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How to Leverage Brand Differentiation for Massive B2B Growth
In the increasingly competitive and saturated world of B2B SaaS and tech, clear brand differentiation and strategic positioning are the most overlooked levers for sustainable growth. While often dismissed, these are critical components in helping companies directly shorten sales cycles and lower their customer acquisition costs (CAC). When done the right way, they can transform everything from strategic alignment across teams to campaign effectiveness and sales velocity. So how can B2B marketing teams develop clear brand differentiation strategy that drives measurable revenue?
That’s why we’re talking to Chantelle Little (Founder and CEO, Tiller Digital), who shares her expertise on how to leverage brand differentiation for massive B2B growth. During our conversation, Chantelle discussed why clear brand differentiation and positioning are underrated growth levers for SaaS and tech companies, especially regarding shorten sales cycles and lowering CAC. She also highlighted the importance of strategic alignment and effective positioning, particularly in the face of increasing competition and the market’s maturity. Chantelle discussed why understanding customer pain points is crucial, and how to leverage AI for audience insights. She provided advice on conducting competitor analyses, gathering customer feedback, and leveraging metrics like unaided recall and CAC to quantify brand performance. Chantelle also underscored the necessity of aligning product marketing and sales teams for impactful branding and scaling.
https://youtu.be/IF4TaI0QAfU
[00:00] Why brand differentiation is a non-negotiable now in the world of SaaS
[02:36] Why AI is a double-edged sword: great for starting positioning work, but dangerous if human judgment isn’t layered in
[08:40] The pushback founders give (“it’s too early”) and why those that invest early remove friction from fundraising, hiring, and conversion
[11:49] Key pitfalls to avoid regarding brand differentiation (and branding in general)
[20:14] How to make brand ROI tangible: work backward from customer lifetime value (CLV), target a specific CAC reduction, and show the revenue math in founder language
[28:34] The 4-step positioning framework:
1) Define your market and competitive alternatives,
2) Gather customer interviews, surveys and competitor audits,
3) Mine for real differentiation beyond table stakes,
4) Operationalize across the website, sales decks and outbound
[39:31] Metrics for proving brand’s impact: unaided recall, branded search growth, direct traffic, CAC trends, conversion rates, sales cycle length, and inbound lead quality
Companies and links mentioned:
TranscriptChristian Klepp, Chantelle Little
Chantelle Little 00:00
One key pitfall I see is just treating brand as a cosmetic exercise, right? So it’s really, especially when people are, you know, not super familiar with brand, not super familiar with marketing. It can be really easy to, you know, associate logo with brand, and it’s, it’s a lot more comprehensive than that.
Christian Klepp 00:19
It’s something that tends to get overlooked in the world of B2B SaaS and tech, yet it’s a crucial component in helping companies to shorten sales cycles and lower Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) I’m talking about clear brand differentiation and positioning. When done the right way, it can transform everything from strategic alignment across teams to campaign effectiveness and sales velocity. So how can B2B Marketing Teams develop clear brand differentiation for growth? Welcome to this episode of the B2B Marketers in the Mission podcast, and I’m your host, Christian Klepp, today I’ll be talking to Chantelle Little, who will be answering this question. She’s the founder and CEO of Tiller Digital that helps B2B, SaaS and tech companies scale through strategic customer centric marketing. Tune in to find out more about what the speed to be Marketers Mission is okay, and away we go. Chantelle Little, welcome to the show.
Chantelle Little 01:13
Thanks for having me, Christian. I appreciate it.
Christian Klepp 01:15
Great to have you on the show. You know, we had such a great pre interview conversation, and I’m really looking forward to this discussion because, man, this is something that’s so important. And I’m not saying this because I also do branding, but it’s just something that I think is really important. I personally feel from my own experience, it’s something that tends to get overlooked a lot, especially in in the world that you operate in, which is in B2B, SaaS and tech, all right, so I’m going to keep the audience in suspense a little while longer, while I go through the first question.
Chantelle Little 01:48
Okay, sounds good.
Christian Klepp 01:49
So you’re on a mission to help B2B SaaS teams clarify their story, sharpen positioning, and build websites that drive pipeline. And who doesn’t want that? I think is the better question. But for this conversation, I’d like to narrow it down to the topic of how clear brand differentiation and positioning shorten sales cycles and lower CAC. So for those that don’t know what CAC is, it’s Customer Acquisition Cost. So let’s kick off the conversation with two questions, and I’m happy to repeat them. So question number one, why do you believe that brand differentiation is the most underrated growth lever in B2B? And question number two, as a follow up, where do you see many B2B SaaS companies struggle?
Chantelle Little 02:36
Yeah, well, maybe I can kick off with the differentiation and positioning pieces. I think one thought that comes to mind is that differentiation from a branding perspective, perspective has always mattered. But the market has changed a lot in in the last decade, but even in the last 18 months, last two years, it has shifted a lot. One of the things that has changed so much is that the SaaS market in particular has matured a lot over the last number of years. And I love to follow all the stats on what’s happening in the market. And if you just consider that, we’re like mid 2020s, and it’s like the SaaS market is roughly 300, 400 billion. And a lot of you know data out there suggesting that that market could double between now and 2030 so in the next four years, kind of thing, we might see that market reach closer to 700 billion. So I share that, because a decade ago, when people were entering the SaaS market, there were fewer that. There was less competition. There were fewer people to actually compete with. By nature, there were fewer buyers as well, because less companies have shifted a lot in terms of their use of SaaS products in operating their businesses, but the market has shifted so it’s more mature, there’s more competition, there’s higher expectations that come with that as well. And then the other thing you know, in addition to saturation in the market, is that the barriers to entry have dramatically lowered, right? So I think last week, I was reading an article about, yet again, another company that has used lovable to launch a you know, product in market within two weeks and generated millions of dollars of revenue. I’m worried about misstating the facts so, but it was like millions of revenue in a short period of time. So when the barriers are lower, the market is saturated, there’s more of a need for differentiation, and I’m really passionate about that, because if we communicate the same story, and if we communicate sameness, we’re never going to win. AI (Artificial Intelligence), obviously lovable is a good example of an AI platform companies are using, but it also has accelerated the ability to create products, but also it is contributing to sameness, like if you put your your competitors into AI and you ask it to spit out positioning for you and your key messaging, it’s a great start, and I’m actually. A huge advocate of using AI for those those steps, but probably talk about that a little bit later in the podcast too. But it’s really critical that human judgment is layered into that that work. Otherwise, you know, brands will be just spit out from AI, and by nature, they will probably become more similar, not more distinct. So those are a couple to answer. Kind of the first question on why I think it’s underrated. I think if companies can really nail that, it really helps with getting traction, and not just, you know, a little bubble of success, but long term traction and long term performance, which is really key. That’s a that’s a big one for brand. So hopefully that that helps, and then I could go into, like, some of the things where I see companies really struggling. I think there’s a few areas I think that a lot of companies, really, if I’m talking early stage for a moment, a lot of companies that I’ve worked with, or I’ve seen, have really struggled to understand the power of getting those foundational brand pieces figured out. So if I use positioning as an example, if you don’t get your positioning correct, all the money invested after that really might, you know, not work in the way that you’re hoping it will work. So it’s kind of going to that foundational layer, and really making sure the foundation is solid, and then building off of that foundation worth saying, hard to get it right. You know, like the first time, you’re constantly iterating on your positioning, not just in the early stage, but as you scale up, you know, I go back to our positioning as a company every year, if not more frequently than that, and you start to tune and experiment and hone it. But I think the core piece is that if you don’t position yourself, you will be positioned by the market, and it may not be in your favor. So being intentional and strategic about that, it may be seemingly insignificant, but it’s really, really critical in terms of getting momentum. So that’s just kind of one thing is like undervaluing brand, which I know we’re going to talk about more here today.
Christian Klepp 07:14
Absolutely, absolutely no thanks for sharing that. And that’s something that like, really, you know, when you brought it up, it makes me clench my teeth and I just, I just like, you know, because every time, I mean, not always, you know, certainly there’s, there’s companies that we work with that, um, they either do get it or they’re open to a different perspective, right?
Chantelle Little 07:37
Yeah.
Christian Klepp 07:38
But more often than not, especially in B2B, I always find that there’s always got to be somebody down there that pushes back on the whole branding aspect and says that’s a complete waste of our time.
Chantelle Little 07:50
Yes.
Christian Klepp 07:51
Right? And I feel, and perhaps this has been your experience as well. But not to sound harsh, but you know, ignorance is bliss.
Chantelle Little 07:57
Yes.
Christian Klepp 07:59
Because, you know, if people don’t understand something the dangerous Well, if I don’t understand it, then perhaps it’s not that important, and nothing can be further from the truth.
Chantelle Little 08:11
Yeah.
Christian Klepp 08:11
Right. So what’s your take on that? Because, I mean, you must, you know, in your in your day to day dealings with clients, especially in those sectors that you serve, you probably get some pushback on, well, why should we do this foundation piece? Why should we do this branding like, you know, we it just sounds like it’s gonna run up, you know, our costs, it’s, it’s, it’s more investment. Why should we do that? We should focus on generating pipeline instead. But what’s your take on that?
Chantelle Little 08:40
Yeah, I definitely have experienced that, so it’s a great question. And have come up that come up against that a lot, and I don’t like generalizations, but generally speaking, a lot of founders that you know, I’ve had the opportunity to speak with and work with over the years are not necessarily coming from a marketing background, and often not coming from a sales background as well. They they usually have a specific area of expertise. It could be domain knowledge, it could be subject matter knowledge, but they’re very focused on the product itself, especially in the SaaS space. So it’s, it’s very product centric. And that’s good, because if, if all you have is sales and marketing and you don’t have a product, then it doesn’t work. Either it’s it’s really about this balance and this, this tension between the two. So the pushback that I often get is that it’s too early to invest in brand. That’s the the one that I hear quite frequently. It’s not worth the investment, or it’s too early, or we need to have 100 customers before we’re going to spend that much money or that much effort. And I think some of it stems from limited data pools. We only have so much data, and we only have so many customers we can speak to that spending money on it. Now we’re making too many hypotheses. So why would we over invest? And like I said, a balance is needed because you don’t want to over invest. But the pattern that I see sometimes downstream is that those founders are sometimes struggling to get investment, struggling to attract top talent, struggling to, you know, convince beta users to convert into paid customers. There there’s some downstream effects that happen and they offer. There’s nuance to its of course, that changes by the nature of the business. But my observation is that founders that are willing to invest, you know that reasonable amount in brand see friction removed from a lot of those different kind of goals that they’re trying to achieve. So I think that that’s, that’s super, super key, is that, you know, proper positioning, proper differentiation, and I mean even going to the visual side of branding as well. Is that credible brand? It really helps, especially in a world where there is a lot of skepticism, right? Like, is that fake? Is that real? Like, am I really going to spend money on that? It concerns compliance, like, the list goes on. You know? How do I know this is credible? And brand plays a really, really big, critical role in that. So I do see that pattern quite a bit, and I’ve seen those that are willing to take the investment, and I’ve seen friction be removed.
Christian Klepp 11:30
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. I’m going to move us on to the next question about key pitfalls. So if we’re talking about marketing teams within B2B SaaS or tech. What are some of these key pitfalls that you would say they should be avoiding, and what should they do instead?
Chantelle Little 11:49
Yeah, so there’s a couple that come to mind. One is, one key pitfall I see is just treating brand as a cosmetic exercise, right? So it’s really, especially when people are, you know, not super familiar with brand, not super familiar with marketing, it can be really easy to, you know, associate logo with brand, and it’s, it’s a lot more comprehensive than that. So I think just remembering that just because you have a nice logo, it doesn’t mean that you’ve clearly positioned yourself. Just because you have a really strong, you know, a nice looking website, it doesn’t mean that the value has been clearly articulated and that you’ve differentiated yourself from, you know, competitors, and that all can go go right through. So it really impacts, you know, sales. If you don’t get those, those P those, those specific foundations in place. So I think you know do instead is you want to start with the positioning as the most critical piece, clarify what market you’re playing in. So this is, like, really practical, but like, clarify what market you’re playing in, because you want to make it easy for buyers to assess you against competitive alternatives. This is really challenging if you’re creating a new category, because the competitive alternatives are less clear. But if you’re entering a market where there are more competitive alternatives, like really making sure that you, you know, figure out what market you’re playing in and what value you’re you’re delivering. So that’s kind of like a couple of key things. So that’s one pitfall. The other one that I definitely could talk about for a while is just over reliance on internal perspective. So this is again challenging, and I see it at different stages, because, you know, I’ve worked with, you know, different founders or leadership teams at variety of different scales, some pre revenue, most in sort of a mid market growth phase, a rate up through it to enterprise. So you see this in different ways, shapes and forms. When you’re in the earlier stages, you have a lot of assumptions that you’re making as an internal team. So the more beta users you can talk to, the more potential customers you can talk to, and if none of that’s available, leverage look alike audiences like get as much input as you can to shape your strategy. It’s quite high risk, and it’s usually ineffective to sit in a room with two people that like your idea, and just brainstorm and build a strategy, because it’s not informed by much other than a couple people’s perspectives. So that’s that’s kind of one at larger scales. This gets really tricky, because if you have an executive team of 10 people, right, and then you have other layers of leadership, so Csuite, and maybe there’s VPs (Vice President) and director levels. It’s really tricky for all those people to get into a room and start to debate what makes sense, because sometimes ego gets in the way. You know, people have their own unique perspective, and then, as a marketer, you’re kind of left with trying to integrate all of that. So I’m a big believer in getting customer feedback, be it interviews, be it surveys, you know, if you’re a B2B tech company or SaaS company, looking at competitor reviews on G2 like, looking for patterns in vocabulary, in how people talk about pain solutions, whatever it might be if you don’t have G2 profiles, like, you know, you can go and get look at your competitors, G2 profiles, and start to look at what people are complaining about and what they’re celebrating about your competitors. And you can mine for patterns there. So that’s, that’s another pitfall is just like over reliance on on internal perspective, and then the the cascading effect of all the assumptions that are made in that in that process as well.
Christian Klepp 15:42
Yeah, yeah. No, I was, um, I was kind of having a little bit of a chuckle to myself when you said over relying internal perspective. Because, um, it’s, um, I think, I think they’ve diagnosed this, um, this malaise. It’s um, it’s analysis paralysis and opinion.
Chantelle Little 16:00
Oh, nice, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Christian Klepp 16:03
Yeah. I tried to say that with a very serious face, yes, but, um, but it’s but it’s so true though, right? Like you just mentioned it, and I’ve been in situations. I’ve certainly been in meetings where there was this constant and very heated, like debate about positioning on what the brand stands for from an internal perspective. And it was usually like, unfortunately, more often than not, the loudest voice in the room at once, right?
Chantelle Little 16:30
Yeah.
Christian Klepp 16:31
Or, depending on the person’s level of seniority as well. And I would then see that falter when they take it to market.
Chantelle Little 16:41
Yes.
Christian Klepp 16:41
Because, as you rightfully pointed out, just because they agreed upon it in the meeting room, that doesn’t mean that the market agrees with that person.
Chantelle Little 16:49
Yes, yes, yeah. Real balance to to to find, and it’s not easy, but it is also surprising how many companies are reluctant. I mean, I talk to B2B, SaaS companies, day in and day out, and there is a reluctancy to ask the customer for a case study or to ask the customer for an interview or survey. And I think some of it comes from, you know, it takes time and energy, which is a very precious commodity in today’s world. But sometimes, I think deep down, people don’t really want to know because they’re trying to protect something, and that’s really tricky. So I think a growth mindset and being willing to accept that customer feedback can be quite, quite powerful, because it creates an ally and ambassador from the customer, not always, but that’s the vision, that’s the goal, right? So if done properly, it really can create that. And then now we have fuel to put in the marketing engine that will help us go further, faster. And that’s a really exciting thing.
Christian Klepp 17:57
It is an exciting thing. It is also a very thin line to walk, because I’ve been in a situation previously where I was a product marketer and I had to go out into the field with salespeople and listen to the way that they would conduct, conduct the meetings with the prospects, and listen to the concerns, the objections and the questions and whatnot, right? And from there to your point is, we can see what the prospect really thinks about the product.
Chantelle Little 18:26
Yes.
Christian Klepp 18:27
Versus what the you know, sometimes when the sales come back, they say, oh yeah. The meeting, the meeting went well. They said they think about it. But when you’re actually there in the meeting, then you actually hear what their concerns are, it’s like, yeah, they like it however they have, they had all of these different questions and concerns, and if that’s not captured in some shape or form, yeah, then anything that we put out from a marketing perspective might not be relevant to them, might not help them, might not also move the sales closer to to getting a deal.
Chantelle Little 19:02
Yeah. Well, and I love that you bring that up Christian, because that kind of reminds me of just the other challenge of scaling brand. It’s at like scaling brand, right? And how it can fracture as you try to scale it.
Christian Klepp 19:15
Yeah.
Chantelle Little 19:15
And one of the things that you you mentioned is just that alignment between product marketing and sales like that is one of the biggest challenges that companies face as they scale. And so it’s like, if sales isn’t, you know, having these great conversations, they’re getting clear on objections, not feeding that back to marketing. And if marketing doesn’t have that Intel or those inputs, it gets difficult to learn from every opportunity to improve conversion performance and improve performance in general. So, yeah, I love that. It’s, it’s really key.
Christian Klepp 19:47
Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. For sure. We already talked about this a little bit, you know, like how to deal with pushback, especially from founders. And you know, more often than not, they’re not from a marketing background. They’re not from us. Sales background. But I think the question that I want to ask you is basically, how do you convince them, or how do you prove to them, I think is the better word. How do you prove to them that brand differentiation and positioning can indeed shorten sales cycles and CAC.
Chantelle Little 20:14
Yeah, I think when speaking to founders and early stage leadership teams, I think it’s important to speak their language. So there’s like, when I’m when I’m talking to a CMO of a, you know, $80 million company, you are dealing with different context and perspective and experience. And so you can kind of adjust your your your pitch and your conversation around more common marketing related terminology. But I’d say when you’re talking to founders, it’s really important for them to see this in context of revenue and a context of how it’s going to really, really move the needle. And so there’s a few different things. Like, there’s different ways that you can that you can position it, but I think really understanding there’s a couple things that I love to understand is, I love to understand about average deal size. Like, I like to understand, okay, so how much money do we anticipate we can make off of this customer in one year? But more important than that, how much do we think that you’re going to make off the customer over the course of the lifetime of the customer? So is it three years, you know, lifetime value, five years lifetime value, whatever that might be, whatever the customer lifetime value is. That’s actually more important than the the annual recurring revenue for one year or one month, right? So if, if I know that, then it becomes easier to work backwards and figure out, okay, so if that customer is worth $20,000 to you over the lifetime of the customer, how much would you be willing to spend to get that customer? If, if that customer is worth 700,000 or a million over the lifetime of the customer. How much would you spend there? And kind of get into some of the unit economics of it, and then help them understand what makes sense to spend to acquire that customer. And I think, like, like I said, talking in context of revenue, talking in context of, you know, the cost to acquire the lead is really helpful. And so let’s just, you know, use a simple example. A couple weeks back, I was speaking to someone, they were sharing that their their cack was closer to $1,000 and based on their price point, it just didn’t make sense. Like the economics only work when we run the numbers. It only works if we can get that down to three or $400 so the question is, how do you move the needle from a CAC of 1000 to a CAC of 300 to 400 and there’s different levers we can pull right? But when you know that that’s the target, we have to reduce the cost to acquire the customer down to 300 400 for all the economics to work and for you to put more money into this and to really scale it now we can start to look for all the friction that’s in the process that or that’s in the buyer journey, the user journey, depending on what context we’re talking about, and remove every little bit of friction. And when we start to see that, if, okay, if we remove that friction, if we change the messaging, if we do better message mismatching or better message matching from the ad to the landing page. If we, you know, maybe improve the brand, because right now, you feel early stage, and we could through better visuals, make you, you know, position you better amongst your four competitors that you’re trying to beat. If we start to change those little levers, then we can start to, you know, incrementally bring down that number. And you have to be careful talking about this, because there’s so many other things that are variables, right, that influence costs to acquire a customer that are outside of, you know, our ability to influence. But I think talking about it in context of the numbers is most helpful, because now we have really concrete goals all anchored to trying to achieve something that could be scaled and sometimes the answer might be, you need to increase your price, like I’ve come along that before as well. It doesn’t work, not because the CAC is wrong, but because the price is actually wrong. When I look at the competitive landscape, you could double your price, and, you know, not price yourself out of market. So there’s, there’s different levers, and that’s actually what’s so fun about marketing, is that it’s like being a mad scientist and sitting there with all your beakers and putting different things in there and seeing what you can achieve, like what you can create, in terms of results that that is what it’s it’s like. So I think that’s, that’s really key. So I think, like, just really practically as it relates to sales cycles, if you have weak positioning, it usually leads to confusion. Buyers are confused. You know, now I’m having to give repeated explanations of what we do. There’s the the marketing website, but now the sales team is having to, like, repeat or re explain or re educate or change the prospects perspective, and then objections end up getting rooted in misunderstandings, like in the sales process, right? So if we have strong positioning, the opposite would be true. Now we probably have better self qualification, so the quality of leads in your pipeline would be going up. In theory, that’s what would happen, right? We’d have easier comparison. The competitor can compare you better against competitive alternatives. Like it starts to make more sense, less friction, less cognitive load. And then, you know, it will someone will move through the pipeline with less friction. So usually shorter sales cycles. That really matters, right? If you could turn 60 day sales cycles into 30, like, what would that mean for you from a cash flow perspective, right? So it’s kind of looking at at all of those different variables.
Christian Klepp 25:51
I love it. I love it. When you talked about the mad scientist that you know, the thing that came to mind was like, Dr. Frankenstein saying.
Chantelle Little 25:59
Yeah, exactly that.
Christian Klepp 26:03
But I love how you started out with as contradictory as it sounds, it’s very profound working backwards.
Chantelle Little 26:11
Yes.
Christian Klepp 26:12
What’s the end game? How much? How much is a customer worth to you, right? And working from there, because if you don’t start out like that, everything is really a guesstimation for for lack of a better description. But going back to something that you said, which I thought is really interesting, because at least I’ve seen this a lot. Do you think a lot of this the issue with differentiation and positioning as it pertains to SaaS and tech, also stems from a, this might sound oversimplified, but it stems from a lack of an actual lack of understanding of who the who the customer is,
Chantelle Little 26:53
Yes.
Christian Klepp 26:53
And what their pain points are, and how you have the ability to address those pain points, versus like, Oh, look at, look at our platform with all these neat features?
Chantelle Little 27:02
Yes, yeah, absolutely. I think it’s, it’s hard, like, really, simply, it’s really hard to serve someone if you don’t know their problem first,
Christian Klepp 27:12
Right.
Chantelle Little 27:13
Right? And I think that’s why I don’t remember the exact quote, and I should look it up, because I keep misquoting it. Then that whole concept of, like, if I had to solve a problem, I’d spend 90% of the time solving the problem, and then whatever, 10% of the time executing against that to actually solve the problem, something like that, right? It is. It is some of that. It’s kind of like if we don’t know the problem, if we don’t know the pain, it’s really hard to solve it. So I think putting adequate energy into understanding, defining the pain, is really critical.
Christian Klepp 27:47
Absolutely, absolutely, okay, you’ve given us quite a bit now, but like, walk us through these steps, right? Like, like, like, without that magic formula of yours, I’m joking. We know. We know that it’s not magic. There’s a lot of hard work that goes into this, right?
Chantelle Little 28:02
Yeah.
Christian Klepp 28:03
Walk us through these steps that that process, right? That helps B2B SaaS teams find their differentiation and strategic positioning. So what? What steps do they need to take? How? How do they? How can they, I should say, conduct research, generate insights, and move rapidly. I think the name of the game is speed too. Like a lot of these guys, especially founder led, they don’t have five years to prove what they have us working.
Chantelle Little 28:31
Yeah.
Christian Klepp 28:32
We’re talking about months here, right?
Chantelle Little 28:34
Yeah, yeah, no, that’s, that’s such a great question. So I’ll try to do this in a way that’s easy to, you know, kind of explain so, so the first part is really defining the market. So in order for us to do positioning like step one, define the market, a couple key questions you can ask is, what cat or category are you in? Right? That’s, that’s really key. And then, what are the competitive alternatives that exist in the market? I’m a big April Dunford fan. I like, there’s a lot of frameworks that there are a lot of books out there about this, but she uses the language of competitive alternatives. And I’ve really, I’ve really taken that and leveraged that, because I think you want to understand who people what I find is that when you start to ask, what are the competitive alternatives? You might realize that the category you originally said you play in is not quite the right category. So if you ask both questions, you can use them to hone in on the right the right spot for early stage founders. I think narrowing in early is really key, and then you can expand really intentionally and strategically later down the line. So what I mean by that is it’s really hard to get traction with the new product in market when you’re trying to solve 30 problems. You know, we’ve talked, talked to so many founders, where it’s like, well, we can do this, we can do this, we can do this. We’re solving this problem, this problem, this problem, this problem, and and so it gets difficult because you need traction. So it’s either, you know, simplify the number of problems you’re solving, or maybe simplify how many industries you’re trying to go after, like start in your best hypothesis industry, get traction there, and then expand later. But I think it’s just being careful, careful about that from a positioning perspective. So that’s kind of step one, just a couple key questions you can ask. Step two is gathering those inputs. So, you know, for customer interviews, you know that’s something that you can do on your own. You can work with an agency to help you do that. I know that that can be really challenging to get people’s time, but for that, it’s really about designing the right script. It’s about making sure that you kind of maintain some continuity through those through those interviews, so that you start to be able to mine for patterns versus changing up the question set every time, leveraging customer surveys. I mean that that requires that you have an outreach list, but often you can, you know, build a bit of an outreach list from the network of folks on your team. But I would say on that one to be really, really careful about narrowing in on the right persona, like the right person, so that you don’t get, you know, the wrong type of input and the wrong type of data. One other thing that you know is really effective is doing a competitor messaging audit. So if you pull up all your competitor websites, and you can use AI to also help you get a start on it, at least you can pull up those websites and basically try to create a bit of a map, right? So it’s like, what is the positioning of each competitor and then what’s their core value prop? Like, that’s that’s also really helpful, outside of positioning. What’s a core value prop? And then, what are some of the key messages that are being highlighted? And then, what proof are they stating? So, is it case studies? Is it testimonials? Is it data points? Like, if that company is saying, we reduce time by 20% or whatever, like, What is the proof that they’re attaching to the message. And again, if you create a bit of a map of those competitors, you can start to see patterns where there’s overlap, and you can also start to see where there’s open gaps, like places you could play that aren’t directly competing. So it can be quite strategic. It can be a lot of fun. You can leverage AI. You could bring all that data back to your team and analyze it. So that’s another one. The review mining, like looking at G2 reviews, that’s really helpful as well, for looking for patterns, again, for all of these things, I we definitely have, you know, really advanced the way that we use AI to do these things, so doing them, but then also validating, making sure you’re using deep research. Sometimes we use multiple platforms so to see if we’re getting the same data from multiple platforms. But I think when you have all this data, AI can be really helpful for analyzing and looking for patterns. So that’s a really useful, useful case. And then internal workshops. I mean, if you’ve got someone on your team that you know is able to run an internal workshop, then that would be a great way to gather feedback from your team and have some of that necessary dialog to drive alignment and pull from the different perspectives on your team. In a perfect world, it’s great if you have a sales perspective, a marketing perspective, a product perspective, and if you’re unsure how to run these workshops, one that’s really useful is just doing a jobs, pains and gains, type or jobs to be done. Using that framework, even that could be really helpful to try map out, you know, the jobs that you believe your customer is doing. And then you can use customer interviews and surveys to validate some of that. And then, to your point, Christian about speed, we actually were. We’ve, we’ve had this a couple times with some customers that we’ve worked with, and even for our own testing, where we will use third party, you know, B2B platforms to, you know, interview look alike audiences. And there’s a whole science to that. So it’s not as simple as just going paying money and then, boom, you get 50 people’s feedback. You have to be super strategic about how you structure the surveys and the questions and what tests you run. But that’s beautiful, because now, 48 hours from now, you’re getting feedback. Now you’re able to leverage that, put that in AI look for patterns. It can be quite helpful when, when speed is the game. So that’s, that’s another one. So that’s kind of step two, gathering the real inputs. Step three is your mining for that true differentiation. A couple things that I’ll just quickly mention here is like, really try avoid table stakes. I see this time and time again, and even it’s very tempting to say, well, we’re we’ve got great customer service, whatever company is going to claim they do. Now, the customer interviews might say something different, and the customer, the competitor reviews online, might say something different, but like, is that sticky enough as a differentiation? Or like, even when people talk about their brand personality, it’s like, well, we’re professional. Well, that’s table stakes, right? Like, everyone’s expecting a level of professionalism.
Christian Klepp 34:58
We hope so.
Chantelle Little 34:59
We hope, we hope, right? So it’s like, try avoid that, or try avoid really vague adjectives. Like, get like, really specific. Don’t be satisfied with like, the vague. So here’s, like, the process where, now that you’ve done all that pre work, right now, you’re trying to, like, look for specific strengths and just where that real uniqueness is. And I believe that when it’s really grounded in real customer language, or maybe it’s lookalike audience language, it drives better performance from a marketing perspective. So that’s something to really look for. And step four, of course, like once you’ve actually found the differentiation, now you have to operationalize all of that, right? So that’s a whole other thing. I could go on and on and on, but it’s a whole other thing, because it can’t just live in a slide deck or a pitch deck. Now we have to figure out, how do we change the website, our sales decks, our email, outbound emails, like literally every touch point so that it aligns with that positioning, because everything that’s out of alignment is going to create confusion and potentially introduce friction. So that’s kind of the other part. So I’ll stop there. Does that help?
Christian Klepp 36:15
I think you’ve got enough material here for an audio book.
Chantelle Little 36:21
So that’s not the first time I’ve been described as robust.
Christian Klepp 36:27
But jokes aside. I mean, I think that that was, that was quite comprehensive, and thank you for walking us through that. And by appreciate the amount of detail that you’ve provided here, because it is, again, one of the reasons why we agreed to discuss this topic on, you know, on this episode, is because this is a component, a vital component, that tends to get overlooked because they feel like, like it’s not such a big deal, or it’s something that’s easy to come up with. And now that you’ve met, you know, you’ve put in the effort to, like, walk us through what that actual process looks like.
Chantelle Little 37:04
Yeah.
Christian Klepp 37:06
We hopefully have dispelled that myth of how easy this is. Because, you know, as you’ve rightfully pointed out, it’s not, I mean, even if you Yes, of course you can use AI. I mean, like, we use it too, but there’s a certain way to use it and leverage it, where it generates, like you said, it helps to aggregate data, it helps to identify patterns, and it helps to generate those insights that also create true differentiation.
Chantelle Little 37:34
Yes.
Christian Klepp 37:35
None of this nonsense. And you know where I’m going with this, like you know, our true brand, our true differentiation, you know, lies in our people.
Chantelle Little 37:43
Right?
Christian Klepp 37:44
No, it does not right.
Chantelle Little 37:45
Yeah, yeah.
Christian Klepp 37:47
It lies in your ability to solve your you know, whatever challenges and problems and pain points your customer is facing, whatever those may be.
Chantelle Little 37:56
Yes, yeah, yeah. And I think I love that you said that, because I think we also are living in this like world where outcomes, there’s so much focus on outcomes. So if you have a B in the B2B SaaS space, you know, saying that we have good customer service, saying that we have good people, those are, those are how we create value. They’re not the value.
Christian Klepp 38:21
Right?
Chantelle Little 38:21
So it’s like the the, you know, old challenge of people that focus on their features versus focusing on the value that they’re creating. And in today’s world, you can’t stand out if you don’t lean into outcomes,
Christian Klepp 38:34
Correct.
Chantelle Little 38:35
Right? So,
Christian Klepp 38:36
I’ll come I’ll come focused, I’ll come driven.
Chantelle Little 38:39
Yes,
Christian Klepp 38:40
Right? I’m love it or hate it, right? Metrics, you know, at some point, especially in the world of SaaS and tech, which is, you know, very technical. Sorry, I’m trying to, try not to use any puns here, but, like, you know, right? But, but, but you, you will have to, especially if you’re dealing with founders and people that are have a very technical background, they need to be able to, like, grab on to something tangible.
Chantelle Little 39:09
Yes.
Christian Klepp 39:10
And sometimes, and I hate to say this myself, because I am that person that that lives and breathes branding, but sometimes that’s not something that’s that’s tangible to them, so you have to show them. This is working. We are making progress here. So what kind of metrics would you suggest marketers pay attention to when it comes to differentiation and positioning?
Chantelle Little 39:31
Yeah, yeah, it’s a great question, and you’ve already alluded to the fact that measuring brand performance is like the thing that every marketer wishes they could do with higher degrees of precision and accuracy, because when they’re sitting, especially we work with so many mid mark, mid market, you know, marketers, and I hear about them going into the Csuite meetings, the board meetings, and I hear how difficult it is for them to get that approval on brand investments. Because, like everyone wants demand, we want x, you know, pipeline by the end of this year. We want, you know, this many (MQL) Marketing Qualified Leads by, you know, July, whatever it is, right? There’s these high expectations for performance, and usually more tendency to focus on demand investments than brand. So I think there’s a number of metrics like, I could go on and on and probably do an audio book on that one too Christian. But the one that I thought was worth maybe highlighting, because I think it’s not talked about enough, is this concept of unaided recall. And it’s it’s a little bit tricky to measure that as well. But I think what, what conceptually, you know, I try to encourage founders to think about is that at any given point in time, only 5% of your market is, like in market ready to buy. So if we run any demand campaigns, we are focused on converting that 5% into customers, right? But the other 95% we don’t want to alienate them. We don’t want to forget about want to forget about them, because they’re not in market today, but they might be tomorrow. They might be next month, next quarter, next year. So how can we build some mental availability with that 95% so that when they go in market and they become in the category of the 5% they think of your brand first, that’s, that’s the una like the recall piece. So typically, you know, we encourage people to think about what buying triggers, what moments in time happen that essentially prompt someone to move from the 95% that aren’t in market to the 5% that are in market. And then we try build campaigns and marketing around those buying triggers. But the key point is, is that we do that to build mental availability, right? So I think of it like this when you think of this category. So I’ll just use (CRM) customer relationship management. We think of this category of customer relationship management, who comes to mind, right? HubSpot, Salesforce.
Christian Klepp 42:00
Yeah, right.
Chantelle Little 42:01
So you kind of want to be the one that comes to mind. So it’s about really building that so. So I think measuring, like unaided, unaided recall, maybe aided recognition too. There’s you can. You can use branded search growth to help, you know, figure that out. Sometimes branded search growth, you know, you have to think about that in context. But are we seeing more people directly search for our solution? You know that could be an indication that they are aware of your company and your brand. There could be direct traffic trends that could be measured, but you’re trying to really think about if, if someone was prompted, like, if someone has pain, and that buying trigger happens like I now have pain. Do they think of your brand first, right? And I mean, some people will say, well, that’s hard to achieve because HubSpot Salesforce, they have these huge they have these huge budgets. And I’m not, you know, trying to gloss over that. That is a reality, but I think that there are targeted ways to build brand awareness and that mental availability and measure those metrics and help boards and Csuite understand the value of that so that they will approve brand investments, because when we invest in brand demand, performs better, right?
Christian Klepp 43:19
Amen. Amen. Absolutely, absolutely. Oh, gosh, I wish. I wish more people would be saying something like that, but you said something which I thought was like, almost like a key phrase in this conversation, almost like an outcome. It’s like the it’s the logical, like, next step. It’s this building mental availability.
Chantelle Little 43:40
Yes.
Christian Klepp 43:41
Because that’s really a big part of what this exercise is.
Chantelle Little 43:46
Yes.
Christian Klepp 43:47
Especially in B2B, as you, as you rightfully pointed out that not everybody’s out there like, oh yeah, I need to get me some of that software. Let me pull up my credit card.
Chantelle Little 43:55
Yes.
Christian Klepp 43:56
It doesn’t happen that way, right? It usually is a much longer process. It usually involves a buying committee of anywhere between four to six people, maybe even more.
Chantelle Little 44:05
Yes.
Christian Klepp 44:05
Right? And they they do, you know, they do their own due diligence and research, and what they find online is extremely important.
Chantelle Little 44:14
Yes.
Christian Klepp 44:16
To your point, about like, not just the review sites, but what you know and what other people are saying, but you know, what are people online commenting, with regards to the software? What’s out there that’s available? Like, okay, if you, if you, if you Google or, or in the this day and age, you do AI search, what is AI saying?
Chantelle Little 44:35
Yes,
Christian Klepp 44:36
Right?
Chantelle Little 44:37
Yeah.
Christian Klepp 44:37
All important.
Chantelle Little 44:38
Yeah. And I think, obviously, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say, of course, you want to measure measure like branded related metrics, like we’ve talked about. But I think you know, it’s also important to be measuring your your CAC, right? Because, like, some people aren’t even measuring their CAC.
Christian Klepp 44:55
That’s right.
Chantelle Little 44:56
And so measuring CAC is important, because if we want to prove you. That increased investment in brand reduces cap. We also have to measure CAC right conversion rates like, that’s a that’s another thing that you we can be measuring on the web level and paid campaigns. We can measure sales cycles, whether they’re shortening right. These are things brand influences. So ideally, we and we measure, you know, how brand is performing, and then we measure the things, the things that we’re trying to improve, right? CAC, conversion rates, sales cycles, all that kind of stuff, quality, right? Inbound quality. What’s the sales team say about the quality of these leads?
Christian Klepp 45:34
Absolutely.
Chantelle Little 45:35
All those pieces could be measured, and it will help us prove that brand is is helping remove friction.
Christian Klepp 45:43
That’s absolutely right. Well, Chantelle, we could have gone on for another 10 hours, but like you know, in the interest of time, I’d like to thank you for coming on, and thank you for sharing your expertise and experience with the listeners. So please quick introduction to yourself and how folks out there can get in touch with you.
Chantelle Little 45:59
Sure. Thanks Christian for having me. I appreciate it. So I’m Chantelle Little, founder and CEO of a digital marketing agency that serves B2B SaaS companies, and we help B2B SaaS teams clarify positioning, build differentiated brands, and also create websites and campaigns that drive qualified pipeline and ultimately revenue. That’s the key. So, so that’s that’s that in terms of connecting with me, you can check out our agency at tillerdigital.com that’s T, I, L, L, E R digital.com and feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn as well.
Christian Klepp 46:35
Perfect and we will drop the links to those all in the show notes when this episode comes out so once again. Chantelle, thank you so much for your time. Take care, stay safe and talk to you soon.
Chantelle Little 46:45
Thanks, Christian, see ya.
Christian Klepp 46:47
Thank you. Bye for now.
On this podcast, we’re on a mission – to change and disrupt the way people think about B2B marketing one insightful conversation at a time. Get inspiration from interviews with B2B marketers and industry experts who share their stories, achievements, thoughts on trending topics, and give B2B marketing tips and recommendations. This show is hosted by Christian Klepp, Co-founder of EINBLICK Consulting.
One key pitfall I see is just
treating brand as a cosmetic
exercise, right? So it's really,
especially when people are, you
know, not super familiar with
brand, not super familiar with
marketing. It can be really easy
to, you know, associate logo
with brand, and it's, it's a lot
more comprehensive than that.
It's something that tends to get
overlooked in the world of B2B
SaaS and tech, yet it's a
crucial component in helping
companies to shorten sales
cycles and lower Customer
Acquisition Costs (CAC) I'm
talking about clear brand
differentiation and positioning.
When done the right way, it can
transform everything from
strategic alignment across teams
to campaign effectiveness and
sales velocity. So how can B2B
Marketing Teams develop clear
brand differentiation for
growth? Welcome to this episode
of the B2B Marketers in the
Mission podcast, and I'm your
host, Christian Klepp, today
I'll be talking to Chantelle
Little, who will be answering
this question. She's the founder
and CEO of Tiller Digital that
helps B2B, SaaS and tech
companies scale through
strategic customer centric
marketing. Tune in to find out
more about what the speed to be
Marketers Mission is okay, and
away we go. Chantelle Little,
welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me, Christian.
I appreciate it.
Great to have you on the show.
You know, we had such a great
pre interview conversation, and
I'm really looking forward to
this discussion because, man,
this is something that's so
important. And I'm not saying
this because I also do branding,
but it's just something that I
think is really important. I
personally feel from my own
experience, it's something that
tends to get overlooked a lot,
especially in in the world that
you operate in, which is in B2B,
SaaS and tech, all right, so I'm
going to keep the audience in
suspense a little while longer,
while I go through the first
question.
Okay, sounds good.
So you're on a mission to help
B2B SaaS teams clarify their
story, sharpen positioning, and
build websites that drive
pipeline. And who doesn't want
that? I think is the better
question. But for this
conversation, I'd like to narrow
it down to the topic of how
clear brand differentiation and
positioning shorten sales cycles
and lower CAC. So for those that
don't know what CAC is, it's
Customer Acquisition Cost. So
let's kick off the conversation
with two questions, and I'm
happy to repeat them. So
question number one, why do you
believe that brand
differentiation is the most
underrated growth lever in B2B?
And question number two, as a
follow up, where do you see many
B2B SaaS companies struggle?
Yeah, well, maybe I can kick off
with the differentiation and
positioning pieces. I think one
thought that comes to mind is
that differentiation from a
branding perspective,
perspective has always mattered.
But the market has changed a lot
in in the last decade, but even
in the last 18 months, last two
years, it has shifted a lot. One
of the things that has changed
so much is that the SaaS market
in particular has matured a lot
over the last number of years.
And I love to follow all the
stats on what's happening in the
market. And if you just consider
that, we're like mid 2020s, and
it's like the SaaS market is
roughly 300, 400 billion. And a
lot of you know data out there
suggesting that that market
could double between now and
2030 so in the next four years,
kind of thing, we might see that
market reach closer to 700
billion. So I share that,
because a decade ago, when
people were entering the SaaS
market, there were fewer that.
There was less competition.
There were fewer people to
actually compete with. By
nature, there were fewer buyers
as well, because less companies
have shifted a lot in terms of
their use of SaaS products in
operating their businesses, but
the market has shifted so it's
more mature, there's more
competition, there's higher
expectations that come with that
as well. And then the other
thing you know, in addition to
saturation in the market, is
that the barriers to entry have
dramatically lowered, right? So
I think last week, I was reading
an article about, yet again,
another company that has used
lovable to launch a you know,
product in market within two
weeks and generated millions of
dollars of revenue. I'm worried
about misstating the facts so,
but it was like millions of
revenue in a short period of
time. So when the barriers are
lower, the market is saturated,
there's more of a need for
differentiation, and I'm really
passionate about that, because
if we communicate the same
story, and if we communicate
sameness, we're never going to
win. AI (Artificial
Intelligence), obviously lovable
is a good example of an AI
platform companies are using,
but it also has accelerated the
ability to create products, but
also it is contributing to
sameness, like if you put your
your competitors into AI and you
ask it to spit out positioning
for you and your key messaging,
it's a great start, and I'm
actually. A huge advocate of
using AI for those those steps,
but probably talk about that a
little bit later in the podcast
too. But it's really critical
that human judgment is layered
into that that work. Otherwise,
you know, brands will be just
spit out from AI, and by nature,
they will probably become more
similar, not more distinct. So
those are a couple to answer.
Kind of the first question on
why I think it's underrated. I
think if companies can really
nail that, it really helps with
getting traction, and not just,
you know, a little bubble of
success, but long term traction
and long term performance, which
is really key. That's a that's a
big one for brand. So hopefully
that that helps, and then I
could go into, like, some of the
things where I see companies
really struggling. I think
there's a few areas I think that
a lot of companies, really, if
I'm talking early stage for a
moment, a lot of companies that
I've worked with, or I've seen,
have really struggled to
understand the power of getting
those foundational brand pieces
figured out. So if I use
positioning as an example, if
you don't get your positioning
correct, all the money invested
after that really might, you
know, not work in the way that
you're hoping it will work. So
it's kind of going to that
foundational layer, and really
making sure the foundation is
solid, and then building off of
that foundation worth saying,
hard to get it right. You know,
like the first time, you're
constantly iterating on your
positioning, not just in the
early stage, but as you scale
up, you know, I go back to our
positioning as a company every
year, if not more frequently
than that, and you start to tune
and experiment and hone it. But
I think the core piece is that
if you don't position yourself,
you will be positioned by the
market, and it may not be in
your favor. So being intentional
and strategic about that, it may
be seemingly insignificant, but
it's really, really critical in
terms of getting momentum. So
that's just kind of one thing is
like undervaluing brand, which I
know we're going to talk about
more here today.
Absolutely, absolutely no thanks
for sharing that. And that's
something that like, really, you
know, when you brought it up, it
makes me clench my teeth and I
just, I just like, you know,
because every time, I mean, not
always, you know, certainly
there's, there's companies that
we work with that, um, they
either do get it or they're open
to a different perspective,
right?
Yeah.
But more often than not,
especially in B2B, I always find
that there's always got to be
somebody down there that pushes
back on the whole branding
aspect and says that's a
complete waste of our time.
Yes.
Right? And I feel, and perhaps
this has been your experience as
well. But not to sound harsh,
but you know, ignorance is
bliss.
Yes.
Because, you know, if people
don't understand something the
dangerous Well, if I don't
understand it, then perhaps it's
not that important, and nothing
can be further from the truth.
Yeah.
Right. So what's your take on
that? Because, I mean, you must,
you know, in your in your day to
day dealings with clients,
especially in those sectors that
you serve, you probably get some
pushback on, well, why should we
do this foundation piece? Why
should we do this branding like,
you know, we it just sounds like
it's gonna run up, you know, our
costs, it's, it's, it's more
investment. Why should we do
that? We should focus on
generating pipeline instead. But
what's your take on that?
Yeah, I definitely have
experienced that, so it's a
great question. And have come up
that come up against that a lot,
and I don't like
generalizations, but generally
speaking, a lot of founders that
you know, I've had the
opportunity to speak with and
work with over the years are not
necessarily coming from a
marketing background, and often
not coming from a sales
background as well. They they
usually have a specific area of
expertise. It could be domain
knowledge, it could be subject
matter knowledge, but they're
very focused on the product
itself, especially in the SaaS
space. So it's, it's very
product centric. And that's
good, because if, if all you
have is sales and marketing and
you don't have a product, then
it doesn't work. Either it's
it's really about this balance
and this, this tension between
the two. So the pushback that I
often get is that it's too early
to invest in brand. That's the
the one that I hear quite
frequently. It's not worth the
investment, or it's too early,
or we need to have 100 customers
before we're going to spend that
much money or that much effort.
And I think some of it stems
from limited data pools. We only
have so much data, and we only
have so many customers we can
speak to that spending money on
it. Now we're making too many
hypotheses. So why would we over
invest? And like I said, a
balance is needed because you
don't want to over invest. But
the pattern that I see sometimes
downstream is that those
founders are sometimes
struggling to get investment,
struggling to attract top
talent, struggling to, you know,
convince beta users to convert
into paid customers. There
there's some downstream effects
that happen and they offer.
There's nuance to its of course,
that changes by the nature of
the business. But my observation
is that founders that are
willing to invest, you know that
reasonable amount in brand see
friction removed from a lot of
those different kind of goals
that they're trying to achieve.
So I think that that's, that's
super, super key, is that, you
know, proper positioning, proper
differentiation, and I mean even
going to the visual side of
branding as well. Is that
credible brand? It really helps,
especially in a world where
there is a lot of skepticism,
right? Like, is that fake? Is
that real? Like, am I really
going to spend money on that? It
concerns compliance, like, the
list goes on. You know? How do I
know this is credible? And brand
plays a really, really big,
critical role in that. So I do
see that pattern quite a bit,
and I've seen those that are
willing to take the investment,
and I've seen friction be
removed.
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely,
absolutely. I'm going to move us
on to the next question about
key pitfalls. So if we're
talking about marketing teams
within B2B SaaS or tech. What
are some of these key pitfalls
that you would say they should
be avoiding, and what should
they do instead?
Yeah, so there's a couple that
come to mind. One is, one key
pitfall I see is just treating
brand as a cosmetic exercise,
right? So it's really,
especially when people are, you
know, not super familiar with
brand, not super familiar with
marketing, it can be really easy
to, you know, associate logo
with brand, and it's, it's a lot
more comprehensive than that. So
I think just remembering that
just because you have a nice
logo, it doesn't mean that
you've clearly positioned
yourself. Just because you have
a really strong, you know, a
nice looking website, it doesn't
mean that the value has been
clearly articulated and that
you've differentiated yourself
from, you know, competitors, and
that all can go go right
through. So it really impacts,
you know, sales. If you don't
get those, those P those, those
specific foundations in place.
So I think you know do instead
is you want to start with the
positioning as the most critical
piece, clarify what market
you're playing in. So this is,
like, really practical, but
like, clarify what market you're
playing in, because you want to
make it easy for buyers to
assess you against competitive
alternatives. This is really
challenging if you're creating a
new category, because the
competitive alternatives are
less clear. But if you're
entering a market where there
are more competitive
alternatives, like really making
sure that you, you know, figure
out what market you're playing
in and what value you're you're
delivering. So that's kind of
like a couple of key things. So
that's one pitfall. The other
one that I definitely could talk
about for a while is just over
reliance on internal
perspective. So this is again
challenging, and I see it at
different stages, because, you
know, I've worked with, you
know, different founders or
leadership teams at variety of
different scales, some pre
revenue, most in sort of a mid
market growth phase, a rate up
through it to enterprise. So you
see this in different ways,
shapes and forms. When you're in
the earlier stages, you have a
lot of assumptions that you're
making as an internal team. So
the more beta users you can talk
to, the more potential customers
you can talk to, and if none of
that's available, leverage look
alike audiences like get as much
input as you can to shape your
strategy. It's quite high risk,
and it's usually ineffective to
sit in a room with two people
that like your idea, and just
brainstorm and build a strategy,
because it's not informed by
much other than a couple
people's perspectives. So that's
that's kind of one at larger
scales. This gets really tricky,
because if you have an executive
team of 10 people, right, and
then you have other layers of
leadership, so Csuite, and maybe
there's VPs (Vice President) and
director levels. It's really
tricky for all those people to
get into a room and start to
debate what makes sense, because
sometimes ego gets in the way.
You know, people have their own
unique perspective, and then, as
a marketer, you're kind of left
with trying to integrate all of
that. So I'm a big believer in
getting customer feedback, be it
interviews, be it surveys, you
know, if you're a B2B tech
company or SaaS company, looking
at competitor reviews on G2
like, looking for patterns in
vocabulary, in how people talk
about pain solutions, whatever
it might be if you don't have G2
profiles, like, you know, you
can go and get look at your
competitors, G2 profiles, and
start to look at what people are
complaining about and what
they're celebrating about your
competitors. And you can mine
for patterns there. So that's,
that's another pitfall is just
like over reliance on on
internal perspective, and then
the the cascading effect of all
the assumptions that are made in
that in that process as well.
Yeah, yeah. No, I was, um, I was
kind of having a little bit of a
chuckle to myself when you said
over relying internal
perspective. Because, um, it's,
um, I think, I think they've
diagnosed this, um, this
malaise. It's um, it's analysis
paralysis and opinion.
Oh, nice, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. I tried to say that with a
very serious face, yes, but, um,
but it's but it's so true
though, right? Like you just
mentioned it, and I've been in
situations. I've certainly been
in meetings where there was this
constant and very heated, like
debate about positioning on what
the brand stands for from an
internal perspective. And it was
usually like, unfortunately,
more often than not, the loudest
voice in the room at once,
right?
Yeah.
Or, depending on the person's
level of seniority as well. And
I would then see that falter
when they take it to market.
Yes.
Because, as you rightfully
pointed out, just because they
agreed upon it in the meeting
room, that doesn't mean that the
market agrees with that person.
Yes, yes, yeah. Real balance to
to to find, and it's not easy,
but it is also surprising how
many companies are reluctant. I
mean, I talk to B2B, SaaS
companies, day in and day out,
and there is a reluctancy to ask
the customer for a case study or
to ask the customer for an
interview or survey. And I think
some of it comes from, you know,
it takes time and energy, which
is a very precious commodity in
today's world. But sometimes, I
think deep down, people don't
really want to know because
they're trying to protect
something, and that's really
tricky. So I think a growth
mindset and being willing to
accept that customer feedback
can be quite, quite powerful,
because it creates an ally and
ambassador from the customer,
not always, but that's the
vision, that's the goal, right?
So if done properly, it really
can create that. And then now we
have fuel to put in the
marketing engine that will help
us go further, faster. And
that's a really exciting thing.
It is an exciting thing. It is
also a very thin line to walk,
because I've been in a situation
previously where I was a product
marketer and I had to go out
into the field with salespeople
and listen to the way that they
would conduct, conduct the
meetings with the prospects, and
listen to the concerns, the
objections and the questions and
whatnot, right? And from there
to your point is, we can see
what the prospect really thinks
about the product.
Yes.
Versus what the you know,
sometimes when the sales come
back, they say, oh yeah. The
meeting, the meeting went well.
They said they think about it.
But when you're actually there
in the meeting, then you
actually hear what their
concerns are, it's like, yeah,
they like it however they have,
they had all of these different
questions and concerns, and if
that's not captured in some
shape or form, yeah, then
anything that we put out from a
marketing perspective might not
be relevant to them, might not
help them, might not also move
the sales closer to to getting a
deal.
Yeah. Well, and I love that you
bring that up Christian, because
that kind of reminds me of just
the other challenge of scaling
brand. It's at like scaling
brand, right? And how it can
fracture as you try to scale it.
Yeah.
And one of the things that you
you mentioned is just that
alignment between product
marketing and sales like that is
one of the biggest challenges
that companies face as they
scale. And so it's like, if
sales isn't, you know, having
these great conversations,
they're getting clear on
objections, not feeding that
back to marketing. And if
marketing doesn't have that
Intel or those inputs, it gets
difficult to learn from every
opportunity to improve
conversion performance and
improve performance in general.
So, yeah, I love that. It's,
it's really key.
Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. For
sure. We already talked about
this a little bit, you know,
like how to deal with pushback,
especially from founders. And
you know, more often than not,
they're not from a marketing
background. They're not from us.
Sales background. But I think
the question that I want to ask
you is basically, how do you
convince them, or how do you
prove to them, I think is the
better word. How do you prove to
them that brand differentiation
and positioning can indeed
shorten sales cycles and CAC.
Yeah, I think when speaking to
founders and early stage
leadership teams, I think it's
important to speak their
language. So there's like, when
I'm when I'm talking to a CMO of
a, you know, $80 million
company, you are dealing with
different context and
perspective and experience. And
so you can kind of adjust your
your your pitch and your
conversation around more common
marketing related terminology.
But I'd say when you're talking
to founders, it's really
important for them to see this
in context of revenue and a
context of how it's going to
really, really move the needle.
And so there's a few different
things. Like, there's different
ways that you can that you can
position it, but I think really
understanding there's a couple
things that I love to understand
is, I love to understand about
average deal size. Like, I like
to understand, okay, so how much
money do we anticipate we can
make off of this customer in one
year? But more important than
that, how much do we think that
you're going to make off the
customer over the course of the
lifetime of the customer? So is
it three years, you know,
lifetime value, five years
lifetime value, whatever that
might be, whatever the customer
lifetime value is. That's
actually more important than the
the annual recurring revenue for
one year or one month, right? So
if, if I know that, then it
becomes easier to work backwards
and figure out, okay, so if that
customer is worth $20,000 to you
over the lifetime of the
customer, how much would you be
willing to spend to get that
customer? If, if that customer
is worth 700,000 or a million
over the lifetime of the
customer. How much would you
spend there? And kind of get
into some of the unit economics
of it, and then help them
understand what makes sense to
spend to acquire that customer.
And I think, like, like I said,
talking in context of revenue,
talking in context of, you know,
the cost to acquire the lead is
really helpful. And so let's
just, you know, use a simple
example. A couple weeks back, I
was speaking to someone, they
were sharing that their their
cack was closer to $1,000 and
based on their price point, it
just didn't make sense. Like the
economics only work when we run
the numbers. It only works if we
can get that down to three or
$400 so the question is, how do
you move the needle from a CAC
of 1000 to a CAC of 300 to 400
and there's different levers we
can pull right? But when you
know that that's the target, we
have to reduce the cost to
acquire the customer down to 300
400 for all the economics to
work and for you to put more
money into this and to really
scale it now we can start to
look for all the friction that's
in the process that or that's in
the buyer journey, the user
journey, depending on what
context we're talking about, and
remove every little bit of
friction. And when we start to
see that, if, okay, if we remove
that friction, if we change the
messaging, if we do better
message mismatching or better
message matching from the ad to
the landing page. If we, you
know, maybe improve the brand,
because right now, you feel
early stage, and we could
through better visuals, make
you, you know, position you
better amongst your four
competitors that you're trying
to beat. If we start to change
those little levers, then we can
start to, you know,
incrementally bring down that
number. And you have to be
careful talking about this,
because there's so many other
things that are variables,
right, that influence costs to
acquire a customer that are
outside of, you know, our
ability to influence. But I
think talking about it in
context of the numbers is most
helpful, because now we have
really concrete goals all
anchored to trying to achieve
something that could be scaled
and sometimes the answer might
be, you need to increase your
price, like I've come along that
before as well. It doesn't work,
not because the CAC is wrong,
but because the price is
actually wrong. When I look at
the competitive landscape, you
could double your price, and,
you know, not price yourself out
of market. So there's, there's
different levers, and that's
actually what's so fun about
marketing, is that it's like
being a mad scientist and
sitting there with all your
beakers and putting different
things in there and seeing what
you can achieve, like what you
can create, in terms of results
that that is what it's it's
like. So I think that's, that's
really key. So I think, like,
just really practically as it
relates to sales cycles, if you
have weak positioning, it
usually leads to confusion.
Buyers are confused. You know,
now I'm having to give repeated
explanations of what we do.
There's the the marketing
website, but now the sales team
is having to, like, repeat or re
explain or re educate or change
the prospects perspective, and
then objections end up getting
rooted in misunderstandings,
like in the sales process,
right? So if we have strong
positioning, the opposite would
be true. Now we probably have
better self qualification, so
the quality of leads in your
pipeline would be going up. In
theory, that's what would
happen, right? We'd have easier
comparison. The competitor can
compare you better against
competitive alternatives. Like
it starts to make more sense,
less friction, less cognitive
load. And then, you know, it
will someone will move through
the pipeline with less friction.
So usually shorter sales cycles.
That really matters, right? If
you could turn 60 day sales
cycles into 30, like, what would
that mean for you from a cash
flow perspective, right? So it's
kind of looking at at all of
those different variables.
I love it. I love it. When you
talked about the mad scientist
that you know, the thing that
came to mind was like, Dr.
Frankenstein saying.
Yeah, exactly that.
But I love how you started out
with as contradictory as it
sounds, it's very profound
working backwards.
Yes.
What's the end game? How much?
How much is a customer worth to
you, right? And working from
there, because if you don't
start out like that, everything
is really a guesstimation for
for lack of a better
description. But going back to
something that you said, which I
thought is really interesting,
because at least I've seen this
a lot. Do you think a lot of
this the issue with
differentiation and positioning
as it pertains to SaaS and tech,
also stems from a, this might
sound oversimplified, but it
stems from a lack of an actual
lack of understanding of who the
who the customer is,
Yes.
And what their pain points are,
and how you have the ability to
address those pain points,
versus like, Oh, look at, look
at our platform with all these
neat features?
Yes, yeah, absolutely. I think
it's, it's hard, like, really,
simply, it's really hard to
serve someone if you don't know
their problem first,
Right.
Right? And I think that's why I
don't remember the exact quote,
and I should look it up, because
I keep misquoting it. Then that
whole concept of, like, if I had
to solve a problem, I'd spend
90% of the time solving the
problem, and then whatever, 10%
of the time executing against
that to actually solve the
problem, something like that,
right? It is. It is some of
that. It's kind of like if we
don't know the problem, if we
don't know the pain, it's really
hard to solve it. So I think
putting adequate energy into
understanding, defining the
pain, is really critical.
Absolutely, absolutely, okay,
you've given us quite a bit now,
but like, walk us through these
steps, right? Like, like, like,
without that magic formula of
yours, I'm joking. We know. We
know that it's not magic.
There's a lot of hard work that
goes into this, right?
Yeah.
Walk us through these steps that
that process, right? That helps
B2B SaaS teams find their
differentiation and strategic
positioning. So what? What steps
do they need to take? How? How
do they? How can they, I should
say, conduct research, generate
insights, and move rapidly. I
think the name of the game is
speed too. Like a lot of these
guys, especially founder led,
they don't have five years to
prove what they have us working.
Yeah.
We're talking about months here,
right?
Yeah, yeah, no, that's, that's
such a great question. So I'll
try to do this in a way that's
easy to, you know, kind of
explain so, so the first part is
really defining the market. So
in order for us to do
positioning like step one,
define the market, a couple key
questions you can ask is, what
cat or category are you in?
Right? That's, that's really
key. And then, what are the
competitive alternatives that
exist in the market? I'm a big
April Dunford fan. I like,
there's a lot of frameworks that
there are a lot of books out
there about this, but she uses
the language of competitive
alternatives. And I've really,
I've really taken that and
leveraged that, because I think
you want to understand who
people what I find is that when
you start to ask, what are the
competitive alternatives? You
might realize that the category
you originally said you play in
is not quite the right category.
So if you ask both questions,
you can use them to hone in on
the right the right spot for
early stage founders. I think
narrowing in early is really
key, and then you can expand
really intentionally and
strategically later down the
line. So what I mean by that is
it's really hard to get traction
with the new product in market
when you're trying to solve 30
problems. You know, we've
talked, talked to so many
founders, where it's like, well,
we can do this, we can do this,
we can do this. We're solving
this problem, this problem, this
problem, this problem, and and
so it gets difficult because you
need traction. So it's either,
you know, simplify the number of
problems you're solving, or
maybe simplify how many
industries you're trying to go
after, like start in your best
hypothesis industry, get
traction there, and then expand
later. But I think it's just
being careful, careful about
that from a positioning
perspective. So that's kind of
step one, just a couple key
questions you can ask. Step two
is gathering those inputs. So,
you know, for customer
interviews, you know that's
something that you can do on
your own. You can work with an
agency to help you do that. I
know that that can be really
challenging to get people's
time, but for that, it's really
about designing the right
script. It's about making sure
that you kind of maintain some
continuity through those through
those interviews, so that you
start to be able to mine for
patterns versus changing up the
question set every time,
leveraging customer surveys. I
mean that that requires that you
have an outreach list, but often
you can, you know, build a bit
of an outreach list from the
network of folks on your team.
But I would say on that one to
be really, really careful about
narrowing in on the right
persona, like the right person,
so that you don't get, you know,
the wrong type of input and the
wrong type of data. One other
thing that you know is really
effective is doing a competitor
messaging audit. So if you pull
up all your competitor websites,
and you can use AI to also help
you get a start on it, at least
you can pull up those websites
and basically try to create a
bit of a map, right? So it's
like, what is the positioning of
each competitor and then what's
their core value prop? Like,
that's that's also really
helpful, outside of positioning.
What's a core value prop? And
then, what are some of the key
messages that are being
highlighted? And then, what
proof are they stating? So, is
it case studies? Is it
testimonials? Is it data points?
Like, if that company is saying,
we reduce time by 20% or
whatever, like, What is the
proof that they're attaching to
the message. And again, if you
create a bit of a map of those
competitors, you can start to
see patterns where there's
overlap, and you can also start
to see where there's open gaps,
like places you could play that
aren't directly competing. So it
can be quite strategic. It can
be a lot of fun. You can
leverage AI. You could bring all
that data back to your team and
analyze it. So that's another
one. The review mining, like
looking at G2 reviews, that's
really helpful as well, for
looking for patterns, again, for
all of these things, I we
definitely have, you know,
really advanced the way that we
use AI to do these things, so
doing them, but then also
validating, making sure you're
using deep research. Sometimes
we use multiple platforms so to
see if we're getting the same
data from multiple platforms.
But I think when you have all
this data, AI can be really
helpful for analyzing and
looking for patterns. So that's
a really useful, useful case.
And then internal workshops. I
mean, if you've got someone on
your team that you know is able
to run an internal workshop,
then that would be a great way
to gather feedback from your
team and have some of that
necessary dialog to drive
alignment and pull from the
different perspectives on your
team. In a perfect world, it's
great if you have a sales
perspective, a marketing
perspective, a product
perspective, and if you're
unsure how to run these
workshops, one that's really
useful is just doing a jobs,
pains and gains, type or jobs to
be done. Using that framework,
even that could be really
helpful to try map out, you
know, the jobs that you believe
your customer is doing. And then
you can use customer interviews
and surveys to validate some of
that. And then, to your point,
Christian about speed, we
actually were. We've, we've had
this a couple times with some
customers that we've worked
with, and even for our own
testing, where we will use third
party, you know, B2B platforms
to, you know, interview look
alike audiences. And there's a
whole science to that. So it's
not as simple as just going
paying money and then, boom, you
get 50 people's feedback. You
have to be super strategic about
how you structure the surveys
and the questions and what tests
you run. But that's beautiful,
because now, 48 hours from now,
you're getting feedback. Now
you're able to leverage that,
put that in AI look for
patterns. It can be quite
helpful when, when speed is the
game. So that's, that's another
one. So that's kind of step two,
gathering the real inputs. Step
three is your mining for that
true differentiation. A couple
things that I'll just quickly
mention here is like, really try
avoid table stakes. I see this
time and time again, and even
it's very tempting to say, well,
we're we've got great customer
service, whatever company is
going to claim they do. Now, the
customer interviews might say
something different, and the
customer, the competitor reviews
online, might say something
different, but like, is that
sticky enough as a
differentiation? Or like, even
when people talk about their
brand personality, it's like,
well, we're professional. Well,
that's table stakes, right?
Like, everyone's expecting a
level of professionalism.
We hope so.
We hope, we hope, right? So it's
like, try avoid that, or try
avoid really vague adjectives.
Like, get like, really specific.
Don't be satisfied with like,
the vague. So here's, like, the
process where, now that you've
done all that pre work, right
now, you're trying to, like,
look for specific strengths and
just where that real uniqueness
is. And I believe that when it's
really grounded in real customer
language, or maybe it's
lookalike audience language, it
drives better performance from a
marketing perspective. So that's
something to really look for.
And step four, of course, like
once you've actually found the
differentiation, now you have to
operationalize all of that,
right? So that's a whole other
thing. I could go on and on and
on, but it's a whole other
thing, because it can't just
live in a slide deck or a pitch
deck. Now we have to figure out,
how do we change the website,
our sales decks, our email,
outbound emails, like literally
every touch point so that it
aligns with that positioning,
because everything that's out of
alignment is going to create
confusion and potentially
introduce friction. So that's
kind of the other part. So I'll
stop there. Does that help?
I think you've got enough
material here for an audio book.
So that's not the first time
I've been described as robust.
But jokes aside. I mean, I think
that that was, that was quite
comprehensive, and thank you for
walking us through that. And by
appreciate the amount of detail
that you've provided here,
because it is, again, one of the
reasons why we agreed to discuss
this topic on, you know, on this
episode, is because this is a
component, a vital component,
that tends to get overlooked
because they feel like, like
it's not such a big deal, or
it's something that's easy to
come up with. And now that
you've met, you know, you've put
in the effort to, like, walk us
through what that actual process
looks like.
Yeah.
We hopefully have dispelled that
myth of how easy this is.
Because, you know, as you've
rightfully pointed out, it's
not, I mean, even if you Yes, of
course you can use AI. I mean,
like, we use it too, but there's
a certain way to use it and
leverage it, where it generates,
like you said, it helps to
aggregate data, it helps to
identify patterns, and it helps
to generate those insights that
also create true
differentiation.
Yes.
None of this nonsense. And you
know where I'm going with this,
like you know, our true brand,
our true differentiation, you
know, lies in our people.
Right?
No, it does not right.
Yeah, yeah.
It lies in your ability to solve
your you know, whatever
challenges and problems and pain
points your customer is facing,
whatever those may be.
Yes, yeah, yeah. And I think I
love that you said that, because
I think we also are living in
this like world where outcomes,
there's so much focus on
outcomes. So if you have a B in
the B2B SaaS space, you know,
saying that we have good
customer service, saying that we
have good people, those are,
those are how we create value.
They're not the value.
Right?
So it's like the the, you know,
old challenge of people that
focus on their features versus
focusing on the value that
they're creating. And in today's
world, you can't stand out if
you don't lean into outcomes,
Correct.
Right? So,
I'll come I'll come focused,
I'll come driven.
Yes,
Right? I'm love it or hate it,
right? Metrics, you know, at
some point, especially in the
world of SaaS and tech, which
is, you know, very technical.
Sorry, I'm trying to, try not to
use any puns here, but, like,
you know, right? But, but, but
you, you will have to,
especially if you're dealing
with founders and people that
are have a very technical
background, they need to be able
to, like, grab on to something
tangible.
Yes.
And sometimes, and I hate to say
this myself, because I am that
person that that lives and
breathes branding, but sometimes
that's not something that's
that's tangible to them, so you
have to show them. This is
working. We are making progress
here. So what kind of metrics
would you suggest marketers pay
attention to when it comes to
differentiation and positioning?
Yeah, yeah, it's a great
question, and you've already
alluded to the fact that
measuring brand performance is
like the thing that every
marketer wishes they could do
with higher degrees of precision
and accuracy, because when
they're sitting, especially we
work with so many mid mark, mid
market, you know, marketers, and
I hear about them going into the
Csuite meetings, the board
meetings, and I hear how
difficult it is for them to get
that approval on brand
investments. Because, like
everyone wants demand, we want
x, you know, pipeline by the end
of this year. We want, you know,
this many (MQL) Marketing
Qualified Leads by, you know,
July, whatever it is, right?
There's these high expectations
for performance, and usually
more tendency to focus on demand
investments than brand. So I
think there's a number of
metrics like, I could go on and
on and probably do an audio book
on that one too Christian. But
the one that I thought was worth
maybe highlighting, because I
think it's not talked about
enough, is this concept of
unaided recall. And it's it's a
little bit tricky to measure
that as well. But I think what,
what conceptually, you know, I
try to encourage founders to
think about is that at any given
point in time, only 5% of your
market is, like in market ready
to buy. So if we run any demand
campaigns, we are focused on
converting that 5% into
customers, right? But the other
95% we don't want to alienate
them. We don't want to forget
about want to forget about them,
because they're not in market
today, but they might be
tomorrow. They might be next
month, next quarter, next year.
So how can we build some mental
availability with that 95% so
that when they go in market and
they become in the category of
the 5% they think of your brand
first, that's, that's the una
like the recall piece. So
typically, you know, we
encourage people to think about
what buying triggers, what
moments in time happen that
essentially prompt someone to
move from the 95% that aren't in
market to the 5% that are in
market. And then we try build
campaigns and marketing around
those buying triggers. But the
key point is, is that we do that
to build mental availability,
right? So I think of it like
this when you think of this
category. So I'll just use (CRM)
customer relationship
management. We think of this
category of customer
relationship management, who
comes to mind, right? HubSpot,
Salesforce.
Yeah, right.
So you kind of want to be the
one that comes to mind. So it's
about really building that so.
So I think measuring, like
unaided, unaided recall, maybe
aided recognition too. There's
you can. You can use branded
search growth to help, you know,
figure that out. Sometimes
branded search growth, you know,
you have to think about that in
context. But are we seeing more
people directly search for our
solution? You know that could be
an indication that they are
aware of your company and your
brand. There could be direct
traffic trends that could be
measured, but you're trying to
really think about if, if
someone was prompted, like, if
someone has pain, and that
buying trigger happens like I
now have pain. Do they think of
your brand first, right? And I
mean, some people will say,
well, that's hard to achieve
because HubSpot Salesforce, they
have these huge they have these
huge budgets. And I'm not, you
know, trying to gloss over that.
That is a reality, but I think
that there are targeted ways to
build brand awareness and that
mental availability and measure
those metrics and help boards
and Csuite understand the value
of that so that they will
approve brand investments,
because when we invest in brand
demand, performs better, right?
Amen. Amen. Absolutely,
absolutely. Oh, gosh, I wish. I
wish more people would be saying
something like that, but you
said something which I thought
was like, almost like a key
phrase in this conversation,
almost like an outcome. It's
like the it's the logical, like,
next step. It's this building
mental availability.
Yes.
Because that's really a big part
of what this exercise is.
Yes.
Especially in B2B, as you, as
you rightfully pointed out that
not everybody's out there like,
oh yeah, I need to get me some
of that software. Let me pull up
my credit card.
Yes.
It doesn't happen that way,
right? It usually is a much
longer process. It usually
involves a buying committee of
anywhere between four to six
people, maybe even more.
Yes.
Right? And they they do, you
know, they do their own due
diligence and research, and what
they find online is extremely
important.
Yes.
To your point, about like, not
just the review sites, but what
you know and what other people
are saying, but you know, what
are people online commenting,
with regards to the software?
What's out there that's
available? Like, okay, if you,
if you, if you Google or, or in
the this day and age, you do AI
search, what is AI saying?
Yes,
Right?
Yeah.
All important.
Yeah. And I think, obviously,
I'd be remiss if I didn't say,
of course, you want to measure
measure like branded related
metrics, like we've talked
about. But I think you know,
it's also important to be
measuring your your CAC, right?
Because, like, some people
aren't even measuring their CAC.
That's right.
And so measuring CAC is
important, because if we want to
prove you. That increased
investment in brand reduces cap.
We also have to measure CAC
right conversion rates like,
that's a that's another thing
that you we can be measuring on
the web level and paid
campaigns. We can measure sales
cycles, whether they're
shortening right. These are
things brand influences. So
ideally, we and we measure, you
know, how brand is performing,
and then we measure the things,
the things that we're trying to
improve, right? CAC, conversion
rates, sales cycles, all that
kind of stuff, quality, right?
Inbound quality. What's the
sales team say about the quality
of these leads?
Absolutely.
All those pieces could be
measured, and it will help us
prove that brand is is helping
remove friction.
That's absolutely right. Well,
Chantelle, we could have gone on
for another 10 hours, but like
you know, in the interest of
time, I'd like to thank you for
coming on, and thank you for
sharing your expertise and
experience with the listeners.
So please quick introduction to
yourself and how folks out there
can get in touch with you.
Sure. Thanks Christian for
having me. I appreciate it. So
I'm Chantelle Little, founder
and CEO of a digital marketing
agency that serves B2B SaaS
companies, and we help B2B SaaS
teams clarify positioning, build
differentiated brands, and also
create websites and campaigns
that drive qualified pipeline
and ultimately revenue. That's
the key. So, so that's that's
that in terms of connecting with
me, you can check out our agency
at tillerdigital.com that's T,
I, L, L, E R digital.com and
feel free to connect with me on
LinkedIn as well.
Perfect and we will drop the
links to those all in the show
notes when this episode comes
out so once again. Chantelle,
thank you so much for your time.
Take care, stay safe and talk to
you soon.
Thanks, Christian, see ya.
Thank you. Bye for now.