Welcome back everybody to our latest episode of Stacking Growth. It's Cassie here at Carl, looking dapper, how you doing? I'm doing good, Cassie, better than usual when you drag me on these podcasts like 8 a.m. Pacific Time.
So I'm super pumped about our guest today, obviously the legend, Jan Allen, newt, canoof. It's like, you went from the easiest last name ever, Jen to now it's a little bit more complicated. Jen, how are you? I'm loving it.
I'm loving the panic. I see in people's eyes when they're like, Jan Allen and then they see I've hyphened it and they're like, what is that word? So you were right the second time it's canoe. The K is not silence.
Well done, Carl. Yeah, you see I got it the second time. I'm pretty good with guessing names. But anyways, I guess it's probably because I'm people butchering my second, my last name constantly.
So I'm a little bit more conscious about it to try to nail it the first time. But anyways, Jen, it's great to have you. I can't believe we've waited this long to have you on the podcast. So thanks for showing up.
I mean, you sent me a text and said, do you want to come on? I said yes, or are we ever talking about a topic? I was just like, yes, I'm here. I'm there.
Let's do it. Of course. Love it. Well, thanks for coming.
Jen needs to know the truth. Okay. And that is your name has sat on a spreadsheet for three months. And every time we get together to talk about who we're going to bring on the show, I'm like, Carl, when are you going to?
Effing right, Jen and say, Hey, come on the show. I finally got off his ass and he did something. That's why it's not like for you. It was like, you know, instantaneous, but it's a three month conversation.
It's like that, Carl. I see you. I see you. He just left.
He just bolted. Like camera switched. It felt uncomfortable. Like my body temperature was raising and my camera was like, no, I'm out.
So obviously now it switched to my MacBook camera for some reason. I don't know what's red cheek has to be talking about. I wasn't there. So don't listen to him again.
But anyway, we're glad to have you. Look, let's kick off your role as shifted quite a bit. I mean, you've done a few things in the last couple of years. So even a challenger, you were closing and then you switched to kind of their chief evangelist.
And now at Lavender, you've got a hybrid role. I guess talk to us a little bit about that and how that transition has been. How are you thinking about sales and marketing together lately? How is your new role was shifted?
How you think about going to market in general, like talk to us, catch us up. Yeah. So 2021, my last year is just a full time quote, a carrying seller. Right.
2021. Yeah. And it was that year that I realized the power of being present where our customers were learning or our prospects were learning. And so that was what prompted me to create the chief evangelist role at Challenger because I realized we were just spewing.
Here's what Challenger is. Here's why Challenger was the best, but we weren't actually helping executives land on training at all as the category to send on. And so that was a year of learning where I was doing a lot of opening conversations because we did not have a huge flow of inbound leads, right? So it was a really big demand creation motion.
And so when I left Challenger, I was kind of just planning to go off of my own and do my own thing. And then we'll all write at Lavender said, Hey, we've got this idea of our community growth role. And I was like, I don't know why you're even mentioning it. So we have never done that job.
I can give you five names of people that I think would kill it. And he was like, I think you're probably making some assumptions around how we're thinking about the way we think about community at Lavender is there is a community that just exists out there on LinkedIn on TikTok and all these different places. And they're having conversations and what we're looking for is someone who has a reputable voice and aligns with our way of viewing sales. And we think you have that and we'd like you to come over and do that job.
So one way of saying, I think the biggest thing that I've learned in these last three years, these last three very different roles is that sales and marketing should feel so similar. And I think in each of these instances, I've seen how when we make it, this is your job and this is your job, it's actually counterproductive to what we want, which is people wanting to have conversations with us. So that's been my big lesson of it. So like, give me some more specifics around your role then.
Like, do you, are you just like kind of like present and like social, you know, and just post and slack people and you're in communities and you're doing events, obviously, like I saw your keynote at a sales assembly remix. Is that like what you do? Or you do close deals, do you like run any sales like that, come your way? Like, what's the kind of the spectrum of your day to day?
Yeah, somewhere our VC partners are like, what are we paying for? But Connor, what my question sounded like, oh, cool. What do you do? That's probably the question I have for most people with community in their title is like, so what do you do?
Exactly. So it's a fair question and it was one of my hesitants season taking the job because when I joined Lavender in January of the year, 2023, I had just seen all these people get laid off from community roles. So I was like, am I just walking into a landmine? So my job, I mean, I do sales, I do marketing.
I kind of just view my job as helping people learn about problems that would encourage them to consider Lavender as a solution, right? So the event that I spoke out that you saw was an event for CROs and sales and new leaders where they were saying, you know, we want to give people a look ahead into 2023 and how to think about how to shift their sales and marketing strategies. So for me to do an event like that, it's far less about me speaking and it's far more about putting our point of view as a business up on a platform. And what that enabled us to do is to have a bunch of people come back, senior people, and say, hey, you know, the problem that you talked about was exactly what we just talked about in our meeting last week.
Can you come in and talk to our team about this? What can you do in the way of helping our folks write, you know, better outreach that's representative of what we want our prospects to think about us? And so the way I look at it is I'm a door opener. Sometimes I walk halfway through the door.
Sometimes I walk all the way through the door, but it's a really clean handoff with our sales AE here because I trust him implicitly to pick up the ball and run with it in the same way I would. So it's nice in the sense that we are still really small. We only have one AE. It's not this big like sales and marketing integration problem that many have.
I know Mike, I competed against him in like y'all's cold email like, yes, I got the closest to beating him and I still lost. So I guess I'm proud of that. What do you think I can't do stuff? But I was like, I could get a 90 on a cold email in Lavender but Mike rewrote it live, you know, he's got like a time date of like 30 seconds, 91.
I was like, gah Lee, I still thought my email was better. I think he has a special version of lavender that like is to me to him, but whatever. Yeah. So by the way, Carl has not gotten any emails to work in real, but he still says, you want to put a lavender score on his performance review.
So I think about that. I think I linked in like banner image 90, you know, what do you mean. I got a 90 according to lavender. So it's not like when your mom like your mom thinks you're cute, you know It's like that's what I feel like lavender is for me.
It's like you don't close deals, but we'll give you Here's what was going on behind the scenes generals like hey Carl's a friend of ours. I know he scored 68 on this thing Give him a 90. We need him out there talking about how he did so well on the score even though he knows email sucks You've been always getting a clear email to a cold prospect in two years. That's what the advantage was done right there She's like no no no we're not giving this guy 68 We wanted to post about the public that so he gets leads We don't want to cry anyways.
Wow we derailed you there Jen our bad that happens on this So you're a door opener. Sometimes you walk all the way through it. Sometimes you don't you got Mike you guys seem to have a really good Mojo going again Mike's a legend. He's awesome I told me something whenever we talked after we like recorded episode He was like you know Carl people don't I'm connecting the dots here right between like you guys have a philosophy and so Mike Said it differently than you but he was like you know what we're finding is that like people aren't buying lavender as a product Even though like that is a transaction that occurs he's like they're buying lavender as a service and I was like dang That's a pretty compelling like frame shift and you said a similar thing like we're out here evangelizing the problem We're not like again.
I saw that in your keynote like you mentioned lavender. You're wearing ridiculous lavender pants, which were awesome Like your keynote was not about lavender and why us why by lavender? It was like why you need to rethink? How you think about email in business context?
So you and Mike speaking similar languages using different words like I guess talk to me the question here is like talk to me about how Why does lavender crack the code on thinking this way about your go-to-market? A lot of companies struggle to talk about why change and what's changed in the world and how you need to rethink XYZ thing and evangelizing the problem they just kind of jump straight into why you should consider them versus another vendor Was that a journey that you all went on did you show up and like that's just what you did like talk to me? Yeah, and by the way, I'm excited for you to talk about your point of view on this because your post today was just like Music I loved reading. See I think I Think I wish I could take credit for it But it's one of the things that drew me to lavender like look I'd spent 18 years at Challenger I had made a decision I was like I'm not going back to full-time and then when we'll reach out I was like the number one reason I will say yes to this is because I believe so strongly in the way that you talk about the problem I would never join an organization that was like let me tell you if I were number one And this is why our solution is the best I was drawn it was one of the big reasons I joined it as I was so drawn to their philosophy of give with no expectation of return And you'll be often surprised pleasantly surprised with what you give back And so that was just from a recruiting perspective the thing that made me reconsider my stance on not going back to work full-time I think in many ways it's because our founders lead by example, right?
So anyone who follows will already or will balance will see how much they post about just writing great outreach in general I mean I had someone reach out to me the other day that was like hey, I doubled my reply rate And I didn't even buy lavender. I've just been like studying will already post and we know that that is a possibility of happening We don't get anything You know you guys are fans of that like we want to give because I think if you help someone while they're learning They're much more likely to think of you and turn to you later on when it's time to buy And so I think it was already well ingrained in our organization prior to me joining on and it just that was part of what made It feel like a really easy fit for me It sounds so good like when you say it and you're like cool like if you give give give like eventually they will return how you wrestle with any Like putting time like you need pipeline today, right? Like we got to keep my busy. He needs to keep closing deals You all have raised money recently so there are targets that do have to get hit How do you balance sort of like the near-term targets that you in milestones that you have to pass with that mindset because a lot of companies Struggled to sort of hold those intentions.
Yeah, and I think you know This is also my first time selling in SAS. So I'm a newbie to SAS for sure But if I compare the lead volume here versus the lead volume at my last company It is so night and day meaning we tracked mqls. We did all that at our last company We don't do any of that here We don't do like lead nurturing and things like thank God because I'm in marketing I don't do any of that stuff What we do though that I think really helps it be less of a fearful thing to do is we're really sharp I would say if I can like tell ourselves a little bit We're really sharp at knowing where our buyers go to learn and being present there. So one example of that is SDR leaders.
It's a group I say I'm Nelson. It is only Leaders of SDR teams which if you think about it is a terrifying job, right? Often you are one of maybe two or three people that have that job at the company It's often a first-time manager role you are held to a standard that is so high and it's like when results are bad It really looks at you and it's like if you suck it's your fault It's a really really scary role in my opinion to be in and so he brings together SDR leaders at these dinner events And when I was looking at where we would spend our partnership and you know events dollars Which is part of my room it too. I looked at that I said that's a no-brainer because we have so much we can help and teach them with around things that they're probably making their very best guess at and so When we go to an event like that, there's 30 of them there on average We're converting like 20 to 25 of them into meetings and so it's not to say we're gonna close them all But I think it's a really natural conversation So we just have a kind of faith-based system if we show up in the right places if we're present where our people are learning If we add to their learning instead of selling them on what we do it creates this gravitational pool But I recognize like we're still small right we're less than 20 people.
I know that's you know Probably a little bit less realistic for a company that's managing sales team of 500 So there's probably some differences there. Well, I mean Cassidy's managed those teams before so be curious to get his take But I'm with you Jen like I don't like why does your marketing for your philosophy around Getting going where people are you like educated continuing to help them to get even further educated where they're at like I wonder why a company evolves away from that and starts to do other more things that are scalable Versus just hanging out with folks at Sam Nelson's dinner said he sets up So here is to hear from Cassidy about that before we like Cassidy talk you said something pretty cool You said, you know, like these SDR leaders are kind of like making their best guess at things That tells me that you all have done some pretty good research I'm like what what are SDRs guessing? What are the questions or the guesses that they're making and can we answer those? That's pretty compelling because I don't think anybody makes like even for me That's challenging to me.
I'm like hey, what are the CMOs that I am talking to I want to be talking to what guesses are they making? What blind shots are they taking? I don't know if I can answer that like immediately off the cuff But you all have developed answers to those questions was that just like because you're awesome or was there like Or was it was like something kind of there was any planning or strategy behind that because that was This is a really good question And if you look at when before lavender got funding the primary reason why Will and Will went so hard on linked in was because They were like it's all we can afford to do like we can't afford to run out We can't afford to do these big bets So we have to be really savvy on linked in and draw attention But in the process of doing that what it became is this really informal listening mechanism So when they would post around writing cold emails and say you know Subject lines need to be between one and three words and leave out numbers and don't use names and all these things They would be met back with people saying well I was always taught this and I was always told to do this this way And so it became a really easy way for us to get in the heads of our buyers to understand What are their beliefs and assumptions and then just repurpose that at a larger scale? And so one of the things that was so easy way easier than I was expecting when I came on was in my onboarding You know again, we're still small something We've got some like massive onboarding program But I was able to really quickly understand what are the some assumptions that SDR's SDR leaders have and just simply by being able to vocalize that in their language gave me immediate credibility even though I've never done the SDR leader job And I think it's like that's the end goal It's to feel like hey, were you just sitting in our meeting talking about that stuff that we were talking about because you just Regurgitated what we said so I think a lot of it comes from the way that we listen and participate linked in That's awesome.
Well since Carl called me out I'll jump in and that is I think everybody a lot of marketing teams have been within the past They have an events budget they go off and they do try to meet their prospects where they are But they show up to call the usual language they show up saying why us come see my booth Come see my demo look how great we are and so What I heard different from Jen is she's she's at those events where her audience is hanging out But she's talking about why change not why us and that's what she wants to be kind of known for and that's her role and so forth So maybe Jen if to put you on the spot like how would that conversation how's that conversation differ? Like how do you approach whether you're speaking you're talking over a drink or whatever kind of put yourself in the Old world of an event where maybe you showed up and there's the CB banner and you're shaking hands talking about great You are versus this world where you know you're meeting all these folks and you're talking about like, you know Why change their problems, etc. Not necessarily specifically about why lavender? Yeah, I think some of this gets to Carl what you had posted about today that I know we'll talk about which is the other Alternative so as an example One of the last dinners I went to this this is dear leaders group that I'm talking about There was a conversation at my table around Orham right orham has nothing to do with email It's all about dialing totally different than or totally from space But because a lot of the folks that we work with don't just go all in on email they go all in on cold calls too Normally, it's not like me saying hey, you should do orham or you should not to oram or you should do this or not this It's prompting them with questions and saying hey, you know We had another client that was looking at a similar thing and here are the two or three questions that they asked themselves before they made the decision Have you thought through that and I think more often than not when we don't tell but we give people questions or formulas to help them make Sense of their world on their own those are really those are memorable moments And so then they turn to you and say okay, well then what is it that you do?
Oh, you're in the cold email space? Well, we don't really believe in cold email. Okay, let's talk about that right There's a lot of reasons why I get that you wouldn't I think being able to empathize and not always defend our stance But really just be able to have a conversation is key and then the second piece is at that meeting obviously one of the big You know topics of conversation right now is chat GPT And so there was a room full of people who were like should I even have the SDR team size that I have? Should I just be using chat GPT and some people that were using it saying we're just solely using it and so being able to help them understand pros and cons Things to watch out for pitfalls to avoid I think just make someone drawn to you because they view you as someone who's looking to help not someone He's looking pitch Unbelievable so good.
Yeah, I agree with you like it and I think it's it's especially difficult for buyers today because It's not just like lavender versus I don't even know if you guys have technically a one-to-one competitor It feels like you're sort of alone in that space, but I don't know But you've got the vendors that's you're up against like one-to-one But today with limited budgets like you're also up against these adjacent solutions, right? Like okay, do I need to improve the quality of my emails? Is that the root cause of my problems or do I just need to pump up volume? Okay, well a dialer is a good solution for that Or do I need to train my sales team and have like somebody like Jen Allen come in and like train the team There are so many different ways to deploy capital to in theory produce the same outcomes, right?
The outcomes are a little more pipeline and revenue. How do you navigate like how does a sales team and a marketing team? Navigate not only why why us why should you choose lavender? But and then there's a why change right like why you should be paying attention to email But also like navigating how difficult is it?
Where do I deploy my capital like why lavender why is email like the root cause I had a good sales people help buyers navigate that You won't do it. Yeah, this is when you posted that today I was like this is the juice like this is the thing that I wish I had figured out earlier in my sales career I'll use an example from challenger and then I'll switch when I was selling challenger I couldn't believe when someone didn't want to do challenger because in my mind I'm like challenger is better than any other sales training Why would you not choose to improve the performance of your your sales team selling skills right in my mind? I was so insulated because I was just focused on my thing and what I was lacking is to what you said Carl that broader context That it's not just challenger versus Sandler or challenger versus winning by designer whoever else It's I could decide to do a rework I could decide to fire my sales leader I could decide to buy sales tech and when sales tech started exploding that I think was a giant slap in the face because I realized sales tech is such a more believe or at least at the time It's such a more believable lift than saying like let's roll the dice and train our people and hope it sticks Yeah And so what it forced me to have to do and what I've carried over into lavender is not just be an expert in our our product our solution Or even our category but truly have expertise in being able to enter into a conversation and even if the prospect doesn't say it I can say hey, I know you're interested in lavender But honestly, there's probably two or three things we should make sure you've covered the box on before you even look at something like this Because let's face it buying anything that new right now is tough. So let's talk about deliverability That's a cheap thing.
Let's talk about the message that you have. How are you building these lists? And I think oftentimes I felt this for sure as a sales rep We are so eager to get across the finish line that we just think the faster we move the faster the deal goes But at some point in all of those deals right now that buyer is either gonna ask themselves or their boss is gonna ask them Is there any other way we can solve this problem that is less expensive less disruptive? So we can either hope it doesn't happen and then probably watch our deal timeline extend or we can be the ones to lead that conversation and say I'm gonna sit sit on my hands of it for our solution and just make sure that we've thought through these other things And I will say before I stop this long-winded sermon Carl when I called you when I was a challenger And I was like I want to look at refine labs That's exactly what you did with me like I was chomping at the bit and you're like first of all you're not you're not fast Right, but second of all like I want you to think about these other things Because I don't know if you're in a position to even need this right now and all it made me feel was I just wanted more and I think that kind of like that to me is taking control right It's taking control of the process versus taking a backseat and hoping that like someone just thinks we're the best things in slice bread Cassidy, sorry you had to hear that I did the cute calendar like 18 months I Think it plays into It work yeah, so no, that's good so to go back though Like also it's to think about revenue fully there's a turn risk there right I could I could definitely a good seller can cram in product down Somebody's throat right somebody like Mike it's a killer right you could sell lavender to anybody But if they aren't prepared for change to actually make the transformation to it not only adopt the software But like there's processes that have to change like your rhythm of prospecting your list building There's so many things that go into like the success of lavender itself like using it's only one piece of it I think you build up so much credibility when you can lead your buyer because again like nobody's doing that most most of the sales People that you're competing against that either other vendors or adjacent solutions like I talk about they're not doing that So it's really differentiating and it's just good for business I want you to be successful because what happens is lavender becomes shelf where and only three out of their 30 reps actually use it And then guess what it eventually just gets canceled and they go do something else right and they keep like random access Sales and marketing like acid.
They just moved to like the next kind of band-aid. What you said in a nutshell there Jen was that slow is fast and sales Slow down pump the brakes. Let's understand the entire context lavender is cool. You should buy it, but let's consider these things I mean, that's that's why that's why I change this leading.
Let's leading change Why do you feel like salespeople struggle? Does it mean it sounds so good when you say it, you know, like okay, you see for Carl and Jen to just say this on a podcast It is difficult to do what do you feel like are some steps that sellers can take and marketers? I don't want to alienate all the marketers listening this because the same thing is true Marketing messaging and advertising messaging and website copy etc What are some steps that you feel like a revenue professional to be inclusive can take to begin to go and kind of evolve away from Why us centric messaging to a why change centric messaging? I mean, I think the single biggest thing actually comes down to leadership like I rarely fault reps for bad behavior I fault leaders for bad behavior because I've worked for incredible leaders Right who want honest forecasts and I've worked for leaders who want the forecast to be green and I think when you have that mindset You encourage bad behavior and you're gonna pay the price at some point Right, like sure, maybe your forecast is great and then your performance sucks Like I'm a big favor of always just having an honest conversation about what's actually happening So when you have a bad leader who's like, you know, where is the steel and why isn't it?
You know, forecasted you're going to see reps making those errors pushing why why them because that's where they're feeling the pressure So I will say I think it's really difficult to do this and be a cowboy or cowgirl If you are newer to an organization if you have a leader that penalizes it like real talk I think that's hard. However, what I would say in most cases is check the box on the things that you're supposed to check Have your right set of activities But then on the side prove it out right prove out that when I do the right things better things happen And I think that is the only way to make change happen in an organization that philosophically looks at the world different If you are lucky enough to work for a leader who is not like make the dashboard green no matter what reality is I think one of the one of the very important first things is to understand what are those different categories of alternatives? I rarely saw that when I was selling sales training I got a lot of visibility into you know sales training programs and onboarding programs I rarely if ever saw people dedicating onboarding or training time to let's talk about what others could do instead of us I think that's a really big piece if you're not getting that from your organization You still have access to your customers you have access to communities you have access to events get yourself smart on what other options and levers They can pull to from a marketing perspective. I'm with you Carl Like I don't view this as this is sales and this is marketing I think sales and marketing needs to be in lock step with how can we help our buyers learn in a way that leads them where we want To go not leads with but leads them to where we want to go So an easy example when I was when I left Islander I was I was enjoying the Challenger podcast Carlos on it I was thinking about doing a podcast on my own and so I started googling podcast because I didn't produce ours And so I was googling it and I came across an article It wasn't branded and it was saying here the 20 things you need to do before you hit record on a podcast And I think number 16 was like pick a podcast platform And when I got to the end of the article it was it turned out that it was like a podcasting platform that wrote it But they gave me whatever 16 steps before it that were giving me recommended resources and places to go and things like that So at the end of that article I was like if I'm gonna do a podcast I'm clearly gonna pick this as my partner because they're the ones that taught me They're the ones that made this easier and less scary And I think when we just when we believe that when we have that mindset is a sales and marketing go to market organization And we and we let go of this like tightly held belief that we have to get everybody's emails and like that's gonna be the thing That helps them convert we just believe that we've got to help them I think that's that's kind of the trigger event that has to happen It's not easy, but I think when you can do it in small pockets you build the credibility to do at a larger scale I think it like I love that and you're you're so right.
I think about was a boil down You just said into like a phrase. It's like it's business acumen, right? It's like understanding how a buyer makes decisions They don't give their email and make fast decision. They learn they research And I think a lot of salespeople and marketers like don't have business acumen right even to answer the question of like why change that assumes That I know why CMO should change I'm a bit of a CMO So like I have to do quite a lot of work to get myself to you know Let's say knowledge parody with a CMO and oh by the way, I don't have a luxury of doing the job itself So I'll never learn it on the job you so business acumen So I want to hang out here for a second Jen you like or one of like when it comes to somebody that like has incredible business acumen You come to mind right you're talking my list of business acumen ists, okay?
Now you switch to lavender okay same ICP sort of right you were probably talking to a lot more executive folks and VP sales And now you're talking to like SDR leaders, etc But like you got up to speed really fast and you never done the job I think a lot of folks a lot of sellers and marketers struggle with just getting up to speed and you do you seem to do that at record pace You're like now like doing keynotes and like SDR leaders are listening to you That is very difficult even though you're probably gonna be like yeah It was fine Like this is this talent and a culmination of like all of your experience coming together if you can unpack like how do you get up to speed? How do you develop your business acumen when you're probably not gonna do the role itself? How have you kind of navigated that in your career? Yeah, it's a great question I think most of it in my for my most recent experience came from communities So this is something I think we didn't have access or not access to years ago But now you know if I go into my slack groups that I'm a part of and I search SDR leader I search you know cold calls cold emailings I can very quickly see what people are talking about and saying and how they're responding and what beliefs and assumptions They have and there's so many just with the sheer amount of podcasts like this I can go and look for who are great companies We want to work with and see if they're SDR leaders have ever been on a podcast or their sales leaders They're gonna podcast and I just the thing that I wish more organizations would do and it goes back to our theme We're talking about before is just slow the hell down if we want our people to have business acumen and customer acumen Why are we putting them in a product onboarding motion two weeks and then giving them a friggin call?
Activity level like what do we think they're gonna talk about? They're gonna talk about the only thing they know which is our product if we want them to be more versed in the alternatives and the wide change We actually have to slow that down and this was something I actually attribute this back to my time at Ceb Ceb did the most phenomenal job of onboarding where I was selling to CMOs as a 22 year old And I was like I don't even know what CMO stands for I don't be to be me and I don't be to see means and like they made it so that I didn't get to talk or you know To be in around anybody until I was properly signed up and I could talk about what is it like to be a CMO to the best of my degree Right to your point. I've never been one I can't speak to it exactly But I think that like that early impact made it so that I was always looking at problems not by how can we solve it? But like what does that feel like hurt like if I'm in that position of the person that's feeling it?
Yeah, I remember so relevant same experience I had like a hub spot right where I was like I was onboarded and it was like all this product training We had like build a small business in HubSpot to like set up workflows and stuff It was fun, but I ended that onboarding and I was like I don't know anything about marketing And what I'm really selling here is inbound marketing First and then hub spot as the platform you should use right to support that strategy and I remember like I would just again Say anything I learned from Chris Walker I was first introduced Chris Walker listen his podcast because I'm like this guy seems to know something about marketing And I need to know something about marketing so I'm gonna listen and absorb I remember to I would listen to the gong calls except I would pay a lot less attention to the terrible discovery questions that were There's more attention to like what the customer was saying or trying to say right? So that was how I sort of up leveled my own business acumen and I think like yeah companies just miss here They're all their enablement all their decks all their trainings all everything is always around product roadmap YS logos here's a customer story of this customer that had all these results IBM doing this stuff right and you have a rest and marketers Right, I think marketers even worse Cassidy you can speak to this But I don't even know if there is onboarding for marketers like is there like you get product training and stuff as a salesperson You usually that some structure, you know even if it's a few days or a couple weeks there's a ramp marketers I don't know if they Here's an adobe account I'm boarding I'm like what are you talking about? What I think is really interesting I can feel on one hand I can feel this conversation being a Decade old conversation of like training reps better But like the urgency I think what companies miss is the urgency around your buyers are smarter than ever before they talk to the sales team And you mentioned it you got people like you out educating people and folks are in communities learning from their peers And all the things that we know about marketing and why it changes and selling away changes and now the buyer shows up to talk to sales And they know way more than they used to know which means your salesperson needs to be Way more intelligent and way more informed have a higher degree of business acumen as Carl says and your marketing team And I feel like this is actually a massive kind of Pandemic or epidemic in kind of marketing and sales where most marketers and sellers I talked to just don't know a lot I hate to say it and yeah, I don't know if you can put that on the company to figure that out I think you kind of have to have the grit and curiosity I'm sure I'm sure there's no onboarding for you to get the speed to be knowledgeable in SDR You just figured out I need to go in the community follow these people talk to folks listen to podcast Carl did the same thing when you want to learn About marketing at some point do we just hire people who have this focus on being able to figure shit out versus like being told What to do I mean I would love it if it was that easy? I'd be like let's just hire that team because man would that be a killer team But I think the problem is there's so few when I look at salespeople that I've been exposed to across my 18 years of selling So I put marketing in this bucket too in many ways they are looking up and saying what do you want me to do?
I want to do the very best that I can right? I don't it's contrary to what like how a lot of people talk about sales I don't need a lot of lazy salespeople I mean a lot of people who are saying I'm doing what you told me to do and so I think the reality is unfortunately We have to set the right beliefs the right mindsets and the right assumptions for our teams to follow suit And then I agree Cassidy Like I think our stars are always gonna be people that like take it upon themselves to learn differently like when I did the Evangelist role is like what am I doing? I don't know what I'm doing I that was when I got sucked into refine labs and I would just keep showing up to marketing meetings being like Why aren't we doing any of this right? But I think to some extent the and I talked about this with Carl before when we were texting If I have the belief that I have to just show someone that we are the most superior option everything I do in my process is going to be Tied back to that so the way I do my discovery the way I do my qualification the way I do my group meeting Everything is going to be in pursuit of showing why we're better But in a world where people are not choosing better.
They're choosing to stay with good enough that requires a completely different mindset We're to your point both of your points We have to backsellers up and say slowing down right now is the way that you cross the finish line and showing someone that you're better Does not mean that you win even if you are better you can still lose and so I just don't know that a lot of Organizations are really teaching that why change is important. We're still holding on to 2021 where everybody to Carl's point was like Yeah, let's change we got to change the new option. I think it's a really difficult problem Because I think even there's like a lot of CEOs that don't entirely know why change I think sign some industries You might you know like you may have a CEO that comes from like I think about the collab CEO right where he came from like the engineering Space and then he built a software so he's a subject matter expert I think especially in sales tech and martech you get a bunch of founders that don't necessarily know a lot about who they're selling to right? They just kind of wake up one day and they're like I'm gonna start a sales acceleration platform and compete without And that person is like an MBA or somebody like or somebody else who's like they've never had a job or they came from doing They were an engineer and they don't know anything about salespeople right and so I think you're right It starts at the top or even at the top like there's nobody that really deeply understands and you can't just open a book and understand You can't just read somebody's LinkedIn posts to be like oh cool This is how you understand the root cause issues that are happening in this And there's no like playbook of questions You really just have to dig in and understand I had somebody on LinkedIn today on my post asked me like well What questions do you ask to like be able to like uncover these things and I'm like I didn't say this to him I brought to go say it to him now after this podcast But I'd be like man I don't know there is not a list of five questions You got to go understand what these people are up to what they're doing what challenges they're facing and ask them the questions that are Gonna uncover that because you understand how that business works if you don't understand how the business works You don't know where to dig you're just blindly digging and you end up not being able to build a case or lead a buyer Do anything right that's gonna lead to that that is like that eats at my heart when people like what are your five discovery questions?
I'm like it friggin depends on the call like it's not as simple as just here's your magic set of questions And I think it gets back to that like process or template like the desire to always have the easy answer Exhales is not easy if you want an easy job. I don't know go somewhere else. It's not it's not here It's not marketing. It's it's harder and that contextual relevance is always going to be superior to whatever list of five questions You have that is supposed to be good and one last thing to what you said I mean I was doing a bunch of like keynotes at sales kickoffs And there was a couple where I literally went right after the CEO and the CEO like one of the companies I was doing the CEO held up a basically like a brag sheet that was like here's all our customers and our revenue Whatever and he was like if we want to sell more We just got to put this sheet of paper down on the desk and I was just like oh it's gonna be awkward I'm just gonna totally derail that but that's right I mean if your CEO is telling you that to your point What am I gonna do?
I'm gonna do that because if I don't do it it makes me look like I'm being defiant and the risk is so high Right now, and that's why I think this is to your point I think it's a CEO founder thing they've got to set the right minds at the rest of the org Yeah, and I mean to live to the to go back a lot under like that's exactly what Will and Will have done right? I didn't even know what lavender did for forever right but I was consuming their content and I was like these dudes know stuff about Old email, you know same thing with Chris like people come to our call the time and they come in down And they're like what is refine labs do like all right? We could probably touch up the website a little bit, but that kind of speaks to that right where I think I've been learning for Chris I don't know what I want but I want this whatever this is what is it that there's a there's a win in there right where it's like cool Chris has been talking about why change for so long people just come in hungry for change that is the hardest sale If you can come in hungry for change my job as a seller so much easier I just have to talk to you about why us it's easy right we're order taking at this point And so that just goes to kind of like speak to like when marketing is doing its job and really evangelizing the problem Like you said earlier why change man? It makes sales life so much easier because when you get an inbound Or you go outbound and you have to sell them on why change and then sell them on why you and why you among not only other vendors in that category But why you among other options man like you get a super long process You get super low rates and you get like some super tired sellers man like that is that is a dogfight You know it's you have to close like three deals really just to get the one that pays you And that's why I think sales and marketing is working together so critical but anyways, I'm rambling Cassidy The question I have is um you step in this role as the kind of evangelist and spokesperson.
How do you um What was the mental model in your head of how you changed or did you change what you talked about? So what I mean by that is you have a lot of experience challenger sales leader You can talk about marketing now and What you sell is something as a subset of that and you're not talking necessarily about like what you the company does But you're talking about the problems that are a subset of like a broader sales and marketing um conversation How conscious were you in okay when I'm talking in public now, there's kind of the gen Person of old and they're and it needs to kind of tweak a little bit And one I guess is that fair and did it and then two how did you think about approaching that and was it How kind of um structured or thought out was it? Yeah, this is a fascinating question right because one of my things I said to Will all read when he was talking about bringing me over I was like the job I did at challenger as an evangelist. You don't need you are the evangelist You're the email guy like I would be competing for attention with you and I don't think that makes any sense because you you do it so well And I think the thing that we landed on is if all we ever talk about is cold email We will get boring really fast, right?
So one of the things he said to me as he was like By virtue of you talking about other things related to selling like your point of view on discovery or running group meetings or whatever You will hook people who hate cold email and they will start to listen to you and engage with you and follow you And then when they see you talking about cold email and your point of view on it They will be much more likely to be open to it because you've earned their trust in areas that they do care about because let's face it Cold email is like a really topic that like people get realness or all real angry about And so part of it was actually intentional to say don't stop talking about these other things because that's part of what gives you credibility in the Community in the audience that you know you engage with is that you've got all these different points of you But for sure I had to get smart on cold email and no longer say like hey Here's how I write cold emails but actually start to understand Where was I screwed up and I will tell you and will and I laugh about this when I first met will because I wanted to bring lavender in for Shallengers sdr's he was like I can't say like why don't you why don't you think about it for eight? So I was like oh well like our emails are pretty good like here's when I wrote that's really good And then he put it in lavender and it was like a 72 and it was humiliating Right, but instead of him going back and forth and being like your email stock and like no They don't he arbitrated it with an objective data driven way, right? And that completely hooked me and so one of the things I talk a lot about is not that I'm a cold eomel expert I'm not I talk about like my beliefs and assumptions about cold email when I was selling what I learned that taught me those things were wrong And now what I do differently and that's I think that is consistent throughout a lot of the topics I talk about is I'm not an expert I'm just someone who's been doing it for so damn long I've made every mistake And I think when you teach someone the underlying belief and assumption that you had what changed that and then now what you do instead Is so much more effective than just saying here's what I do and here's what I do because people don't have a back story Um, so that was a big part of my journey coming over to lavender That's great how um, let me kind of follow up on this. So you mentioned this notion of cold email.
I'm I can't I can't say I told you All the good ones that I'm like, hey, look at this. This is a good one and he's like no it's trash Like they said this is a now a point. I'll like defending this sdr It's effective because we don't take the meeting anyways, but I'm like look, this is pretty good personalization here hates it So maybe um Share with us the why I changed story around this and like let me give an example like chat We've we've kind of baked on the market enough about how to why to change marketing That most people agree at this point for a long time even when I was here a year ago We had a lot of the baits with people about what if what we were saying was like the way to change or why to change And that's kind of gone past you're using terms like demand creation and so forth and so on you're kind of the beginning of this journey of like Educating people on why to change and basically that changes maybe the perception of how they think about holding on What does that actually sound like in a conversation? Yeah, so there's two things so one is I rarely just focus on cold email So carl mentioned he watched the keynote right that keynote was not all about cold email There's actually only a couple pieces that were what we're trying to do is tell a much larger story about the philosophy I'm velocity how you have to sell a market today to earn customer attention So one thing is like elevate the subject matter because if I'm talking about cold email to someone who hates cold email I'm gonna have a hell of a time trying to win them over so if I talk about earning attention Then it gives me a lot of different pillars to go down right so I'm not just positioning cold email is the only way So it's telling a larger story To like have that emotional response to what they don't enjoy right so I'll say I'm sure you know most of the emails you Code emails you get are great right and you I mean every single time someone's like absolutely not I got one the other day and it sucked in here's why it's like you allow someone to get fired up and to me That is a good thing because now there's a motion involved in the conversation I can work with that what I can't work with is a flat line conversation Or so I'm just not either head I'm like looking into the sky waiting for the call to be over So when I do that what I then start to look for are what beliefs and assumptions are underneath it So often what we'll hear is someone will say you know really good cold emails require two hours worth of work to personalize And I'll say that's interesting like can you walk me through how your reps personalized today?
Well, they read the end report and then they write this sermon and then they send it It's too long and no one ever applies and what I'm listening for is what are those beliefs and assumptions that are flawed where if I can disrupt the belief An assumption and this is straight from what I learned from challenger. I can get them to reconsider their behavior So instead of me saying no, you should like cold email cold emails effective, which is a losing battle I've got to figure out okay, you think that personalization great personalization takes two hours So now I know why you hate cold email is because you think it's a waste of time So if I can change your belief state around you can write a great personalized email in 10 minutes five minutes Maybe that opens you up to saying okay. Well, let's see how you would do that because I don't believe you I'm okay with someone disagree actually I want someone to disagree I want someone to be skeptical if I'm changing their mind on something It's not gonna be easy But I think in order to do that you have to give that prospect airtime so that you can listen and learn for what is that flawed beliefs and assumption That's causing them to hate cold email as much as they do Yeah, the takeaway I appreciate that by the way, I think the one One key takeaway that was really subtle is that you're trying to create an emotional response And you probably don't care if it's good or bad because you can react either way and I feel like Folks listening to this when they think about what you just said that is the objective But marketing and sales is to create an emotional response And if you aren't creating one then that's the problem Well, you need that emotional response to that's where that's where change now starts to happen Right if you don't get fired up about something there's really gonna be any commitment to change or to invest time or to invest money Or to build consensus all the commitments that you need to gain in the sales process to close a deal I mean, that's all pivots off of you know various emotions and Jen Obviously you are an expert in provoking those very early in sales conversation. So I will wrap up a little bit by just saying the number of times carol has told me He's going to try to go outbound and email folks And then not have done anything it's like literally dies on the vine two days later So if there's anything anybody she might have died but every every two weeks, it's like I'm going outbound.
I'm like no you're not carol should go outbound because literally I would pay to receive a cold email from car Because I bet it would be bad when you've got that much 91 I'm surprised carol to get a one-hundred I'm gonna send him a son is trying to prospect Mike again and see if he responds I'm gonna prospect Cassidy If anyone is listening to this I will send you a gift if you can get Cassidy and book a meeting with him DM me I'll give you his email his mobile get all his contact information get it from me. Yeah, it doesn't matter. So I love it Game on yeah, it's tough. I'm a I'm a salty old dog I like that challenge.
What do you get it? What's on the line Carl? What are you gonna get? I promise in a previous podcast like a free pizza party for their marketing team and somebody actually caught like the Easter egg that I left And then I had to do that and I was like do like a marketing team's massive.
I can't do that. I can't expense this dude I'm sorry. I'm like afraid to like make promises now. So if anybody can get Cassidy to book a meeting I will send you Cookies from oh my gosh, where's my favorite?
Broke cookie comp you'll get a real growth cookie company Title that subject line salty old dog That shows you're listening right there. So So I just want to make sure expectations are said Carl will send you one cookie Just he promised a $1,000 pizza party on our last part on that podcast he's referring to and then he then after we Wrapped he's like dude what happens make I expense that I'm like, you're on your own dude Somebody called me out on it. I just ghosted him. I just stopped I was like god.
I was making it to legal Republish the podcast like they cut this part out Anyways, Jen, uh, we'll wrap up. I know we kept you long. Thank you so much for joining stack and growth If you think that we can do to support you support lavender Um, we only need like a couple seats over here But if my can book a meeting with Cassidy to sell a maventer, I might send a cold email sometime in the few Challenge accepted all right. Thanks.
Yeah, thank you guys. This is a blast