to the, to the team. And like, there's a part of that story, Michael, that you just started telling right now where I'm like, oh, I wonder if they just have a break in their system. Right. And it just like literally didn't get to them. And, and like now this MOPS or RevOps person has to go figure it out because someone's going to find out like in 6 weeks that Michael Hartman tried to contact them.

Right.

And the salesperson is going to come kick down the door and be like, what the hell? Where are my leads at? And that's part of our job.

Well, so it's interesting. So this particular vendor, I intentionally went to, went to the About Us, Contact Us page, I intentionally skipped the very prominent request a demo that was all over the site. So it will be interesting to see if this is a breakdown. It's now become like a, you know, now I'm curious to see what happens kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe what I'll do next is I'll go request a demo and see if that happens faster. But I don't really— I actually don't really want a demo.

Right. Yeah. You're like, I'm familiar. I don't really want the demo.

Right.

I mean, that's why we do our no bullshit demos, right? Like, because nobody really wants to do a demo, right?

Well, especially if they're like the one you just executed.

Right. Yeah. Like, let's just cut to the chase. Answer the questions that I kind of care about most. That's why we do those things. But anyway, shameless plug.

Right. Well, so the— okay, so let's try it. Let's compare that to the other vendor that I basically exact same time submitted a request. So first off, they got back to me quickly and not only did they get back to me quickly, It was the sales rep that already has a relationship with our company. And he did, he did 2 things, right? A, he responded quickly, and B, he told me, we already have a relationship with your company and these are the people who already we work with there. So he—

See, and that's a good system right there.

Yeah. So which I, you know, I appreciate that because I have had scenarios, especially at larger companies, where a salesperson Knows absolutely that another part of the business has a, has a contract and relationship, but doesn't talk about it because they know that we're not very good at big companies about communicating this stuff to each other or figuring out if somebody else has a— already has a relationship. And so he already won a lot of points because he did that.

Mm-hmm.

So even though I did finally have a conversation with them today, I'd already had internal conversations. And, um, frankly, like, it was not a demo this morning. It was more of them doing an inquisition with me, which I didn't appreciate. At the same time, I was more— because of how they handled the initial stuff, I was more than willing to cut them some slack.

Right, right. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that makes sense, right? Like, they're doing— they're, they're allowing you to go do a little discovery internally. It also helps them, right? Like, because, you know, especially at the enterprise level, right, we're We're talking about, you know, the diligence, like due diligence, security reviews, all of those things that you kind of have to go through. And if like, if an organization's already got a contract won with you, to some degree, that should be like a signal to you as the potential buyer that like, all right, well, if I, if I need a tool and this, this solves a certain percentage of the need, then at least I know I can get through procurement a little easier because we already have an agreement in place.

I haven't even, like, I don't even know what that process is like. And I was trying to like limit my need to go through that.

So, um, yeah, yeah, that's a big win. It's a good move on their part. So, so tip number 1 for the sales orgs out there, build a system that, you know, uh, lets you know when a contract is already in place.

Well, and don't, and don't, don't play games with this stuff, right? I, I, like I said, I have had people who I have come to find out later, after we've gone down pretty far on a path of negotiation or even getting all the way through to contract, that, oh, this other part of our business already had a contract and no one bothered to stand up and say that happened. Now, that may not have been intentional, but I, I don't believe that was the case in most of those scenarios. And I think that gets to like one of the critical things for me as a buyer. I want someone who's there who's going to be direct, honest, even to the point of being willing to walk away if there's really not a match. I say we're really not going to be able to do what you need us to do. Yeah.

Yeah, I really appreciate it when an organization understands, you know, the value that they bring and when it's going to be too difficult. And like, look, it's hard. Not every sales rep is fully educated on, you know, the value that they can bring to a team, right? Especially if they're just learning a tool.

Sure.

Maybe they're a little junior in their career. And then in addition to that, um, it's incredibly difficult to, to walk away from something when you're entirely incentivized by just getting the deal across.

Right.

And deal desk stuff. And so if the sales org is not really thinking about retention numbers and most aren't, right, um, then, or if their leadership isn't thinking about like measuring some sort of retention, then That's, you know, what you end up with, right? But, but yeah, I would totally appreciate if somebody was like willing to walk away if there just wasn't a fit. And that takes some understanding and like scope of work, right? Like scoping out your needs and all that stuff.

Yeah, I think, and, and probably the reality is I, I'm, uh, even though I said that, I actually am trying to rack my brain right now to think of a scenario where I had that happen. And I'm sure I have, uh, but I cannot think of an example right off the top of my head. But it, it, you know, I think that shows a sign of confidence and everything else. It's not, it's not, um, you know, it's like anything else, right? If you, if you eventually— that lie or that, you know, kind of overstatement or whatever is going to come back and bite you, right? Because, yeah, you know, a big part— like, there was— I still think about my first experience buying, being, or, you know, being a buyer for marketing automation platform. In this case, it was Eloqua. And I, to this day, Would tell you this person who sold to me, it was the salesperson in a relatively small deal compared. This was Eloquissa. It was on the higher end. We were relatively small. The amount of work that she had to put in to get the deal over the over the you know to the point where I was actually feeling bad for her, and it was being driven mostly by my management asking a bunch of additional questions, and she just got in and jumped in with me and. Help, you know, go through everything and make sure that we understood what we were really getting, what we really could do, what we couldn't do without additional, you know, that I would, in fact, I have, she has since moved on to other companies. I've reached out to her just to find out more about it because I thought so highly of that experience.

Of the experience that she actually provided you. It was like very consultative and hands-on.

Absolutely, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it was—

I think that's the right way to sell to this particular It's just like, we, I don't know. I mean, I don't know about you, but typically we're pretty well educated on how stuff works. And we have usually a pretty clear scope of, by the time we're going to find tools, we've probably done a bunch of research. I don't know about you, but I typically go do a ton of research. A lot of buyers do this. Absolutely. Absolutely. But like, we definitely fall into the category of like, all right, I think it's an easy blanket statement to say that this role— marketing ops, rev ops, sales ops, whatever— tends to do a lot of research. And by the time they're reaching out to us, it's like I kind of have really specific questions. Like, I actually really only care about, can you do this thing? Not can you hack away to do this thing?

Right.

Can you do this thing or not? And can we just get into the like, bring the solutions engineer onto the call right away? Don't give me the AE the first time unless that AE happens to be pretty technical or well-versed. Like, let's bring that solutions engineer in. Let's start talking like technical because I need to get into it and make a decision and get out.

Yeah. And by the way, don't start that, that conversation with your regular sales pitch deck that tells me about the history of your company because honestly, I don't really give a shit.

What, the NASCAR slide?

Right. Like, I know, like, you've got all these logos that you've sold to. Hooray for you. Doesn't help me move the needle.

Yeah. The only time that slide— here, salespeople— the only time that slide is ever valuable is when I've selected you and one other competitor and my leadership says, well, who else is their customer? And then I say, well, they're working with this kind of customer that's just like us. And they go, great, can you get a reference? And then the, the wheel starts over again.

Absolutely. Right.

So, but otherwise I don't retain the customers. It is not impressive. I've done my research. I wanna know if your tool can do it. I don't care if anybody else is using it. I care if someone else is using it after I've decided that you're one of the 2, right, that I'm gonna buy.

Well, and, and I think nowadays, especially with communities like the MoPros, You know, we have another way of getting that backdoor information about who's already using it and actually learning more about, you know, what's, what's real, what's BS, right? So you don't want to go in assuming that we don't know anything. I think that's probably the key, right, is that we've probably done some homework. Very rarely have we not done a fair amount of digging to understand what we think it is.

Yeah, totally. This week alone, I've seen, you know, at least, I don't know, 5, 10 questions come through about pricing strategies from certain competitors or whether or not, you know, a particular solution for referrals can integrate well into HubSpot, you know, and people are giving these bits of feedback and experiences. And so it's immediately giving someone this, this decision to make like, well, maybe I won't work on like, maybe I won't go check that one out because it doesn't sound like it's as Attractive as the marketing site says that it is.

Well, okay, so this brings me—

this is okay—

this brings me to another one of my sort of, uh, you know, I guess I'll get out of my sandbox and shout out about this one, is that by the way, your websites generally suck.

Totally.

They do not tell me what the— what in the world your product or service does.

Yep. And that's usually how it goes. It's the fluff, right? I mean, I'm— look, I'm a marketer first by trade, right? I've been in— I came through the marketing ops landscape and I've been in it this, this whole part of my career and integrating, you know, doing deep integrations and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, I totally went deep into like, what is growth marketing and what is all this stuff about? And I definitely skew towards like the marketer side of marketing ops, and I get it. You got to build stuff that's attractive. But as an owner of this community and someone who fully respects the buying process that we want to go through, yeah, I'm like, nah, right? Let's do some no bullshit demos. And you tell me exactly what you do and let me give that to this community because I don't want to know. I'm not going to your website. This is not going to happen.

Well, if I go to your website and you're making me work to translate the big flowery words that you're using describe what your product does.

Yeah.

And not really telling me, like, I want— I don't want it to be hard for me. And so, by the way, this is not unique, I think, to technology, B2B technology companies. I think B2B websites just in general are pretty crummy at this because they— I can't remember, there was one the other day that I looked at and I can't remember exactly what it was, but I walked away going like, I— someone had recommended this platform too, and I can't remember. I think it was more of a personal thing. And I was like, I couldn't tell you what they do. Yeah, I've gone through the website, spent 10, 15 minutes, and I don't know what it is they do.

Yeah. Yeah. It's incredibly hard to build a marketing website, B2B or otherwise, that makes— that gives any sense of clarity. I mean, I've seen it done well, of course, but like, it seems like all the tech companies you know, tend to skew towards like, well, you know, what inevitably happens is you get design involved and brand involved, right? Because it is your forward-facing design and brand. And those things are tremendously important. Don't get me wrong.

Yep.

Um, but when I hit a site in this particular audience, if you happen to be primarily selling to this particular audience, the feeling that your site gives me is way less interesting to me than what your product actually can do.

Right.

Right? And so, you know, and this, it's funny because I was just sharing this with this company that I advise and I said, you know, this brand that you're building, I don't— it's a little— this is like a little bit too busy for me. And I need a little bit more clarity on not just what you do, but just like create some breathing room here. And I really did go into this like sense of feeling about the brand. But it's funny because like they sell to this audience and, and I still like I lightly touched on it, but it was all— it actually had less to do with the way that I feel and more to do with freeing up my mind space, like letting me try to understand and not creating more chaos for me and just like be clear, be transparent and be straightforward.

Simple language, right?

Yeah. And like open up some breathing room between all of the stuff you're trying to throw at me. Because I'm looking for answers. And so there's a, there's a component of that that is about brand and the way that you feel when you experience the information that's on the page. But it's not this like, ooh, look how cool it is. They look really trendy, or I identify with that because it uses those colors. Like, it's less about that and more about the cognitive, like, emotional feeling that I get, uh, where like, oh, you respect that. I have intelligence.

Well, and not only that, so there's actually like a physiological challenge that goes with, yeah, your brain actually burns more calories the harder you're having to think and interpret. And so there was an interesting book that I never ended up finishing that we were doing sort of a book club at my last company and we started it and it sort of petered out, but it was called Building a StoryBrand or How to Build a StoryBrand. Some people may know about it, but what I remember from an early part of it was this, like imagine your customers or your prospects coming to your website and that like that their brain is like on a treadmill, right? And the harder your site is to navigate or to read or to understand, it's like that the speed on that treadmill is just going up and they're working harder and harder and eventually they're going to get too tired and they're going to go away.

Yeah.

And it was such a great image for me. Like I remembered that. So—

I think it's a really good message.

Yeah.

Like without a doubt. It's, it's funny though, cuz like, as you're saying that, I'm reflecting back on the very first website that I ever built for myself where I was like, you know, I'm gonna try this agency thing. I'm gonna see, I'm gonna see if I could be an agency. And so I was like, just like experimenting and I did these like little Easter eggs, like on the site and I actually kind of called attention to it. So it was like a little less of an Easter egg. And I put like, hey, if you find the like one logo on our site that like, uh, you know, and you click on it, like there's going to be like a, a free something or whatever. Like as if anybody was ever gonna like go troll through all my pages and try to click on this thing, right? So like, okay, yeah, so they're on a treadmill, they don't want to run any faster.

I get it. Well, that one reminds me of another one of my favorites, and I, I pull this out every time I get somebody who's trying to be too clever with a website, is, um, some people might be familiar with the guy. He's like a, uh, and I guess an artist is the best way to put it. It goes by the name of— his website is The Oatmeal. And yeah, I think you have to—

oh yeah, oh yeah.

So he has one, uh, strip, comic strip, that says— it's titled something like How a Website Design Goes to Hell, and it is the funniest thing, right? Um, and it—

I like— I wish I, I wish I could just like share. I know it's audio only, but like the oatmeal is fantastic. I can only imagine.

The oatmeal is great if you need a break, like you just need a moment to just get your sarcasm fix. Yeah. Um, and you're not offended easily by language. Yeah. I highly recommend The Oatmeal.

Yeah, totally. It's super good. I would love— I gotta get my hands on that one. Maybe we'll put it in the show notes or something.

Yeah, I'm happy to do that. We could do those 2, right? Here's StoryBrand so you can be the intellectual guy, or you can go to The Oatmeal and just laugh.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. We touched on both ends of the spectrum today. Absolutely.

That's funny. Um, okay. So, uh, I've got sort of 2 other things that I've got kind of thinking about and maybe, maybe you've got more, Mike, but I'll, I'll throw them out there and maybe we can decide how we want to go. But so one is when and how do you talk about pricing, right? Do you put it on your website? So that's number one. Another one is maybe a little more for our friends who are doing cold outreach, right?

Mm-hmm.

So how do you approach a marketing ops person? Say you're sending them a cold outreach through LinkedIn or an email or whatever, right? How do you, how do you get our attention? Thoughts on which you want to cover first? Because I think they're both meaty.

Oh, they are both really meaty. I, yeah, I think we'll start with pricing. Now, you want me to answer that as a buyer and as a marketing ops buyer?

Yes.

Okay.

But you can, if you want to have to take the other side too, I'm more than happy to listen to you and then I'll shoot you down.

No, no. Yeah, no, it's fine. No, as a marketing ops buyer, I definitely appreciate price transparency. I sort of like, I understand the language enterprise pricing, inquire below, right? I get it. It's probably expensive and that's fine. But giving us a sense of like average contract size even is even better.

Yeah.

And so, you know, I think, I think there's an extreme of this that I personally would appreciate, which is like on your pricing page, if you gave me a mechanism to sort of compare myself and say like, hey, companies of this size on average pay X for this product. Oh my gosh, that'd be a game changer, right? Like I can see all day long what your, like your monthly pricing kind of model is or whatever.

Yep.

Uh, and maybe you can pad it by 20% just because, you know, you're going to discount by 20%, like go for it. I don't care. But it'd be great. Build a pricing page that tells me like companies of this size typically pay this plus 20% and give me a sense of what I need to reach out to you about.

Well, or if you, so I very often, like, I appreciate that some Some vendors, they're like, they sell things in different sort of mixes, right? You know, you say you've got one capability or you have multiple capabilities and they're sort of sold in different tiers. And there's also like, uh, the number of users or the number of visitors or like all the— there are things that affect how their pricing model works, right?

Yeah.

At least tell me what those are. Like, what are the main drivers, right? And where can we like Where do we have control over, you know, where that goes? I think that is what I want.

I think that level of transparency would be super interesting. I mean, I sound like a buffoon saying that, you know, like, oh, you want me— so think about this from— put your, put your business owner cap on, right, for a second, Mike. And me, Mike, not you, Mike.

It's okay.

And, and so, you know, here I sound like a fool. Okay, Mike, you're telling me you want someone to be able to come to my website, Including my competitors and see, oh yeah, companies of this size on average pay this. They might not know how many companies I have in my organization, like subscribe to us, but I generally am like giving away like my competitive information by just like broadly telling all my competitors like, yeah, here's what people typically pay for us.

Guess, guess what? If they, if your competitors wanted to really know, they can find out.

They're coming. Are you kidding? Oh, I will not say who, where, when, or how, or any of the logistics of this, but I once worked on a team where there was a persona created and that persona went and signed up and got demos of every competitive product in the market that competed with that product. And then the competitive intel, like decks were built and it was, it was really impressive. Like you, you sort of feel sleuthy. I mean, it's not illegal, right?

No.

But it's like, you know, that's, that's funny. But it's real. It's a real thing. If you want to know, they'll get it done.

Well, that one always sort of falls into the same one. Back in the day when I was helping to build some— like, we— I was working at a company, happened to be an enterprise company that wanted to really drive top-line revenue growth, but historically it always had a kind of a corresponding growth in costs for support. And so they were looking for ways to try to bend that cost curve, right? So not reduce costs, but avoid some costs so they could capture more of the growth. And one of the things I found, and I really pitched hard, was the idea of essentially what would probably be now called community, right? But, you know, like a place where customers could help each other out.

Mm-hmm.

There was a ton of worry about, you know, how— what that might expose, that the wrong answer might get out there.

Oh yeah.

Or that, that, that the— every scenario was unique, right? But that wasn't really the case. And what was really interesting as we dug into it is what we found out is people in support, guess what they all had on their own computer? Like their own little knowledge base. A few of them shared it, right? It was usually a Word doc or something like that. We're like, why don't we make this available? And we don't want to do it, but— and there's actually a methodology and an organization that's behind this one methodology that I found was great, which is like— so the point is, right, we often assume the worst case with all these things. But I like—

Yeah.

I don't know, like, your case, your story is one of the only ones I've ever heard about where a company really went to that amount of effort to really You know, go after that kind of information because it wasn't published.

Yeah.

But they, if they, again, like if they want to, they want to invest that time and effort, they're going to find it.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Without a doubt. It's funny because I've actually seen, I've even seen the other end of it where as a tech company, this particular tech company knew the, they somehow got a sense of like the referring network or IP address or something. of, of the organization. Um, and, and they would not allow that organization to interact with their website. It was really impressive stuff. Like they knew, they knew, generally speaking, that that was a competitor coming to their site and it effectively just like totally changed the site. And, uh, it was funny because like—

That's a new use case for personalization.

It's like block your competitors by IP. Uh, And so it was funny because I, um, you know, little, little hack is just, you know, go get yourself a, uh, uh, IP masking like solution and like route yourself around the globe and then you can get around that problem. And it takes all of like 5 seconds to go download, you know, a browser that'll do that for you.

Right.

But it was, it was funny because it was like the other end of that, uh, that whole like, oh, well, I want to stop my competitors. Look, at the end of the day, Everybody is going to get what they want if they want it bad enough, like they will get there. So don't be afraid of creating environments for knowledge to be shared, uh, which you're seeing a lot less of, I think now, like community. You're right. Community's like becoming a forefront of, you know, learning and, you know, people are like less afraid of it. So.

Yeah. So I think, I think the message for me is, you know, don't be afraid to share your pricing if you've got to, if truly your pricing is too complicated to put on like simply on your website, right, where you don't have just sort of like 3 levels of pricing and then enterprise or something like that, at least get into a conversation with whoever you're selling to fairly quickly because they're going to want to know because they may or may not have an idea of exactly how much they need to spend or budget. So when you're asking them how much you have for budget, very often, like today, like right now, those 2 I mentioned, like I don't have a specific budget. I'm still kind of— it's all happening very quickly.

Mm-hmm.

And but yeah, the more you can get me into the business case, right, the more I know to go, okay, well, it's probably about this. And then to implement, there's some additional one-time costs, right? And then if I'm looking at it from a longer-term standpoint, I need to know what are my recurring costs so I can build, like you said, build out that business case for it.

Yeah. And I think, I think that's one of the— I don't know, maybe it's not that unique, but I do feel like it is somewhat unique to us as buyers, like When we're looking to tackle a particular business challenge as a marketing ops, rev ops person, we're, you know, we're sort of vetting the solutions that are available, right? And then, and then we're trying to make a business case. Like sometimes we've discovered a problem and we're trying to go secure budget to fix said problem. And sometimes we're trying to state that said problem will result in a certain amount of ROI. And so the reason we don't have a budget yet is that we are trying to, you know, prove that we should, like, we're advocating on your behalf. It's like, we, we want to be your champion internally.

That is so true.

But yeah, like, we definitely want to be your champion, but you need to help us help you kind of a thing. Um, which is very different than the sales methodology of like, I need to understand You know, what your potential use case is for our tool and like what, what your goals are for your company or whatever. And then I'll figure out like how I want to sell to you. When you're talking to us, I think, you know, this particular audience, it's like, all right, what do you need from me to make this ask for this product an easier ask of your leadership team and to be able to go get that budget? Like, You just tell me and I'll, I'll, I'll be your partner.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's part of what I really appreciated with that Eloqua salesperson years ago, who basically— that was probably the— I think you just summarized, like, that's what she did. She helped me build the case. She helped me to build a case that ultimately helped her, right, get her commission or whatever, right?

So yeah, um, I think that's the right way to do it. And I guess that, that sort of dovetails into your second question, which is like, how do you get in the inbox, right?

Well, how do you get your— how do you get our attention in the inbox and not where it's we're just rolling our eyes?

Yeah, yeah, totally. I, um, I have, I have 2 answers. One of them is, uh, catchy subject lines. No, I'm just kidding. Actually, really cheeky subject lines work really well with me. I don't know.

I think, I think they do too. I mean, I think be interesting is at least a part of it.

Yeah, be interesting is a part of it, I think. And then in the, in the copy, like, you know, make it really easy for me to scan. Don't make my brain run on that treadmill anymore. Make it obvious what you're trying to like get me to do and don't drone on for like 4 paragraphs or whatever.

Right. I don't have time for that.

Yeah. And then the second answer for me is actually I just I think there's a shift happening and it's really interesting. I learned about this product and I do not work— I do not work for this company, so I'm literally just going to share it because I think it's really interesting. But have you heard of Gated?

No. Okay.

It's, it's pretty interesting. They're letting you sort of like take control as a, as an end user of your inbox. And that's like a really fluffy way to, to try to describe them, I think. But why, why it's interesting when you're saying like, hey, how do you get my attention? What they're doing is they're saying like, this is a free tool for you as an end user to just use this, plug it into your G Suite account or whatever. And then if anybody wants to actually reach you and they got your email address, you can give them permission to contact you. And one of the ways you can give them permission is like, make a donation to a charity of my choice. And that's how their platform works.

Oh, interesting.

So I'm giving you, Michael, permission to talk to me. As long as you sort of like, in a way, buy my attention by showing you— showing me that I'm worth it to you to go invest in a charity, right? Or something like that.

So that's really interesting. I was going to bring up like one of the things that I get not all the time, but fairly regularly is, you know, I'll buy— I'll give you a gift card for Grubhub, or I'll give you, you know, I'll buy you a steak dinner, whatever, right? And I honestly could not care less about that stuff, right?

Yeah.

Um, and it—

in fact, I think some junior, you know, like maybe Maybe, you know, I'm a single individual and like maybe that's interesting, or like I'm, you know, I got a family I got to feed with young kids and it's always cool to have like an Amazon gift card or whatever.

Or if I could take my girlfriend or wife or boyfriend or whatever, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. But I think it would be interesting to do something like that where instead, right, do a donation to something that I care about. That would be more interesting to me than Totally.

I really appreciate that.

Like, I don't feel like— so first off, it feels a little bit like being bribed, you know? And like, it does, even though it's a small amount and I get it. And then we're— but at the same time, for me, at least, for me at least, and I don't know if this would be one where I would really like to hear feedback from our audience and the folks in the market, like, how do you feel about it when you get those kind of offers? Um, does it make you more likely to take the meeting? Does it turn you off? Like, That would be a really interesting— maybe we need to do a LinkedIn poll, Mike.

Yeah, maybe we do. I saw what's his name from, I think, like Rev Genius or whatever. He was asking questions about this, like, would you get— would you enjoy getting paid to like take a demo or whatever? And I'm sure it has something to do with the business model strategy he's building, right?

Right.

Yeah, that's fine. Yes, I want to be paid for my expertise, but it's not because I want someone to give me a demo. I want someone to literally like ask me questions that are— they're trying to learn from me, right? Like, not trying to earn from me.

So this gets to my difference. This gets to my— I don't know if it's my first or second point. You know, you talked about, you know, have at least have something that's— I'll paraphrase, right? Something interesting in the subject line, you know, and be direct and to the point. But I also— what I've noticed, and I don't know how much of this is based on automation or how much of it is based on just flat-out laziness. But, you know, if you're gonna reach out to me and you haven't actually done a little bit of research to figure out, hey, this guy's been around doing this for a while— like, if I get the generic, oh, I'm really interested in selling you X or talking to you about X problem about what you're doing at Company Y that's on my profile, then— and it Well, what's interesting is in my profile now I have these communities that I'm active in as where I have sort of a more active role. I would get— I was getting people reaching out to me for those as if they were real, like companies where I was a, you know, a paid staff member or something like that. And that is that I was— most of the time I would ignore it. There were times when I would kind of look and say, is this probably somebody who's just trying to make a buck and learning the ropes? And I would actually just send them a feedback. Hey, look, first off, I'm not interested. Second off, let me just give you a little bit of advice, right? Don't take this approach, right?

Yeah.

And do just a little bit of research, right? If you'd done, you know, 5 minutes of research on what, in this case, it was a different community, what was known as Revenue Collective, that you would know that really it's just a community. And that, by the way, there are staff members there, but I am not one of them. And so trying to pitch me about what you might be able to do for me at Revenue Collective didn't make any sense. And you would have probably figured that out.

Yeah.

And so, um, I think that— and I get some of those sometimes, I— for MoPros, right? So it's, it's like, just do a little bit of work and don't be lazy.

Yeah. Yeah, like I don't— I don't— yeah, yeah, don't be lazy. Like take a minute to try to learn a little bit about it, but like it's hard, right? I get it. BDRs, SDRs, AEs, they're all tasked with hitting a number. It's, it is a numbers game. Inevitably, if they're targeting even, you know, remotely the accurate persona or buyer audience, like they're going to get some wins. But, you know, I think one of my favorite things that I hear from, from certain startup founders out there is like, do things that don't scale. And particularly, like, I think that's applicable in kind of any stage of a company. But there are efforts that are worth exercising that don't scale infinitely, like picking up the phone and, and Placing a phone call, I, you know, I don't really want to field your phone call, but like that is something that doesn't scale, right? And sending a letter to someone, like literally a handwritten letter.

Yeah.

Nowadays that gets someone's attention because you're like, that never happens. That doesn't scale. Like if you literally write the letter and you don't do some like printed thing that looks like handwriting.

Well, there are some of those like print-on-demand vendors do actually have people that will literally handwrite. Like, yeah, so I don't know what the pricing is.

So it scales in the sense that they're doing it for you, right? It's still from a, even from like a cost per acquisition kind of perspective, that's, that's more expensive than sending an email.

Absolutely.

So, and it's slower and harder to track, right?

All those things.

Yeah. Take the time, do the research, you know, try to get to know why, like me, or, or just like realize that you shouldn't be reaching out to me. With that kind of message, because like clearly I'm not the right person.

Of course.

It's pretty funny.

Oh, so this has been a really interesting conversation. Any other thoughts? Any other advice? No?

No, I, you know, I think there's a lot of folks out there that are just trying to understand all of this stuff. I, it, it, it happens in, in client success too, right? Where we're just trying to understand, um, how to get in somebody's inbox when you want to cross-sell, upsell, or just even like make sure they're getting the value out of the product. And I think everybody's just trying to figure out how to make sure that you're building a good relationship there. And we are, I'd say like this community of people like marketing operations professionals in general definitely has a unique purview on the buying cycle. And if, I don't know, if I was anyone listening to this as a practitioner in this field, I would love your you know, feedback and then like throw it in Slack, DM me on LinkedIn or whatever. But if I was a salesperson, like, I don't know, maybe next time. That's, that's the, that's the thing. That's our hack, folks. Everyone who's listening to this, if you get an outreach today or in the next like 3 days and you're thinking about it, it's top of mind, just like bookmark this episode and send it to them.

See what—

see if it works. If you, if you agree with this, right? Uh, but if not, tell us why and Let's all keep talking about it.

Yeah, maybe, or maybe we need to ask our audience to start— this might actually be kind of a funny one, but capture the best and worst of those kinds of outreaches or communications, and then we could do dramatic readings of those or something.

Oh, yeah, we could do a whole episode of super dramatized email outreach campaigns. That'd be fun. That would be fun.

Yeah. All right, so For those of you who are selling to marketing ops pros and you're listening to this, hopefully this is going to be helpful for you because we all want this process to be better. For the marketing ops folks, listeners, our main audience, hopefully you're not going to pillory us for this. But again, hopefully this is going to be something that will help all of our experiences as we're going out and assessing vendors and building our tech stack. And whatnot. All right, well, as always, uh, thank you for listening. Remember to subscribe, rate, send us feedback, send us ideas for topics and guests. If you want to be a guest, let me know. Reach out to me, Michael Hartman, either through the Slack community on the MoPros or on LinkedIn. Um, with that, uh, enjoy the rest of your day wherever you are.

Bye, everybody.