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Insider Secrets for Digitial Marketing Success
The Power of Interfunctional Coordination in Digital Marketing Success
In this Performance Delivered episode, Steffen Horst speaks with Dawn Muller, CMO at ViTech, about the critical role of inter-functional coordination in achieving digital marketing success. Dawn shares her marketing journey, her extensive experience in B2B marketing within the tech and professional services industries, and her role at VTech. The discussion delves into the concept of market orientation, highlighting the need for customer orientation, competitor orientation, and inter-functional coordination. Dawn emphasizes the importance of collaboration between sales and marketing and how companies can foster alignment and communication to enhance marketing strategies, product development, and customer orientation. Practical insights and future trends for SaaS companies are also discussed, providing valuable advice for fostering a successful inter-functional coordination framework.
On this episode, We'll talk about:
Introduction to Performance DeliveredMeet Dawn Muller: CMO at VTechDawn's Journey into MarketingDefining Interfunctional CoordinationEnsuring Sales and Marketing AlignmentPractical Implementation in SaaS CompaniesFuture Trends and RecommendationsConclusion and Contact Information
[00:00:00] Intro: This is Performance Delivered, Insider Secrets for Digital Marketing Success with Steffen Horst.
[00:00:11] Steffen Horst: In today's episode, we're going to talk about the importance of interfunctional coordination. Here to speak with me is Don Muller, the CMO at VTech, a company that empowers businesses with innovative solutions to address the complexities of the insurance and retirement industries.
She was formerly Chief Marketing Officer at Sapphire. And has served in marketing and communications position with global renowned companies, including Walters Kluver, IBM, Branson Young, and Deloitte. Dawn has a strong history of implementing innovative marketing strategies, cultivating valuable relationships and delivering growth solutions.
Her experience includes leading multifunctional teams, creating pioneering strategies to elevate. Brand presence and developing go to market and business initiatives. Dawn, welcome to the show.
[00:00:56] Dawn Mueller: Hi, Stefan. I'm really glad to be here. Thanks for having me on.
[00:00:59] Steffen Horst: Sure. Well, before we start talking about the importance of inter functional coordination, tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself.
How did you get started in career and what led you to becoming the CMO at VTech?
[00:01:10] Dawn Mueller: Oh, sure. So I fell into marketing kind of accidentally in my undergraduate studies. Believe it or not. I was a communication major undergraduate. And a friend of mine said, Hey, we have elective credits. Let's take a business administration minor.
And I was kind of on the fence. I was. Involved with broadcasting. I was involved with public relations, so I wasn't really convinced. I said, all right, why not? We'll do it. One of the last classes I had was marketing and it just sparked such an epiphany for me. And I thought, oh my gosh, this is so amazing.
All of the nuances and the different psychology and aspects of marketing and what goes into it. And that's when I said, this is what I want to do for my career. That was the only time I've ever had that kind of feeling. That started me on a path of pursuing more information, both academically and professionally.
And it has been a passion for me ever since. So that's how I got started. And
[00:02:07] Steffen Horst: well, that's great.
[00:02:08] Dawn Mueller: Yeah. Thanks. And throughout the course of my career, I've really, I've done some B2C. I've really gravitated towards B2B. I'm not, B2C is, has its own set of complexities, but I really enjoy the complexities and the B2B space specifically around.
technical, technology, professional services, and software and software as a service. So, And through sequence of events, I've learned that I can do a lot with a company that is in a growth phase and looking to scale. And, uh, that's what brought me to Vitek.
[00:02:40] Steffen Horst: Now, today we're going to talk about the importance of interfunctional coordination.
Now, would you mind defining interfunctional coordination for the listeners?
[00:02:50] Dawn Mueller: Sure. I'm going to take a step back and then we'll go forward on that, if that's okay. Yeah,
[00:02:55] Steffen Horst: please.
[00:02:55] Dawn Mueller: So Stefan, interfunctional coordination is one component of something called market orientation. So people can say a company is market oriented, but there is actually a statement or a term called market orientation.
It was first popularized a couple of decades ago by two scholars called I named Narver and Slater and Narver and Slater said, Hey, what we've discovered is that if you have these, this structure, this framework that supports market orientation as a company, it means greater profitability. And we know companies like that.
We like that too. So what we, so. Dialing into that, there are three components of a market orientated company, and those components are a customer orientation, a competitor orientation, and inter functional coordination. The inter functional coordination, the other things, the competitor orientation, the customer orientation don't work without that inter functional connectivity and coordination.
So that's a little bit of the background on that.
[00:03:58] Steffen Horst: So let's talk about inter company coordination. So what teams. In that concept, you need to work closely together to create that value.
[00:04:07] Dawn Mueller: Okay. I'm going to say this somewhat facetiously, but all of them, but, but in particular, sales and marketing, sales, marketing, and finance, sales, marketing, finance, and it, I would say those are all critical, but really that sales and marketing relationship is absolutely critical to the inter functional coordination.
We've all heard examples in. Okay. Large companies of silos existing, you know, marketing's over here doing whatever marketing does, sales is over there knocking on doors and trying to sell, sales says we need more people in sales to make things happen, marketing saying we need to spend more money. And it's because of that lack of interfunctional coordination that you hear things like that.
So that relationship between sales and marketing is critical for it.
[00:04:50] Steffen Horst: So how should companies go about to ensure that these two disciplines are properly aligned?
[00:04:57] Dawn Mueller: I think it really depends on the leadership that they select too. You know, you have one, I think it's respect for each function. You know, marketing shouldn't be over here saying, Hey, we do everything.
We make the company run. Sales shouldn't be saying, Hey, you guys wouldn't have jobs if it wasn't for us. There has to be, I think, a degree of mutual respect and professional maturity. with the people that lead both of those functions. And I think there really has to be synergy and respect and affinity for each other.
So if you think of it, uh, Go back to American football, first of all. So American football, how does the team win? Well, it's a balance between the defensive and the offensive strategies, right? So if you think of sales and marketing as the offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator, they're not subservient to each other.
They don't butt heads. They work in concert together. That's how sales and marketing needs to work. And I think that manifests in combinations of calls, interactions, and sharing of plans. Thanks. Thanks. And just talking through what's her go to market strategy and both sales and marketing have a role in that.
[00:06:05] Steffen Horst: So when you started a new company, how do you approach this? How do you pull your sales counterpart into the conversation? And in what are the steps you're going through to align yourself? What specific points are you working for?
[00:06:17] Dawn Mueller: Usually I like to start by asking a lot of questions and not exactly interviewing, but understanding the landscape, understanding what are the challenges.
What are we seeing in the, you know, again, from that competitor orientation, what are we seeing from our competitors? What are we seeing from our customers or our clients and where are the gaps there? And then how can marketing help fill in those gaps? For example, you know, some companies have business development reps.
Some companies don't, if you don't have a business development rep, can I use what I have in my marketing toolkit and technology to help fill that void and help create the follow up and activate on. The different leads that come in so that they are better qualified. So it's really almost an assessment process at the beginning when I join a company and then having that conversation and then creating a plan and saying, okay, let's see what we can accomplish together.
What are the goals we need to accomplish? What do we need to hit on? And then figuring out also the full funnel as part of the go to market strategy, are we really heavy, heavy dominance on the lower end of the funnel? Are we mid funnel? Are we top of the funnel? So really deploying a full funnel strategy so that we're covering everything.
[00:07:29] Steffen Horst: And a net full funnel strategy obviously has also impact on what ends up on the sales side.
[00:07:33] Dawn Mueller: Absolutely.
[00:07:34] Steffen Horst: Right? Because if you have kind of mid funnel activities, ebook downloads or white paper downloads and things like that, obviously those leads are not ready to make a decision. You might have to run them through a drip campaign and things like that.
And it's probably good for sales to exactly know what type of leads they are getting versus the leads that are on a lower funnel. I don't know if, if you have set up a demo call or. You know, set up call with a consultant or something like that. They are obviously much more sales ready than someone who downloads something.
[00:08:07] Dawn Mueller: Yeah. And that's a great point, Stefan, because one of the other things that I think not everybody realizes it's there's a perception. Well, you turn marketing on with the switch, we turn it off, right? It's, it doesn't work that way, especially in a complex selling environment. And I would say even now with so much noise and so many options, To really get your client or customer's attention, it's going to take multiple touch points.
And, and just a rule of thumb, I mean, a complex selling environment, you know, maybe a SaaS or a higher end or professional services, it takes seven touch points for a prospect to convert to a conversation. So when you think about that, that's a good number of white papers. That's presence at conferences, speaking opportunities, media exposure.
I mean, there's, there's a lot out there, but it takes on average seven.
[00:08:58] Steffen Horst: How do you work through agreeing on a KPI that you both sales and marketing can work towards?
[00:09:05] Dawn Mueller: It's funny. I was just looking at some of our OKRs or objectives and key results today. So I guess it's now KPI to OKR. But we were just looking at them and it's really, what are we trying to accomplish from a sales perspective?
So for example, right now we have some clients who are on a legacy system and we need to migrate them to the cloud based platform. And of course there's a cost involved and there's time and there's a lot of effort involved in that. So we look at that together. My sales counterpart and me. And we say, okay, what can we do to help migrate our current clients over to that system?
How do we work on that? And then that becomes one of our OKRs. Okay, we're going to migrate. Let's just set a goal of 10 clients over the coming year to agree to that system. So we set that goal and then we go back and say, all right, what do we need to do to help them? All right, we need to solidify our value proposition.
We need to provide them a cost benefit analysis. We We need to provide them with, you know, something that gives them a case, a business case to justify the expense. So that's how we start with that, you know, so we start with the end and then see what we can do.
[00:10:15] Steffen Horst: No, obviously communication. Is this really important, right?
I mean, you could agree on a lot in the beginning and be aligned and then as leads and, you know, start trickling through that doesn't necessarily still mean that you were able to generate sales. That could be still something broken within that system. So how should sales marketing work to ensure that information from both sides are exchanged and therefore can also be used to optimize.
The entire process. Do you process on the marketing side so that the buying part or kind of the driving needs part, but also the sales part, kind of pushing leads now on the sales funnel to a point of when they're ready to actually become a client?
[00:10:55] Dawn Mueller: That's a great question and there are a couple of different elements that I think go into that.
One is technology. Are we using salesforce.com? Does marketing have access to salesforce.com? Is sales updating the information? That's one component of it. And then as you mentioned, communication. Are we having cross department, cross departmental meetings? Sorry about that. Are we having those types of meetings?
And are we having a joint go to market meeting regularly? I will say that with my sales colleagues, I am on no less than four calls per week where it's sales and marketing. I would say my team, the members of my team are running with sales all the time. They talk to sales people within the organization more than they talk to each other and we talk a lot too.
So there's a lot to that. And I think it's also having those goals communicated, those joint, those OKRs communicated so that everybody knows what we're striving for and what we're working towards and then having those cascade down.
[00:11:54] Steffen Horst: So how does customer orientation fit into all of that? So what does sales and what does marketing need to do to be customer focused?
[00:12:02] Dawn Mueller: Okay. So from a customer orientation, you know, working with customer success, wherever that resides. Thanks. Thanks. Understanding, I can give you an example right now with Vitek. We just said, we've got a lot of information, are we providing that information to our clients or our customers in a manner in which they want to receive it, right?
It's one thing if I'm putting everything on the website, but you're expecting an email from me and you're not getting it. Guess what? We have a value gap right there. So we, marketing, just created a survey to be used by sales to ask the clients, how do they want to receive information? How often do they want to receive information?
What type of information and what type of format? So that's kind of that handshake, you know, sales said, Hey, we need to get information to clients. We said, well, do we know that we're providing it in the right way? How do we solve this? Yeah. Okay. Thanks. So it's coming to the table, both sales and marketing with, here's what we need to solve for and let's come up with the ideas to solve it.
So that's one way.
[00:13:01] Steffen Horst: Okay. If we dive a little bit more into the practical side of things. So you talked about SaaS companies, you work for them, currently work for one. How is the practical implementation at a SaaS company work for this? Can you describe the mechanism for fostering it into functional coordination?
[00:13:17] Dawn Mueller: Yeah, it's, I'll start at the highest level. From a macro level. We, as executives at the company, we have a monthly objective and key result meeting where we all kind of share and we all just say, Hey, you know, for example, sales may say, Hey product, we're waiting for the next release. You let the date slip as an example.
So that's all discussed. It's pretty much putting everything out on the table for everybody to talk about. So there, it goes back to that communication element again. And then from there, it just kind of drops down. So. We say, all right, how, what's going on with customer satisfaction? What's going on with customer success?
Is there a gap there? Are we taking the information from our NPS survey and are we actioning it? Because a lot of companies will take the NPS score and not do anything with it. So we have to make sure we're actioning things. Really making sure that we're providing information. And again, this is where I said, it's a lot of teams and a lot of departments at the beginning of this conversation, but product development, are we giving that feedback back to product development saying, Hey, this is what we're hearing from, and again, sales is on the front lines.
Sales heard this from the clients. Are we feeding that back to product development? And then is marketing able to say action it? One of the things we like to avoid is. Getting to the point where clients are saying they want something, product development saying, yeah, that's aspirational, but it's not on the roadmap and the marketing is out there promoting it.
We try to avoid that at all costs because until it's something solid, we don't want to market it. So there's, there are a lot of hurdles there.
[00:14:51] Steffen Horst: Yeah. Do you see marketing sales and product working really close together more than, than other teams work together?
[00:14:59] Dawn Mueller: I do. Yes. I would say those three teams work together more frequently than any other, especially that's what's happening at Vitek.
Again, we have multiple calls, multiple video conferences per week, and then we have some in person meetings too. We're really looking to have that interlock and, Hey, product, you know, this is what we're hearing. And product is also telling us, well, we're, we've got voice of the customer and this is what we're hearing.
So it's again. That customer orientation is coming through in everything that we do so that we can become even more market oriented.
[00:15:33] Steffen Horst: So what are the benefits for a SaaS company?
[00:15:35] Dawn Mueller: You're more agile, and I know agile is also a methodology too, but so yes, there is nuance in that. You're able to provide enhanced customer support.
You're able to have more effective marketing strategies, and you can also have faster product development. That's how I see it playing out in the SaaS context.
[00:15:53] Steffen Horst: Let's dive a little bit deeper into that and can you talk a little bit more, where does the faster product development come from within that model?
[00:15:59] Dawn Mueller: You're getting timely feedback. So for example, with marketing, one of the things we're saying, Hey, sales would like to have more information and understand what's going on with the client's decision making process. So we say, let's put up. A round table discussion, Hey, product development, what information do you want us to extract from, you know, current clients, but also prospective clients to understand what's going into it.
So that's how we help in that regard and that, and they're getting information more timely as opposed to, okay, let's go out, let's do more of a formal analysis. And, you know, figure out how things are going, where we can actually give them hands on, real time information. And I think that's another key component, and that goes back to that technological aspect too, Stefan, is through the use of technology, you know, across the spectrum, we're able to get real time information and share that, again, through that interfunctional coordination across the departments and teams.
[00:16:58] Steffen Horst: Now, in many cases, when you have a model that you apply, they're not always just preps. They're also cons or challenges with preps. What are the challenges and potential solutions with this market orientation approach?
[00:17:14] Dawn Mueller: I think some of the challenges is you may have disagreement on the strategy. You may have some friction.
Again, you still, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes you have people that are saying, Hey, sales just needs more salespeople and marketing is saying we just need more budget. So I think that's where you get into some friction there. It's also a cultural shift, right? Because you have to foster a collaborative culture and.
Yes. The communication. And, and that is uncomfortable for some people, especially if they weren't used to that. And it's also leveraging that technology for better communication too. So.
[00:17:46] Steffen Horst: Is that collaborative culture or that collaborative approach becoming more challenging in kind of a work environment where a lot of people work remote and they are no longer sitting, you know, in one building all together?
[00:17:59] Dawn Mueller: You know, in the past that may have been the case. But I do think that we. Because of the remote workforce, because of the way things are distributed, I think there's a little bit more effort put into it. And you know, just to be really blunt, being on video, you have to pay more attention. Whereas in a meeting, in an in person meeting, come on, everybody knows they've been on their phone or they've done something else or they're writing something in their notebook that may not be notes.
But with the remote working arrangements, you kind of have to pay more attention. So I do think the collaboration is there. I don't think it's diminished through the virtual. I can tell you that sometimes in person, yeah, you had the advantage. You could walk down the hall to somebody's office and have a conversation.
But again, having grown up a lot of my professional career in Deloitte and Ernst Young and professional services environments, people were on the road and people were all over the place anyway. So we were trendy with, with the remote work before it was actually trendy.
[00:18:58] Steffen Horst: So, but you were on the road with mostly in teams.
[00:19:02] Dawn Mueller: Yes,
[00:19:03] Steffen Horst: that's true. So you weren't as an individual in many cases. It was like a small group of people or, you know,
[00:19:08] Dawn Mueller: yeah, but still you're working with groups across.
[00:19:10] Steffen Horst: So that's true. Now let's talk about future trends and recommendations. So what are the emerging trends with this?
[00:19:18] Dawn Mueller: I think future trends for software companies.
Tend to be more of that error, functional coordination. I think you're seeing also a blur of the lines between sales and marketing, or I should say revenue and marketing. I'm seeing more of a blurring of the lines of that. So, you know, you may have a chief revenue officer and a CMO, you may have a chief sales officer who knows it's all different things like that.
It just really depends. And then also technology. I think that is an ever emerging trend. I mentioned salesforce. com, but that's been around for a long time, right? That's a legacy platform, but now you've got competitive intelligence tools that are doing web scraping to get the information. You've got other technologies coming into play that, I mean, again, there were those intent companies, but now it's intent aggregated with profiling and other information.
So I see a lot of that. And then how do you share that? And I guess it's also who owns it, right? Does one group own it or is everybody accountable for it? So I think that's another one.
[00:20:26] Steffen Horst: Oh, it's that question. Yeah. Are you a first mover when it comes to new technologies or are you waiting till other companies?
Have kind of, you know, have created the first use cases and then show results.
[00:20:37] Dawn Mueller: I think we have, I would have answered that differently a few months ago. So right now I would say we're becoming a first mover. And as an example of that, you know, there's competitive intelligence. Platforms out there, there's other information and our company, I said, Hey, it'd be great if we could buy this, but it's really expensive.
And I know we have capabilities in, in house. So right now we're building our own competitive intelligence tool using generative AI. So we've been testing that. So we're not going out externally with mark to the market with it, but for our own internal use. And then we just invested in another tool to help us with the curation of information for prospects, for current clients.
And really being able to function in that BDR role through the technology. So, so we're starting to move into that first mover, I would say.
[00:21:30] Steffen Horst: Interesting. Now, before we come to the end in today's podcast episode, now, what are some actual advice that you can share with the listeners where you say, Hey, you know what?
If you're getting started. with this, or you're rethinking what you're currently doing, here are the top three, top five things I would want you to, to look at or to think about.
[00:21:51] Dawn Mueller: That's a great question too. And I would say first, and you hit this topic in there, is communication, right? Communicate, respect each other's roles, respect that it's not one or the other.
Again, it's like that offensive and defensive coordinator, and that symbiosis for marketing and sales. And really, a cultural shift starts. With us as leaders in those roles. So, you know, so communication, respect, cultural shift and affecting that. And then really, I think also envisioning mutually, right? So, Hey, Hey, my colleague in sales, or Hey, my colleague in marketing, depending on which seat you're in, let's talk and let's figure out you've got this objective.
I've got these objectives, but how did these come together? And that's a gestalt thing, right? You know, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. So I think really making that your North Star, that we just want to make all of it better together. I think if you can set that tone and you have the right people in place, you can make a lot of great things happen.
[00:22:57] Steffen Horst: Well, Dawn, thank you so much for joining me in a performance about podcasts and sharing your thoughts on the importance of inter functional coordination. Now if people want to find out more about you, about Vitek, how can they get in touch?
[00:23:09] Dawn Mueller: linkedin.com/in/dawn Mueller. So I managed it even though the name is all over the place for other people with the same name.
That's mine. So LinkedIn, Dawn Mueller, and then for Vitech we're on LinkedIn. And then we also have our website, vitech inc IN c.com. We'd love to hear from you and get your opinion on any of this.
[00:23:32] Steffen Horst: Perfect. And as always, we'll leave that information in the show notes. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to follow us about podcasts, please subscribe to us and leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast application.
If you want to find out more about the Phonic Digital, you can visit us at phonicdigital. com or follow us on Hacks. at Symphonic HQ. Thanks again and see you
[00:23:51] Intro: next time. Performance Delivered is sponsored by Symphonic Digital. Discover audience focused and data driven digital marketing solutions for small and medium businesses at SymphonicDigital.com.