Philippe Gamache 0:07 What's up guys, welcome to the humans of martec podcast. His name is John Taylor. My name is Phil ganache. Our mission is to future proof the humans behind the tech so you can have a successful and happy career in marketing. What's up everyone today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Andrea Lechner Becker, author and co host have owned. Andrew started her career in martec. As a database marketing coordinator at the Phoenix Suns NBA basketball team. She later joined a two year old marketing automation consultancy called Lead MD. She would quickly get promoted to principal VP of Marketing Service and later cmo when the company was acquired by another agency and rebranded as shift paradigm. Through the consultancy, Andrew has helped huge brands like Adobe Atlassian drift tealium. She also ran marketing at Tullio for a bit before leaving her successful career as a marketing exec and going back to her entrepreneurial roots creating uncommonly good content. She's the co host of owned podcast by audience Plus, she wrote the Practical Guide to b2b event sponsorship and she's also written an intensely emotional and powerful fiction story called 60. days left. Andrea, thank you so much for your time today pumped to chat. Andrea Lechner-Becker 1:18 Hi, thanks. Great intro. very succinct. Thank Philippe Gamache 1:22 you. Yeah, I practice a few times. There were a few interviews where I didn't practice and definitely shows them that post recording. So thank you. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by our friends at knack. launching an email or landing page and your marketing automation platform shouldn't feel like assembling an airplane mid flight with no instructions. But too often, that's exactly how it feels. NAC is like an instruction set for campaign creation for establishing brand guardrails and streamlining your approval process to knacks no code, drag and drop editor to help you build emails and landing pages. 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Copy workflow items, so you don't have to repeat the building process again and monitor campaigns tests and key list membership growth from your personalized dashboard. The icing on the cake marketers using customer to have seen a 20% increase in conversion rates from strategic messaging. So stop using clunky old tools and adopt a multi channel approach that creates joyful interactions with your customers start a free trial without a credit card customer.eo And tell them we sent you. I wanted to ask you by the last thing I said in your intro. John and I are both aspiring sci fi novelists. Maybe someday in April 2018, couple years ago, you released your first fiction story. Walk us through that whole journey where that idea came from the story about Willow and maybe touch on like the publishing process. Super curious. Yeah, Andrea Lechner-Becker 3:42 so first of all, if you write you are a writer, right, you're not an aspiring writer, you are one if you write, so congratulations. Writing is hard. And it's a daily practice that if you choose to do it, if you have the passion for it, it can be the most rewarding and terrible experience ever. Because it's hard to write every single day. But that's sort of my advice to anybody who wants to write. In general, right? Whether you want to become a better writer in business, or you want to be a published author one day, just write every day, even if it's drunk and like two sentences just right. Um, but yeah, so the story of Willow comes from real life. So there is a lot of people who deal with this essentially, in America and a lot of people internationally don't realize what Death with Dignity laws are here, which are basically human euthanasia laws. And they differ from state to state and so in the country, and I'm a little bit removed from the politics of this issue since 2018. But at the time that I wrote it, there were five states in America that have Death with Dignity, which basically means that if you have a terminal illness, and your life is latency is less than six months to live that you can get a cocktail of drugs to, you know, slow your heart to a point of stopping and pass away in your sleep essentially, which I think is just, you know, it's a, it's a rite that we give to animals. And it's odd to me that we don't give it to humans, just philosophically. And so there are people who will travel live in one state and go travel to another state in order to do this. And I really just wanted to bring awareness to this issue that I think is just a, an odd fascination to me that in America, we have created these boundaries. And then given people this idea that because certain people with certain philosophies, whether it's, you know, your right to choose in a woman's health care decisions, or your right to choose how you want to leave this earth, like, it's just like, we've made these boundaries up, we just made them up. And then we put people in charge of what happens to all of the human beings in those boundaries, to me is just like the most fascinating artists kind of concept in the world. And so I just wanted to bring attention to like, this is the insanity in which we are living in this country. And like, we should really have the choice to choose how we want to live and die. That's really what the book is about in the, in the grander scheme of things. And I think that sometimes issues like that are really hard to talk about or contextualize, unless you have a fictional character that's kind of going through these emotions that you can go through with them and sort of realize it. So the best compliments that I get on the book are people who say, you know, I was totally against the idea of death with dignity. And after reading this story, I either am now very much for it. I think everyone should have this right. Or at least like this gave me another perspective, I'm still against it mostly for religious reasons are typically why people are against the kind of thing that I'm talking about. But so that's that's the thing. So you know, humans have March, I don't know, if you were expecting to get into a debate, I have a conversation about, about, you know, the way that people get to choose how they die. But that's what the book is about. Jon Taylor 7:10 Fascinating. Well, thank you for walking us through that. And I mean, I'll kind of segue this a little bit into the realm of marketing. But in marketing, like, wow, you have to be a genius. Let's see how we do this great GT crackin calls. So the idea with marketing and writing, as you're discussing is just like this idea to clearly communicate like this simple, clear communication. And lately, maybe not just lately, but right now we're all infused with this, like everything is now has a dash of AI. And I've seen you on LinkedIn, call out companies for making, you know, AI powered revenue orchestration. And I also saw a piece that you did on your podcast around a mouse Palooza asking people to describe their products without any buzzwords. And it was actually like an impossible task. And you're talking about, like the idea of daily writing, and it just got me thinking about, like, what's happened to us in marketing? Like, why are we so eager to just enter? You know, more writing into the sea of the sameness? Like everything looks the same? Like why aren't we using simple emotional connections to communicate things? How have we lost our path? What's your take on this? Andrea Lechner-Becker 8:20 Yeah, I mean, I in general, I'm the kind of person who wants to go back to basics in marketing back to the feeling. And I talk a lot about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And I think, if you're unfamiliar with it, you know, Google it, and then you will see it, it's a pyramid, whereby at the top is self actualization, and at the bottom are basic needs like food, water, and shelter, right. And basically, as you as a human being go beyond your basic needs that you need just to survive, you can start doing things like investing in your career and learning skill sets that aren't like building a fire skill sets, right? They're more mind skill sets that help you build a career and help you feel confident. And so there are social elements to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And I fundamentally believe that in business people are very bad at connecting to the human element, whether that is your customer, whether that is your boss, whether that is a peer of yours, people do not. And it's crazy to me how bad people are at this, like I have attended cmo happy hours. And then like, You people are boring as fuck, and like unable to hold a conversation with another human being. And I actually think that this is a skill like, I have very specific questions in there from a guy named Art Aaron, who's a psychologist and he has these 32 questions to fall in love with someone, but you can use them in business. There are things like if a fire was to, you know, unfortunately befall your home and all of your parents, all of your pets and your kids are in your file. and all those things are okay, what's the one thing that you would take from your home? Right? Like it their questions like that all the way through? Did you grow up with a family that was very physically affectionate? Right? So of course, there are things that, you know, you'd have to really get to know someone in a business environment in order to ask that question. But all of the beginning ones are very innocuous, and I just use those at happy hours. Those are the things that I asked other people that I just meet so that I can get to know them. And there's not all these like weird little lols and conversation. Now it's not because I'm a great conversationalist. It's because I had these awkward experiences where I was like, Hey, I cannot make conversation with these motherfuckers to say, My God, what am I going to do to solve for this? And I was I went out, and I found questions, and I liked the philosophy of what art Aaron was doing, and blah, blah, blah, right? Like, people need to do shit like that. Sometimes, if you are a socially awkward person, such as myself, like, I'm an introvert, but I have all of these little tools that I use in order to become less awkward as people. So back to your question of like, Why do b2b companies all sound the same? Why do they all Baba Baba blah, because they're not trying very hard to be different is just the reality. And the majority, the thing that people do not talk enough about, is that CEOs, most of them in this country, well, you're in Canada, but most of us in North America will just say that, but like, they do not understand marketing. Most of the people who are running businesses come from finance, especially if they're big companies, right? Enterprise level companies, fortune 500 companies, a lot of those dudes, mostly white men come from fucking finance, they do not understand marketing, they've never sold something at all. So they don't understand how to communicate one to one to get people to buy something, and they don't understand how to do it in mass, which is my definition of marketing. Marketing is just mass sales. And people some people don't like that, because then they feel like marketing is like on like, under sales. And I think of it is the exact opposite. I think marketing is an umbrella under which sales is a main skill set that we have just in mass versus one to one. So anyways, all of that to say the reason that it sucks, it's because people don't care to make it not suck, it cannot suck. It has not socked in b2c a bunch of times, but even b2c can get confused, right. But I think, in b2b, what people are very bad at is communicating the benefit of the benefit, right. So like when you think about this, in b2c, you never sell grass seed to someone, right? You sell a beautiful lawn to someone because that's what people care about. People want the best lawn in the neighborhood. They don't want to buy fucking grass. That is unsexy as hell, right? So like, in b2b, nobody wants to buy accounting software. Like I didn't wake up today and go, I'd love QuickBooks in my life. Like, I just would love to spend $100 a month on QuickBooks, no, like I have a need, which is less pain in my ass of manually doing invoicing. So I buy accounting software, because I want to spend less time on should I fucking hate, or I want peace of mind. I don't want, I invest in marketing technology, that's easy to use, because I don't want to accidentally fuck something up and send the wrong email to people and look like a fucking idiot and hurt my brand and get my boss to yell at me. And all of those things like b2b companies are just really bad at getting in touch with those kind of emotions and saying, like, we don't help you send invoices, we help you sleep better at night, we help you focus on the shit that you actually want to do with your time instead of all this innocuous shit that you don't want to do, right? Like, we're just really bad at that human connection. But I don't think it's because we can't be better. I just think that the incentives aren't there to really do it. Because the people who run these companies don't really understand the importance of it. And it all turns into, like, demand marketing, right? Like, what's the ROI of this gonna be is just like, you know, it's like, all those corporate who I'm in like, I'm ranting, but there's like all of those corporate humorists who talk about all the bullshit that happens in business communication, and what's the ROI of that going to be is one of those things, right? It's one of those things that people say when they don't know what else to say, that's smarter how to actually accomplish results. They just kind of oh, well, what's the ROI back innovate, huh? You know, well, you're so smart. Yes. Like what a great fucking question. And the answer is, you know, marketing is part art and part science and there are a ton of things that we should be doing that do not have direct correlation to an ROI and sometimes you have to believe it's like magic Philippe Gamache 14:42 man there's there's so many paths that we could go down on with with this rant. I appreciate the hell out of this rant. I want to touch on the the introverted advice that you have on like those like 30 questions to get to know someone you love. We'll, we'll we'll dig up that that author there and and add that to the resources for this episode. But as an introvert myself, like I, I've done similar things and like these awkward networking situations where you're just sitting there having dinner and like, you have no idea what to say to this other person. But the thing I love the most about your answer, I think is like this idea that sales is under the umbrella of marketing and not because like the two departments are often fighting with each other but because marketing is essentially sales at volume doing it to multiple people, whether it's like email or different tactics on on ads there, but I wanted to ask you about on this topic like this, like you essentially left the path of a marketing exec right, like you haven't like fully left marketing. But I wanted to ask you about like what keeps you coming back to marketing, the sweaty palms before to hitting that like send button on an email. We're the rush of seeing impressions and your new ad campaigns starting to come in. There's something special and exhilarating about marketing and that hands on nature of doing stuff and getting it out in the wild. You said that during your time at Tullio you got your hands dirty again, after kind of being a bit more out of the loop on stuff. And you loved every second about that. Andrew, what do you love marketing so much, and what keeps you coming back? Andrea Lechner-Becker 16:24 I do love marketing, it is true. I went to school for marketing. And I really love the idea of just communicating something that you think is awesome to another human being. That's fundamentally what it is right? Like, if I enjoy something, I want other people to enjoy it too. So even the content that I create, right now, essentially, most of my time is well, not most of my time, most of my time is spent mucking around, don't do anything, I'm retired, right. So I like hanging out with my dog, I you know, prune my orange trees, I juice the oranges that I grow, I do things like that for the most part. But you know, when it comes to actually using my brain, and then that's stuff that I know that I have accumulated over my career, most of what I do is teach people on tick tock how to think of themselves like a product in order for them to get a great job and grow their career. Because I really think that the there's a lot of similarities between the way that you build a SaaS product and the way that you should be building your own skill sets as a human being and then promoting them selling them into a potential future employer, right. So I even love that, that kind of a concept, right? I have had a great career, I've been super fortunate. And I just want other people to do the same thing, right? Like I want them to be able to live the life that they want, I want them to be able to make them on money that they want. And that's the same thing that I feel about my very first full time marketing job, which was at an art gallery selling dog art, right. I I loved the art, I saw the way that people smiled, when they walked into the gallery, I saw homes of people with it all over their walls, and how joyful their living spaces were. And when you believe in something like that, you really just want other people to, to, to see it to do it to experience that same joy. And that is ultimately how I have operated my entire career. Right. So like, when I worked at a consultancy, and I think that's the thing that has always kind of confused me about people who want to be passionate about their work is that if you find something that you love, and it's your whole job to tell other people about that thing that you love, I, to me, that's the most fulfilling thing in the world. And so, and you might think, Well, I mean, you worked at Marketo agency, what's so fulfilling about that, like, the people that I worked with, have become VPs of marketing have become CMOS have been able to afford people that work directly for me, who came in, you know, making $32,000 and thought I want to have a brood of children and but I'm never gonna be able to afford them. In five years, were able to afford a 3000 square foot house and their wife didn't have to work and like that changes people's lives. And so I I really think that any kind of company you can if you're passionate about the product that they're selling, or the work that they're doing, or the people that you're working with, like there's always and I'm like a big nine to five dork like, I think entrepreneurships massively overrated I think working for someone else with incredibly intelligent human beings where you can just make a bunch of money, grow your skill set, and have fun is I think it's dope if and I think it's really just like attitude at the end of the day. Like, I think tons of 90 fives can be awesome, but you really need to have the right attitude. And so essentially, that's, that's why I love marketing. i It's, I went around around it and And over here, but really that's it like I, I am an excitable human being. And when I get excited about something, I just want to tell everyone about it. And when they respond to me right to your point, when they open my email, or they click on my link, I'm like me like someone else is understanding the value that I that I think that this thing has. So that's why I love marketing. Yes, Philippe Gamache 20:23 super cool perspective. Yeah, I agree. I think there's like, a way for people to work in house somewhere in nine to five and still feel that passion about sharing something they're working on and feeling passionate about it, while also folks working for themselves and building something. And I feel like then there's even more of that elements, because like, it is your own thing. And you're building that. But I love when you said folks should think more of their careers like a SaaS product, almost like how do you market your Sass products should be similar to how you market your career. And like a big theme on the show that we've had, especially with like, a lot of topics around AI and shit moving so fast. And martech is this idea of how can we future proof ourselves as marketers, so don't want to like just pick your brain? They're like, what if you had to pick one skill to encourage marketers to do today that would allow them to future proof their careers and 510 years? What does that today and you're not allowed to say tick tock? Andrea Lechner-Becker 21:21 I wouldn't say tick tock. But I would say I still believe so my answer to this historically has been writing. I think writing is an incredible skill set. And I don't think that AI has taken away that answer. But it has complicated it a little bit for me. Because I do think that I can tell immediately at this point when chat GPT has written something Yeah, 100 or 100%, I can unlike you just use check GPT you didn't do anything else. And so I think, but I think it will get better to the point where you can't tell. So I have g PTS that I use to assist me in my writing all the time. And I've trained them on certain linguistic preferences that I have in order to make it sound not like it normally does. So I I don't know that I is, I don't know that. That's what I want to say, You know what I would say, here's the biggest skill set that you can use to future proof yourself is pattern recognition. I think that because even when you look at a technology like AI, what I do when I use that technology is not just use it, I use it, I assess the results, I find patterns in what's working and what's not. And then what's not working, I re experiment, I reassess, I re identify patterns. And I just do that and do that and do that until I have something that I really like. It's the same thing with any job, literally, whether you're in marketing or not. It is, hey, when I got on boarded, I saw this consistent inefficiency in that process. Here's how I suggest we fix it. When I go to our corporate meetings, I always see this pattern in you know, our CEO, always just talks, talks, talks and then says Does anyone have any comments or questions? And it's silence? Do you want silence? Or do you want people to actually ask questions, because if you want that, then here's a suggestion of what this looks like instead. So I think that pattern recognition, generally is the most important skill set for any human being, and even in your any human being. And then even in your personal life, right? Like there's an inefficiency in the way that I'm doing laundry every week. Like she really could do this better. Like I gotta and maybe you don't want to eke out inefficiencies in every element of your existence, which I also totally understand. But I think pattern recognition in general is rarely talked about, and really is this stand out quality that makes someone successful and, and flexible to whatever might come at them next. Philippe Gamache 24:02 Very cool. When one day, I forget which book I read, but like, the author made the case that one of the best ways to get better at pattern recognition was to play board games and card games. And I joke characters usually, sometimes JT is recording from his parents basement and there's like a bunch of board games behind him. It's the JT this would have been a perfect segue there. Oh, man, Jon Taylor 24:25 he's still chirping that board game day and it was my mom actually changed that whole room just because of you by the way. So she's gonna she has a little bit of a thing for you fell so you better watch out. Man, you totally threw me off course with that one. Philippe Gamache 24:41 This episode is brought to you by our friends at revenue hero. I can't think of anything worse than finding out a lead waited a week for a response from sales. That's why we recommend revenue hero. It's the easiest way to qualify leads based on Form Values or enrich data and route them to the right sales rep. Their product is packed with a bunch of books When the scenes superpowers that ensures qualified leads are assigned to the right reps following your custom round robin rules and sending key data back to your CRM. That means more qualified meetings for your reps. We all know they want more of those. But more importantly, no more waiting time for your potential customers. They back all of this up with the best product support out there offering 24 Five support on Slack Connect for all customers, no matter your pricing plan. So if you want to three extra conversions with the same traffic, go to revenue hero.io And tell them we sent you your sales team will thank you for it. This episode is also brought to you by our friends at census the number one data activation and reverse ETL platform left by Activision Canva Sonos notion and more. As you might know, I'm pretty opinionated. The future of martec is composable. And that the single source of truth for your marketing data should be your data warehouse. Since this helps marketers solve an age old marketing problem getting real time complete access to your customer data without needing to write a line of code. Also, if you want your own face as humans have martec style image, we're doing a fun monthly raffle with census for a personalized t shirt, enter to win at get census.com/humans. Jon Taylor 26:20 You know, just one of the questions I hear you talk a lot about is just this idea of advocating for ourselves in marketing. Again, another huge scene for us in the show, we just talked about this, like the idea that the CEOs know nothing about marketing. It's such an easy thing for folks on LinkedIn to say like if your CEO doesn't get marketing, you know, FM but like, that's not always reality, like you got to get paid. Andrea Lechner-Becker 26:44 And what has worked for that CEO? Yeah. And Jon Taylor 26:47 I think like, also, like, we might be so busy thinking about how do we market ourselves. And I have an example. I'm part of a Slack team with one of my clients, and they, their data team put out this huge update, I could tell this update took them probably 10 hours on the monthly reporting was really detailed, tons of bullet points. No, like it was so easy to ignore, like, there's just this no advocating for what you're actually doing. There's no contrast, there's no surprising elements, there's no main takeaways, like we kind of suck at marketing for ourselves internally. And I think that there's a component of marketing, that we need to be better about advocating for ourselves. What have you seen work in your career? You've worked with tons of different, you know, top tier companies, what do you think the top people are doing to challenge those CEOs to learn more about marketing to care more about marketing? Andrea Lechner-Becker 27:35 Yeah, so I will almost always go back to relationships. I had a post at one point helping it's up anymore, but I what, you know, what do you do, and you're actually I talked to Chris Walker about this, like, I don't know, six years ago, and it's still up on his YouTube, if you are curious. But the first thing that I say is, your first 90 days as a CMO is it should be all about relationships, the number of leaders in marketing, that their first thing is I want quick wins, I want to get in there and get you know, assess the whole, like, Fuck all of that. Like, the only thing you need is relationships with the rest of people in the C suite, primarily your CFO CFOs control all of my fucking budget. So I do not understand why CMOS do not immediately go befriend the CFO, it's the it's my number one relationship, because even if the CEO and I, even if the CEO doesn't get marketing, if I can convince the CFO to spend me and the CFO together can definitely convince the CEO of anything that we want, beyond even sales, like I do not focus on even the sales relationship before the CFO relationship, they need to be my absolute best friend, I need to convince them that my plan is going to make this company money in the long term because CFOs are both short term and long term focused which sales is more short term focused than long term. CEOs can often dragged into short term mindset, because let's be honest, winning new logos is a dopamine hit that CEOs love. They love talking about that new logo that just came on board, that big company that they've always wanting to get. So they can they can shiny object a lot more than CFOs. So if I can partner with my CFO, and we can go together to to sell our mission into the organization. That is what I think is the number one thing that great marketing leaders do is they immediately work with their finance partners. The other thing is that I do think it's a storytelling element. And I think that I talk all the time about Made to Stick by the Heath Brothers is the only business book that I really recommend ever to people because it's so succinctly gives you the toolkit to be able to sell your ideas to anyone and so of course it's good for selling your product into your customer base, but it's also good for selling Your internal stuff and you, you just mentioned two key elements from it, which is surprise, right? You have to break someone's guessing machine in order to get them to go, oh, fuck, this is different. Okay, now I'm going to pay attention to it. And you mentioned something else too, but I already forgot it. But yeah, like major stick has like these very quick, it's like five things that you got to do in order to make your idea sticky so that it infiltrates someone's mind. And it actually moves them to action, because that's the thing, right? Like, when you're talking internally, you're not just saying things to say them, you want to spur someone into action. And that that is I think that the key is that you have to think deeply about these things to your point, you can't just do the thing, and then like, pop it on into Slack and be like, Oh, I hope somebody reads it. Right. Like if you really want to change hearts and minds, you have to think deeply about the way that you're communicating the thing that you just did. I Jon Taylor 30:56 love that. And I love the kind of tie in Back to the CFO, like, I had a tour of duty where I was a kind of head of marketing. And it just kind of happened that the CFO and I became really good friends quickly, I wasn't a strategic move at all. It's just mutual interests. And I will say that that relationship became very easy because he did the budget and in USD for me, and I thought it was all in CD. So I got a little surprise there. At the beginning of the year, I got a boost in my budget artificially. So I'm in but related to that, as well as like this idea of attribution. And I've heard you talk about this on a few other podcasts. I think it's just such a cool story, right? I think you're at Marketo summit 2011 2012. You've, you've told this story many times, I think but like the lead MD cards had Dr. on it. And then like a decade later, people are still coming up to you and saying, oh, yeah, you guys are the doctors of Marketo. And you're like, you remember that. And I think this is like this kind of gets to the point around attribution and marketing that I would like to ask you a question about, which is just this idea of like, we know the CFO and the CEO, we know these these folks want perfect attribution that $1 into the into the marketing machine equals to five $20 out on the other side, but we also know as marketers that we're creating emotional responses, we're creating memories that will last decades in the case of of Dr. Lead MD, do you feel like this quest that we're on to have perfect attribution can lead marketers to do dumb things? What's your take on this? Andrea Lechner-Becker 32:23 Yeah. Just Yes, yes, yes. 1000 times? Yes. Yes, I think so I posted this on LinkedIn vans, the shoe company, created two vehicles that looked like shoes and drove them around New York. And the first thing that I came into my mind, and the thing that I posted on LinkedIn was, what executive at vans do you think is asking? What's the ROI of those two giant shoes? None, none. It's cultural. Right? It is 100% cultural, how you get to do something like that, as a marketing team, because you're never going to know, you can do a little bit around impressions, you can try to figure out what the virality of something like that is, but you, you could do eyeballs that see them in New York estimates, right? Like you can do all of that stuff. But it's kind of it's useless. Right? Like, ultimately, that's just a good fucking idea. It's clever. It's fun, you know, people are gonna like it and share it. And frankly, that was, I don't know, eight months ago, at this point, and I'm talking about it on a podcast now. Right? How can you monetize things like that? You just can't, it is you just can't. And, but that's a mentality thing, right. And so like I said, most CEOs are finance guys, or engineers, like, you got to just believe, and you don't have a CEO who believes your entire job is going to be selling that shit. Every, every fucking month, every quarter, every year, it is going to be selling that stuff. And I think part of the other thing that's super hard, is that cmo tenure, obviously is the worst in the C suite. Right? It's under two years. And the thing that's hard is that any of that long term planning, you're never going to see it and that's that's why I talk about that story a lot. And and that's why I talk about I'll just finish the thought. That's why I talk about that story a lot from Marketo Summit, because I think that I was at lead MD from 2011 until 2000. And wanting to join a three block I don't even remember 2222 22. So I was there 11 years. So I got the benefit of working for a company for over a decade and seeing things that we did my first year come to fruition on your 10 or 11. And most marketers do not even have that experience to draw on to tell that story. So I hope they use my story because most people have not been in an organization at this point over 10 years to be able to say, Yeah, but remember, you said the same thing about that event that we did. And I told you at work, and now we, we have brand recognition. All in this way, this is the way that this has percolated and I think, Adobe, well, what used to be Marketo Summit, is that example for lead MD, we very strategically said, We are not a big company, but we're gonna look big. We took for the first couple years, we went, we took every single person that worked at our company, so we could look at every single person went because we were not Accenture, we were not Pedowitz group, we did not have the people we did not have really the expertise. So you are faking it. And like, and we just said, like, we're gonna do this, and we're gonna act like we're bigger than we are and the number of people who just like, the elite MD, I know you guys from that entire thing like you have, you are never going to be able to look at it in your system and go like, Wow, great, we got this amount of money from this expenditure, you have to believe conceptually in this idea, in any idea like that, right? Like you have to buy into it. And so yeah, I think marketers do themselves a great disservice. Dis justice, that's not a word, injustice is the word, a great injustice by focusing too much on by a, I should say, they do themselves an injustice by assuming that if that if you can measure it better, it's a better tactic, not always, tactics that you cannot measure sometimes are very, very effective. Now, the other thing that makes events incredibly challenging, is that the vast majority of people do them terribly. So I am a huge proponent of events, but you really got to have your shit together when you're going there. And, and investing that kind of money, and time and energy. And I think most people shit the bad on the actual execution. At the event, the running people down the making sure that you show up to a session that your target account is speaking at with questions on deck sitting in the front row asking those questions going up to them afterwards, asking them questions, getting involved, things like that matter a lot to the ROI of an event, but you got to be there, and you got to hustle, and you cannot just show up and stand at the booth on your phone and have some tchotchkes that, ain't it either. So I think that, that those kinds of things also, they're super hard to uncover from a dashboard, right? Like that event might have sucked. But like, why did it sock because I will have my an eye. After I released the ebook, which you mentioned at the top of the event ebook, I got into all these conversations with people. And they were trying to figure out what events do I say yes to? And my answer to them was, if 100% of the attendees of this event could be your customer, you must be there. Like that. That's, that's an opportunity. You don't get fucking anywhere else on the planet. If 100%. And that was the case for Marketo summit for us, right? We sold Marketo services, if you were at Marketo Summit, you should be our customer period. So if us not investing in that event, would have been the dumbest thing on the planet, in my opinion. And I think that of any company, if 100% of your potential customers, and current customers are at a place one place, and you can get in front of them, if you are not there, you're just stupid, and you need to make sure that when you get there, you fucking execute, I would put almost all if I had no other things, I would put all of my energy into that. Like if I didn't, I told this to a CEO the other day, like that they don't have a marketing department, I was like, your customers are in one place. And you can go there and be in front of them. Do that immediately. Do not fucking run ads, don't worry about SEO, like, go to the event and get in front of these people. Like it's so easy. And I think a lot of times people are put there's so many options of what I could. Sure, but ultimately, you need to get in front of the people who can buy your shit. And 100% of of even 200 people a roomful of 200 people that could say yes to your shit tomorrow. Be there. Be there, do it execute. Philippe Gamache 39:42 Love it. I'm taking those myself on our pitch deck for getting sponsors on the podcast because we have a pretty niche audience of folks. And there's a lot of martech vendors out there and 100% of our audience could be buyers of that tech But not everyone is interested in investing in stuff that doesn't have direct attribution. And we know that like podcasts is a whole other nuts on crack and like events is on there also. But I love the example that you gave about like the the doctor on the cards and folks like still remembering that like a decade later and yeah, how like you guys weren't a big company, but you were coming up with these cool ideas of doing brand marketing. I don't know what your definition of that is, and if it qualifies for that idea, but I think the the vans, shoes like driving around the city is definitely brand marketing. And I saw a post recently that said that late stage startups should start caring about brand marketing, but early stage could really only care about demand. Gen. I think deli part of your answer is kind of flipping that and saying that that's bullshit. What do you think that's bullshit? Andrea Lechner-Becker 40:52 Yeah, I personally think everyone needs a brand if you ever talk, and I think salespeople get a lot of marketers, here's all right. So here's the thing about, I love marketing, and I love marketers. However, we have egos. And the ego of the marketer is very sales doesn't understand what we do. They're short sighted, they will never understand. But the reality is that sales absolutely understands brand. And the way that they understand it, is when they get on a call with someone for the first time. If you do not have a brand, you waste the first 40 minutes trying to get that person to trust that you are an actual fucking company. That is the truth. So a salesperson who moves and this happened all the time with Marketo reps. Marketo had a great brand in the marketplace, that sales reps had it fucking easy. All they had to do was compete features, benefits, price points, shit like that, because everyone trusted Marketo because of the brand that John Miller built, then they went to other places. And they were like, holy shit, this is art. Because now I have to spend the first half an hour explaining why this company that I work for is as trustworthy as Marketo was. And with Marketo I could just jump right into my sales pitch. And so sellers understand this, I think often way better than marketers that brand is absolutely fucking critical right of way. If people do not trust your company if they don't know your company's they haven't seen it, which that is what brand is right brand is being able to look at a Coca Cola in green and go that doesn't seem right. But in the red that you all know and could probably pick off of a color swatch. That's the coke that I know, right? That is brand. It's just seeped into your brain, an absolutely b2b has to be doing this. And I think the cheapest way for b2b to do this is through founder led insights and sales, and essentially, on social media. I think that is the fastest way to get your brand into the hearts and minds of human beings so that your sellers can leverage it in order to sell. So that's what that's what I personally would do. And I would do it right away. I would, I would, I would I would do it early and often and right fucking away. I wouldn't run obviously, like TV ads or any of that stuff. But I think you need to get into you have to, you have to make sure people know you fucking exist. Yeah, yeah. That's what it boils down to. Yeah. Philippe Gamache 43:27 Love, love the takeaways there. I agree. Like marketers have definitely a bit of an ego. And I think a lot of sales reps totally understand this idea of like brand and the importance of it. But I think there's a perfect follow up here to this question around can marketers be good sales reps, especially for martec? You commented on a post on LinkedIn recently asking why martec vendors don't hire marketers to sell martec To simply just geek out with other marketers, instead of sales reps who have to like spend 3456 months learning the martec learning why marketers are using it and they've never really been in marketers shoes. And I've thought of this myself also a bunch of times. Do you think that marketers can be good sales reps? Andrea Lechner-Becker 44:18 I think so. I don't I literally, I posted about it after I commented on another post. I was like, someone explained to me, why can't Why can't Why people not believe that marketers can't be salespeople. And I did not get any answers about why, but I do. And so listen, I don't know why people think this I absolutely think that a marketer could crush selling martec to other marketers. I do not understand why. I really don't I have no idea. I'm looking for the answer. Philippe Gamache 44:55 Well, we'll ask him he'll we've had him on the show and he was the one that like commented on that same like no No, I don't think markers can can be good at sales. So maybe it's a specific opinion he has and his own experience there. Andrea Lechner-Becker 45:08 Yeah. Cuz I, I mean, really, to me the best sellers listen. Right. And so one of the comments on that post for me was, you know, marketers don't talk to the customers enough. Fair, absolutely. But that it doesn't. It's not that they can't it's that they're not prioritizing it. And I would agree it should be a higher priority on more marketing teams, but this isn't a capability question. This is a prioritization question. Okay. So one, okay, you have to listen, yes. To you have to run the deal. Right? You have to really manage the deal. You have to help a buyer understand what are next steps, you have to proactively say, let me get you the MSA so that your legal team can look over it ahead of time. Let me give you some insights so that you can get procurement wheels greased, right? Like, that's all just proactive, really, deal management equals project management equals campaign management, like, all those skill sets are things that marketers already have. So you know, and then it sort of to like, one of the comments I got was like, marketers are typically like to be behind the scenes, behind the scenes, like you mean talking to people and encouraging them to go get the buy in from other people in their depart, you know what I mean? Like, all of this stuff, it's, to me, I really was looking for, give me a skill set that marketers do not have and cannot acquire? And I did not get, I did not get an answer. So I still absolutely believe that they can, I think if anything, and my whole point on my post was like, if anything marketers is holding themselves back, because a lot of young people that I talked to, who've gone to school for marketing, and are looking for their first job out of college will literally say, but I don't want to be in sales. Why? Like, why don't you want to be in because life is fucking sales. You don't want to sell yourself to a potential future employer. You're fat, you're fucked. Like, there's no way you'll get the best jobs if you can't sell yourself. So job one of getting a great marketing job is being able to sell yourself. So you are in sales, you immediately are in sales, because you have to sell yourself. And then there's this whole idea of like, Yeah, but that's selling isn't the same as b2b selling. And like, of course, but again, this is all, you know, desire skill set capability questions, right? Like, I'm not saying, Why can't a marketer be a doctor, I'm saying, Why can't a marketer sell something? Like? I don't know, to me, it's, it would only marketers are telling ourselves that we can't do it, I absolutely think that we could. And I actually also was super hoping that a marketer would be like, I was in marketing for five years, and I moved into sales, because I saw how much they were making. And I was like, I want to make more money. And so I decided to do that. So I but I didn't do that either. Please, if you're out there. Tell me tell me the things contribute to the discussion. Jon Taylor 48:14 I so so just from my part, I actually ended up moving into his startup, one point. And part of what attracted me to the startup was that I was going to lead sales and marketing, I had no sales experience. I was a market Marketo consultant for a hot minute. And I thought that gave me the ability to help the sales team. So I had a very academic experience of whiteboarding out what they should be doing. And then pedantically, telling them everything they needed to do, and then was subsequently humbled for the better parts of a year. And then what the shift for me was going out and actually sitting beside them and then taking some of the sales calls. It wasn't a Mar tech vendor I worked for it was like a hardware engineering firm. So it was incredibly tough to sit on a call with a hardware engineer and try to answer their questions about, you know, prototyping circuit boards and that kind of thing. So my question is a follow up for you that do you think? Do you think there's value in being a salesperson that do you think marketers should do a tour of duty in sales? Do you think that helps some folks, you know, check your ego? I know, we talked to like Josh Hill, you know, well, renowned in the Marketo. He started in sales number of other people. We just talked to recent guests on product marketing, who started in sales and then went to marketing like, do you think this might be an essential piece of the skill set missing for missing for marketers? Andrea Lechner-Becker 49:30 Yes, I love that idea. I love a tour of duty as a sales rep or as a BDR. Or, at the very, very least, like yes, people gotta listen to more calls and really hear directly from the customer, how the customer frames, their job, their issues, their pain points, the way that they perceive your product and what it's going to do. Absolutely. Marketers should be doing more of that and I do You think that there is something very different that happens when you are the one leading the call and getting embarrassed, right? It's one thing to listen to other people kind of fumble around with your terrible messaging, it's another to have to sit on a call with your face and be like, oh, yeah, that's a good point. That doesn't really make sense. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, I, I love that idea. I don't know, I think the majority of marketers would probably shit their pants. That's part of the job and what they have to do, but I think it would absolutely be good for the vast majority of us. Philippe Gamache 50:42 Love it. Yeah, such a great answer. At a short stint of duty@wordpress.com, an automatic company, and they actually force all new employees to spend a full week in customer support. And you literally just go on, like chat, and you help troubleshoot issues with WordPress, and you get a sense of like, what they're trying to build what they're trying to do. And then you take that into your day to day after. So I thought that was a cool practice that the company is doing. Yeah, Andrea Lechner-Becker 51:15 I like so. We mentioned pretty funny business, the podcast that I was just on, like last week, and we talked about when I started at lead MD, I was on my first client call four days in and, you know, Sydney was like, I can't believe they did that to you. And, and although it's like, scary, I, I do think that something happens when you know, you're going to be on the hook for things that really bring a level of excellence to your performance that is really hard to get any other way. Right? Like, when you are asked a question you do not know the answer to live with a human being who is paying you $250 an hour to consult them. Like, you just got to take that job more seriously. Immediately. You know what I mean? Like, there's just there, I don't know that there's another way to manufacture that kind of anxiety. And I don't say anxiety as a negative thing. I really, I think that to some degree, knowing that you have to show up and perform at your most excellent is is a blessing because it makes you show up better. And I don't I don't know that there's you gong doesn't do that for you. Right, like Gong is or even like, like chat is a good step in the right direction. But even chat you can think about you know, it's it's totally different than really having to like, show up and manage all of this stuff. It's trial by fire, but I think, you know, good. Yeah, learn a lot. Yeah, Philippe Gamache 52:53 definitely. I think that's great advice. Andrew, this has been such a fun conversation. It's flown by. We have one last question that we asked all of our guests curious your take here. You're recovering CMO, a creator, a writer, a speaker, you're also a tick tock novice and a bad reality TV connoisseur as well. As a Wisconsin sports enthusiast. One question we ask everyone on the show is, how do you remain happy and successful in your career or your post career? And how do you find balance between all the things you're working on while staying happy? Andrea Lechner-Becker 53:26 I think happiness boils down to who you surround yourself with. I found that when I am around people who I know I'm I'm like, I don't know what picks up the traits of other people really quickly or like thing that picks up the traits of others really quickly glue maybe, I don't know, I'm very I'm very very susceptible to other people's energy. So when I am around negative people, I feel negative. When I am around positive people I feel positive. And I think in general that is true. I am way more highly in tune to it than other people and susceptible to it. I don't have a mind of my own. Despite what how I come across, probably, but I am very energy sensitive. And so I have found that the way that I remain the happiest is to be around people who are doing awesome shit who have a positive outlook on life. And, and positive too, by the way, like so one of my good friends JUSTIN GRAY, my old boss at sea and CEO of lead and D like he is he can be a hard person to be around because he has such a high fucking standard, but he also is always hot and positive. The reason I bring this up is positive isn't just like, everything's gonna be great. But positive is more especially in business. This is hard. How do we get through it? Like Forward, forward constantly forward? Not all this sucks. We can't do this. This is the worst clients are the worst. Why is everybody such an idiot? Like that's negative? Positive is? This is hard? How do we move forward? What do we do next? How are we going to proceed now? And basically, everything is is on the table. And a possibility is like just a mindset that if you can surround yourself with other people who see the world, opportunistically, it helps you see the world opportunistically and that is my biggest way to keep happy is just surrounding myself with people who are better than me, that I aspire to be more like. Philippe Gamache 55:37 Awesome. Such a great answer. Yeah, I definitely could take some of that advice myself. Listening to your answer. And I'm like, shit. Yeah, I think in a lot of cases, I'm definitely a negative person at work for sure. Andrea Lechner-Becker 55:49 I can't imagine you seem so positive. Philippe Gamache 55:52 But yeah, definitely positive for the podcast, let's say so yeah. Appreciate your time. So much, Andrew. This has been super fun. We'll share links to everything you've got going on and looking forward to the second novel that you write whenever that comes. Out. Folks, thank you so much for listening this far. We really appreciate you being here. 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