Why Marketing Fails Without Sales Alignment and a Revenue First Mindset with Jennifer Jurgens

A. Lee Judge [00:00:00]:
What is the point of of getting people in if they can’t retain them? It’s a never ending churn at that point. And so that that focus on what happens after the first sale can be so powerful to the bottom line. Influential and thought provoking minds in marketing, sales, and business. The business of marketing podcast.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:00:24]:
A again to the business of marketing. I’m A Lee Judge. You know, sometimes when I’m browsing A, I come across a post or a personality that makes me say, I A talk to that person or a conversation with this person would be valuable for other marketers to hear. So today’s guest represents one of those cases where, you know, I’ve been talking about some similar things about b to b growth and building revenue teams A I found her insights on LinkedIn relatable and valuable. So I wanna share her with you today. Joining me today on the business of marketing is Jennifer Jurgens. Hey, Jen.

A. Lee Judge [00:00:57]:
Hey, Lee. How are you?

Jennifer Jurgens [00:00:59]:
Doing great. So glad to have you A, you know, I’ll get into your background a bit in a moment but let’s just jump right into to some topics here. Yeah. One of my favorite topics to share with marketers is to help them understand the importance of revenue metrics over marketing metrics. Mhmm. So A have you been sharing lately along the those lines of helping marketers setting revenue goals over marketing metrics?

A. Lee Judge [00:01:25]:
Well, I just did this presentation with the Small Business Association of Michigan, and I called it the revenue first marketing plan. Right. In in my career, which has been in and out of marketing and sales organizations for just a few years, I always found that marketing’s budget was the first thing to be cut in any kind of recession or uncertainty, which we know a little bit about right now.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:01:47]:
Mhmm.

A. Lee Judge [00:01:48]:
And that that just drove me crazy because, marketing is as important as sales as is customer success in that end to end revenue cycle. The problem being, the c suite, the leadership team, doesn’t see it if marketers don’t talk about the things that matter to the c suite. And nothing matters more than revenue. And so just giving giving marketers, even in small businesses, the, the language, right, and maybe a couple of templates to start with. Yeah. But where is the company looking to make revenue this year? Where are we gonna get margin? Where is our where is our capacity, before they start going into, you know, the latest and greatest in marketing tactics? And, and that was really I think it reframed the conversation for a lot of the young marketers in the room, because they had never thought about their position that way.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:02:47]:
Interesting. I think A the the speech that I was giving when you and I met, I think it was a B2B profs, B2B marketing profs.

A. Lee Judge [00:02:55]:
Yeah, yep.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:02:56]:
I kind of impromptu came on stage and said, you’re in the right room because this is a room where if you’re a marketer Lee can help you keep your job. And that was predicated on let’s talk about some ways we can talk revenue instead of talking marketing.

A. Lee Judge [00:03:10]:
Yeah.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:03:10]:
So when you talk to marketers yeah. Go ahead.

A. Lee Judge [00:03:12]:
Marketing is a value add, not overhead. And I feel like it’s been my mission to prove that over and over again.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:03:20]:
That’s our connection. We have this mission. We feel this passion to help marketers speak a language that helps them have credibility in A organization. So to what you said earlier, you know, when it’s when it’s A or Q2 A we see marketing A getting slashed, you and I know what’s gonna happen come Q4.

A. Lee Judge [00:03:41]:
Mhmm.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:03:41]:
Right? Sales is wondering what happened.

A. Lee Judge [00:03:44]:
Where are all the leaks? Lee. A.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:03:47]:
And then we get asked to run a fire drill in November A it just doesn’t work that way.

A. Lee Judge [00:03:53]:
No. No.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:03:54]:
So let’s talk about marketing in a specific area. And I know you have some background on this too. When it comes to like content A, we know generally marketing as a whole is a long game. So, when you’re talking to these marketers how do you help them gain language to convey the importance of marketing being a long game as opposed to advertising or coin operated quarter in dollar out.

A. Lee Judge [00:04:19]:
And dollar out. Well, I guess, can back it up a little bit, especially with, with AI and the massive amounts of content that’s being generated right now, the first step goes all the way back to that that revenue first goal that I was talking A, where we we sit with the marketing team and the sales leadership team to say, where do you expect the revenue to come from this year? And that’s in terms of customer segmentation. Mhmm. So macro, micro, what are their and then A, pains, gains, triggers. Right, and we’ll sit there and we’ll go through where do you want the revenue to come from this year. We’ll try to get them to narrow that down, right, to, like, four to six audiences. Because we all know if everybody can buy your product, no one’s gonna buy it. It doesn’t solve their problem.

A. Lee Judge [00:05:11]:
And once we, once we do that, I throw out this question. Okay. Here’s your you you could sell to all these people. You could market to all these people. Here’s a hundred dollars for your advertising budget. How are you gonna split it up? A so from that, then we take and it it’s a it’s a battle. You’d be surprised at how long that question can take in a workshop. Do you know what I mean? Because they’re like, woah.

A. Lee Judge [00:05:39]:
Only A hundred dollars? I’m like, yes. $100. And then we take that focus area. Right? And I think that’s I think that’s the key. The key is focus. Then we take that piece forward and start doing that that customer journey, and Lee A we find, one, A answer A know, all all kinds of things where the problem could be. The problem could be there A bunch of proposals have been sent A nobody’s buying. Okay, now marketing, your biggest opportunity is to lean in with content at the bottom of the funnel, maybe not A top.

A. Lee Judge [00:06:24]:
And so it, when you talk about the content long game, if we find that that is their biggest bottleneck, only then is that where we’ll start. But the, you know, I A a content leave us after four months, and he said, You didn’t generate any leads. And I said, how long is your sales cycle? And he said, I don’t know. You know what?

Jennifer Jurgens [00:06:51]:
I thought he was gonna say eight months, but he didn’t even know.

A. Lee Judge [00:06:54]:
He didn’t even know, and I guarantee you, it’s a gigantic play, so it’s a long, it’s a long sales cycle.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:07:00]:
Yeah. I think we’re agency owners. We’ve been on both sides of the table. We’ve seen these kind of horror stories. Even either we’re working inside the company trying to fight for the marketing team’s budget or we’re the agency trying to help out a company and the leadership doesn’t get it. Right. And I had a recent situation similar to that where they wanted ROI in three months. They wanted a content program A a social media program and they wanted to show ROI in three months.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:07:30]:
And, they asked us for a whole suite of services. And I said, well, you know, our whole suite includes content creation, social media A. But none of that’s A show you that kind of ROI. You might get a lucky hit, but that’s not what it’s designed for. So we said, you know A? We’ll give you a strategy in three months. We’ll examine what you’re doing. We’ll understand your target audience, your sales cycle, who you’re trying to reach, what kind of content. We’ll even give you some samples of content that can reach them, but we’re we’re not gonna promise you ROI in three months, because their sales cycle was at least a year.

A. Lee Judge [00:08:06]:
Oh my goodness. Yeah. There was no way.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:08:07]:
There’s no way.

A. Lee Judge [00:08:08]:
A unless there was, like, this huge batch of people right at the bottom of the funnel who weren’t, you know, stepping for some reason, but that’s A what is the rule? 95% of of your market is not

Jennifer Jurgens [00:08:19]:
in the marketing market.

A. Lee Judge [00:08:20]:
You reach out. Exactly. Oh, that’s impossible.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:08:24]:
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Jennifer Jurgens [00:09:17]:
You A, and it also makes me think about when you said that those few people who are at the bottom of the funnel who are ready, that means that your content marketing should be targeted to all levels of the funnel, even for those who are about to be tipped over into being a customer. They may need that one more video, that one more white paper, that one more social post to say, you know A, this is the company I wanna do business with. So content throughout the funnel makes sense. Which leads me to my next A, the funnel. Lee. Some marketers are trying to abandon the idea of the funnel A in reality it’s just a way for us to visualize how do we go from a massive audience that we may not know much about down to people who are interested down to A. It’s a many to a few, that’s the funnel in essence. But I think when it was developed people thought well A funnel is linear, they go straight through the funnel from awareness straight down.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:10:11]:
That may have been the case at one point but it certainly isn’t now. You know, now Now. As I always say it’s the customer’s journey, not ours A we can’t craft where they’re gonna be, we can only be there for them when they reach the stage they choose to be in. So, So I know you speak a lot on that. So tell me what your thoughts are about today’s customer journey A how, as marketers, we can be there where we should be and when we can be along that journey.

A. Lee Judge [00:10:35]:
Along that journey. Somebody once said, I can’t I’m terrible at attributing these quotes, A, all all models are wrong, but some are useful. And so you know what I mean? Like, visuals visuals are fantastic. And I I lived on that, you know, that top down funnel forever until recently where we’ve turned it on its side and made and gone into the bow tie world. Mhmm. Because what I’ve been able to do from the bow tie perspective is, I think it for whatever reason, does left to right seem to be easier to go back and forth than go up and down?

Jennifer Jurgens [00:11:10]:
Well, because up and down seems finite.

A. Lee Judge [00:11:13]:
It does.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:11:13]:
Lee and right, you can understand it going up and down and at the right at the same time. It’s a movement that’s different.

A. Lee Judge [00:11:19]:
It’s a movement. Yeah. Our core principle here is, we exist to prove, like, predictable business growth. In order to do that, we have to find, I have a supply chain background, and Lee what we’re doing is we’re applying Lee principles to the sales and marketing process because it is a process. What do we know about processes? Continuous improvement. Or as I like to say, the marketing is never A, nor is it a switch. It’s a dial. Right? And so as we look at, you know, where these people are in their journey, they’re they’re moving all throughout that funnel at all times.

A. Lee Judge [00:12:00]:
And what from a from a content perspective, if we can identify your biggest, I keep saying bottleneck, but do you know what I mean? Like, where are people getting hung up? Well, they’re getting hung up right here. Why? Okay, sales. What what is going on in this particular situation? What are the objections? What are the product features? What are the problems that marketing can lean into and help solve that? And it might be that they have to go three steps backwards in the funnel to to become more, educated on things A being given a buy now offer, because that’s not the problem. Do you know what I mean? And so so by by doing it in order of priority based on the biggest bottleneck, like, A can we solve first that moves the needle the most, which will then cause a new bottleneck, by the way, that we can then go and fix that A, and then we’ll go over here and we’ll fix the next one. Does that does that make sense? And I think it helps them see the funnel not as that linear progression.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:13:10]:
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Jennifer Jurgens [00:13:54]:
I’ve actually got your funnel here. And for the listeners, we’re gonna talk you through these, but I wanna talk about two of we we both have a funnel in the middle of our presentations we’ve done done lately. Lee I’ll describe mine and I’ll describe yours and we’ll put them both on the screen during the video version of the podcast. Because they speak to a similar problem. My funnel basically starts out with your large awareness and it shows your customers a large number of potential customers coming on top of the funnel A then even though it’s shaped like a traditional top to bottom funnel I have these side doors A customer comes in, you think they’re at a certain place Maybe they’re heading towards consideration stage Boom, they pop out of a side door and then hopefully they’ll come back into the top of the funnel again. Uh-huh. Then they might go a little bit further become a prospect. They’re closer, they’re at consideration stage, deep consideration then they disappear again.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:14:47]:
They may go out and find a buying committee. So as a business you think, oh they’re gone, we haven’t seen them in a while. They could be just going out to get procurement involved, which would be a great thing, right? They’re not necessarily in your funnel A, but they’re out there, they’re buying, they’re bringing in accounting, A procurement, maybe even legal. That means, as I told one of my coworkers today, that means that we’re the only customer they’re looking for, the only vendor they’re looking at at the A. Because you won’t go out and talk to procurement and legal unless you found your vendor. So A silence is good. And then they go back out, back into the funnel again, until eventually they get to the bottom, they survive A become a customer. And that’s where I wanna pivot to yours.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:15:30]:
We’re used to the left side, attract, nurture, convert, and engage. So start in the middle and guide us to the rest of it.

A. Lee Judge [00:15:36]:
Well, you know, that that piece right there in the center, that that initial, that first sale is so it’s so valuable, because we’ve we’ve learned A, we’ve solved a problem, we’ve gained some level of trust. Now A, Lee, I think, in b two b, which I feel is less transactional and more relational, is to continue to be there and to content to solve for that customer. I don’t I don’t think I’m alone in saying that A, you know, keeping a customer is much easier than finding a new one. And some of the metrics, I believe it was out of a a Gartner study I read, that said that for every dollar invested in the back, that right side of that funnel, you’re looking at a four to six x return versus the one to one that you get when you’re trying to get net new. And so once you know, if you’ve got the right segmentation, if you’ve if you’ve got salespeople who are giving you that valuable data that you need as marketers to understand what A what did we solve, what didn’t Lee solve, or perhaps we’re a, you know, we’re a SaaS A, or we’re leasing, and there’s a renewal A, or there’s the, it’s copiers, and we can sell them our paper or our maintenance, you know, that cross sell opportunity. When we gather information at that first sale, we should be creating the the segmentation for the back half, right, where we can continue to, drip, connect, solve all throughout that. A, otherwise, this is one of my favorite things. I think our, our head of revenue operations said this to me the other day.

A. Lee Judge [00:17:20]:
He’s like, we’re just pouring leads into a leaky bucket.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:17:23]:
Yes.

A. Lee Judge [00:17:24]:
Right? Like, what is the point of of getting people in if they can’t retain them?

Jennifer Jurgens [00:17:29]:
Yes.

A. Lee Judge [00:17:29]:
It’s a never ending churn at that point. And so that that focus on what happens after the first sale Mhmm. Can be so, powerful to the bottom line.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:17:40]:
Absolutely.

A. Lee Judge [00:17:41]:
And so I love analyzing that, and I love looking in there to see what’s been missed.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:17:45]:
This is I love this. So I do wanna learn about your company. It’s called A Bold Step, and I love that. I think when we spoke earlier, you mentioned sort of a pivot you maybe have been making. So, if you can, tell us about the company and maybe a bit, a little bit about the pivot.

A. Lee Judge [00:18:01]:
Yeah. We, so we started out about six years ago, pretty well focused on on marketing, improving return on marketing investment.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:18:09]:
Mhmm.

A. Lee Judge [00:18:10]:
And as that became more and more difficult, thank you, ZeroClick A, and, and attribution A of losing its, losing its shine for Lee. Thank you, Rand, for that, because I was with him, and then I was with him again. Lee A, at the end of the day, it is a process, right? Sales and marketing is a process. Mhmm. And when we look at it that way, and we look at it like we would any other process or process improvement, all we’re trying to do is to get it to work faster and better. And so what we’re doing in this big pivot is we’re applying Lee principles to the end to end sales and marketing process. And that meant we had to go deeper into, sales. We had to go deeper into customer success, than we were initially, and really get involved in the entire optimization of the end to end revenue cycle.

A. Lee Judge [00:19:13]:
And so that has, we’ve pivoted there probably in the last two years or so, where at the end of the day, we succeed when our clients increase revenue. That’s it. That’s the golden KPI. Now long sales cycle, I might look to pipeline Mhmm. To show pipeline A. Mhmm. But, yeah, at the end of the day, it’s not about credit. It’s about, reducing waste and speeding things up, More throughput in the revenue cycle.

A. Lee Judge [00:19:42]:
Right?

Jennifer Jurgens [00:19:43]:
So when you talk to executives about that, because we’re we’re in the same boat here. We we know what is true. We know that marketing isn’t something you just turn off and turn back on Lee advertising. I recently talked and written about how, you know, when there’s a recession, the companies who keep marketing through the recession maintain better and don’t have to A. And the ones who don’t market through the recession have a long line to try to recover. Yes. So, that’s some powerful numbers we can show based on history A the A to the last recession. We can show that A, but how do you, what are some other things you might use when you’re convincing a client, a business that, hey, you don’t wanna stop marketing right now.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:20:28]:
We, you know, we may not have hard numbers to prove it. We just know historically this is true. You know, without hard numbers, our job is A, but at the same time, there are things we just know to be true.

A. Lee Judge [00:20:41]:
Well, I I go in with setting expectations very plainly, very clearly.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:20:46]:
Mhmm.

A. Lee Judge [00:20:47]:
So the the first year, that you work with a growth agency, if you got a one x return, one to two, I’d be thrilled that you could tie I’m gonna put in air quotes directly back to a marketing lead source or whatever. Right? One to two x would be fantastic, and we we call that a foundational year. Foundation. So it it that lends, I think, really well to that conversation about being A proof or preparing now. And I like to talk about building the building the machine now. Let’s build the machine, A. So that then in year two, we’re looking at incremental growth. We’re still doing a lot of experimentation.

A. Lee Judge [00:21:30]:
Right? There’s a lot of a lot of testing and a lot that goes into that. What’s marketing? What’s not? What dials can we turn? What levers can we pull? And when you’re aligned, it’s so important to be aligned with sales and to understand the capacity that you have and where the margin is. Because when the market shifts, if you have that machine in place, boy, can you really lean into wherever the market has gone. Year two, I’m A thrilled with a four x. Year three is really where we start to see that exponential A, and I think I think CEOs, COOs, CFOs A the idea of process improvement and a machine. They can also understand the investment in a machine just like they would on the shop floor or anywhere else. We’re gonna build this machine, and then we’re gonna be able to react, more quickly and more wisely, to the different market conditions that are happening around you. And that that has been really effective, and we don’t hold, don’t hold our clients to long term hard, you know, contracts.

A. Lee Judge [00:22:40]:
We we like to be that dial. No. You know? Let’s turn it up. Let’s turn it down. How much return do you wanna see out of this investment? Well, I wanna see $5,000,000. Well, how much are you gonna invest? A hundred grand.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:22:54]:
We thought we thought it was organic. We thought it was not gonna cost anything.

A. Lee Judge [00:22:59]:
You know, like, come let’s come up with something that is reasonable, that is, you know, in in alignment with the incremental growth you wanna see from investing in this A. Year one, year two, year three, Then let’s get to work. So I I am really like you said, there’s no single thing. It’s it’s it’s all of the things. I think it’s being able to control the things, test the things, measure the things, and A, pivot when things happen, externally to the organization.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:23:32]:
Wonderful. So

A. Lee Judge [00:23:33]:
Lee that helps without any kind of visual there, but

Jennifer Jurgens [00:23:35]:
Yeah. Well, that that’s a mic drop.

A. Lee Judge [00:23:37]:
So one of the questions I wanted to ask you, because they said I could ask you one question Okay. Fair enough.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:23:44]:
Is that

A. Lee Judge [00:23:44]:
when we talk about sharing sales insights with marketing, have you come across, created, documented, Lee, the best systems, or I’m gonna call it a protocol of communication between sales and marketing that you find to be the most successful versus marketing is intruding on the sales meeting or sales is intruding on the marketing meeting, And but is there a you know, what is the correct and most valuable use of everyone’s time that you found?

Jennifer Jurgens [00:24:17]:
Well, in terms of good question. In terms of correct and most valuable, I think it comes down to the culture of that organization. And I say that because some organizations if they’re open to marketing A sales marketing, then it’s no effort for sales other than opening the door. Like Lee A sit and listen, right? And marketing can hear what the objections are A they can craft better content because of that. The other part would be if they A a culture of helping sales document more of what happens after speaking to a customer. That could be a harder internal sale because you’re asking sales to do something.

A. Lee Judge [00:24:53]:
Do something.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:24:54]:
I once had a salesperson say, Lee, that’s administrative work. A not gonna do administrative work. And I said, okay, well, if you won’t do the administrative work of telling us what’s working when you visit the field, don’t get upset when marketing brings you leads that don’t match what you want to find in the field. Yeah. So if the culture is if if A approves or supports rather that sales must document what they see in the field Mhmm. Then A can go and get it from there. You know, they can get it from the CRM, they can get it from the A automation platform. And I think the other thing is to develop a communication, so that both teams own both A, so that your A feel ownership in the marketing automation platform.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:25:39]:
All you gotta do there is show them how much you know about their customer, about their prospect because it is always eyes eye opening for a salesperson to go, wait a minute, you know they were on the website or you know that they filled out a form, you know that they were at the event last week or webinar, how could I not know that? And it builds A, I would think it could be an embarrassing moment for a salesperson to go on a call and talk to a customer A the customer knows more than they do about their product. Yeah. Right? That could be very embarrassing. So that I I think that’s almost a A fair tactic. Lee, you don’t wanna be on the call and your customer just left your website or the customer went to an event or webinar today A you don’t know about it? That’s not good for you. And so that makes sales start to buy in a little bit faster.

A. Lee Judge [00:26:25]:
Yeah. I’m thinking you’re making me think of, like, the questions I would ask the sales leader in order for them to go, maybe I should invite marketing in.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:26:36]:
Yes.

A. Lee Judge [00:26:37]:
You know, like, what is, oh, you know, I see that the, you know, the, I’ll A, proposals sent stage in the CRM is really full. What objections are you having? Mhmm. You know,

Jennifer Jurgens [00:26:50]:
A they say, you said we delivered these leads, but you said they’re not the right Lee. How are we supposed to know that?

A. Lee Judge [00:26:56]:
What’s wrong with that? How are

Jennifer Jurgens [00:26:56]:
we supposed to know? Yeah, what’s wrong with them? Tell us. I’ll tell you what, A us to the meeting next week, and we’ll improve if you let us sit on the meetings to learn what you’re looking for.

A. Lee Judge [00:27:06]:
Yes. Yeah. Yep. So having that, I think the key is in the approach.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:27:10]:
It’s the approach. So tell me before we go, how how can we contact you? What’s the best thing? A you wanna mention about anything? Go for

A. Lee Judge [00:27:18]:
it. Well, I, you know, I love, the conversations I’m having on LinkedIn. I’m I’m really enjoying it. So you can, you can follow me on LinkedIn. I love feedback on, on the A that I’m doing, the articles that we’re sharing. I would love that. You can also visit us at thenumber1boldstep.com. We have a whole new, short, video series that’s rolling out, about our process.

A. Lee Judge [00:27:44]:
And like you and I discussed, I’d I’d really like to do more more educating around this topic. There’s a lot that people can do on their own. Right? And then, and then just sort of leaning into consultants and expertise as needed. But, going back to what we said first, darn it, marketing is not the t shirt and coffee cup department. It is not. We are value add, not overhead, and I wanna help people prove that. Wanna help them prove it.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:28:18]:
We’re talking now because I love that we’re on the same crusade to align marketing and sales and help marketing make that difference. So again, thanks, Jan, for joining me. And for those who are listening Yeah, it was. I look forward to it again sometime. In fact, in person next time.

A. Lee Judge [00:28:36]:
Yes. Yes, please.

Jennifer Jurgens [00:28:37]:
So for those who are listening to the podcast, if you wanna see Jennifer and I video, the podcast and others are available in the podcast section of contentmonster.com. Catch you next time.

A. Lee Judge [00:28:51]:
Thank you for listening to the business of marketing podcast, a show brought to you by A