GTM After Hours

Building Strong Relationships in Marketing Operations with Stephanie Tran

• Mark Bliss • Season 1 • Episode 12

Share episode

In this conversation, Mark Bliss and Stephanie Tran discuss the importance of communication and collaboration between marketing operations (MOPs) and sales teams. They emphasize the need for MOPs professionals to spend time talking and listening to build strategic connections and alliances. Stephanie highlights the challenge of getting the sales team to acknowledge and address issues with lead management, and the importance of allowing them to come to that realization themselves. Mark emphasizes the need for MOPs professionals to set aside their ego and be open to admitting mistakes and learning from others. They also discuss the importance of asking the right questions, painting a clear picture, and telling a story to effectively communicate and solve problems. Finally, they play a game where they share lessons that go-to-market teams can learn from songs in Broadway musicals.

Takeaways

  • Building strong relationships with sales and customer success teams is crucial for marketing operations professionals.
  • Effective communication and collaboration between different departments is essential for success.
  • Multi-touch attribution should be approached with a holistic mindset, giving credit to all contributing factors.
  • Marketing operations professionals play a vital role in bridging the gap between creativity and data-driven decision-making. Building strategic connections and alliances through communication and collaboration is crucial for marketing operations professionals.
  • Allowing the sales team to acknowledge and address issues themselves can lead to more productive collaboration and better outcomes.
  • Setting aside ego and being open to admitting mistakes and learning from others is essential for success in marketing operations.
  • Asking the right questions, painting a clear picture, and telling a story can effectively communicate and solve problems.

Sound Bites

"Marketing gets a seat at the table."
"Being flexible and being able to work across multiple spectrums of creativity and data and analytics."
"You spend a lot of time on calls, just talking and listening."
"Are the systems in place to successfully pass these MQLs over to our sales team?"
"It took me like five roundabout questions and 20, 30 extra minutes to just get them to say that themselves."


Support the show

Hi, and welcome to the GTM After Hours podcast, a safe space for marketers, AEs, CSMs, and everyone else in this B2B SaaS growth hamster wheel. So grab your comfy blanket, your emotional support animal, and your go -to beverage of choice, and join me for another exciting go -to -market conversation. All hi, everybody. I am so excited about this episode. I use the term rockstar a lot. I think in this one, I'm going to say, I have a Mops superhero, joining me on the podcast today. Stephanie trend, is one of those rare Mops professionals who not just understands the data, but they understand the people that are driving the data. And so, you know, a lot of times when you see inaccuracies in reporting, it's because of some sort of. Human element that is coming into play and Stephanie Absolutely, not just understands that but I think that that's her superpower is cutting through that connecting with people and truly truly understanding the data and the technology that she's implementing So so so so many so many compliments but Steph you want to give Give kind of the 30 second overview of your career. Hey, yeah, first off, thank you so much for having me today. I always love talking to you and I always love talking about myself. No, I'm just kidding. But hi, I'm a marketing operations manager. have, my gosh, going on nine years of experience specifically in B2B SaaS demand generation, but it was specifically the last six or seven years where I focused primarily on marketing operations, revenue operations, and sales enablement. Early on in my career, like many other marketers, I started off at some very, very, very impressionable, high pace marketing agencies. And it was at those agencies where I really gained my expertise specifically in HubSpot and Salesforce ecosystems, which I know is a bit of a hot take. People who work in the HubSpot ecosystem are typically like, we bleed orange, we hate blue. But I actually disagree with that. That's kind of like. my bread and butter. love working in instances with both HubSpot and Salesforce. So that's my background. I'm really excited to talk about all things Mops and music and nerdy Broadway stuff with you, Mark. Well, the fit for this episode, and I'm sorry for those who are in listening only mode, but my fit for this episode is actually a Moulin Rouge on Broadway t -shirt. So specifically because Steph's on this episode and we absolutely, and we nerd out over MarTech and attribution reporting, but we also nerd out over Broadway and all things music and fun. So excited to. dig in on this stuff. I think where I want to start on this episode is actually, you know, that human part of, of Mops, you know, thing that, that you do better than I would say easily, easily 90 % of, Mops professionals is you build such strong relationships with the sales team and the CS team. You know that are implementing that data on a daily basis. So What are what are some of the you know pros on that? Like what are the benefits you've seen by building those relationships and Let's talk about some of the struggles in doing that. How does that suck up your day? my gosh, I thank you so much for saying that I I consider myself one of those people who's really really strong at listening and I think that's part of the reason why I'm able to build such strong relationships and it's beyond just listening to what's being said but also inferring what is not being said and unfortunately and this is just the reality people may disagree with me people may bury their heads in the sand with it but when you're working with other teams and other personalities, and there are certain personalities in customer success as well as sales, as well as with leadership, there are, I don't wanna say egos. I wouldn't say that it's egos to consider, but it's just being really considerate of what people are perceiving that's coming out of your mouth. Because one thing that MOPs people or any OPs people tend to do, is they get a little too lost in the jargon or the nitty gritty of the systems and the processes and the data. But when you're talking to someone in sales, or especially when you're talking to someone in leadership, when you get too granular like that, you lose them for a couple of reasons. One of those reasons is they feel stupid. And when people feel stupid, they get defensive. And when they get defensive, they suddenly can't hear anything else that's coming out of your mouth, but instead they're just so worried about being perceived as incompetent. And I never want anybody to feel that way. So that's one way that you lose them. And the other way that you lose them is just because they honestly just have no idea what you're talking about. They can be very earnestly trying to understand what is it you're saying and they just can't follow along. And when I'm able to bridge that gap and make sure that we're speaking really, really simply of what the problem is, I mean, one of the pros is honestly that marketing gets a seat at the table. Unfortunately, I think there's a stereotype that I think I've said this to you, but there's a stereotype that the marketing department is like this woo woo artsy fartsy middle child who makes cool logos, makes fun websites and has great branding, but can't really tie it back to numbers. That's kind of my job in marketing operations is trying to get those quantifiable numbers to people who can't quite see past the fun logos and the fun images. So being able to talk about that kind of thing while getting a seat at the table is really, important to me just because marketing needs someone to say something and needs, marketing needs someone to advocate for them in ways that maybe marketing people are not necessarily strong at. Not saying that marketing people are not strong at talking numbers and money or anything like that, but Marketing is particularly strong at being creative. That's part of reason why people hire marketers. They can do that kind of thing. They can think outside of the box. You're a wonderful example of that, Mark, actually. You are so great at giving creative, out -of -the -box ideas, but having someone like myself or someone in sales ops or rev ops being able to tie that creativity to things that leadership cares about, such as money and also money. You forgot you forgot money money, don't forget money. Thank you for the reminder. But yeah, that's really important to me. One of the major pros is being able to get a seat at the table. funny too, because we Mops is usually in this weird middle ground where they're in marketing, where they're surrounded by, you know, the, the, the hyper creative forces of nature, but to be a successful Mops person, you need to be a tech nerd. And sometimes those two things don't overlap. I mean, you're an incredibly creative and just fun. person. So I think people will look at your they'll like, yeah, yeah, yeah, Steph, she could totally be like, even a field marketer, like, like, I could see you out at a trade show booth and everything. But actually really charming at trade show booths. I'm actually not a bashful about that. I'm really charming at them. You want me there. yeah. Yeah. But it's, you know, the skillset that you need for your job, that people typically view is like secondary, but I would argue you need to be incredibly creative to be able to implement some of these tools accurately and to be able to generate the data that you need. So I, I don't know. I think it's a, it's a tough thing because everybody stereotypes, departments and individual roles when At any point in time, there's going to be five opposing skill sets that you need in order to do your job. Now, some of them you might not like doing like I'm terrible, absolutely terrible at paperwork. I will wait till the last possible minute to turn in an expense report. Like if, if we don't have tech that makes it automatic and like I take a picture or receipt and it fills everything in and is automatically loaded. If we don't have that. My expense report is going to be. not filed until either policy demands that I have to or I get reminded on my credit card statement and I go, yeah, I probably need that money. I saw this tweet once that was like, people with ADHD, I work well under pressure, but also I don't work unless there is pressure, which is so me sometimes. But Mark, you mentioned something that is actually really important to me and how I navigate my career, especially being in marketing operations. And that's kind of being flexible and being able to work across multiple spectrums of creativity and data and analytics. And when I work with the marketing team, every company that I've ever worked with and for, the marketing team is generally just full of happy people, frankly. I understand the stereotype. Marketing people have fun. Frankly, we just do. But, and then there's the stereotype of when you're working with finance or sales or with executives and... has fun. Well, they have a, they certainly have fun. But when you're talking about like data and numbers and when you're talking to somebody about data numbers, you do, you really do have to shift. And I can actually even catch it in myself right now in this very moment. When I was speaking about marketing, you might, if you go back and replay this, you might have noticed that I was like really up here and I was very excitable. And then as soon as I started just even thinking about sales and, and finance and the other departments, you might go back and kind of hear me bring my voice down like half an octave and start speaking in down speaking tones and just speaking more slowly. And I do it so often now that I just caught myself doing it naturally in a conversation with you, my good friend. But that's how I think it's marketing operations professionals can get things done. Or really anybody who works across multiple departments because I never want my joy or my charm or my fun loving attitude to detract from the fact that I'm really, really smart and I'm really, really good at my job. And I'm very, very good at speaking about things that matter, such as numbers and data and conversion rates and channel acquisitions and that kind of thing. And to navigate that in a way that is still authentic is something that I think is one of my gifts, but it's not a gift that came overnight. It's something that I've practiced and I think a lot of people who work in marketing can practice that. And I'm just saying this very, very humbly. People who work in marketing tend to forget that people who their stakeholders are, they need to be spoken to in a different way. And it's not pandering and it's not, you know, going up against people's egos. It's just the reality of how do you, what's the best way to connect with that person that you're trying to work with? And if that means speaking their language a little bit more, that just means that you end up getting more work done and more collaboration. And as a bonus, you get a little bit more respect too. And that doesn't hurt anybody. At least not you. I think I think there's always this I think there's a misunderstanding as it relates to authenticity. And, you know, if you're building authentic relationships, it does not mean that you're operating the same way yourself all the time. It means that you're building a relationship with somebody. And so you're adopting some of how they communicate, you know, and, and, and I think we get lost in that. think it's like, you know, this, this, I'm, just being myself. It's like, Well, I'm being myself in this relationship and in communication one to one or one to many with this person or group of people. And if they're different from me in any way, adopting some of their language, some of their tone, I think that's still authentic. And you're showing a different version of yourself. You know, you can be many things. Yeah, cuz people are multi -layered go figure but to what I was saying before about speaking with different teams about different things Sometimes the things that you say actually means something really different. and I have talked a lot about attribution, for example, in touch points. When it comes to multi -touch attribution, that term in and of itself, multi -touch attribution in some ways has become a four -letter word. it is, you're laughing, but it's true. Multi -touch attribution can be such a contentious conversation topic. And I really do believe that it comes down to when people are talking about multi -touch attribution, people don't take that time to before talking about that, really uncovering what is multi -touch attribution to you? What is a touch? And this may seem small and silly, but I know someone who called it omni -channel attribution. And I switched my language to omni -channel attribution, even though they thought it was different than multi -touch. But once we kind of peeled that layer back, we realized that we were talking about the same thing. And the way that people talk about multi -touch attribution, for example. think when people, especially people who don't work in operations or people who don't work in marketing very much, they're picturing it in a different way. Some people don't actually know what a W attribution model is or what a U attribution model is or what the purpose of a first touch is and what the purpose of a last touch is. And it's really, really annoying to some people to have to really peel back those layers. But in my experience, it is so important to uncover all that stuff before you get to the problem solving. Because when you get to the problem solving first, people end up arguing, people get confused. mean, multi -touch attribution is already confusing. It's usually more confusing. Do remember what I said earlier about people get confused or they feel stupid, they feel defensive, and they suddenly cannot hear anything else that you're saying? The same thing goes with any complicated topic such as multi -touch. But soapbox, off. look, I think people just let ego get in the way. and they make dumb decisions because of ego. And what I mean by that is when you're talking about any attribution at all, it's about where do you assign credit? And if, if you're fighting from a place of, of ego and selfishness and you're like, I want credit for this. That's where everything falls apart. know, people are fighting over different models. So that way this credit when it's really just about what dollar did we spend and where, where is it spent best? You know, where, where should the sales team be spending their time? You know, like this, this isn't a credit scenario. And I think we, we take that out of the equation, you know, and I get it, you know, you have to measure. people on performance, especially if you have outbound sales characteristics as a part of your go -to -market motion. absolutely, totally understand that you want to make sure your rep is doing their job. But I also don't understand why everyone can't get credit. You you need to know if they were successful in turning a trade show lead from a year ago into. Yeah. an opportunity, you need to know that. But you also need to know that it came from that trade show and you need to give credit to that trade show. Otherwise you might not go back. And even though it took them some time, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't give some credit where that credits do to enable you to make better decisions. But ego gets in the way of that because marketers want 100 % of that to typically go to the event because that's where it came from. It came from the event and then sales says, well, you know, it's been it's been like a year since that event. I cold called them and they picked up. so at what point, you know, is, is ego stopping them from just coalescing around a everybody gets credit model, which is how I view kind of Omni -Touch, Multi -Touch is everybody gets credit. The degree of credit changes, but everybody gets some credit. Every, every single thing. agree with that. I mean, that's the reality of what we should aim toward. And I actually know of a company who actually and this ended up shooting in them in the foot, not gonna say who it is, but they actually compensated people based off of what the multi -touch attribution said, which of course led to an extremely toxic finger -pointy, no, it's mine, it's not yours kind of environment and culture. And on top of that, it wasn't necessarily true because... Ultimately, this is what I say as well. My job in marketing operations is to be objective. This is what it says. Period. End of story. This is what the data says. But when people are, when their people's livelihoods are quite literally tied to multi-touch attribution, people get really, really contentious about who gets credit for what and for how much and because of what and people end up having like change. manually change things in the system, which I hate doing. I hate changing things in the system manually. But I think when people or when organizations are kind of looking at what kind of multi-touch attribution models they should review, I actually firmly believe that you could use all of them for different reasons. I mean, if it's a first touch model, that will tell you, like what you just said, what channel was it that brought them top of the funnel? Or if you want to look at your last touch model, that can tell you some stories about what pushed for bottom of funnel. And each of those stories can help you navigate different strategies in different ways. And, but I think the key, the key thing to keep in mind, this is just my opinion as well, but multi -text attribution is meant to aid in telling stories and patterns, but as marketers, as people who navigate the digital landscape, and also as things are becoming, more nebulous in the digital space, it's never gonna tell you the truth, like the 100 % truth. We can't, because if we want to give people a positive experience online, for example, we're just gonna have to trust that we don't have to put this specific thing behind a gate, or we have to trust that they don't have to put in their email for this specific thing, and we have to trust that if they're coming to our trade show, they don't find a bunch of... people wearing the same t -shirt swarming them trying to get a badge scan just for the sake of getting a badge scan. Like we, there's always gonna be some level of information that is missing. And I think as an organization and especially with leadership, have to kind of accept that and also really embrace it because I kind of like that there's a little bit of room for our end customer to not feel like they're being hounded all the time or that every single thing that doing is getting tracked. So multi -touch attribution is meant to be a guide and to help you see patterns, but it's never going to give you an exact answer. And I think that's part of reason why it's become such a four -letter word, because people perceive it in that way. Like it needs to be correct. even the, even multi -billion dollar corporations like Amazon or Deloitte, for example, they will never get, even they can't get it right. And they have so much money. Well, everybody has a difficult time quantifying brand and brand visibility. know, like shelving that aside, I think there's so many organizations who, the top, the top of the job description or even one of their core values is that they're, they're data driven. And I love that. I absolutely love that. I love that you want data driven people, but which data is always the question. And in a lot of those organizations, They will prioritize one data set over another. So that leads to, you know, where the marketing organization is highlighting the amount of booth traffic, but not giving credit to the sales team, working the booth, helping to drive such traffic. or, and this happened, at a company that was very data driven. was literally a core value and they, there was a half a million dollar sale. That came through and there was a slide on the, weekly go -to -market call with sales marketing and CS on it. The slide had the salesperson's picture and this congratulations. And the onus was then on the salesperson to determine who they would think for their part in the process. And it's like, the data is all there. You know exactly what parts of the process that the SE team was involved in. You know what parts of the process that the marketing team was involved in. can quantify that. You can quantify which webinars people from their company were on, which ads that were clicked on by people from their company. can, you can quantify, they go to any events? Like all of those things, which programs, which assets did the salesperson send them? All of that's quantifiable. And I find that in that multi -touch or omni -channel approach, you're able to do a better job of taking that screenshot of all of the items that were at play and putting that on the same slide. Because what happened at that organization is the salesperson thanked the SE, but didn't mention any of the marketing team. And every member of the marketing team went absolutely berserk on Slack. 30 seconds later, and as they should. mean, they did a lot of work and they weren't getting any of the credit, not even so much as a mention. And the reverse is also true. If marketing is getting all the credit and sales isn't getting any, then they're upset. And now you're just wasting time because people are mad and you've got a cultural problem. But either the data was there and you chose not to show it and highlight it, or what's most common, you didn't collect enough of the data, even though you could have. Like it was just living in so many disparate sources and you didn't put those all together. Yeah. And I think another theme that has admittedly come up a lot, even in our conversation today is, my gosh, this literally can be an entire other episode if you haven't already gone through it, but sales and marketing alignment and the culture and the culture between marketing and sales. This stereotype of finger pointing and stealing credit and not sharing it between specifically between marketing and sales. This needs to end. Don't get me wrong. I love corporate bro. He's one of my favorite content creators. I love him so much. For those who are listening, Ross, if you happen to see this, I love your content. But he makes a lot of content about how shitty marketing is or how marketing is just like, hey guys, we got 12 attendees to our webinar. Listen, I understand that stereotype. It's really fun. it comes from a very, very sad. and that sad place is that marketing and sales seem to never get aligned. And I mentioned earlier on the call, having marketing have a seat at the table via your marketing ops person is really important to me for that specific reason. And this is so full circle. At the beginning of this conversation, you also talked about my relationship with sales teams. That relationship is so, so, so important because... We need someone who can speak both languages. I actually used to work in sales enablement. Now that I think about it, I worked in sales enablement for two years. So that's probably why I work with sales really well too. I'm a I'm a I'm a former sales guy. So, like, know, when you when you have that immediate empathy, when you're like, I was on that side of the house, it makes it easier to spot, I think, when there's gaps. You know, like if you drive the road all the time, you know where the potholes are so you can avoid them. Yeah, even on a conversation I had at work this week, we were reviewing a certain list of MQLs that were passed off to sales and they weren't being followed up with for one reason or another. They were marketing and sales people on this call. And there was a point where I played a little bit of devil's advocate for the marketing team or against the marketing team where I could just tell that people were getting like a little defensive. Like they just didn't want to call things out. But I just said, is it possible that the marketing team is just not giving sales enough information at all to be able to work with it with them? Because if I were in their shoes, why would I work a lead that I know absolutely nothing about? I don't know how they landed on my desk. I don't know why they're my sequence outreach tool and my task list. Is that at all possible? And I know that some people on my marketing team, they weren't necessarily surprised, but they thought about it a little differently when I brought it up that way. Like, are we even enabling the sales team to do their jobs because we can point fingers and say, they're not doing their job all day, but sales people have so much pressure on them already. Having worked in sales enablement, it couldn't be me. thick skin to work in sales. Mark, I know you know what I'm talking about. There's so much pressure and also on top of it, it's the last week of August, the last week of the month. So they already have enough pressure. Can we at least take a moment to empathize them for just a second? Like they might not have the tools to succeed. I care a lot about advocating for advocating for the other team whenever I can. Well, you know that I guess the downside of that is you spend a lot of time on calls, just talking and listening. And I think it takes a particularly, we'll say strategic mindset for a MOPs person specifically to devote that much time talking and listening and playing devil's advocate on calls like that. like you might lose four hours of your day. And so somebody's looking like, well, why didn't you do these three really basic things? But it was because you were building that strategic connection and Alliance that made everything else easier to six months down the road. Yes, I very much appreciate you saying that because I think it's a skill and a necessity that goes really underrated in this exact same conversation that I just told you about. One of the things that I was trying to get through to the team was are the systems in place to successfully pass these MQLs over to our sales team? and is it successfully notifying our sales team? And is our sales team actually working this lead? Frankly, Mark, the answer was no, but it took me, I shit you not, it took me like five roundabout questions and 20, 30 extra minutes to just get them to say that themselves. because it's really important that they say that themselves. You know what I mean? Because nobody wants a marketer to say sales isn't doing their job. That's not what I'm trying to say, but it's perceived that way, right? It's perceived that way when marketing is quote unquote calling out salespeople. But if you can take that 20 minutes, 20 minutes, which is like almost half the meaning to get them to that conclusion themselves, it ends up being much more productive. down the line and you get a lot more collaboration, a lot more grace too, honestly. Well, it does mean, you know, again, going back to ego, you you, you have to, you have to set aside your ego in order to be for them to listen to like they, have to know it and acknowledge that they're doing something wrong, that they don't know everything about everything, in order for them to say it out loud and accept the fact that, you know, we might not be providing the right information or, those might not actually be. good leads or from the reverse side, it's like, we're, we are de -prioritizing contacting these. I don't know why. Like, I guess I'm just too busy or like, my, my favorite on that end was, I had this CRO and I've worked, I've worked directly for some great CROs who marketing sat under the department and they realized what they didn't know. and then I've had other C or CROs where They thought that they were the experts and the things that they were pushing through. They wouldn't listen to the flaws. mean, literally partying like it's 1999 with some attribution models or a particular tech stack that's aged out and even just that mindset. And so it was really difficult for them to hear when there was an issue on the sales side. Whereas I think folks who are. Maybe a little less, or I guess maybe open and they have a, they have a more open and honest mindset. They're willing to admit when there's, when they're wrong and when there's mistakes, I find that those are always the organizations that are going to have the best relationship between sales and marketing. Because if you can admit that you're doing something wrong, even though if it takes time to get there, as long as you can admit it, everybody can move forward and everybody's happy. but if you don't and you try to. Yeah, square peg round hole something. Eventually all the wheels fall off. You make some really valid points about setting your own ego aside. And this is something that admittedly has taken me many years to be comfortable doing, but that is being the first to admit my shortcomings. and the first to admit my knowledge gaps. and because you're so tall, it's very difficult. Yes, all five feet two of me is very very tall so difficult but Realistically, there's a it took a lot of practice I mentioned this earlier in the call too, but there are things you have to practice and one of the things I had to practice was admitting when I had a knowledge gap admitting when there there's just some ignorance on my side, but also being able to admit those things in a way that still shows my level of confidence as well as competence. I think a lot of people are afraid to say, I don't know the answer to this, but I actually say it in a way that's, I think it's my tone, but I actually say it in a way that is really, really confident. And maybe a little bit, it depends. If it's my marketing team, if it's my team, I'd be like, guys, I, I, I'm a moron. I don't know any of stuff. But if it's somebody like, if I'm in a call with leadership, for example, I will just say very, I will just say very, very astutely, I'll just say, I'll just say, I don't actually understand how this works. Like I'll just say just like that versus there are some people who are like, I don't really know how that works. Do you hear the difference there? There's a difference between saying, I don't understand why. I don't understand how that functions today versus I don't understand how that functions today. You hear the difference? you, you have to like, and it takes, it took years of practice. And especially when I was a younger woman in tech, I was always so afraid to admit when I didn't know something, but I realized how, how much more confident people are in you when they can see that you know where your shortcomings are because you're never going to bullshit them. And people who are that self -aware are very, very smart. So I've just kind of leaned into that. Like my self -awareness and my confidence is one of my superpowers. And my confidence enables me to be like, guys, I don't understand this. Somebody explain this to me, please. So, yeah. I love how I love how you gave me some crap at beginning of the call because I was complimenting you too much and I called you a superhero. And now this is the second time in the conversation that you have talked about your superpowers. Okay, I mean everybody can have respect don't do this to me mark All right. So the cultures that you build from the MOPs function are very unique in how transparent and how empathetic they are. How do you build that coming into an organization? like, you know, your first 90 days somewhere, what are the things that you do to be able to put the foundation in place where you can continue to operate like that? your first 90 days is so important. one, I mentioned this earlier, but I really lean into my delusional confidence. That is one of it. I'm able to empathize with people and be okay being wrong. And that really enables people to be a bit more vulnerable with me. And I think part of reason why I'm able to just admit. that I'm wrong so often is because I'm really, really confident. But especially in that first 90 days, and I'm really guilty of this, I get a little too overenthusiastic about things. But when in your first 90 days, especially when you are working with people who've been there for years, who know what is wrong, you have to be a little, I have to be a little careful with the things that I spit out or the things that I automatically say. shut my dang mouth more than I'm comfortable with my first 90 days. You know me, I can blab forever. And it is a serious, it takes practice and conscious effort for me to just listen and also ask questions in the correct environments to get people to be vulnerable and honest with me. I'm not going to talk to my SDRs when their manager is there and ask them about their problems. I'm smarter than that. I'm going to take the extra time to maybe get in a one -on -one conversation with them or maybe just me and two other SDRs and admit my own shortcomings first and then enable them to very confidently share some very vulnerable issues that they're running with, especially in that first 90 days. I really want to, for my new team to know that I am a safe place for them to be really vulnerable with me about some of the problems that we're having and some of the problems that they are having that maybe other people aren't seeing. And being able to have those really, I don't know if the word intimate is correct, but I'm going to say it, having more intimate conversations about what they've experienced while they're there. has really given me a chance to establish myself as one, a friend, and two, a partner, so that you know that I'm invested in change as well. And that all comes with me shutting my dang mouth. That does not come naturally to me, as you know, and anybody who's listening to this knows me knows. It takes practice. It's funny, so you use the word intimacy and I'm sitting there like, okay, so does that make you the intimacy coordinator of the data? Are you like, a movie set, you're like, okay, and we're gonna put a loin cloth over this one right now. Yes, sometimes it feels that way, especially when I'm interpreting data or making data dashboards for certain leadership. need to make sure that I'm covering up the stuff that's going to distract them. You know what I mean? Yep. you, got, you got two actors on set who hate each other, but they now have to kiss. So fun. you, you said something earlier about how they know the problems that they're having. And I think the magic actually is the fact that if they knew the answer to solve it, they already would have done so. And so you need to listen to the people who. know and truly understand the problem, but even their ideas on how to solve it may not be accurate. And so like how you filter those in is important because, you know, if you're there to solve a problem that's existed for a year, years at a time, nobody knows how to solve it except maybe you, because it hasn't been solved yet. Yeah, and that happens a lot with startups too. I've worked a lot of startups, which is typically questions that had never been asked before are getting asked. Therefore, we have never had an answer before. to that note of sometimes you know a better solution. Sometimes marketing operations or operations in general gets affectionately known as the no department, but Part of it comes from the fact that people sometimes ask for specific things. And rather than jumping in, I will be one of the first people to ask, why are you asking for this? What are you trying to solve for? And then I can peel back those layers even more. And then I will say, I totally understand why you might want this. Did you know that this might actually be better? And as a bonus, you'll actually get this too. And then they'll be like, yeah, that's a great idea. And also as a bonus for me, takes me less time and effort to do if I do it my way. So it's more efficient all around. And yeah. I always prefer people to state the problem in their own voice. Like I don't, I'm not going to accept you typing the problem on Slack. Now I don't need to have a meeting on everything, but I will ask that you record a, you know, one minute, like Vidyard video or something on the phone while you're like taking the dog outside to be able to state the problem in the context is how it comes out of your mouth because how we type things. and how we communicate verbally are completely different. And something is always lost in translation. If somebody just sends an email and says, this is what we need. Bullet, bullet, bullet. And then you lose all the context. You're never going to be able to get it right. Yeah. So I always reply back like, that's great. Could we either meet for 10 minutes about this, or could you record me a short video explaining the importance and why, you know, why we need this? I am such a hoe for a voice note, dude. Because Slack allows you to, Slack allows you to send a voice note that also transcribes it for you. And I send them and receive them a lot. I love them. It helps a ton. And also sometimes it eliminates a meeting. I love eliminating meetings. a video always better than a voice note because then you also get to see, cause they said you lose 60 % of communication without being able to see body language and you know, where they're excited, where they're not, like you can see how they're leaning in, leaning out, all that. Like, I don't know, there's a huge percentage of communication. that we lose when it's just a voice note. Now it's better. You can hear inflections a lot better than if somebody sends you an email. I hate emails of death and they always come in at the end of the day. It's, like, like four 25 and it's the email of death with these three bullets. And this is what we need and we need it tomorrow. And no context, no communication, just that. yeah, think everybody's experienced that before. It sucks. So how do you draw lines? So you have a lot of experience and exposure to the problems, particularly that startups are trying to solve on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. And so how do you put up the appropriate guardrails to make sure that your expertise is not lost on a bad decision? I ask a lot of questions. I mentioned this earlier on the call too, when we talk a lot about egos and working collaboratively and effectively with other people, but asking the right questions to get them to kind of come to the conclusion themselves and realizing that my idea is a little better, it's a dance and takes a long time, but it helps immensely, even though it's annoying. I think it's really, really necessary that if I can ask really thought -provoking questions, then my expertise will just naturally come through. people are always more prone to the way that you make them feel, right? So I find that if I make people feel smart, then they perceive me as smart. People are funny like that. Speaking of funny, I'm gonna play a really weird game with you right now like I Did promise some some curveballs. So just to the audience knows this is a big one We're gonna play a game Well, okay, so we brought up we brought up our mutual love of Broadway and musical theater and so I want to play a game where we go back and forth Where we share a lesson that go -to -market teams can learn from a song from a musical I will go first because you need to wrap your head around it. And I knew the game was coming. You didn't. The first one I'm going to throw out is learn from Hamilton and don't throw away your shot. The worst thing that you can do is spend three months going, going down the wrong way, despite the fact that you knew that it was wrong all along. You need to be loud. You need to be boisterous. The entire premise of Hamilton is this guy, you know, he will not stop talking until you understand his point. Now to your point, know, a lot of that talking should be asking questions and then listening. But, you know, don't let the wrong decision be made because you weren't willing to speak up. Do not throw away your shot. So that's first one out there. What do you, what do you got for us? What, Broadway musical are you going to? Am I gosh I'm going through I have some recency bias Ooh. You're gonna edit out this pause, right, of me thinking, because this is a fun game, but I gotta really think about this. I might, I might not. We'll see. It's all up to the editing gods. I can't promise anything. So I just saw Wicked, and it was Wicked. And then I just saw Hairspray. And David Hansen's one of my all time faves. obviously we're talking about the musical, not the movie. god, the movie never happened. What are you talking about? The movie never happened. Okay, turn it off from Brooke of Mormon, which I know the song is about, what? I know, but turning it off, think there is a lot of, especially working at a fast -paced marketing startup, it's really important that you know how to shut certain parts of your mind off to really focus on the one thing. I'm not saying, my gosh, I'm gonna get canceled for suggesting that song, I think. When I say this song from Turn It Off, Book of Mormon is an inspiration for marketing teams. There is something to be said about in that song where he just, just turn it off. And it's really necessary to keep your sanity, especially to go to market in this day and age when there are a million fucking things that need to be done and that you want to do. You got to turn off that noise, which can be hard for people with ADD, as it myself, but it's a really good lesson. and a good skill to have. I'm thinking of another one. Love it. Well, let's do one more. So far we've done more recent musicals. So I'm going do a throwback. We'll do a Rodgers and Hammerstein one. And I will go Oklahoma. The song Surrey with a Fringe on Top. And that's a perfect example for marketers of painting a picture and telling a story. Very, very beautiful imagery of this fictitious siree that he doesn't even have. Which I also suppose is a example for salespeople to not oversell because then you have to deliver. But I don't want to spoil it if you haven't seen the like 60 year old musical Oklahoma. But that is a pivotal plot point. have not actually. If we're gonna go old school. you haven't. OK, that is that is now that is now your homework, because I've well, I will probably now post this clip as an episode clip. And that is your homework to reply back into those comments on LinkedIn about having watched it and what you thought of Oklahoma. Okay, okay I will. I don't know where I can find this. I'm sure there's a slime tutorial on YouTube somewhere. a movie. And there's a video. They did a recording of Hugh Jackman starring in Oklahoma. So if you want dancing Wolverine, perfect. so much fun. Okay, mine is The Confrontation. If we're going like classic. The Confrontation, what's the name? The name is a wrap. Yeah. classic people might cancel you for that You know all the all the Broadway folks all the Broadway folks like the classic. I don't know if you can call it classic But I love that Yes, the confrontation teaches you a lot about what not to do when you're trying to collaborate with sales. It's not a product, it's a beautiful song, beautiful duet, not productive conversation with, no. There's not a lot of listening in some of these duets, for sure. Awesome. Well, this was this was a ton of fun. I will like like like I do with all all of my guests I will leave you with the last word and I want you to give advice to you know, ten years ago Steph Who's coming into her go-to -market career? What advice would you give her? That's funny because I just got asked a question today about what I would give 20 year old me advice for, but it was like all of life, but specifically with work. actually, I really wish I could go back and just tell myself this. Ask for help. You're not going to look stupid. You're going to look stupid when you did it wrong and you have to kind of fumble your way through it. Ask for help. I know you're excited and you want to prove yourself, but it's counterproductive when you're trying to prove yourself and you end up really fucking things up, which I did do a lot. 10 years ago.