Collaborative Velocity: Accelerating Pipeline Together

Intro VO  00:06

Welcome to revenue rehab, your one stop destination for collective solutions to the biggest challenges faced by marketing leaders today. Now head on over to the couch, make yourself comfortable and get ready to change the way you approach revenue. Leading your recovery is modern marketer, author, speaker and Chief Operating Officer at Tegrita Brandi Starr

Brandi Starr  00:34

Hello, hello and welcome to another episode of revenue rehab. I am your host Brandi Starr and we have another amazing episode for you today. I am joined by Jennifer Hopkins. Jennifer is the driving force behind the marketing strategy at sonar with 14 years as a b2b marketing executive. She's known for driving category leaving leading brands to unprecedented growth and helping founders successfully exit with a knack for sales acquisition. Jennifer thrives in the intersection of art and analytics, constantly pushing the envelope to deliver campaigns that not only resonate, but also deliver tangible results. As cmo Jennifer understands the value of building high performance marketing teams and collaborating across the C suite to propel growth. When not crafting the next big campaign. She can be found enjoying time with her family in her new role as mom or mentoring the next generation of marketing trailblazers. Jennifer, welcome to revenue rehab, your session begins now.

Jennifer Hopkins  01:44

Hey, Brandi, how's it going? Thanks for having me.

Brandi Starr  01:48

I am doing great. Glad to have you on. Excited for our topic today. But before we jump into that, I like to break the ice with a little woosah moment that I call buzzword banishment. So what overused word would you like to get rid of forever?

Jennifer Hopkins  02:08

I think this is great. I only wish there were a buzz word police where we take these words, and they actually get vanished. You know, it's such a great icebreaker question. I was thinking about it. And the word I would banish is frothy. And I don't know if you've heard of this. It's popular, you know, in the tech space in the investment space. And I've heard it a lot in the past year and a half in regards to capital flowing around the marketplace. But for me, it just, it's a little cringe worthy to me. You know, it's just like too many people going to Starbucks and now they're pulling it into some of their their business investment lingo so frothy or froth in the business terms? I would I would accept one out. Okay, I

Brandi Starr  02:55

have not heard that one. I was gonna say what do you got against Starbucks, but now, people have taken the coffee lingo into the business world, which sometimes it's kind of like, how did we get here? Like, you know, who got a coffee and was like, You know what? Investment is frothy?

Jennifer Hopkins  03:16

I know, I hadn't heard of it till a year and a half ago when I started here at sonar. But yeah, it just, it bothers me for some reason.

Brandi Starr  03:25

Okay, well, I can promise you that I will not use the term frothy in this conversation. And I'm not even a coffee drinker. So in my day to day vernacular, anyway, we will banish that one. So now that we've gotten that off our chest, tell me what brings you to revenue rehab?

Jennifer Hopkins  03:49

you know, thinking about some topics that hopefully I could contribute to your your leaders, because you guys cover a lot of different topics here. And, you know, no doubt a topic that's very popular on your podcast, it's in the name of your podcast is driving revenue. So me personally, my opinion, and I think a lot of people would agree that if you're going to be driving revenue for an organization, you're not going to be successful doing it unless your sales and your marketing team have a really great relationship. And I'm hoping in a little bit of time that we have together branding, maybe we can kind of peel back the layers there a little bit and talk specifically about how leaders across sales and marketing can drive a healthy competitive mindset in order to accelerate that pipeline velocity that they're working so hard to achieve.

Brandi Starr  04:36

I love it. I love a good healthy competition just in general. I think it is an aspect we talked so much about marketing and sales alignment, which is important, but that little bit of you know, collaboration and competitiveness. I do agree can be valuable. I believe in setting intentions, it gives us focus gives us purpose, and most important, it gives our audience an understanding of what they should take away from our discussion. So I would say what's your best hope for our talk today? You know, what do you want people to really take away from the discussion?

Jennifer Hopkins  05:17

You know, my hope is that throughout our conversation, they can find some actionable pieces that they can take back and implement. Hopefully, I can give a few suggestions throughout the conversation today that they can maybe audit their current process and say, Okay, what are we currently doing to have a really great relationship with sales? And are we missing a few things? If not, maybe I can take a few suggestions from Brandi and Jennifer today, and maybe implement just one of those to see if we can improve the relationship between these two really important departments.

Brandi Starr  05:49

Perfect. So let's jump back to this healthy competition. You know, there's so much at least in my career, so much of the relationship between marketing and sales has been a lot of finger pointing a little bit of a knockdown drag out battle, in some cases, where there is this, you know, who's best at what, who drives what? And so, you know, that's why there has been this shift over the years of like, okay, how do we align? How do we be on the same page? How do we be collaborative. And so I'd love to hear your take on what sounds like the middle ground, which is we're not fighting, and we are collaborating, but that there is a little bit of healthy competition there. So what would you say that What do you mean by it?

Jennifer Hopkins  06:42

Well, and I would even kind of back that up for just a second to because when I was, you know, thinking about our conversation today, it still kind of blows my mind Brandi, that this is even a question to be had, right? Like, it's 2024. There's so much innovation, especially in marketing with the technologies that we're using to help us get closer. And I paused and asked myself, and I was like, Is this still an issue? And you know, I can answer it. And you know, you work across so many organizations and teams as well, too, like, do you see this as an issue? Because I do I mean, I could definitely sense that. When I joined sonar here a year and a half ago, there were some areas of improvement, that could definitely happen between these two teams. So you know, I just wanted to tee it up of like, it seems you would assume that this would be solved by now. But it's still something that happens today.

Brandi Starr  07:31

Surprisingly, I agree. And, you know, we work across a lot of different size organizations, generally mid market to enterprise. And honestly, I'd say the larger the organization, the bigger the challenge, because there tends to be so much more disconnect and silos that exist.

Jennifer Hopkins  07:51

So, you know, I think it's still a relevant topic for today. And, you know, to answer the question that you asked me, like, how do you go about building this healthy, healthy relationship and competitive mindset? I jotted down like four things in my mind that's been successful in my career, I think the first thing is that you've got to have a marketing leader who's not afraid to put a number on their back. You know, when I come into organizations, and I see sometimes the teams aren't getting along, it usually starts with this with the marketing leader was a little too skeptical to own a number. And I think that's a starting point that that just starts a little bit of a divide in the two teams. So one, I think you've got to be able to own a number. And I think that starts this healthy kind of Olive Branch of building a relationship building trust, because what you said earlier, oftentimes is these two teams don't trust each other, right? Like, sales says, I'm not getting enough leads, I'm not getting enough qualified leads. Marketing says, I'm giving you leads, but you're just not working hard enough. So I think building trust is really important. And I think to start, you've got to be able to own a number on the marketing side.

Brandi Starr  09:01

I think that is a great one. I know, Helen Baptist, who is, you know, cmo that is, you know, everybody kind of knows Helen and I really look up to her, she always says, You got to be able to carry the bag. And, you know, it's it is one of those things that is important because if I think about early in my career where marketing did not own a revenue number, we had a bunch of fluffy numbers that we were accountable to. And it did create a bit of friction, because sales was like, Look, if I don't hit a number, my job is on the line. You know, you don't have that same accountability. And therefore you don't have that same input state and again, you know, all those sorts like you don't have skin in the game. So we need to be driving what needs to happen. And so I do I agree wholeheartedly that marketing has to carry a number. And so you know what that number is, is always debatable. Because, you know, then you get into the influence attribution contribution, all these sorts of things. But yeah, I definitely agree that that does build trust.

Jennifer Hopkins  10:19

Yeah. And I think it leads into the second thing, which is, I think both sales and marketing leaders, they've got to have their teams aligned on the same KPIs, the same targets that they're going after. And if you can compensate both teams, you know, on that same KPI or goal. So for example, you know, sometimes you'll see marketing teams being gold on how many total leads can you bring to the table every month? Well, then you've got the sales team who's obviously working to hit their quota, which is close one revenue. And what you'll find is, these two teams focus on two different initiatives, which are just paddling in different directions. And I think you're finding more and more teams, you know, putting the marketing departments more focused on qualified pipe that they're generating, or even close one revenue generated by marketing. So getting closer to that number that they own, I think making sure that sales and marketing have similar goals and are compensated on those goals are really great as well.

Brandi Starr  11:17

And I want to dig into that a little bit more, because I agree with this as well. You know, in our book, we talk about what gets measured gets done. And compensation is the most clearest form of motivating measurement for employees. And when I've talked to other CMOS, and those that, you know, VPS, those that had marketing, they buy into the concept of aligning goals, and compensating people based on those goal alignments. But some of the pushback that I have heard is that that fundamental shift in comp for marketing is one of those things where it's like, just nobody wants to tackle the sales side, it's like comp plans, reviewing those like that just as kind of a normal part of business. And you don't see that so much on the marketing side. And so there is a little bit of hesitation to, to really try to push for that. Have you seen that? Any thoughts or advice there?

Jennifer Hopkins  12:30

I have, you know, I think marketing compensation is never going to be at the caliber of a sales compensation, right? Like, to your point, nobody wants to really kind of open that Pandora's box and kind of make it that complex. But I have worked in organizations and lead marketing teams, where you can structure bonuses, right, and incentive agreements on top of their base plans, to where it's still incentivizing the behavior. And it's not a complex structure, by any means, you know, you'll find some, some functions like demand gen that are a little bit closer, right, you could maybe build out their compensation package, you know, a little bit more meticulously, but across to your team, right? If you've got to, like for us sometimes what's our marketing qualified pipe goal that we're hitting this quarter, you can still align the team and figure out what that quarterly incentive semi annual annual incentive could be on achieving that specific goal. So, you know, I would say to some people who are considering this phase one, phase two, find a really easy way to maybe introduce it, see if you can get buy in from your marketing team, see if it is indeed kind of inspiring the behavior that you want. And then see if you've got to make it more complex or not, sometimes, you know, you know, simple, kind of gives go a long way.

Brandi Starr  13:43

I like that, okay, so we got, you got to carry the bag, we got to make sure that we are aligned on our KPIs. And ideally, tying comp to that, what's your number three,

Jennifer Hopkins  13:54

My number three is you've got to bring people into the fold. So you've got to, you know, alongside your sales leadership, you've got to create a collaborative environment. Oftentimes, these teams that are siloed, they're not even meeting regularly, which again, kind of just boggles my mind a little bit. Because if you're not putting these two teams in the same room together, how are you ever going to anticipate collaboration, so you've got to be able to bring them together? Let them weigh in and conversate on some important topics, like who is our ICP? Let's get aligned on who that is. Because that's the leads that I've been driving for you. And if we can agree on that, then hopefully, we're gonna get more qualified leads, higher close rates, and we're going to be able to help you hit your quota. Messaging, again, something really great sales is on the front line. So marketing can learn a lot from how to refine some of the messaging and positioning, things like lead scoring Brandi, even creating lead SLAs things that bring the teams closer together. So get them in the same room frequently figure out what kind of meeting cadence that is create a Slack channel where people can throw out ideas real time outside of meetings. The other thing, too, that I think is important with increasing communication across these teams Brandi is getting the marketing team to start sitting in or listening to recorded sales calls. I do this with my teams, and it's so great to follow up with them after they sit down their first sales call. They're just like, so impressed with what they learned. I think it helps them build empathy to the salesperson because sales is actually a really tough job. But then it also gives marketers light bulbs that go off, right, like, oh, my gosh, I didn't realize this was a sticking point in the sales conversation, maybe we can create some sales enablement that does this, or hey, I didn't even have an idea. But maybe this can be a campaign we can run. So again, getting the teams together, building this collaborative environment where they can actually talk and ideate and improve and optimize together.

Brandi Starr  15:56

I love that. And you know, that is as a career marketer, I can remember, you know, listening to sales calls for the first time. And I can remember like, and this was back before, we had like Gong and all these things where you were remote, where I was literally sitting at a desk in the room that just like double headset plug in thing like listening to this call. And I was feverishly scribbling notes, because it was like, Okay, we could get ahead of this objection in our marketing collateral, we could phrase this differently, we could capture this on our forms, like there were so no, I mean, that was like from one or two calls, I think I sat with this guy for like, two hours. So it wasn't even you know, this long time. But I had so many ideas. And I do think that it's so easy, you know, especially since most of us have teams that are stretched thin, and you know, we don't have enough resources, it's so easy to get caught up in the day to day and to not make time for those sorts of things. And so going back to what you talked about, about getting marketing and sales to meet, I always like to, you know, in these conversations tackles some of the objections and pushback that I hear. And one of the challenges that I have seen, you know, consistently come up is marketing will try to drive this initiative to get these collaboration meetings. And then their, you know, sales will agree to it. And then when it comes time for it, nobody shows up, like, oh, we had this, it's beginning of month, end of month, middle of month, you know, we've got this thing that thing, and it just is not or they'll do it for a month or two or a quarter or two. And then it just kind of fizzles. And so it, it almost feels one sided and forced. Have you been over able to overcome that? Or really get to where you know, both sides see the value?

Jennifer Hopkins  18:06

I think that's a good question, right? Because sometimes there's meetings overload these days, especially in a remote world. And to your point, people can just kind of, you know, fade into the background, if they don't find a meaning valuable. I think that this is kind of like a top down approach. Your marketing leader and your sales leader have to find a way to make sure that the team sees the value in these meetings, and they have to personally be on top of, Hey, did you meet with this counterpart in sales? What did they think? And so I think there's got to be some management, right, of being able to kind of corral this initiative. But I think you said something really important. How do you get them to see the value? If I've ever wanted anything done with sales, I have to tell them the why I have to tell sales, why this benefits them Brandi. And I think, you know, in a an example like this, if I'm talking to, you know, a director of VP of sales of like, Hey, you really should carve out 30 minutes for this meeting every month. And here's why. Because you're on the front line of sales, you want more qualified sales. And the best way for me and my team to make sure that you've got a qualified pipeline, is to hear directly from you and your team on how this campaign is running. There's no better person to tell me what's working and what's not working than you. And I think if you can tie it back to this helps you win. This helps you hit your quota. These people will show up for the meetings.

Brandi Starr  19:28

Yeah, and that is great at bias and, you know, something that we recently did, and you know, we are super small organization, but I do feel like it would scale is we were having those meetings and you know, consistently they were coming, but not necessarily feeling that the time was, you know, the best use of their time. And so, our CRO and I collaborated and you know, he asked asked me like, why do you want this call, like, why isn't important to you that this is an actual meeting. And through that conversation, and you know, I had to really pause and think about it, because the way we were doing the meeting before, was the marketing team was presenting all the stats of like, what campaigns were in market and what leads they drove, as well as what was in planning. And it was a lot of us talking with a bit of commute, you know, conversation at the end. And so through the conversation with the CRO, what we decided to do is marketing does all the slides, puts more detail into the slides and sends them out in advance. And there's some clear, here's what we're going to talk about during the call, like what's in planning, it's brainstorming input, the things you talked about messaging, ICP objections they're hearing for things that are already in market. It's, you know, what are you doing with the leads that have come from this? Are they good? Are they bad, and we've been doing that now, just three months, but the screen calls have been incredibly valuable. Because now we're not presenting anything like they have all reviewed it in advance. They come in, you know, they've digested it, they come in with ideas and questions. And you know, my two marketing managers after the first one, they both messaged me, like, wow, why haven't we been doing it this way? In the past? This is what we've been meeting. And so like, you know, what you were saying made me think about that? is also how do you format that meeting? Because sometimes there are a lot of meetings that could have been an email. Why isn't the time to gather valuable?

Jennifer Hopkins  22:02

Yes. And, you know, I think this kind of leads me into into the fourth point of, you've got to share the data. And you got to be transparent across both teams. And Brandi, when I think about like, in, in my career, what are some of the most successful sales and marketing meetings that I've had? It's the real simple ones. I mean, it's the ones that oftentimes, I will have weekly. And it might not be with the entire marketing team, right, and I'll start there. My most successful meetings have been when I'm meeting with myself, the CRO, the VP of sales and my demand gen team. And weekly, we are popping open the dashboards, we're looking at how we're pacing across pipeline, marketing's quickly presenting on how we're supporting them, and their efforts to build that pipeline. And we had like a quick conversation on like, Okay, this isn't performing well, here's where I could use some help. Now, and I think the important thing is to is your entire marketing team, and your entire sales team doesn't have to be in a meeting all the time together. I'm a huge fan of don't put anything on my calendar, if it could be an email. So I think it's finding the right meetings and putting the right people in the same room. Now, I'll also say, in order to get your marketing team to buy in, you've got to disseminate that information. So whether it's your head of marketing, or your head of demand gen who's hearing those conversations, they've got to then bring it back to the team and the most immediate, you know, next meeting with the marketing team, and say, Hey, guys, here's where sales pacing, here's where we are at, here's where we need to adjust a little bit. So I think finding the right meeting, pulling in the right stakeholders, and talking about the numbers, which is important to salespeople, I think you'll find a lot of success if you look at it that way. Also.

Brandi Starr  23:40

I love it. And so, you know, coming back to this competitive angle. Where do you see the healthy competition come in? Because we've talked like a lot of the things we're talking about real collaboration and alignment. Where do we see that healthy competition show up?

Jennifer Hopkins  24:02

I think healthy competition, it starts with the first thing that I mentioned, right? Building trust. So you've got a marketing team, you got a marketing leader who's putting a number on their back. And through small actions like that brand new, you're building trust, and you're building a relationship. And I think with any relationship, whether it's at work or in your personal life, once you build that relationship, you've got a little bit more casualness to kind of like poke and make fun of and inspire and, and I think the healthy competition, you know, I smile, because this is where I have fun with sales teams. You know, I can say, hey, VP of sales. I noticed you haven't hit your outbound sets for this week. What's going on? Do you need some help from marketing? And kind of like that healthy banter, you would be surprised how fast a salesperson will spark up and then that healthy competition kind of follows, you know, then they'll say, Oh, well if you were hiring more, or bringing in more qualified leads, and then you just kind of see the spark arise between the two teams, so building the relationship having a fun banter. And then I think that sparks some of the healthy competitiveness that naturally follows afterwards,

Brandi Starr  25:08

I think you just hit on something really, really key, because when there isn't that clear alignment, collaboration, healthy relationship, then competitiveness is where it becomes a battle and corruption, where there is trust, and that healthy relationship and that shared accountability, that is where it does then become a little bit of that, you know, healthy nudging of like, oh, I drove this much pipeline, what are you gonna do with it? You know, and then it's like, you know, you have those conversations in the sales meeting, like, look, we got to crush these leads, because marketing is talking trash about you. They are. And I do agree, like, I think that is like you've cracked the key nut there, that takes that from friction to healthy competition is all the work that you just talked about in creating that alignment and collaboration and trust,

Jennifer Hopkins  26:11

you won't be successful if you don't build a relationship. And I'll give you an example. I know we're running up on time. But like when I first started at sonar, you could tell there was a little bit friction between sales and marketing. And I was a new person coming in, you know, they didn't trust me, they were like, Oh, here's another marketing person, they're not going to be generating leads. And I said, Hey, guys excited to be here. My background is around building and kind of spearheading the pipeline, I'm used to driving at least 60% of the pipeline. And I'm going to do that here for you guys. So you better buckle up and start doing your outbound sets, because you've got some competition in town, and the whole room just kind of set up and we're like, oh, wow, this is gonna be fun, you know, but you, when you when you talk like that, you've got to be able to back it up. And so you know, fortunately, I was able to rally the marketing team behind that same kind of mantra. And every week, we were able to come to the sales team of hey, here's where we're inching up pipeline. And sonar, for example, I started and we were generating 4% of pipeline, you know, a year later, we're generating 70 plus percent of pipeline. So there's that that healthy banter. And you've got to be able to kind of backup the big talk that you've got so, but building the relationship and kind of poking them a little bit, making them smile, and letting them know that you're in it with them. I think that's the big thing.

Brandi Starr  27:29

Yeah, that that is like a good relationship with sales like that, where you can kind of rile them up a little bit. Like, that is such a beautiful thing. And it makes it better for everyone to come to work. Because you know, then both teams are kind of really rallying behind that, you know, the marketing teams like up, we talked trash, we got to make sure that we back it up and sales is like, we're not going to take that we're going to everything you throw at us. And then in the end, everybody's having fun that helps with retention of employees, and then you're driving revenue. And like, that's really, you know, like, I mean, it's clear why your 14 year career has been so successful with that kind of mindset. Because, you know, that is the way that you build teams and grow companies. My

Jennifer Hopkins  28:24

favorite people are sales. And I don't know a lot of marketing leaders that would say that, but I genuinely love working with salespeople, because, you know, if you go into it with the right mentality, you know, you can have a lot of fun driving revenue.

Brandi Starr  28:37

While awesome, talking about our challenges is just the first step and nothing changes if nothing changes. And so in traditional therapy, the therapist will give the client some homework, but here at revenue rehab, we like to flip that on its head and ask you to give us some homework. And so what I'd like to ask is, you know, if we've got marketing leaders that are listening, and they're like, what Jennifer is saying sounds amazing, but we are not there. Where would you suggest they start? What is that one thing that they can do to start to move the needle in the right direction?

Jennifer Hopkins  29:16

I would say it's a lot of what I said earlier at the beginning of the call, audit your current process, like take five minutes and actually sit down and think how am I currently collaborating with the sales team. And if you're doing all four of the things that we talked through today, awesome, high five, keep doing it. If there's something that you haven't tried yet, my one homework would be pick one. Try it out for 3060 days and see if it's helping. My guess is that it is going to help and then if it does move on to another one. And then over time, hopefully you've got all four checked off and you've got a really great relationship with your sales team.

Brandi Starr  29:52

I absolutely love it auditing prot you know process is my jam. And so that is a great place to start. because if you don't know where there are gaps or things that are not working, then it does, you know, it can feel huge to tackle. And you know, having the four sort of key things is also really great. Well, Jennifer, I have thoroughly enjoyed this discussion. It's been insightful. But that's our time for today. But thank you, Brandi. Before we go, how can people stay connected with you? Follow

Jennifer Hopkins  30:30

me on LinkedIn. You can find me under Jennifer Hopkins. Or you can pop over to the sonar website and find me on there as well, too. But thank you again for having me. Brandi, great conversation this afternoon. Awesome.

Brandi Starr  30:42

Yes, I have thoroughly enjoyed it, we will make sure to link to your LinkedIn as well as sonar. So check the show notes wherever you are listening or watching this podcast. And if this conversation has resonated with you, I encourage you to go back to Episode 38, where we talked a bit more about the marketing and sales divide and how to close that gap as well. Well, thanks, everyone for joining us. I hope you have enjoyed my conversation with Jennifer. Can't believe we're at the end. Until next time.

Outro VO  31:18

You've been listening to revenue rehab with your host Brandi Starr. Your session is now over but the learning has just begun. join our mailing list and catch up on all our shows at revenuerehab.live. We're also on Twitter and Instagram at revenue rehab. This concludes this week's session. We'll see you next week.