Welcome to Stacking Growth, called Action, a show for the Trailblazers, change makers, and paradigm shifters. Each week, a different marketing hero who was called to make a change in their field will join us to walk through each step of their journey. They'll cover the highs, the lows, and what's coming next. Together, we'll help you find the changes needed for your own business to win.
I'm Steph Kneola, here with Evan Hughes, and today we're so excited to welcome Refine Labs' performance marketing manager, Jason Thoreau. Jason is committed to refine Labs' vision to develop a unified team by aligning marketing and sales so that everyone stops fighting for credit and starts prioritizing a holistic strategy. Jason, thank you so much for coming on today. Thanks for having me on.
Pleasure to be here. So let's back up a little bit before Refine Labs, and before this, like, joining of forces between marketing and sales, tell us a little bit about your path into marketing and the experiences you've had, especially in more traditionally siloed marketing versus sales teams. Yeah, yeah, so I would say like you've probably heard this many times, but I did not get into marketing on purpose. And in fact, I was actually in sales before I was in marketing.
So I've been in marketing for about 13 years, going on 13 years, and before that I had three different sales jobs. So my very first sales job was working at Circuit City, selling TVs, just to age myself a little bit there, shout out to Circuit City. Also worked at Vans selling shoes and skateboards. But the role that led me to my career in marketing was actually working at a call center at an e-commerce company, it's on car audio gear.
So I was doing inbound sales, helping customers set up sound systems for their cars. So as a 20 to 20 year old, that was a blast. And so when I was there, there was an internal opening for a marketing position, a product content copywriter role. And I always thought marketing was intriguing enough.
So I just kind of took a stab and applied for it. And I got the role. And so my entrance into marketing was more on the SEO content side of things. And so that was really my first exposure to working with the sales team.
And in the e-commerce context, it was a little different than SaaS, it was working with the buyer team and a wholesale team. And so I realized pretty quickly, early on in my marketing career, that the way that marketing prioritizes initiatives is much different than the way sales prioritizes initiatives. And so for instance, in this context, I was writing product descriptions for the website and doing blogs. And so I was getting a lot of push and pull from the buyer and the wholesale team to prioritize writing certain blog types of contents, putting up product descriptions faster for certain brands.
Because a lot of these brands would give us kickbacks for future orders if we promoted their products within our ecosystem. Like Hero Banners on our website, social posts, writing reviews and blog form, those types of things. So it was a really good start to kind of understand the inherent friction between sales and marketing. And so kind of from there, in my role after that, I actually managed to organize social channels and really kind of develop the passion for YouTube and kind of that ecosystem.
And then I was only making like $14 an hour there, so just wasn't quite paying the bills. So I decided to go on the agency to the agency side of things. And so I've worked at four different agencies, Refine Labs is the fourth. And I was thinking about this and I was thinking like, how many sales reps I've worked with in my entire career, just on the agency side alone, I've probably worked between 50 to 100 different sales reps.
And I've also worked in-house and SaaS as well, I've worked in-house and e-commerce. So I've had to work with sales teams in a lot of different contexts. And so with that being said, there's still a lot of general things I've noticed throughout the years in terms of how you can work better with your sales team. And at the end of the day, you always have sales and marketing teams fighting for resources, fighting for budgets, and ultimately fighting for credit.
So kind of a good segue for this conversation. Yeah, it's a challenge that we all face, I think, as no matter how we navigate it into marketing, there's going to be some sort of friction between some sort of stakeholder, whether it is sales internally or it's internal operations, it's just identifying how to communicate with those individuals, but also recognizing there is a challenge. So I would love to hear what you think about, you had a ton of different experiences, different angles in which you've interacted with different sales functions. But when was there a moment or that like kind of aha that you knew that you needed to prioritize and that strategic partnership with sales?
Is it kind of building up over time or was there one single incident that you kind of talked through from the audience? Yeah, I would say it's both actually, but I do remember one very specific time. It was pretty early on in my career. And I just remember one of the sales leaders just absolutely berating one of the sales reps on the open office floor, like in front of everyone.
And he was kind of just like saying, you're not trying hard enough, you're not getting enough leads. And it was always like leads, leads, leads, leads. And I think like in uncovering a lot more on how that team operated, it really started at the top. Like we had a very rigid sales leader who was like, you need to be making 100 outbound calls a day, you need to be booking, you may setting 25 points a week, no questions asked.
Like that was kind of the rigidness of the sales. And so in kind of looking at that, that sales team really operated a lot of fear and they had a sense of urgency that was almost unhealthy. And so kind of looking at that and kind of looking at how they were just so focused on leads kind of led me, and this was probably like 10 years ago. So like the talk about demand generation wasn't really quite there yet.
It was kind of in its preliminary stages. So it was, it was interesting to see, because I was not like early on too, like why are we focusing on leads? Why are we not focusing on the actual revenue that's being brought in? And I think that's really what kind of sparked the change in me was like, you know, why are we working together as a team to actually create more revenue instead of actually just focusing on leads and checking boxes and booking appointments that may not actually result in anything?
You were ahead of the time. You're probably having the same conversation internally, you know, that we've all had that argument from one side of our mind is telling us just do the job while the other saying why the hell am I actually doing this? So I think that that kind of aha moment is key and it recognizes the importance of building those partnerships. So I shot out to all the sales folks.
I don't know how people can do it, that it's just a different grind that I don't have. So I appreciate sharing that. Do you think part of it is because you had started in sales that you were able to understand both sides of the table a little bit more deeply? Oh, absolutely.
Like to your point, I'm not that kind of way that I can't just grind on the phone every day making hundreds of phone calls. Like that takes a specific type of person. And I think like I sympathize a lot more with sales teams because more times than not, a sales team has a financial incentive. They have commission structures, they have bonus structures and most of the time marketing teams do not.
And so I think like that can create a inherent friction too because it's like if a sales team is getting pushed back from a marketing team and they lose a sale because of it, the marketing team is literally affecting their paychecks. And so I think there's a real, I think there's a financial element to it. There's a human element to it and there's a technological element to it that needs to be taken account when kind of looking at these friction points. Yeah, that all of the systems in place really have built this structural misalignment between the teams.
And I think it's easy to say, yes, marketing and sales should work together. It feels quite obvious when you say it aloud, right? You're all part of the same company. You're all trying to sell the same thing.
But how do you actually go about aligning these teams? Is there anything that when you started pushing forward to get this more holistic mindset, any tools that help you along the way, whether technical or convincing leadership, maybe to make a mindset shift? Yes. No, I would say the leadership is like the start of the conversation because if like your CRO and your CMO aren't in, you know, cohesive understanding, you know, there's just going to be an inherent disconnect between the teams under them.
And I would say like to that point too, like leadership can actually inadvertently add fuel that fire. They might publicly award a lot more credit to one team or the other and I would say it both ways. And so, you know, I'd say they need to make sure that they have shared goals too. You know, I can't tell many times I've worked in a organization where there's just such siloed goals, not just across like sales and marketing, but across products, across operations, across finance.
So it creates like a kind of an environment of competition versus collaboration. And you have all these teams that have all these ulterior motives. And on top of that, I've seen it too where not all these goals are made public to the entire organization. So sometimes you might see a team kind of reacting to something a certain way and you don't quite understand it because from the top, there's just not that level of transparency.
And I think that's really important. So that's kind of like the leadership human element to it. I think also like in terms of a lot of CRMs, like CRMs and their instances can be set up in a way that silo performance as well. And so I would say to that point, like you need to make sure you're looking at the same source of truth.
You need to have mutual hub spot or sales force dashboards. You need to have shared Slack channels for feedback, like even at Refine Labs, like we have an inbound request Slack channel that it's fun for me to look at to see like all the people that we're talking to. And then when a sale closes, we have an alert in Slack that alerts us want to say a close. And that's excited.
And so I think that's really important. I think it's also really important to meet very frequently as a sales and a marketing team. I would say if you're meeting with your sales team once per quarter, you're not collaborating. You're just coexisting, right?
And so I think it all starts at the top with the goals and how those fold down and how those all, all those tactics meet up to those larger goals. And so I think outside of that, like making sure we're looking more tactically at the unified attribution model, like using a multi-touch attribution model with context, using self-reported attribution. And then, you know, and even like, it could be a simple, I feel like it's so over complicated nowadays with just how many tools there are. It doesn't need to be that way.
Like you can just get a spreadsheet, look at the opportunities week over week with the team. And I think that's like an inherent thing is like not that feedback loop not closing creates a lot of friction. So if marketing is driving a bunch of leads, a lot of times they think, oh, well sales is just ignoring them. They're not actually like giving us any feedback on them.
And a lot of times sales is like, well, we're not looking at them because they suck. That's something that needs to be understood on both sides to really kind of bridge that gap. So yeah, like I said, like it's multi-faceted in the sense that like everyone wants to be valued for their work regardless of their job function. And I think like when you, when you like don't humanize the teams that are doing the work, you know, I think that can be a problem.
I think also too, like I've had times when I've worked with sales teams where I feel like I'm just sales enablement and I'm not like a true strategic forward thinking partner. And I'll tell you like when I, when I have felt like that strategic forward thinking partner, I was much more willing to help them. Because they would just go to just like, oh, make this PDF look pretty, make this deck look pretty. And okay, thanks, Sia.
You know, so I think there's, there's a lot of ways you can create some quick wins, you know, especially on a technological side, especially with how much help with AI we have now. I think like there's, there's so many ways to create unity because I have to make sure we leverage those appropriately. I think you nailed it too. And he said to find goals and shared definitions across the board.
That's a lot of areas that I see friction between the teams because one could define an MQL one way while the marketing team could be thinking of it differently. I think often, as marketers, we think about what are the best resources to bring sales and marketing alignment together is working with sales, not for sales. And it's just like that mindset shift. We're thinking about content creation.
We were building that deck or that enablement material with the sales team, not for the sales team. And then that creates more of a partnership that I think is so invaluable across the org. So yeah, definitely. And so many tools, right?
There's too many tools out there right now that it does murky the water. So I love how you kind of peeled back the layers and simplified it for the audience. And like sometimes it's just as easy as having three point checklist, right? Like here are goals.
Here's how often we're going to meet. Here's the outcome of that meeting and just like that cadence reoccurring. I think that's just super helpful to start there and not be overwhelmed with like all of the things that you can evaluate. Yeah.
Yeah. Having a clear line of communication, having transparency from leadership and not like micro managing the little things along the way, it sounds so simple, doesn't it? That's. And I think too, like something organizations to think about more is how you incentivize the marketing team as well.
Because I've had times when marketing teams where I'm financially incentivized as well. And I'll tell you like when I get a request from sales to do something, I'm going to do it way quicker because I know I'm going to get a piece of that pie. So I think they're starting to be that shift in a lot of places. And I think like organizations really look at how they kind of divvy up the piece of that pie, you know, when they get new business.
I'm not dangled to care that you will get this payout if we hit this goal and you recognize that the goal is five X the growth target that actually was last year, right? So there's a realistic like targets that you should actually aim for and not be incentivized by something you can't definitely love an extra little bump here and there for all the hard work that we do as marketers. It's important. Yeah.
Because we think about like, you know, your kind of your journey of entering into the sales world, bridging the gap to marketing, finding like partnerships, being some good, some not. Was there a moment like in long this journey that was your lowest point that kind of kept you pushing like a point of friction between the two where you just kind of wanted to walk away? I'd love for you to kind of walk the audience through some of those. Yeah.
I mean, to the point of walking away, I think being laid off was kind of a way where I was forced to walk away. And you know, it's it's it's unfortunate. Like when you spend so much time kind of fostering these relationships between these teams. And then one day, you know, you think you've done enough and then all of a sudden COVID happens and lose your job.
And I think like that's a very real thing. I think especially from marketers to like from what I've seen marketers are usually the first to be like, Oh, and times get tough, which is crazy to think because the businesses that I've seen actually survive the tough times are the ones that actually double down their efforts in marketing. And so not to say that sales team don't get sized down during rough times as well too. But I think that was kind of a big struggle is kind of having to restart somewhere new.
When I thought I've got everything in a good place, I set up all these processes, all these SOPs, you know, I thought things were humming and then it just kind of gets taken from under your feet with the kind of macro economic changes in the world. So, you know, I think like that, I mean, I think marketing still in a tough spot right now, you know, we had kind of like the great tech layoff of 2023. And I think it's starting to recover a little bit. But now there's even more uncertainty coming up in the market.
And so I think us as marketers need to be really selective about how we're spending our ad dollars. And I think now more than ever we need to help and empower sales teams to really help drive our revenue. Because at the end of the day, marketers are there to help sell the products just as much as sales is. We're not on the front lines usually as much as the sales team, but we are the harper, harper of the messaging and the positioning.
And more times than not, like there's going to be 20 plus touch points that someone sees from a marketing perspective before they might even talk to a sales rep. And so kind of making sure we have the omnitannel approach and we're kind of really working lockstep with those sales partners and speaking the same message is really good. I remember times where like I've launched a marketing campaign and maybe we didn't get enough input from the sales team and we're talking about a certain value proposition or highlighting a certain one. And then the sales team will come back and be like, why are you highlighting that one?
You should be talking about X, Y and Z, not ABC. And so I think just getting feedback on both sides is very important, especially when times are tough and really when the opportunities start to dry up. I feel like that's the conversation where the board comes in and goes, we need to speak about these features. And that's what you're talking about.
And then it's like, well, that doesn't communicate to the market. And that makes it so much challenging on both sides of the end, right? Because you're trying to operate and connect the dots of what's being told to you, but you're also recognizing the market is so unrealistic. So I feel that to my core.
Yeah, that's all it all ties back to communication and transparency. And then these teams being aligned in messaging, I wonder if there is a cyclical way to deal with some of these issues in just what you were saying instead of meeting once a quarter, meeting more regularly and having the conversations like while they're while things are changing instead of getting the message that something has changed and then having to react and respond to the change in a delayed time, only for it to change again. Yeah. By the time you've updated the messaging, like it just feels like that timeline is never going to work unless you're constantly in communication.
Yeah. I think especially in B2B SAS, where a lot of our listeners are like, it's such a longer sales cycle. And things might change in their organization over such a long period of time. And so yeah, it's really important to kind of feedback that information to each other just to make sure that what you're saying to those people over time is in a green swith with sales and marketing.
Reactionary marketing is a strategy. I'll say that to you. Yes, exactly. I love it.
I'm blown up. I see. So let's swing up to the more positive side of this. What is something that through this journey, you have learned about yourself that you can appreciate about your skills, maybe coming from that background of having both sales and marketing experience that you feel is kind of like your superpower in being able to align these teams.
Yeah. I mean, I've learned a lot. I would say I can't probably narrow it down to just one thing. So I'll talk about a few.
I would say getting comfortable with confrontation is a big one. I'd say in my personal life, I probably tend to gravitate away from confrontation. But in my professional life, I'm so hardwired to just tackle it head on now. And I would say I embrace it more as a sign of progress now.
And I'd say I would say probably one of my superpowers is being a translator at heart and really being able to bridge perspectives together. And I think when you can do that, I think it's really important for me to foster a work environment that is energizing to me instead of exhausting. So I would say that's one. I would say, too, from a marketing standpoint, I think what doesn't get talked about marketers need to be good sellers and not necessarily have a product and service, but you need to be good sellers internally.
You need to be able to get buy-in from your strategy, from sales team, from leadership team, from everyone. If you can't get buy-in from your internal folks, you're going to have a very hard time getting it from your buyers. And I would say one thing I've learned from the best sales reps that I've worked with, the best ones that I've worked with, they try to take as little credit as possible. They try to uplift the other ones that help them close that sale.
And I remember working somewhere and every time a sale would close, they'd get TVs in every room. And they would display a video of a sale. They'd have a unique video for every sales rep when they actually close a deal. So it was kind of like, okay, you're giving all the credit to just this one person at the end that close a sale.
And there was really 20 plus touch points that kind of led to that. And there was no other videos on the screen saying, oh, marketing got a high click-through rate on this touch point. It just doesn't exist. So I think the more we can take away credit and try to push it towards others, ultimately, it really kind of comes back full circle.
And you do end up getting more of the credit because you're trying to take it away from yourself in a strange way. So yeah, I would say those are the main things. I think, yeah, yeah, probably those three things, I would say. Very important.
It's incredible. Yeah, it's incredible that I feel like the industry is accepting that last touch attribution is not a B.O.L.L. End-all measurement tool, but slow to accept that last sales touch point isn't the B.O.L. End-all of the sale.
It feels like when you say it, it feels so clearly laid out that if we're working on our measurement in attribution, we should also be rethinking the way that we give credit on these internal teams. But that human part is always the toughest one to shift mindset on, I think. Yeah, like I said, we're all humans, we just want to be valued for the work that we do, regardless of our job function. That's just a very human thing to want at the end of the day.
Sign up strong leader right there though, right? Pushing credit to the team versus standing on that podium alone. So I love that. Kind of pivoting a little bit.
Hearing your story, hearing the journeys awesome, and I really appreciate you diving into some things that, I don't know, it just makes marketers more real when they can hear their journey into the path and what makes them excited and what keeps them excited. It's such an important topic. But switching gears and thinking about how marketing's evolved in the last few years, what shift in marketing do you expect is coming next? And how do you think listeners should prepare for that or kind of get their gears ready?
Yeah, I mean, obviously the hot topic of conversation lately has been AI, AI, AI. I think we talk a lot of the positives of that. I think there's also negatives. I think especially as the younger generations get older, gen alpha, gen Z and they become more of those decision makers, I think you're going to see a lot more brand mistrust, especially because even when you go on AI on social media nowadays, you can usually tell when something AI is AI and when something is not, at least for now, that could change in the future.
But I think especially like Gen Z kind of started like brands need to have a purpose, they need to have social values that resonate with them. So I like to say that to grow as those people get older and as kind of the older generations kind of go away. I think there's going to be a shift away maybe in like five to ten years away, more so from traditional advertising. As an agency, we always talk about dark social.
I think it's going to be the primary revenue at some point. Like people, especially younger generations are going to have ad blockers, they're going to, you know, cookies are going away entirely soon. So it's like all of these younger folks and me to an extent are looking at ads in their feed and be like, okay, well, that's obviously an ad. That's AI.
That's not authentic. And I think that's really the key there. Like we're safe for now because AI cannot reproduce authenticity. And I'd say until that happens, I think we all have jobs.
But the moment that happens, the moment that AI can replicate authenticity, I think we're going to be in for a rude awakening. But I think hopefully that'll never happen. And if it does happen, we're hopefully kind of always off from that. Yeah, the trust component there is such a key aspect.
And I think that that's something I really haven't actually thought much about, but recognizing how important and influential you are to your peers, I think in that whole generation is going to come up and kind of replace the lead marketing leaders now, the boards are going to change. We're all going to step into these new roles and evaluate things differently. And I love that perspective. So appreciate your sharing.
Yeah, of course. Yeah, Jason, thank you so much. Thanks for coming on to share your journey. We're really grateful for the time and insights that you brought.
And we hope everyone listening will start to open up those lines of communication, practice full transparency and book a meeting to align with your sales team today. Give them give them a slack, hit them up, let them know you want to chat and not an aggressive way. Yeah, I would say one final note, sales team and marketing team, stop fighting each other and start fighting for buyers trust. Let's go.
Nailed it. If you all like hearing these journeys, make sure to subscribe and share this episode out to your network. And if you want to nominate a marketing hero to come on and chat with us, feel free to get in touch. Thank you so much for listening.
We'll see y'all next time.