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What are the best brands doing to stay relevant, build trust, and create content smarter?
At Share Your Genius, we have the same questions, so we're tapping the best in the space for their answers—one voicemail at a time.
Join us each week for quick hits of insights from b2b marketers and leaders.
Rachel Elsts Downey (00:00):
Rachel Downey go to market. Teams aren't breaking down because of a bad strategy. They're breaking down because they lack unity. There's broken trust, and so I reached out to Megan Klingman because she knows this better than most. She's the director of Go-to-Market and a BM at Gravity Global. So she's sitting on the client side helping develop campaigns and programs and enrolling people into them, and she's also spearheading the go-to-market motion for the company itself. So not only is she seeing both the agency side of running multiple campaigns and delivering amazing results, but she's also standing up their own program. She's having to get buy-in, having to communicate ideas effectively, and she's having to do it all while activating multiple team members and every campaign that she's running that has to count. She's seen firsthand how hard it can be to get all those segments moving in a go-to-market team. So I asked her, how do you build trust across every single part of that go-to-market team? Here's the voicemail she left me. Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. At the tone, please record your message.
Megan Klingaman (01:23):
Thanks, Rachel. That's a great question. And when establishing trust, whether it's internal at your organization or external with clients, there can be a bit of confusion around what go-to market is. It's a newer term in the industry while its deliverables and roles aren't new, ultimately establishing trust can be through tying everything back to business goals and identifying what's ultimately needed with that connective tissue. We think about business goals regardless of whether it's B2C or B2B. It's ultimately tied to pipeline and revenue in most cases. I think by earning that trust, you're looking at what's happening in the industry and leading by data, whether it's a company's historical of what they've done that went well or what they've done that could use more of that go to market connection. An example of that is when we think about activation and maybe we're running direct mail and then paid social and email outreach, go to market can really help tie everything together of how things work together to ultimately either get that sale or move an account through the funnel because our platform metrics or those activation pieces are going to be different than the marketing and account metrics.
(02:51):
And you can have really great success with direct mail, but not see it move the needle with the business goals. And so that's where go to market can provide extra layer. A big thing that comes to mind that I see quite often and I've experienced myself is when you're working with people who are either in a sales role or have a sales mindset, they don't understand or have that trust in go to market or some of that marketing recommendations because they're so focused on leads, right? Or maybe sales isn't aligned with marketing. And the way that typically I overcome that is by hearing what's important to them, those leads, goals, and outline what's needed to generate those leads. So for example, if they're trying to reach the FedExes of the world, just because they got one lead, especially in the B2B space, doesn't mean that FedEx is in market for their product.
(03:46):
And so by providing them research or an example I like to use that's relevant, I think to most organizations regardless of the space you're in, is you use Outlook for your email. Google is trying to have your organization switch from Outlook to Google, and I outline what that experience is because then people can resonate and put themselves in their buying audience's shoes regardless of their role and understand the needs of the buying committee, the approach, the multiple touch, the reason it's important to tie multiple tactics together or identify different areas of the funnel that need support and where go-to market can help elevate and multiply and not necessarily take anything away from maybe that person's role or that previous strategy in terms of the way that they think. I recommend doing that if you're just trying to earn that trust. Another scenario that I think can be common, especially working agency side with clients where maybe they worked with a previous partner and they lost their trust in the approach or strategy or go to market support, again, it's through listening to them what didn't go well, why was that trust lost?
(05:02):
And providing recommendations that are unique to that business. They're set up their internal maturity in terms of how large is their marketing team. I've worked with organizations that are large corporations and they have five people on the marketing team. And so the maturity operationally may not be as high or they're set up in terms of data sharing may not be where it's needed. And so hearing and listening to that to provide an approach, and that's what I love about Go To Market, is you can leverage some of your frameworks and foundational, but you're able to apply and create something that is unique for every single client based on their space. By doing so, you're able to establish trust and have all the teamwork together and provide ultimately what everyone's wanting and that's achieving their business goals of pipeline and revenue. Thank you so much, Rachel. I look forward to connecting with you next. And if you need anything, go to market, feel free to holler.
Rachel Elsts Downey (06:07):
Thanks for listening. Want your podcast to do more? Subscribe to Genius Cuts because it's never just a podcast. You can find it@shareyourgenius.com.