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What else can I be doing to drive revenue? How do I optimize our go-to-market strategies to ensure effectiveness and ROI? If questions like these keep you up at night and occupy your thoughts by day, have we got a podcast for you.
Welcome to Market Mastery presented by The Bridge Group, the podcast where sales professionals learn to advance their careers. Join host and revenue expert Kyle Smith as he talks to elite B2B sales and revenue experts about the strategies they're using to win in the market.
From cultivating a killer company culture to navigating compensation questions, we'll provide you with the insights, education, and strategies you need to thrive.
For more from The Bridge Group, visit www.bridgegroupinc.com.
Matt Heinz [00:00:00]:
So there's more excuses that you can lean on in tough times, but even in tough times, you got to figure out how to get through it. In tough times, people still buy, right? In boom times, people are going to ghost you in the pipeline as well. Like, there's never a time when we're working with a sales cylinder. It's always a funnel for a reason, because we lose people along the way. I think that it's hard all of the time. And part of the reason why it's hard is companies don't have some of those fundamentals in place, like what is our real addressable market.
Kyle Smith [00:00:30]:
Welcome to Market Mastery, the podcast dedicated to uncovering revenue driving strategies for sales leaders in B2B tech. On today's episode of Market Mastery, I was joined by Matt Heinz, Founder and CEO of Heinz Marketing. They work with business to business technology companies and even some outside of B2B tech to help scale and generate a predictable marketing funnel across strategy and playbooks. Within the marketing department, Matt and I talked through some of what he's seen over the last year and a half and what he anticipates is going to happen in 2025, based on recent conversations with his clients. Great episode. Give it a listen.
Kyle Smith [00:01:11]:
Hey, Matt, thanks for coming on.
Matt Heinz [00:01:11]:
Oh, man, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Kyle Smith [00:01:13]:
Yeah. How you been?
Matt Heinz [00:01:15]:
Good. Good year. Good finish of the year. Can't complain. I mean, Kyle, I think that if we're doing this together and if someone's listening to this, almost by definition, I think we got champagne problems in the grand sense of the word. So, yeah, a lot of gratitude.
Kyle Smith [00:01:27]:
Yeah. Are you seeing a shift? You say good end to the year, Are you seeing a shift with a lot more client acquisition, at least for your side or the client's businesses doing better or what are you seeing right now?
Matt Heinz [00:01:38]:
Yes, and yes. I would say that, you know, if you are in tech and if you're in the tech orbit, the last year and a half has probably been a little bumpy as companies pull back on their spend, try to preserve cash. A lot of these companies doing very well, continuing to hit their number, but their valuations and their investors have different goals than just selling stuff to customers. So that has been harder for sort of service providers, but I've definitely sensed a shift in the market. I think it's a combination of potential soft landing on the economy side, some interest rates, cuts, getting past the election, and generally companies seeing that like the market is strong, demand for their services is strong, and I guess every industry is different but in B2B and in B2B SaaS and in B2B private equity, I think 2025 is going to be a really strong year.
Kyle Smith [00:02:21]:
Yeah, I hope so. I've read an article from an investor who I follow really closely recently and he primarily plays in like the 5 to 50 million range. So take this for what you will, given that context, but he said right now median Multiple is like 8.8 and peak crazy times like 2021. 2022 is more like 12 to 15, but it's off like a full half X. So it was like low eight. Now we're high eight. So there's definitely a climb back on both the valuation side and company performance side.
Matt Heinz [00:02:56]:
And this is what we're looking for, right. I think that there's a lot of companies that if we would have continued to see the sort of those higher multiples there to size and maturity, they probably would have exited somehow or gone public and be in a different place, but I think we're seeing a lot of investors and a lot of boards say like, this is the time to start to grow again. This is the time to really put the gas on the pedal. And so if you're a go-to-market leader, you got to be ready for that, right. And ideally you've sort of had that plan in place to know that that's coming, but if you're now expected to sort of really start to accelerate growth in 2025, the playbook has changed a little bit, you know, in the last two or three years with the adoption and the acceleration of AI's impact and changes in how consumers and even B2B buyers are engaging, but I think, yeah, I'm excited for the year ahead.
Kyle Smith [00:03:39]:
Yeah, me too. I want to circle back to the AI point, but to take a gigantic step backwards and to add context for anyone who doesn't know you or know your firm. What's your role and what's the charter of Heinz Marketing?
Matt Heinz [00:03:51]:
Yeah, we're all about helping companies build more predictable pipeline. We find a lot of companies doing random acts of sales and marketing, generating lumpy production and lumpy output from what marketing is driving in terms of pipeline and revenue achievement. So for companies, especially with large, complex sales cycles, lots of moving parts on the buyer and the seller side, we're all about strategy, process playbooks to help marketers drive revenue, responsible outcomes and more predictable pipelines.
Kyle Smith [00:04:17]:
Cool. And so is your primary, the people you work with most closely, is that primarily CMO, VP Marketing?
Matt Heinz [00:04:24]:
Yeah, it's entirely on the marketing side. So it's a Chief Marketing officer, it's a VP of Demand in some cases as a CRO that sees that they need to uplevel the sophistication of the programs that are happening. From a marketing perspective, it doesn't preclude, obviously the focus on brand, but we are pipeline people, so the whole focus is on what are we doing short and long term to impact predictable, repeatable and scalable pipeline moving forward.
Kyle Smith [00:04:48]:
Yeah, that makes sense. So I think about the last year and a half which we just outlined was significantly more challenging for tech companies. In particular, do you think that it is harder to be in an executive leadership position through insane boom time where you're just scrambling to keep up with growth expectations or a tougher economic climate where maybe expectations have been scaled back but everything feels harder?
Matt Heinz [00:05:14]:
It's really hard to compare. I mean, if I had to choose one or the other, I would say in the boom times it's harder because it's hard all the time, but in the boom times, you're expected to hit these like crazy numbers and, you know, God help you if you are, you know, funded by an investor who has another company that has all the right conditions in place and is killing it. And you're in a different industry, in a different space, in a different level of maturity of the category you're in. It's apples and oranges, right? And so even if you don't have the same investors, someone going to find a blog post or an article or someone bragging on LinkedIn and then that becomes their new benchmark of what you should be achieving. And this is whether you're in marketing or sales or CS or wherever you're at. So there's more excuses that you can lean on in tough times, but even in tough times, you gotta figure out how to get through it.
Matt Heinz [00:06:01]:
In tough times, people still buy, right? In boom times, people are going to ghost you in the pipeline as well. There's never a time when we're working with a sales cylinder. It's always a funnel for a reason, because we lose people along the way. So I think that it's hard all of the time. And part of the reason why it's hard is companies don't have some of those fundamentals in place. What is our real addressable market? What's the subset of the market we should be selling to? Who are the people that are making decisions at those companies and how do I talk to them in a way that's not about my product and service, but it's really focused on the people and problems that exist in those organizations. So those fundamentals, I think sometimes it's easy to sort of forget them when we are in those really sort of gravy times when like the fish are jumping in the boat and it feels like everything's going great. You will generate more predictable results during those times and especially during the lean times if you're focused on the fundamentals.
Kyle Smith [00:06:54]:
Yeah, I think I agree 100%. And for me, as a control freak, I want to feel like I'm more in control of my own destiny. And then also if I was a revenue leader, that I'm being evaluated based off of my actual contributions and input, which I feel like you have a better chance to do in a more difficult environment like we've been in for the last 18 months versus okay, I'm not working at the company that has perfect product market fit, who has their TAM dialed in before I even joined, who has an extra 20 million in funding they're throwing behind marketing, where if you're comparing me to my peer or perceived peer at another competitive organization, they could be outperforming, but that's not because that they're making any better decisions or leading their people any better from an actual leader perspective, which is more frustrating, I think.
Matt Heinz [00:07:44]:
Yeah, I mean, I think that in any time you're sort of addressing that, there's just this strategy process, playbooks of doing it well, but then you also have to think about the cultural considerations of doing that work. Not only doing that work with a complex go-to-market motion. You have to have sales, marketing and CS working closely together at a strategic and tactical level. You have to have a common understanding of the market and a common playbook and nomenclature for how you're talking about, how you operationalize that work. And then that complexity isn't always understood by your CEO, your CFO and your board. So driving the culture change of understanding and embracing the complexity and sometimes the inconvenient truths of how B2B go-to-market works today is part of this process?
Kyle Smith [00:08:26]:
Do you think the hiring profile for some of those roles, who would work in support of VP of Marketing, Chief Marketing Officer? Do you think that the hiring profile is changing significantly because of either current economy or emerging AI technologies?
Matt Heinz [00:08:42]:
It's a really great question. I mean, I think there's a lot of things going at play here, right? You've got AI coming and really sort of starting to replace some of the more tactical elements of the marketing and even sales team. The jobs to be done if we break it down and not say like hey, we're replacing humans. No we're not. Like if we break down from a jobs to be done standpoint, there are things that 20 years ago people did that robots do today. And we just don't even think about that as a problem. And that's starting to happen with sales and marketing.
Matt Heinz [00:09:08]:
Go-to-market motions as well. I think we have over indexed over the last two or three years on marketing leaders that are focused entirely on demand. And I think, you know, any good sort of long term marketing leader is going to tell you you can't consistently generate demand unless you have a strong brand. So as you get bigger you have to invest in both. As you're early stage you may say listen, like I just need to make the phone ring, I need to get some logos on board so I can get the next round of funding. I get it. You want to earn your way into building brand, but as you get bigger as an organization, that mix needs to fix, needs to change to be a more healthy mix of brand and demand together.
Matt Heinz [00:09:44]:
And I think I'm seeing a lot more of that now as I'm looking at companies hiring CMOs. Not just looking for someone that's going to just start generating leads, but someone who's going to really own product, market fit, who's going to understand the market well enough to be able to generate material input to the product roadmap, but also create the market that needs your product. Like the sales team doesn't really want leads. Leads is a manifestation of market demand, right. What sales wants and needs is a market that is desperate for the solution you are selling. That's what we need. We track and manage and quantify that as leads.
Matt Heinz [00:10:23]:
But if you got a market that needs this, then your sellers, people that are outbound calling or at field events, are having the right conversations to have that. You have to focus on brand to have that. You have to think about how are I going to create a narrative in my industry, in my market, amongst my target customers that helps them do the value translation of here's the problem I have and here's some solutions that I should explore to address that.
Kyle Smith [00:10:47]:
So investment and brand, you can think about it from two ways. One is like what I experience more so as a consumer, which is every single time I'm watching a football game, you're going to see whatever a Pepsi advertisement and there's billboards and they're just everywhere all the time. So you're constantly thinking about it. So that when you walk into a store product placement actually has an impact because you were already subconsciously thinking about it when you walked in. When I think about it from a B2B tech standpoint, not being a professional marketer, I think about paid and then content as like the two main ways that you promote brand, but what does it mean to increase the investment in brand at least in 2025? What does that mean?
Matt Heinz [00:11:23]:
Well, I mean I think it's easy for companies to go right to like here's the channels I need to invest in, but really again like if I take a step back and say like the manifestation of brand that impacts me as a business is a target market that demands and needs what I am selling. So how do I create that? I have to create a narrative, I have to create a storyline and perpetuate that in the market that helps people understand and better quantify the cost of a problem that they may or may not have understood before, right. So in Soda Land, like all I have to do is say Pepsi, Pepsi, Pepsi. It's a very well established brand. Like you're going to drink sugar water or you're not. Like if you're a health nut, you don't care about that.
Matt Heinz [00:11:59]:
If you're kind of non-committal, like maybe you're switching, maybe you're fine getting a Pepsi when you're offered. So I'm not a consumer marketer but like that's a well established category for a lot of companies that are selling tech and especially like new tech. You go in there and tell a story about composability or like non-linear. If you start talking about products and start features, your customers are going to have no idea what you're talking about, right? And they have no idea how to do the self translation around this. Now I heard lots of companies and especially founders will say, oh no, no, they understand it, our buyers understand it. This is a mirage. This is what I sometimes call the founders folly, which is assuming that all their customers are like them or assuming that all your customers are like the very early adopters that do get it.
Matt Heinz [00:12:43]:
But a lot of people aren't early adopters because they don't understand the problem. They haven't prioritized the problem, they haven't quantified the problem. So we have to go and every one of us has an opportunity to go and build that awareness, to build that understanding and to help the companies and your prospects not only start to see the light around that problem and start to challenge their own status quo, but see you as the subject matter expert that helped them get there within their mind, will see you as someone that if you have a solution, because you came to me with an understanding of the problem, you must have the better solution for me as well. That's how the psychology works with those prospects. And so your ability to go create that, have that conversation early on, that's the brand imperative for B2B companies in 2025.
Kyle Smith [00:13:28]:
Yeah. And how do you actually get that out? What is the distribution method that's going to. I mean, I'm sure it depends on target audience, but in B2B tech it's pretty consistent. So how do you actually get that story out there?
Matt Heinz [00:13:40]:
I don't think there's one channel. I think what's important is to understand for your market like what is that message and be consistent about delivering that message across channels, right. So people are still reading email, people are still getting direct mail, people are still answering their phones. Those are all opportunities to have that conversation with an executive audience. I think experiences are working really well. Events are back. Executives will show up to it in person.
Matt Heinz [00:14:03]:
Absolutely, events, but more likely people are going to get in the car than get in an airplane. So I'm seeing a resurgence of those regional road shows, those executive peer to peer events, join other CTOs for wine tasting. And we're not going to talk about product, we're just going to talk about the problems you have. So there's lots of things like that that are feel like they're from an old school playbook. And I see a lot of companies say like ah, no, we're just going to have AI and our AI bots, you know, bug the crap out of them on digital channels. Well, as soon as that becomes democratized, that's going to become a noisier channel than we've ever seen in those digital channels. So your ability to cut through the clutter and leverage offline channels, leverage experiences, leverage peer networks and peer communities so that the message isn't coming just from you, the brand, but it's coming from their peers that have already sort of seen the light and understood the problem.
Matt Heinz [00:14:49]:
I'm not choosing between one or other of these channels. I'm saying like understand your audience, understand what they pay attention to and be in as many of those places as possible with as consistent of a message as possible. Knowing that just like most advertising, it's going to take several repetitions of hearing that message before your prospect understands it and wants to take action on it.
Kyle Smith [00:15:09]:
Does anybody read blogs anymore?
Matt Heinz [00:15:11]:
I'm sure some people do.
Kyle Smith [00:15:12]:
Do you?
Matt Heinz [00:15:13]:
Some, yeah. What's funny is I'm actually disappointed that some people that I used to get a lot of value from in their blogs just aren't publishing nearly as much. And it could be that they're shifting from the blog format to doing things more and LinkedIn and other places where they think the algorithm has gone and sort of moved and focused. I mean, obviously I think that there's been a more of a focus on podcasts and video series than pure blogs these days, you know, for good reason even thus recording something like this, okay, we got it on video, you can strip out the audio only you can create a transcript and have AI generate a bunch of different blog posts out of this. So as a repurposable starting point, a video like this works really well, but you know, the search engine has got to find something and the AI engines have to find something. Like they're not making things up. I mean, think of like AI and the LLMs is just a much more efficient, a much smarter way of just looking at what has always been the greatest library in the world with all the books on the floor.
Matt Heinz [00:16:06]:
So as you create content, understand the algorithms that Gemini and Cloud and ChatGPT are using is going to over time be as important, if not over time, more important than the way we've looked at SEO and Google.
Kyle Smith [00:16:18]:
I think about that back to the idea of like hiring profile changes. And I had somebody position it to me this way, which is that they think that the middle level people, however you define it, are going to get hollowed out a little. So you need strategic thinkers at the top to design like the vision and the actual marketing strategy. And then you need people who can drive ChatGPT, whatever the AI to actually produce text based content at scale. And then that middle person who used to be like quality control, maybe first draft editor is going to get less and less important because you don't want to pay the premium above a chatbot driver for that person because you just have the high level people who will do final checks and balances on your content and the way cheaper people who can produce significantly more. Any thoughts or reaction to that? I don't know how I feel about it just yet.
Matt Heinz [00:17:12]:
It's all changing so quickly. I think we could sit here and create eight different scenarios of how that future is going to play out and we could justify all of them. And I don't know, I'm not smart enough to figure that out at this point. Here's what I see now. If you're not using AI as your first reaction to like hey, I need to get this done, can I do it? You're already falling behind, right? So assume AI can do anything, know that there's a lot that it can't do, but if you tried it six months ago, try it again now and you might be surprised what it can do. And so like yes, you could create bots that are gonna like 24, seven test messages, read the social sphere, like, help you adjust your messages, but we've existed in an online world for a while and yet we live in an offline world.
Matt Heinz [00:17:59]:
And so all those AI tools are gonna impact what we see on our screens and what we hear, but until robots sell the robots, there's a human to human opportunity here to still create some value, right. I still think we respond better to humans than we do to robots for the same reason that people based social handles are way more interesting and way more followed than corporate channels, right. Is way more interesting than at Heinz Marketing. And so I think that is going to continue, that dynamic will continue as we have robots start to do more of the heavy lifting on some of the tactical digital work in terms of how that distributes across what marketers do. That change has been happening forever. My first job, Kyle, out of college, I worked at a PR firm and I was a super junior level person.
Matt Heinz [00:18:49]:
And you know, a significant part of my job was building briefing books for press tours that we would send executives out on for our clients. That job doesn't exist anymore. Like you press a button and the briefing book just exists now like 10 times better than what I put together back then. And so like there's a bunch of jobs to be done that just don't exist because technology marches forward. And it's always scary to look at that because we worry about what it means for our. I worry about what it means for my kids and what jobs they're gonna have and what the world is gonna learn to look at, but my fear is not based on an understanding of what's going to happen. My fear is not knowing what's going to happen and not having confidence, having anxiety about that not knowing.
Matt Heinz [00:19:35]:
And I mean AI is going to change a lot, but we've been through so many cycles over the years of thinking that technology and innovation is going to make us obsolete or make it so we don't have to do work or make it so that housewives don't have to do any cooking or cleaning or any work around the house. And yet it seems like we're just busier and busier and busier doing More and more things, I don't know, it's really hard to predict, but what I keep going back to is what's the job to be done, what are we ultimately trying to achieve and what's the best way to achieve that? And I do think in the near term the innovations and efficiencies of AI are going to create massively more noise in front of your customers. You're going to get more emails, you're going to get more voicemails. Like the making it faster, easier to get messages out is going to make it so that you've got way more messages in front of you. Sellers may think that addresses a problem, but it makes an exponentially greater problem for buyers trying to cut through the clutter. So if I'm a marketer and I want to figure out like how do I differentiate? How do you solve for that problem over the next one to two years, do you think?
Kyle Smith [00:20:41]:
So you mentioned the in person events, like trying to differentiate from all this noise. Almost all of it will be digital. Do you think that we'll see a resurgence in field sales?
Matt Heinz [00:20:51]:
Somewhat. You know, here's the problem with that, right, Is that it used to be you could say I'm going to do a roadshow tour based on where companies are based. Because if the company space there, of course the executives there too, because they go to the office, right? And so that's increasingly not the case now. If you're selling into an industrial business, like if you're selling into manufacturing, if you're selling into health care, into industries that inherently have a greater physical element to it, you may be more likely to sort of get that. And so in that case, yeah, you may, you know, if you're selling to sort of shop managers, you know, in manufacturing, like, yeah, it totally makes sense if you're trying to meet the chief marketing officer for tech companies, they're all over the place now, right. And so like roadshow, like field sales, if they work from home, what are you going to do? Like meet them at their house? You're not going to do that, but I think that the absence of the office creates an opportunity elsewhere. I am seeing far greater attendance rates of birds of a feather, peer to peer local regional meetings than I've ever seen before.
Matt Heinz [00:21:53]:
I've been part of a series of sort of marketing meetups for B2B marketers that's put on by a client of ours where it's basically a lunch and learn and it's like a two and a half hour, like there's lunch and then there's a panel and a whole discussion around it and we will get easily 120 people registered. And you think, oh, you know, it's free event, people are going to like we'll get 110 show up, which is crazy for two and a half hour event. And it's not a pitch, it's all about marketing therapy and like comment just with your peers. And we're going to just commiserate about the problems we have and try to find some problems of solutions, but I think people are clamoring for what they miss by not being in the office. Like I don't get that lunchtime rapport, I don't get that osmosis learning of what's going on by sitting with my peers. Assuming this isn't a podcast recording, but assuming this is a zoom, it's just different, right? You miss things and people miss spending time with each other. And even the introverts amongst us, myself included, are naturally social animals that value and benefit from being around each other.
Matt Heinz [00:22:51]:
So I think that that is something I've seen over the last year be a pretty consistent opportunity. And I think that is going to continue to exist going into next year for sure.
Kyle Smith [00:23:04]:
One of the things I think about off of that, this is super tactical, but I do think about it. So if you do a birds of a feather event, let's say you get 110 registrants, who do you actually send to the event? Who works it for you? So that's an investment. You have to drive people there, you have to pay for it. Who do you then send to go work it and actually have something come out of it from a lead perspective?
Matt Heinz [00:23:28]:
Well, I would send the. So if it's customers, prospects, you know, you got an account manager, you've got some CS folks, you've got the AES that, that work those territories or work those opportunities. I'd make sure they're there. Not so they can sell or pitch there, but because the follow up conversations are going to come from them and you want that continuity of the relationship. Also if you've had a relationship with someone virtually via video or zoom or whatever, meeting them in person and sort of finally getting them being able to shake their hand or give them a hug and sort of just say it's so great to meet you in person, wow, you're way shorter. And I thought you whatever it is, like that accelerates the loyalty and relationship that you have with someone. And so I would highly encourage you to do that. I mean, who's There and how many people are there is almost sort of like a secondary question to like, what is the job at the event? And when you think of the event as the middle of a larger body of work campaign, where the campaign is before, during and after, it takes the pressure off what you have to do at the event.
Matt Heinz [00:24:23]:
Like if ideally you're not pulling up a spread, you know, pulling up a projector and doing like product slides, ideally you're sort of talking about not the product, but the people and problems that are people are focused on a regular basis. You can follow up afterward and say like, hey, let's talk about how to connect the dots on what was discussed at luncheon and the problems you have internally and what can be done to solve for that. So I think the people you have in the room need to be seen less as sellers and more as trusted advisors and peers relative to the overall value and content of the experience.
Kyle Smith [00:24:54]:
That makes sense. Immediately I'm just starting to think about we have a bunch of people, greater Boston area. Immediately I think about, well, I actually know and would enjoy spending time with a bunch of the sales leaders that we've worked with in the greater Boston area. We should just set this up, dude.
Matt Heinz [00:25:09]:
I mean, set it up. And even if you get 15 people there, great conversation. If they have a great experience, they wanted to come next time, get a picture of all 15 of you posted in whatever sales community channels on LinkedIn. Now you'll have FOMO. From the other people that didn't go, they're like, oh, it actually happened. Oh, people were there. Bill was there. I would have loved to talk to Bill, right.
Matt Heinz [00:25:27]:
And so again, because most of us either work from home or like, I'm in the office today, but this is a small office and most of our team is remote, I don't get to see people in person that often. I'm a socially anxious introvert, but I still like going to those events and seeing people in person. It's much more enriching and fulfilling than just sitting in my basement all day long. And so I think, you know, if you're selling to sellers, you're more likely to have people that aren't introverts, that are extroverts that prioritize and miss that behavior as well.
Kyle Smith [00:25:55]:
Yeah. The other benefit of the in person, a two and a half hour event. Yes. Still, like everyone has time limitations, but the benefit of that is you're not constantly just looking up in the top right hand corner of your screen being like, when's my next call? When do I have to jump off this thing? We have to cut this conversation short. If you get into a good back and forth and you're on a topic that even if it's one on one with one individual who's there, you can just go. Just let that conversation go wherever it needs to for you to feel like you teased out the information from the person who had value to add.
Matt Heinz [00:26:26]:
So let's say you're selling to sellers and you create an event that is sort of like seller therapy, right? You say like, we're not going to record this event. It's going to be an in person event. And if you're in a selling role, we want you to come and we're just going to talk together about like how selling has changed and what we think it's going to look like to be successful in 2025. Commiseration, best practices, cautionary tales, dumpster fires, it all applies. We're going to have some snacks and drinks and just enjoy each other's company, right? And so you make it a safe place for people to come and learn and listen. And even if you don't talk about what you're selling, they appreciate that you did that for them. And then the next day they show up to their office or their home office or wherever, and all the AI bots are descending with all of their messages, all of their perfectly honed 247 refined messages. And then there's you from last night, who made an impression, who created some value.
Matt Heinz [00:27:15]:
Where are they going to spend their time? Now, the AI bots might be faster, cheaper, but if you want the deal, if you want the relationship, if you still need the human to lean in and create preference for you, there's a more complex and integrated and diverse playbook you're probably going to want to apply.
Kyle Smith [00:27:31]:
Yeah, definitely. And on a much, much smaller scale and less intentional, honestly. It was more accidental. I do notice this with, I do usually at least two, like mentor type deals with graduating seniors from UMass Amherst, where I went every year, like, who are interested in sales, like through some affiliation with the sales club. And I'm like, all right, well, let's figure out how to get you the job that you want. And like six years ago I did it for the first time, maybe seven. And like I still get calls from those people. And now they're directors, you know what I mean? So it's, I mean, those little.
Kyle Smith [00:28:05]:
Just keep putting in donations and don't even worry about what comes back. You just know that it just does.
Matt Heinz [00:28:11]:
Oh, but Kyle, that's so. I mean you can say that, but like you made an investment, you just spend some marketing dollars. Where's my pipeline from that? Right? Like when am I going to see that? But another piece of like investing in brand and saying, okay, those relationships matter is knowing that like you may not benefit from that right away. Knowing that the majority of your prospects are not in a buying cycle right now and there's nothing you as a seller can do materially to accelerate the complex set of variables inside the organization that are going to make them ready to buy, that are make a consensus of buying committees committed to change and moving forward. So what do you do to create those value deposits? What do you do to create that trust and preference well before someone wants to buy? I mean that's an inconvenient truth perhaps of how sort of sales and marketing works in complex B2B today. Because I think we want the spreadsheets to work, we want the AI agents to just go find our prospects. And it's more complex than that.
Kyle Smith [00:29:02]:
Always, always, always. So when you're thinking about your customers and what they're talking about, I'm sure, same as us, you're working with them on 2025 planning like it happened for the last couple months. Do you see any major shifts in how they're going to think about next year as opposed to this one? Where headcount growth is going to go, where spend is going to go. Any big shifts?
Matt Heinz [00:29:20]:
Yeah, three, I think big things. One is a greater balance between brand and demand and not doing brand just for the sake of pretty pictures and logos and you know, billboards on Highway 101, but just a better balance between knowing that demand is going to be driven by better brand and vice versa. And so that's one. Two is a greater investment in customer-led growth, which is sort of thinking about, I'm not just focused on driving net new logos, but what am I doing to increase lifetime value and revenue from existing customers. That has not been a very disciplined marketing focus in the past and so we've seen a lot greater focus on that. And the third is just a tighter integration across the entire go-to-market team. Like we've been banging the drum forever on sales and marketing working more closely together.
Matt Heinz [00:30:03]:
And it's really a triumvirate of sales, marketing and CS that owns the overall customer relationship. Because this isn't just a funnel and it's not even just a bow tie, right. A bow tie addresses the customer side, but it assumes it's just one directional and they just keep going. What happens when one of your best customers, the CIO of your best customer, goes to another company and they want to buy from you? Again, that's not a repeat customer, but it's a repeat executive sponsor who is now somewhere else going to bring you business. And so how we manage those account and contact relationships across the entire customer relationship continuum is really important. And this isn't just about like where do we go buy media and where do we go sort of like do advertising. It's about the relationship that you maintain with that individual.
Matt Heinz [00:30:45]:
Now the AI role here is going to make it so some of those trigger events, some of those intent signals when they leave and what you do next can be automated, but it's still about the relationship you have and keep with that person. And I think we're going to put more focus on that as brands, as sellers, but also within the ecosystems of complimentary partners and providers that surround that same customer as well.
Kyle Smith [00:31:06]:
Do you think that that would change? This is like an interesting thought experiment. If I own, let's say I own GE and I don't own Walmart and the CIO who I sold and worked with for three years to close this million dollar deal, leaves and goes to Walmart, do you think that you'll see more or less rigid territory designs based off of some of these changes where you're going to let sellers follow their key contacts and have less strict account ownership?
Matt Heinz [00:31:38]:
I think you think you just asked a territory question. What I think you just asked is a compensation question. And I'm not getting into that water. Cause that's where if you have a comp question, go hire the Bridge Group and they'll help work through that. I am a marketing pipeline guy.
Kyle Smith [00:31:52]:
But who gets to work it? They go to Walmart. Walmart's never been in the.
Matt Heinz [00:31:54]:
The guy that has the relationship with the CIO. I mean like anytime you're looking at like where you want to go, leverage, like if we have a new prospect that comes in, I'm looking at like, who in my company has a relationship better than I do there? Who in my network has a relationship better than I do? That can put in a good word for us, right? I mean so like where's your advantage? Where's the relationship you have? Why just because of your rigid territory or compensation rules, would you say, well, Joe had the relationship for the last six years, but now that she works at Walmart, I gotta give it to Sally to work and Sally doesn't know her from anything. We're gonna start, we're Gonna go backwards. Now the CIO may have a relationship with the company and Joe could make an introduction to Sally and could sort of warm that up, but why start from scratch? Sally doesn't know her at all. And now I'm using these names and not even really keeping track of who's who here, but. And so what does this mean? It means that the CIO isn't just a cell and a spreadsheet that now works over there and we're just going to apply a new bot to them. That CIO is a human that has a memory, that has relationships that are not just like connections in LinkedIn but are real relationships that have meaning.
Matt Heinz [00:32:58]:
And so that's where I think like we have to be really careful as we continue to automate more and more of the process. How do we address the humanity that will continue to be part of decision making? Will we continue to be part of preferences in this complex process?
Kyle Smith [00:33:13]:
That's exactly where I was going with it. As we say, it's becoming harder and harder and harder to actually have meaningful engagement with an individual who actually drives purchase decisions. Does that start to get prioritized in the way that the team is structured, the way that the company runs processes so that those one-to-one relationships start to become a point of emphasis and then we build that whole customer ecosystem, SDR, ECSM, whoever, marketing around us, creating and establishing those and starting to let some of the other intricate pieces fade away.
Matt Heinz [00:33:46]:
Well, let's address a problem that isn't even that complicated, right? Let's say you're trying to sell to Walmart, right? And you've got a lead from Walmart and like Rep. A is already working that lead, right? Well, let's say another person from Walmart comes through and is now a lead. There are some companies, Kyle, sitting here today that their system marks that as a duplicate. I don't need that lead. I already have a lead from Walmart. So that second person from Walmart, some companies say like I don't need it. Other companies give that lead from Walmart to a whole nother rep. So rep 2 is now working.
Matt Heinz [00:34:18]:
That other person, Walmart and Walmart may be a bad example because there are probably numerous buying units within Walmart, right? So let's Assume this is 100, let's assume this is a 300 person company, right? That the lead one comes in, lead two comes in. I guarantee you there's some connective tissue between those two people. And yet our lead routing rules say, oh, we got to be fair. So Rep one Gets this one, rep two, gets that one. And we don't think at all about the continuity of having one person now see those relationships and say, how do I build some consensus and alignment between those two, let alone the other known members of a potential buying committee in that organization where you might call and say, hey, did you know that Tom and Sally from your company have already in the last two days inquired about X and Y? Is there something going on? Is there something you want to be involved in if there's a decision being made here? And so your ability to think about the account momentum, not just like lead to leads, is critical. And so that's just within one 300 person company, let alone the CIO of a massive company moving across country to a whole other company or industry and not following the relationship where you have the best chance of engagement.
Kyle Smith [00:35:25]:
It's always disheartening to hear that those things still happen, but they fully do, but on the investment in customer growth, knowing that, I think that there's going to be like this weird inflection point where like cost of capital goes down but valuations don't immediately jump back up. Like there might be like this weird perfect window where there might be more consolidation happening, where you raise capital. And rather than raising capital even within like smaller C series companies, instead of just having it to fuel organic growth, you start to actually do acquisitions even at that level. And for the reason that you mentioned, for customer growth, so that you have ancillary products to sell back into the customer base who already know love you and who are like fully bought in. So rather than taking 20 million to go, try to double or triple, take 20 million, buy a $10 million company, take the $10 million company and sell it into the thousand customers that you have. And that's a shorter path to get that same revenue growth.
Matt Heinz [00:36:23]:
Yeah, and it is in many cases, again, like we got to step back and think like, where's the relationship exists there? I've seen a lot of companies sort of buy another company and say, I got all these new people I can sell something to and throw away, or disvalue the brand relationship between acquired company and their customers and just say, oh, we just bought the customers, they'll buy from us. You may have bought the company, but you didn't buy the loyalty and trust and relationship with the customers. You have to earn that. Just because you bought that doesn't mean that you have that right. And so this is where I see a lot of companies like really lose the value they thought they bought. By assuming that that relationship and trust immediately transfers just because you now own the company, right.
Kyle Smith [00:37:07]:
Not only that or the product, if it's not sold to the same people, then the brand affiliation means nothing. So like you sell the VPs of marketing might be a bad example. We sell the VP of sales. Let's say they weren't as tightly aligned as they are, but Bridge Group buy signs marketing. I go turn around to all of the Bridge Group customers and try to sell them Heinz Marketing. They're all VPs of sales. Like, I don't have anything to do with this.
Kyle Smith [00:37:31]:
And so now even though that they're a Bridge Group customer, I have to reach out to a VP of marketing. And how much easier is that than just running a new business process at the VP of marketing than it is just because what they have an MSA with us, it's not that easy. And we think this path of resistance is just going to be wide open just because they're owned by us now.
Matt Heinz [00:37:50]:
Yeah. So let's pull this string further, right. So what doesn't work here is like, I wish my company name wasn't Heinz Marketing because it's very clear that we do marketing type stuff. Bridge Group, you can make more into it, but like you guys are very well known in CSO's VP of sales land, right? Like we've got decent recognition among CMOs. Let's say you're like, you're not sitting there saying like, we want better relationship with CMOs.
Matt Heinz [00:38:10]:
You're saying, we just want to grow, we want to grow, we want to grow revenue and we're go-to-market leaders. Okay, so you buy Heinz Marketing. Like what a lot of companies would do is say like, we are Bridge Group and we are selling Bridge Group. And you would immediately go to those CMOs and say like, we are CMO, we are bridge Group and we have bought these relationships. So now we want you to work with Bridge Group as opposed to saying like, the brand that they know is Heinz Marketing. And the faster path to actually getting more revenue might be taking whatever Bridge Group does really, really well in terms of sales, in terms of marketing, in terms of services, and apply those best practices to increase the loyalty and revenue that Heinz Marketing has with the CMOs. There may be a time down the road when you can retire the Heinz Marketing brand or they start to see Bridge Group as the overall sort of like value provider, especially as sales and marketing leaders sort of get further integrated in their efforts and their strategy and tactics, but I think there is a fair amount of ego at play.
Matt Heinz [00:39:03]:
Like when Bridge Group buys high marketing saying like, we won, Heinz lost, so everything's gonna be Bridge Group now. And you throw away the association. Cause even though you own hind marketing, in this scenario, you gotta earn the relationships. And sometimes maintaining that brand for a period of time is important, but a lot of companies don't wanna do that. Cause they just want the one story and they want it to be theirs. Cause we bought you, what do we want?
Kyle Smith [00:39:26]:
It's easy when it doesn't feel like your money. It's easy to throw away the brand when it's your money. You're like, I don't have any ego, I want returns, I need my money back.
Matt Heinz [00:39:35]:
Yeah. I mean, there's a lot that goes at play here, right. And I think that, you know, again, what I keep coming back to is the person on the other side, the relationship you have with your customer, the relationship you have with the people of that company, whether they stay or go, what are you doing to reinforce and enhance and grow that relationship? That's how we make decisions. If it's easier, faster for us to do that with AI bots, but do that in a way that enhances and grows the value of that relationship, great. Do it right. If you no longer need intern Matt Heinz to write briefing books and you can have a bot do that and the value is similar or greater for the client. 100% do it right, but faster, cheaper doesn't always create better enhanced experiences.
Kyle Smith [00:40:22]:
Yeah, I think the enhanced experience on the AI front needs to come in production. If you're trying to do it to replace human-driven—---- efforts like through like support tickets maybe. I think in product, helping you solve your own problems faster in product, especially when you sell the technical buyers. That's where I've already seen, even at this still infancy stage of AI, the biggest impact.
Matt Heinz [00:40:45]:
Okay. For SaaS, you know, we have a client that sells industrial floor scrubbers. And so there's no SaaS, there's no end product. What are you going to do? So a lot of our clients are in tech. It's really easy to sort of get in our bubble and talk about what we can do with software that the real world just inherently physically can't do. So it's interesting to think about, right. And it's sort of like if I'm selling like oil spill containment consumables, what's my opportunity to leverage some of this technology to enhance the experience there?
Kyle Smith [00:41:14]:
Yeah, probably massive amounts of opportunity. Cool. Okay, so the big three things for 2025, where you're seeing shifts. More investment in brand. Not necessarily away from demand, but just more investment in brand. Better balance and customer marketing or customer growth. Focusing on customer growth and then significantly better alignment between the full revenue team that not just that hourglass, but this full life cycle of customer journey across marketing, sales, development, account executive, CSM, the whole revenue team.
Matt Heinz [00:41:46]:
You got it.
Kyle Smith [00:41:47]:
Cool. Thanks so much, Matt. Appreciate you coming on.
Matt Heinz [00:41:49]:
Oh, anytime, man. Thanks for having me.
Kyle Smith [00:41:53]:
Thanks for listening to this episode of Market Mastery brought to you by The Bridge Group. If you're a revenue leader in the B2B sales space or know someone who is, connect with me on LinkedIn. Don't forget to subscribe to stay updated on future episodes.