Global Sales Mentor - Conversations that Drive Global Sales Growth

Welcome to the Global Sales Mentor Podcast for conversations that drive growth. When you are ready to grow your international sales, join the conversation with your host, Zach Selch. Hi, and welcome back to Conversations That Drive International Sales. I have a guest with me who's an old friend or a friend of mine that I've known for a while, who is a great marketing person that I've worked with for years, or I have worked with for years. We haven't worked together for a while. Jennifer Holden. Jennifer Holden is the Vice President of Marketing for a manufacturing division in about a half-billion-dollar multinational corporation, and she's been doing marketing for a very long time. Didn't come out of school as a marketing person, came from a more clinical background, and she'll talk a little bit about how she got to where she was, But she knows an awful lot about the marketing piece, and I'm always sort of separating the sales part from the marketing part and who does what, etc. And when we worked together, she was responsible for the marketing team and I was responsible for the international sales team, and she did an awful lot to support the international sales curve and our growth. And you really can't get ahead with sales without the right marketing person. So we're going to welcome Jennifer, and we're going to talk about marketing and how that supports sales, or how marketing and sales work together to drive revenue. Jennifer, welcome! Thank you for coming on the podcast.

Thank you, Zach, and thank you, thank you for having me, and thank you for the extraordinary introduction. I will do my best to live up to what you have put forth, for sure. As Zach said, we've worked together in the past and haven't worked together in a, in a few years, but just as he said, sales leans on marketing. Marketing obviously needs and leans on sales as well. So we found a very nice balance over the years between the two disciplines. I hope we can talk about that. Great.

And also, I guess everybody is aware of the idea that there's very often stress between marketing and sales. And I think Jennifer and I were able to work together really, really well and understand each other. And I'm sure she has worked with sales managers that she liked less than me, and I've worked with marketing people that I liked less than her. But I think we've gotten along pretty well, and it really is important. This whole stress between marketing and sales never turns out well for anybody, right? That's, you know, in the, in the end of the day, everybody loses because It's going to impact numbers, right, Jennifer?

No, absolutely. There's, there's a natural tension and a natural cohesion between the 2 groups, right? Sales is always pushing and pulling marketing and product and these things forward, sometimes at a comfortable rate and other times at an uncomfortable rate. And it's very important, and I learned through the years, to get, to get, as the saying goes, comfortable with being uncomfortable. Right, because there is a good stretch, a good push that is healthy for both sides, which yields great results for the company. And then, you know, conversely, I'm pushing and have pushed on sales in the bank to think about not just a product or solution or an offering, features, benefits, and, you know, really refine that message and identify those target customers, right? So Not necessarily, um, try and be everything to everybody because it's a very difficult game to win.

Well, I was going to save this question for later, but you gave me a really good inroad to this. So what would you say the biggest weakness of sales in terms of understanding marketing is? And I'm thinking of an idea myself in my head, but I'm wondering what, what you would say.

I would, I would say the greatest weakness that I've seen in the, in the sales side as it relates to marketing is a lack of understanding. Some would lead with, hey, maybe there's a lack of appreciation or something, but honestly, it's more about having that foundation, a lack of understanding of what marketing and communications can bring to the table to assist in selling and/or developing a market and/or a distributor, right? All of those things.

Right.

are very important. And so long as you do your groundwork and have a champion in sales leadership and champion in the other areas, right, then you can avoid some of that. But it's hard. I mean, you've got to really— if you're in a situation, and I had been in the past many years ago, where you've got to justify marketing as being more than logos and fluff, right, or video, something, then that naturally works itself out because then sales will understand what it can bring to the table and then want to get involved and say, okay, that's a different line of thinking that is complementary to what I'm doing, not against. And then you get that engagement, which I think we had a lot of, Zach. You know, those—

I think so. I'd like to think we did.

Yeah. Yeah.

I was going to say, so I'll tell you what I was sort of thinking based on what you had said last. Was one thing that I find with salespeople and sales managers, not sales leaders, is they're always thinking about what they would need marketing-wise for the last customer, right? And it's always sort of like people will come and they'll say, well, you have to do this. And you're like, well, why? That's my feeling, right? So they're like, well, why do we have to do that? Like, well, the last customer I had, and you're like, okay, yes, but we're not thinking about the last, we closed that, we got the purchase order, we moved on. Like we should be thinking strategically about what do we need for the long-term. Right.

And I would add to that, it's either from a, from a, from a salesperson's point of view, right? Like you said, not a manager, is either the very last deal or the very next deal, the thing that they're working on at that moment. Right. And it's, and so sometimes it can be hard to do greenfield conversations when that point of view starts with such an immediate perspective, one back or one forward. So once you break through that, And, and try and find patterns and, and things along those lines. And then you can get some really great collaboration between the two.

Right.

And I think managers, right, they've got that vision.

Exactly. And I think not to get away from the marketing side, but when you're thinking about who on your team has the potential for leadership, it comes down to that. That's one of the big things that differentiates between a salesperson who can grow into leadership And one who can't. And it comes— a lot of that comes to the interaction with other departments, especially marketing, right? You know, because if you can't deal well with marketing, you're not going to sell, you're not going to lead sales, right? You can close a deal, right? But you need somebody to interact with marketing, right?

Well, and I would agree. I mean, as a sales manager, right, you've covered a lot of topics. So your podcasts and your posts and all of the program in the last year plus that you've been working through it and getting the word out. And it's as much about developing a channel. It's as much as about developing the internal relationships and, you know, collaborations with leadership, right? Because it does take several disciplines to grow at larger numbers than, let's say, you know, a couple of percentage points a year.

Right, right.

You just want to move along, it's one thing.

Yeah, and I'll tell you what, so think about things like sales enablement tools, and let— you know what, let's even focus in on the deck, right? Who should make the deck?

You know, lots of lively conversations around that. Right, right.

Yeah, yes. And I'll tell you what, I come down— I've come down in different points of my life at different points on this story. And I think we're probably going to collab— we probably lean towards the same direction now maybe than we would have 10 years ago. But because I used to think, you know, I used to think that made a lot of sense for salespeople to own their own decks. And I've gotten away from that. I do think there should be flexibility, but—

Yeah.

From a corporate perspective, it makes a lot of sense for you to own the deck, right? As a head of marketing. Yeah. And so you, you talk, I'm talking too much.

So— No, no, that's all right. The, um, it's completely true, right? And, and I don't think it depends on what you're selling. I think the story is true no matter what you're selling, but you know, you've got the expertise to say otherwise. A lot of initial, you know, back in the day, you said a long time ago, a lot of times in my profiles, It made me feel very old. But a long time ago, there was the belief that sales, hey, you're out there. You're the ones talking to the customers day in and day out. You're the ones who are getting the stories, right, that resonate with the customers and then speak them back. Therefore, it makes a lot of sense for sales to own the message, right? Just tell me what the thing does and I'll take it from there.

Right.

And truth be told, a lot of success can be brought with that approach. But the things that you lose, I think, is what you're really alluding to, right?

Right.

What you lose then at that point, particularly if you're building a brand, building a culture, building a vision around it, you will have offline, you know, brand standards thrown out the window. You will have a less professional, a less succinct deck than maybe it could be. You will be saying as a salesperson, not you as a sales manager, you as a salesperson, could be saying things differently than your colleague, right?

Right.

And that can be a bit of a problem because if one is positioning the product this way and another one another way, and those 2 happen to conflict and suddenly affect the dollar that you can drive, the value dollar on that sale, now you're getting some real impact.

I'll tell you, I'll take that even one step farther, right? What year was your company founded in?

Early 1900s.

Right. Now, I remember if you had asked 5 salespeople what year it was founded in, they would all give you a different year, right?

Mm-hmm.

And now that seems like a small thing, seems like a very small thing, but I can tell you that if you were a customer and 5 different salespeople talked to you from the same company over a year period, and each presentation had a different year that the company was founded in, That looks a little strange, right? It's not a big thing.

Yeah, it chips away at the credibility. Right.

Sorry?

It does. It chips away at the credibility, right? It's not a big thing, but it hits the credibility, right?

And that's something that I've always thought about. It's like, how many people are in the company? What year was it founded? Those little stories, if you hear 2 different ones, it chips away at the credibility. And it isn't important. But then when somebody comes and says, and by the way, we're, you know, we have the most reliable product, we do this, we do this, the important stuff, there is the chance that that credibility has already been cracked. And that's my opinion, right? I like the idea of message discipline with that. And then, you know—

Yeah.

No, it could be, and it goes from the small things to the big things. So, you know, you come and, Sure, one regional manager can come and say, well, this is the benefit people like most. And then different regional managers say, well, this is a benefit people like most. So you can balance those messages. But how you talk about those benefits, how you talk about this, anything related to a number or a fact of a product—

Mm-hmm.

And, and I'm talking from a pure sales guy perspective. I don't think it should be owned by the salespeople. I think it should be owned by somebody in marketing And the, the other part of this— I'm talking way too much now— the other part of this is the institution, the company owns that. So if I, as a regional sales manager, say, well, this is a great message, that has to work up the chain so that somebody else can use it, right?

Exactly.

I'm not, you know, and there is this tendency of salespeople to compete with each other. So somebody might say, I have a great message. I don't want the other RMs to have that message, right? But that isn't good.

Yeah, no, it's not at all, right? There's several elements to a deck, right? That if you— if we broke it down into— and you started to cover this, right? You've got the company brand, the company image, the company message. Then you've got the portfolio message, and then you've got the product feature functions, but really value, right? We're going to get into a value And then you want to talk about the call to action, the next steps, and have the right supplemental information that, that really support what that person is saying. There's got to be a cohesion between the 2 or 3. And if you have a sales force out there— and think about it for just a minute, because really we focus on sales, sales to distributors, and then distributors to customers. If you have a lack of discipline within the company's sales team or cohesion— Right.

And then you're gonna have a bigger lag with distributors. Yeah.

Right. Imagine the amount of creative license it will take with several distributors, hundreds of distributors, and then to those end customers, right? So it's extraordinarily important. Now, there's a difference, right, between ownership, accountability, and collaboration and consultation. And, and that's what— that's a really important distinction because You need to have, and I happen to believe on the marketing side, right, that person own the deck because they're the ones setting the 3, 5-year vision alongside, you know, executive leadership in that. But then you bring sales and others in, in an editorial fashion.

Right.

All right. I have found it, and you can disagree or not, that it's easier for someone to edit, particularly as you're putting something together that's, you know, so subjective. To edit something than create from scratch.

Oh yeah, I agree. And, and here's the thing, the, the collaboration. I mean, remember we, we had a workshop once— workshop's even the wrong— I mean, we worked months, a couple of times a month to work on building a deck, and it was a collaboration. And, and here's the thing, like, so, so I, I could tell you, for instance, in a different company, Somebody came up with a benefit from marketing who wasn't a salesperson, and that wasn't a good benefit, right? It just— no, the customers didn't care about it. And he didn't get that because he hadn't been out to a customer, right? So we talked about it. I said, okay, this is just not the right benefit. It's a benefit. Nobody values it the way you think they do, right?

Yeah.

So we had to shift it around. So that kind of conversation takes place, and at the end of the day, you settle in on something, and it has to be a collaboration, and it has to be an agreement. It's not like the marketing is deciding or the sales are deciding. You're working together. But I, I still feel very comfortable with marketing owning the deck in the end of the day.

Yeah, and there's 2 things I want to add to that, right? One, the reason, you know, when, when Zach is talking about this story that took us months to do the deck, It's because we were reworking, going from a feature function kind of presentation to a completely different style, a solution-based and a value-based. And plus you've got travel schedules and things like that that make it complicated. But so that's, that's the reason why I don't want that to be off-putting. But I think the second piece that we didn't cover yet is who the heck says that marketing knows best and what the customer wants?

Right.

Well, you know what, marketing, you better be getting out there with salespeople. You better be getting out there and talking to those customers. If you think you're going to develop that message via a distance, then you're already starting back on your heels. And that's, that's going to make it very difficult for you to have any credibility. I think that—

How many— sorry, how much were you in the field when we worked together? I mean, you were, I'd say, 30 days a year, at least in international markets, thinking about it, because you were at 2 trade shows and a couple of other shows.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I spent a lot of time digging international market. Those are long trips, right? Zach was extraordinarily efficient with our travel that once he got— I mean, they were— once they got me out of the office, at that point it was, it was an around-the-world trip with, I don't know, no less than 8 countries at a time.

Yeah.

And talking to customers, talking to distributors, and yeah, throwing in a trade show then. But I found honestly trade shows to be not as worthwhile or fruitful than I did actually going to the end customer and see what was going on. So I think that's a key point to any successful marketeer who thinks that they're going to take on doing this is you darn well better be out there talking to the customers alongside.

Right. We got you in over, over a period of years, we got you in dozens of hospitals, I think, right? All over.

Yeah. No, no, no. Yeah. I've been to outside of North America, well north of 100 hospitals, right, and 30— over 30 countries, right? So it's important, and you don't just get to go once and get in and out, right? That you've got to establish before.

And, and, and we know somebody once who, who did like 2, you know, tried to, to design a product around 2 hospitals in 2 countries, right? And that was, that was a mistake. I think you gotta You know, you, you, if you're designing something for international markets and you want even, you know, even, even marketing materials, if you want to understand international markets, 2 countries doesn't make it international. You got to get to a bunch of places, right?

Oh, you're an exporter at that point to 2 countries. I mean, you're not an international sale.

Right, right, right. Yeah, exactly. So we talked a little bit about the deck. Talk about some of the other cool stuff. I liked— we worked together a little bit on that iPad playbook, right?

We did. So sales enablement tools is extremely important, right? And it dovetails off of some items that we have already talked about, which is alignment, right? You know, consolidation around a message. But then it's also saying, this is how you do it, right? This is the best practice and how to make that happen. And getting those rules of engagement and steps and training and those things are super important when you're working with a sales manager As they're growing the international market, as they're choosing new distributors, you want that onboarding piece to be as straightforward as possible, easy to understand.

Reproducible, right? Yep.

Reproducible. Absolutely. So, um, I've— and that was really your baby, candidly, and I thought you did an extraordinary job on that. We just helped give you the, the platform to do it. But it was really about just consolidating all the different things that Zach knows and building up an international distribution channel. And, you know, putting it into topics and steps so that it's consumable by a new distributor, and you don't scare the heck out of them. Right.

And that they have what they need to go out and talk to a customer, right? They have those tools, because if they don't have the tools, they're going to try and make them themselves. And they're You are going to do it better than any distributor salesperson or even distributor marketing person. Even the distributors that have marketing teams, you're gonna do it better than they are.

And— No, and that's the point, Zach. If there's a void, right? If there's not something there that they need, they're gonna do it themselves. They're gonna distribute it. And then at that point you have no visibility.

Exactly. Right, exactly. And even the, you know, we used to have approved pieces for them to use. Like if they wanted to use our logo, Or stuff like that.

And I—

and we, we used to police that pretty well because that can become very important.

It's extremely important, right, to have a brand standard, have a brand standard guide document, whatever it is, and have rules of engagement, right? You want to protect as a marketing person your collateral, things that have your name, your brand, your information on it, as closely as possible. So what we implemented was a big change as opposed to giving over documents and in editable form and letting distributors customize it for their market, you know, I shut that down. Absolutely not. And in return, what we'll do for you is provide a service where we will co-brand that with you as a distributor, right? So there's a value. It's not just a penalty to say you can't do that. It's like, no, no, no, we'll co-brand this for you. So it, it forced a conversation between marketing, sales, and the, and the, and that market, that channel partner, and said, what are you looking to do? And I think the salesperson kind of sussed out some, some opportunities for education to the distributor. It brought forward maybe some items, points, value statements, whatever it may be that hadn't thought about that, but really kept everything in sync with the overall portfolio. Right.

And I like what you said at the beginning of this, of that bit about the void, right?

Yeah.

If there's a void, right, the distributors are going to try and fill it and you want to avoid that, right?

So we've seen it with distributors and you've seen it with sales team members as well, right? Because you'll get a strong Type A successful sales manager and, you know, they know best. And it is, you know, it's hard to keep that in line, um, to not let that creative license for the void go too terribly far. Right.

Because if they don't have it, that void represents money for them. If they're saying, I'm gonna lose a deal because I don't have this piece of collateral, they'll make the collateral, right? They'll find— so they'll go to Fiverr, they'll find somebody to make that collateral for them. And, you know, 2 years later, you'll see something with your picture on it. You're like, what is that? I didn't make that.

Well, and it's true. I've seen it, and I've seen paint. I mean, literally the program Paint. I mean, it's awful, but Bringing it back to something even more challenging, or something to consider, is you now have risk, right? When you have claims—

Yep.

Being paid on a document or whatever it is that has your company logo and/or brand, right? You now, particularly in medical device or healthcare or regulatory or governmental work, You have to be— you're accountable to that. You've made a claim. You put it in writing.

Right.

And, you know, they don't know that somebody else, a distributor, created that. It looks and smells like yours.

Oh yeah. And that does put you at risk, even just to the simple thing of getting paid. You know, they could say, well, I expected this was going to do 5 of these and there are only 3 of them. And you're like, well, yeah, but we never said 5. They're like, yeah, look right here.

You know?

And these things happen.

There's enough of those problems with just interpretation of what something means on a page without having, you know, more people creating unique and tailored messaging.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Now you have possibly the best solution center I've ever seen for a company your size. You know, I've been to like Siemens solution center and I've been to a couple of other really You know, the multinational, the giant companies, right? Okay. But for a half-billion-dollar company, you have a great solution center. Can you talk a little bit about that, about what you use that for?

We're really fortunate, right? So, you know, US-based company to have a solution center, customer experience center, whatever you want to call it, someplace that is, I would dare say, the most valuable sales tool that we've got, which is getting a customer into this space that feels welcoming, familiar, right, approachable, educational, professional, is, is a very big deal. And we were extremely lucky with our management that they understood the vision, they funded that vision, and it's no small task. I mean, back, back in the day, things— people used to just have Demo rooms, right? Right. And you would have equipment.

And arguing that ROI in the beginning, I remember that was not easy.

It's hard because when it particularly— forgive me, Zach— when you have sales talking to finance and they say, I will, I will close, you know, 20% more deals or $10, $20 million worth more business for this, that's— your CFO starts to hear ROI and there's been so many ROIs out there that they don't believe ROI anymore, right? So it's It was a labor of love. And it was all the managers of sales and marketing that were pressing forward with the message, right? It was very important. And it went all the way up to the president who then, who, as I said, was— did understand the vision, did understand the value, and invested in it. So it's got product, right? You have a solution center that has product placement. It's in situ. You know, you've got a feel that's comfortable for the For your customer. It really—

so, so this is— we're talking about medical devices here, but it could be any type of products. But it looks like a hospital, right? It looks like a couple of different sections of the hospital. So you are seeing product in situ, you're seeing how it looks like it gets used, and then it also has, I could say, an auditorium, right? Like a little area to present, which really is like an auditorium. Sorry?

Yeah, you, you need a stage for the salespeople. And it's not a negative thing that I'm saying. They need a place where they can be in charge, be large, have the attendees facing them appropriately. The sound is correct, right? Everybody can see and hear and be engaged, but not too far away, right? You don't want a true auditorium that's 15 or, you know, 50 rows deep. And so that was a separate space carved out within this space.

Right.

We happen to have a very large one, but you don't have to have, you know—

It doesn't have to be large, but it's a great concept. It's basically the way it was, was an area to present where people could sit. Actually, you could say a coffee area, an area where people could sit, and then the products in what looked like the situation they would be used in. Those 3 components Really brought things together. And I'd, I'd say we had a kill ratio of above 80 to 90%. If somebody made it to the Solution Center—

There's no about. We track it. It's, it's just over 92% close rate every time that we brought a customer in. But you got to think about it, right? Uh, particularly with international customers, as you're asking them to make a very big investment Right. And I'd like you to talk about this in just a second, but, you know, they're making a very big investment of time, come over, make a very long journey. Dollars are not cheap, right? Many times. So this has gotta be something— this is the key— something that they cannot get at a local distributor office. They cannot get, you know, anywhere else but at corporate or at this space. Right. And And I was going to say the people that you can bring in, right? I think maybe we're on the same page.

Yeah.

So you have the stage, you have this environment, but you also have the added benefit of the sales manager or the lead to bring in a whole bunch of other experts, a whole bunch of other bodies, a whole bunch of other, you know, skill set that, hey, I've got somebody who's You know, in our case, either a clinician or an engineer or an IT professional or CFO or COO, whatever it may be. And Zach had at his fingertips the business.

Right. And we used to do this. We had this, we, you know, we did this really well together. So we would basically, I had this whole thing where we would do a fact, we would come in, we'd bring people into a factory tour. And very often I would get— well, I would typically get a senior manager from manufacturing to do the tour, and then I would try and run into the CEO during the tour, right? And we would be able to say hello and, and do that kind of thing. And then we'd sit down and we'd bring in a product manager, and then we'd bring in somebody who could talk about service, and we'd bring in somebody who could talk about software. And it would be, again, so what would typically happen would be the customer would know, sometimes they would know me, sometimes they wouldn't even know me. They'd know the regional sales manager really well. They'd know the distributor. They might've seen me once or twice. And then suddenly, boom, they're seeing 8 or 10 people who aren't salespeople. And we had, you know, we were, again, depending on what you're selling, We had ex-clinicians presenting, so they would— people would come in and they were obviously genuine. A couple of them were customers, right? So, you know, had been customers before. So they're talking, and this is a really, really nice way to, you know, it's not a sale. It's, it becomes less sell-y. It's less salesy, right?

You're answering questions. Every time I saw this happen, right, it was a conversation. And who was doing most of the talking after the icebreaking and the beginning, it was the customer, right? Tell me about this. Let me hear about that. I would also say what it allowed us to do as a company is reflect our culture in practice to the customer, right? Going back to our first point of conversation, right, in the sales deck and all of these things, you're trying to put forth an image, a brand, and that is a value statement as well about the company.

Right.

And they get to see that firsthand. They come in and they're like, wow, What, what that salesperson was putting forth out in Country A is actually the same as what these guys are putting forth.

Right. And again, you know, I like— I want to talk about things that everybody can do. And, and sometimes, you, you know, we worked for a company where the culture was very supportive of customers. It had been around for a long time. It had a very reliable product. And people really, really cared about the customer getting a good product, right? And they can— And I can't, you know, from a sales perspective, I can't say, okay, just build a culture like that, right? Not everybody can. That was our tool and that was our brand and it was really nice, but you can take the brand you have and tweak out of it the benefits and present that To your customer, because if you don't have anything good about your brand, I can't help you. Right? But you know, so that's what you're trying to do. Right? Yeah. You have bigger problems than sales. You know, work on your culture if you can't come up with anything. You know, but that's what we did. And really, when you know, when you say to people one of our benefits, you know that we again every product has weaknesses. So we weren't a cheap product. Right? But it was a very high quality product. Right? It lasted forever. It was a tank. And it was feature-rich, right? So if you say from the 3 things, it was feature-rich, it was reliable, it wasn't cheap, right? But when you come in and you see, well, what can I do with those features? What problems can I solve? You know, that was great. And then when you could see—

sorry? It allows it to be interactive too. Another big strength is, you know, salespersons hindered by slideware or virtual demos or a case that they're bringing out and doing things. There's only so much you can do with that, right? You've got to have that environment in tip-top shape, and you've got to have it with all the different bells and whistles and options. And so you are ready for when that conversation goes to that topic. It's there, it's ready, you know, and you can show it. You're not just talking it, right? So a great tool for sure.

Yep.

But I mean, let's talk about— I mean, I wouldn't mind pivoting to something that I know is changing as we're speaking, which is this idea of trade shows.

I'm sorry?

Trade shows, this idea.

Oh yeah, and I, I do also want to touch on social media before we go because you've done some cool stuff with social media in the past couple of years that we weren't doing at all before. What, what are your thoughts on trade shows?

It's a— it's so— it's 2020 when we're talking, the end of 2020, and it's just going to go down in the books as a year that is, you know, to put it mildly, difficult, strained, but changing rapidly. So if we were to have this conversation a year ago and we were talking about trade shows, we'd be talking about it's an excellent tool for, you know, exposure and to customers and distributor gathering and, you know, information on what customers are hearing at these trade shows, particularly if they're, you know, through a a non-for-profit or an organization that represents their needs, right? Because there's usually education tracks and continuing education, those sorts of things, right? We'll be talking about all the grand benefits and how much you want to tack and push into that trade show so you get the most out of it, because they're not an inexpensive item to do. Here we are again, end of 2020, and, you know, things have flipped. And I don't think it's a temporary flip, right?

Right.

And now we're talking, you know, a bit of reading into the tea leaves into the future, but you know, it's not going to come back the way it did.

No, no.

Shows have out of necessity tried to go virtual, and there's a lot of challenges with that, right? And particularly as a vendor, you know, I've got to speak to it with you as a vendor who— you're, you're a side gig anyway to these trade shows, to these events. Those customers—

Didn't come out of school as a marketing person, came from a more clinical background. And she'll talk a little bit about how she got to where she was, but she knows an awful lot about the marketing piece. And I'm always sort of separating— didn't come out of school as a marketing person, came from a more clinical background, and she'll talk a little bit about how she got to where she was, but she knows an awful lot about the marketing piece. And I'm always sort of separating. So have you done a virtual trade show yet as a vendor?

No, but we're about to. Right. And I'm going to be very interested in those results because the trade show that we're doing is, is really company-based. It's not tied to an organization that's drawing in customers. I've attended quite a few and it's difficult.

Yeah.

It's difficult to find, to find what you want. But on the great part of it is you can see the content that you want. and you're out of the content you don't want to see. Right. So that puts a lot of pressure on marketing. Right. And the whole organization is saying, yeah, you better have something to say. Otherwise, people aren't just going to be tripping across your, quote, booth at all. Right?

Yeah. Yeah.

So I'll just add something onto that, if you don't mind.

Please.

One thing that's— yeah, one thing that's up and coming is really this whole digital This whole digital experience for customers, right? And a digital experience is what it's called. And it's, it's around building not a trade show necessarily, but an environment. Think the gaming industry, right?

Yeah, yeah.

You're submerged into this virtual reality of a game and you're moving around a space and you— it feels like you're there, right? Welcome to digital technology 2021, right? This is what's going to go down is people, you are going to be getting, investing in platforms, platforms, products, software, technology, where you have this virtual, you know, we were just talking about the solution center or experience center. Now we're building a virtual house, right?

Right.

Now this technology is building it. So I'm walking in, think Google Maps meets gaming. Right. I'm walking in, I'm touching the screen, I'm moving through, I turn left, I turn right. Suddenly you're, you're engaged. You're like, oh wow, this is interesting. And then your, your product information, you know, you've got videos that are being played, you know, all of these different things. And you know, that, that's going to be— that is an extraordinarily powerful tool, self-guided as well as managed and owned by the salesperson.

Right. Now the question is, can that I mean, does that have to be tied up to a time? Because we're talking about trade shows.

No, absolutely not.

You could send somebody an invite and say, please come to my virtual tour and set it up, right? Whatever you want.

And it's super, super flexible that way. And that's really what this is about, right? Yeah. This, from, you know, a set time and date and when it's convenient for the vendors, when it's convenient for the speakers, you know, that's getting blown out of the water.

Right.

And you've hit it on the head. So that's why you want to have this. And it's a multi-tiered interaction, right?

Yeah.

You can have, hey, self-guided tours. You as a salesperson send them a link. They can see so much, just enough to get interested, enough to whet the appetite. The rest is behind, you know, a wall, so to speak. And the salesperson then can say, oh, you want to learn more? Now let me schedule some time where I can walk you through this. Right, right, right.

And I'm doing, you know, it's sort of ironic. For 30 years I said, well, this has to be done face-to-face, and now I can't. So I'm doing a lot more remotely this year than I've ever done before. And like you said, I'm never going back. I will go back with 70% of it, 80% of it, maybe 60% of it. I don't know. But there are some things that aren't. And now some of it, some of it's related to this type of thing is you can demo so much remotely. If, you know, if you get agreement, if everybody agrees to sit down and watch a screen, which everybody's learned to do this year, you can do a lot of stuff remotely.

Well, and, and I'll, and I'll dovetail on that to say it's, it's a, it's one part Of the people, right? It's a tool. What it also is allowing is customers now are suddenly much more comfortable with this. Yeah, the conversation, right? Cameras are so important, right? I just got to get on a soapbox for a minute, right? Gotta get your camera on. None of this nonsense of having a computer-based audio call where they can't see you, right? You're missing the boat. But it allows you this, this digital experience to still bring in a bunch of people from corporate and have that interaction and have those spaces and, and make those virtual relationships, right? I mean, we're still there. Now you have scale. That's the one thing you don't have when you're forced to do in-person meetings and in-person— fly to the office and see my solution center. You can scale, you can hit more, you're not running into budget constraints, right? You're just looking for an appointment in time.

I— exactly. I think the scalability of this is fantastic. And I'll sort of touch on this, which isn't necessarily marketing, but one thing that I've found is you can get somebody— like, what I've been doing this year is essentially finding people on the ground who can get the customer in front of a camera, right?

Mm-hmm.

So instead of saying, I need a regional manager with 20 years sales experience who blah blah blah, I can say, look, I need 20 people in that, in each particular town who are good enough to get in front of the customer and say, hey, do you mind, you know, turning on your TV and talking to my boss? Right? Which is sort of amazing. I, I never would have thought this is a thing. And, and that's sort of where we're going.

Very interesting. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And we live in interesting times right now, right? So, you know, it's, it's interesting. And I want to touch on what you've been doing with social media, because again, we didn't do this, right? I mean, you know, we, we didn't do this.

Sorry, it wasn't around.

It wasn't a thing. And you'd say like, okay, you'd say, great, if you are buying a pair of shoes, cool, you might want to look, you know, you'll, you'll follow an ad you see on Facebook or something. But you're buying a half-million-dollar system for your hospital, you don't— you're not looking at social media. But that's not true anymore, right?

It's not. It's interesting. So, but I'll have a caveat on it is you need everybody on board in your company, right?

Right.

So this isn't just a marketing-driven thing where you're throwing out tweets or posts or likes or things like that with the hope that if a customer is online shopping, that they'll see something that interests Right. So it's really important that you've got, you know, a social strategy that really permeates all those things we talked about in the sales deck, right? And everything else, right?

Right.

You have to have relevance. You have to, and it's not just about pushing your product. You want to come across as the, as knowledgeable, an industry expert or contributor that you're paying attention.

You want to pass over your culture, right? And your culture is about caring, reliability, Feature-rich, all those things.

And you have to, right? It's a big campaign. It's a big deal. And you have to align to figure out what, what social platforms are your customers possibly looking at. You rank them in order, right? Are they big? Are they going to follow your business on Facebook?

So I'm sorry, I gotta ask, did you, did you do some quantitative study on studies on this? Or are you sort of trying to figure it out as you go along?

You can do both. Right? We've done both. You can do both because it really depends on your company. Because the nice thing, and you know about social, is you get immediate feedback, right? It's data. It's information that you can track, trend, and know.

It can give you an ulcer, that immediate feedback. Yeah.

Don't watch it every single day. You'll go crazy. But you know, it's really important. So you got to know what are your options for social. You know, maybe you're a different type of business and Instagram's important to you, right? Or these other things. It really depends on the business, candidly. And then you rank them in importance, and then you have to have a strategy strung together between them, right? Your website, you need to have that in good working order, and search engine optimization and keyword finding and articles and blogs. That then connects to your Facebook and/or your LinkedIn and/or your Twitter account or whatever it might be. And then you have to have the messages that are going out aligned with, back to square one, your overall marketing message, right? And then your product roadmap and where are we going so that there's a theme, there's a string, and there's a continuity between those things. And continuity—

I think continuity is the best word there for social media, in my opinion, right? Yeah, people overlook the value of continuity in social media.

I think in terms of selling.

Yeah.

No, it's terribly important. And very much like what you've put together as well, you need to have story, but you're giving very small pieces of the story because people don't have time.

People don't have attention. People don't have attention span. Yeah.

No, we, we have all been conditioned to read headlines and move on. Right, right, right. Read a small blip and then, hey, maybe I'm interested and there's an interesting article I'm going to link to. Then that's step 2, right? But it's not front and center. So, and you have to be constant or regular in that posting. If you come and go, yeah, it's much less effective. Meaning that if you're not posting on a regular basis, and you don't need to post every day. I mean, I've had people talk to me and say, wow, this is a lot. It's a lot of undertaking. It's a lot to do. Good Lord, you don't have to post every day.

Right. You just have to be consistent. Yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, and the one thing I would say that I've, I've seen is particularly in international, you got to be sensitive to the holidays, right? To the events, to the current things. I have seen people— companies, not people, excuse me— be very, you know, let's say US-centric and hosting US holidays and/or things, and particularly those that have a religious basis, you need to be— just get that stuff off unless you know that is what you're trying to build. And then, and that's part of your brand, right? You have to be extremely culturally sensitive and either put everything on there or put nothing on there.

And I'm more maximalist with this. I like to put everything on there. I like people to look and see that I'm wishing them, you know, their Muslim holiday, their Hindu holiday, You know, all the different holidays, I'd like to pull them in and talk about them. But I, I can understand taking them all off too. But you got to go one way or another. You can't wish people a Merry Christmas and then forget about the Muslim holidays because they will remember that, right?

Exactly. And that's a company decision, right? If it's very important for your company to recognize certain key things because that's a core value, then you do that.

Right.

But it's certainly not made in a marketing bubble decision. But it's— you got to have some sensitivity to it. And if it's absolutely core to your company, do it. If it's not, err on the side and don't do it and talk about problems, products, solutions, you know, top-of-mind content that is going to— you're trying to bring customers in, you're trying to bring new people into the fold, and you don't want anything that could be Oh, off-putting or not relevant to their market.

That's really, really smart. Yep, that's great.

Great.

So this has been really, really interesting. We've had a lot of fun, fun times together traveling around and talking to customers and stuff like that. We work really well together. And I appreciate your giving me a little bit of time now. Any other funny, funny marketing stories that, that you've come up with that you'd like to share with The world?

Funny, no, certainly not that I need to be memorialized on this bad boy, but relevant perhaps. You know, you just take your, take your time and building that trust. It's really foundational between sales and marketing. I think that's the key to the success. It's not one versus the other or one and/or the other. You gotta have them both because you'll both be better together.

Right.

And building that relationship is important, right, between the managers of the different— the two different disciplines. And being sure that you're balanced, particularly if you have different markets that you're serving, you need to balance your attention and your time and your output to those— all of those different markets. You can't go in and message and discuss with the market and then ignore for a lot of time, whether it's a year or months or whatever it might be.

Right.

It goes back to a theme that we've said more than once, consistency, right? You need that continuity between it and enjoy it and learn and, you know, evolve because you'll be surprised what you can reuse and bring forward into different markets and/or into different segments and customer segments as you're working through that, that It's not all net new stuff.

No. And, and there's a lot of room to recycle stuff. Yeah, absolutely.

And it takes a lot more than, you know, a vice president of sales and a vice president of marketing to do this, right? It takes a group of people to, to make the engine go.

And, and you had some really, really good people on your team. And they were— it's sort of funny, because like on a sales team, you want everybody to do pretty much the same thing just in a different territory. But in marketing, everybody's doing something totally different, and you got to keep track of what they're doing and fit them together, which is an interesting leadership challenge.

Yeah, it's very true. Um, I, you know, we had a multidiscipline team, uh, with not just marketing communications but other things, and you can get that synergy working, it's a joy. And oh, I, I've been just so lucky to have the best teams I've ever worked with over the years. So it makes it a joy. Yeah, great. So, but thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Well, thank you very much for giving me some time, Jennifer. And this is great. And I, uh, I'll, um, be putting this up so people will be able to hear this. And I, I'm going to say very often I finish up now and I say, and if you need something from Jennifer, reach out. But, you know, unless you're a hospital and you want to buy a half-million-dollar system, probably you don't need anything from Jennifer. But Thank you very much for being on board, Jennifer. Thanks, thanks a lot for this.

Absolutely. Thanks, Zach. Take care.

All right. So that was it. And thank you very much.

That was a lot of fun.