 the number one way that marketing and sales can converge is shared goals and KPIs. Welcome to the Smarter Building Materials Marketing Podcast, helping you find better ways to grow leads, sales and outperform your competition. Alright, everybody, welcome to Smarter Building Materials Marketing, where we believe your online presence should be your best salesperson. I am Zach Williams, and I have a great co-host today, along with gonna show freshly back from AIA. I have Steve Coffey, who's our director of growth. Welcome to the show, Steve. Thanks, Zach. Great to be here with you. I am freshly back from AIA. For me, I enjoy trade shows. I like, I like being at any trade show. I think AI is moving in a good direction. I think there was less attendance than perhaps they may have wanted. San Francisco is maybe not the most exciting place that they could have had the show. But I saw a lot of high quality interaction that was exciting to see. I walked the trade show floor. There was a puppy booth, an actual booth where you could go in and hold a puppy. That is a really smart idea, though. If I was a flooring company, that like highly durable flooring, I would turn my entire booth into a puppy booth. Because it's a great narrative. Because you're like, Oh, look at the puppies. And oh, by the way, they don't scratch the floor. Yeah, hands on experience. It was a good show. Other than that, I didn't see a lot of like hands on interactive booths. It was more traditional type booth style. So I think there's a lot of opportunities for manufacturers to reinvent the way that they allow architects and designers and, you know, at other shows, builders interact with their products. Puppies being one of them. So I think there's a lot of opportunities for for the future of trade shows. You and I were chatting, Steve, it's we're about halfway through 2023. And if I had to use a word for this year, I think the word convergence is probably the word I would use is like, we're starting to see more and more of this convergence of marketing and sales happening in the industry. This is true for how we're helping our clients as well as just what we're hearing from other manufacturers. And so you and I, we want to break down the top three ways we see this happening and how manufacturers can take advantage of this. So I think this is really time is deep because this is where you play a lot and how you help think about how to plan effectively from a strategic standpoint from a manufacturer. So why don't we dive in? I live in the conversions between marketing and sales teams. And a lot of times when, you know, we have the opportunity to interact with manufacturers, we're oftentimes talking to the marketing department. I invite the sales team being a part of that conversation. I think it's very important. And when that happens, you oftentimes begin to see the wheels turning in the manufacturer themselves and say, we're not as aligned as we'd like to be. And I feel across manufacturing, but specifically within the building space, you'll find that sales teams are experimenting with and trying to figure out how can we converge? What does that look like? There could be a lot of speculation within the company. There could be a lot of ideation. But when the rubber meets the road and you're trying to actually bring together both of those efforts and alignment to achieve organizational objectives, there's a significant amount of opportunity that can can arise from that. Okay, so break this down for me, like you're talking to a manufacturer and you're like, Hey, this is where I think see things happening. And this is the biggest mistake I see manufacturers make or problem that they're running into. What is that if you had to pinpoint that? I'll say it like this. I think the number one way that marketing and sales can converge is shared goals and KPIs. When you think about how they interact with each other, sales teams may have their own set of KPIs, their own goals, their own objectives. Marketing may have their own goals and objectives and their own KPIs and subsets of goals and objectives within each department. And then they're saying, Okay, sales says we need more leads. Sales gets the leads and they say, Hey, this is not the best quality or this is not exactly what we're looking for. Marketing saying, Well, that's exactly what you what you needed. That's exactly what we can get. So you've got all these conversations that happen when you align the two with a shared set of goals and KPIs, you can collectively pursue the experience that the individual needs to have with your company. It creates a cohesive environment. When you have a set of shared goals and KPIs, you can construct a better user journey. Let's say I'm an architect and I'm trying to interact with your company, I'm willing to take a look. It looks interesting. I want to have the conversation about it. I may not be ready to buy my project maybe six months away. There's a lot of interaction that I can potentially have with your brand and with your product and with a sales rep and with what marketing produces. So how can you create a very cohesive journey for me? And that happens with the convergence of sales and marketing teams, but it has to come together with goals and KPIs because you can start there and say, If we're going to create a lead, right, just let's say we're going to increase our lead rate by X amount. Well, what does that even mean? What does that look like from the user experience? If the architect is going to be that lead, what kind of nurturing do you need to create? What kind of marketing campaign does the sales team need to have to nurture that conversation for the six months until their project begins? So I think the number one way that you can begin to converge marketing and sales is going to be shared goals and KPIs. And that may look different for each company. You need to collaborate to make sure that you're in alignment with those. And then you can craft a very cohesive journey from. I think you bring up a good point here, Steven, you said something in the very beginning of that explanation, which is marketing is tasked to go create and drive leads for the organization. They go do that. They hand those leads to sales, sales calls on a couple of them and goes, These leads are junk. They're not good. Marketing doesn't know what they're doing. I'm going to go back to what I was doing, right? And like I've run this before where you almost have to like kind of tiptoe in the situation. We've had clients before where they're like, Hey, we brought in these two sales people who you're going to pilot this on and they know that they're going to have to work with you to ensure that we're getting the right types of leads. So that the narrative internally becomes all marketing is actually good and good leads versus everyone out of the gate understanding that that there is going to need to be some finessing of how leads are driven, how we follow up with them, how we nurture them, how they're different from an online driven perspective versus let's say traditional network. It's interesting you talk about alignment because I'd be curious to get your take. When you talk or you see manufacturers who run into that scenario, Steve, let's say marketing drives leads and then sales starts to go, I don't know if those are very good. What is the problem? Is the leads are not good? Or is it an issue of follow up or what would you say is the problem if you had to pinpoint it? I think it could be a number of contributing factors. I'd say the number one contributing factor coming back to misalignment on messaging. The messaging has to be very precise. It has to tell me why I want your product or your brand and how I buy it. If you if I don't know those two things, then I'm going to struggle with the follow up or the nurture campaign after I have a conversation with the sales rep, right? So let's say I'm also going to struggle at the at the beginning when you're trying to generate the traffic or the or the interest. So if I don't know why I would want your product or how I buy it, that puts more work on the sales rep. And then that that, you know, facilitates a harder conversation. So marketing on the front end of that conversation with the sales rep can facilitate an easier transition between this is what this company does and this is why I would want to buy the product. This is how I buy the product. And then when they interact with sales rep, they already understand that. So the next phase is doesn't meet these qualifications. Can I do x, y and z the nurturing and the follow up then can quickly move that conversation along. Is there anyone out there you've seen that does as well? Like who do you look at your like those guys have a really dialed in? I've seen actually quite a few companies do a good job of this one that immediately comes to mind is a company that is more D to C. A lot of window companies champion windows specifically is one of those companies that does a really good job of facilitating the conversation on the front end. I know if I need window replacement, I know that I'm probably going to be a good fit as a homeowner as a as a consumer. If I need window replacement, I know that I'm probably going to be able to have a decent conversation, get a good quote. If I go to champion window, then I have to go and find them. Right. So if they don't have an ad that's specifically targeting me, then I go online and then I begin to search. There's ways that you can out strategize your competitors instead of just outspending them. There's a lot of ways that you can interact with your audience. Once I get to champion windows, then it's a very clear nurture, a nurture path that I'm going to go down. I know that I'm going to get a couple calls. I actually did this recently and I got a call every single day. I never responded just to see how many calls I would get. I got a call every day for two weeks. They called you on the phone. They called me. They called me on the phone. I think it was a local dealer. They sold champion windows. I had filled out the form on champion windows.com and then I was it was it was that many interactions. So they were able to stay up with me. So I knew, hey, you know, this, I need a window replacement. I'm going to, I'm going to reach out to this company and then they directly interacted with me. So that's one way that, you know, whether it's an ad, whether it's a programmatic advertising method or whether it's direct traffic or whatever it would be, they're going to get in front of me and then they're going to, they're going to nurture that conversation for a long time. You know, also, I think up here is Lee Filter, who's like, you can make an argument. It's not really a building product. But like, my goodness, like they're so dialed in. Do you know how much do you know how much they're spending online in a monthly basis? Just on the significant like just on Google ads. It's like, I think it's in the millions. Don't quote me on that, but I'm pretty sure it's like an absurd amount of money. I had a buddy that used to work for them years ago and it was like, yeah, I'm meeting every day with people that have filled out a form online. And if you go just look at the sophistication level of how leads come into their site, are they target people online? And then they convert that into a conversation or a meeting request. It's so smart. I think that that's where there's a ton of opportunity. I look at that and I'm like, okay, it'd be a really interesting exercise to go to every manufacturer out there and go, okay, how long does it take for our team to reach out to somebody that reaches out to us? Because time is money. It's like, I think about Steve, you ever like been on a zoom call? Yeah. And it's funny, like this is like now the culture we live in. It's like you're like you're a minute or two early. And it's like, oh, my gosh, that person showed up early. But then you're a minute or two late and you're like, where in the world is that person? Like that's what you start to think you won't say it because you're like, it's only two minutes. But it's kind of like that, like we're just like, it has to be instantaneous. I agree. You said something that's important. And this is related. So I think number one way shared goals and KPIs, I think that's really important. But in your interaction with Lee Filter, I think the second area that companies can converge sales and marketing departments effectively is in co creation of content and resources. Hear me out on this one. I think that's something that a lot of manufacturers will will miss is the sales team will create perhaps their own materials, and it won't be an alignment with branding. So the message can be off. But marketing isn't fully utilizing that sales information. So when you have alignment with goals and KPIs, the construction that the user journey then can become clear, like this is the path that we want them to take someone who's who's needs Lee filters products, someone who needs champion windows products is going to go down this journey, right? You haven't built out the personas, you build out the user journey mapping, all of those different elements, or customer journey mapping. And then when you craft them, the conversation needs to be between the marketing department and the sales team to co create the content. Because if you can meet the pain points that the sales team has with all of their conversations, right? And then you align that with what they're interacting with at the front end of the conversation. Then you're going to have a really success. You're going to have a lot more work done before they ever get on the call. What you're getting out here is self serve. Like we're like the more someone can self serve themselves around content and information, the closer that person is going to get on their own to buying. Like if you have to convince a prospect to purchase, there's clearly an opportunity for your marketing and sales to get better alignment because there's those questions are probably coming up in the field or in meetings or whatever it might be, right? So, Steve, what is the third and final thing that you see? I think one of the perhaps biggest aspects that marketing departments have problems with sales teams on is data and the collection of data. So marketing teams have a lot of problems with how sales teams either input data, the collection of data. There's very few companies that I have interacted with that collect data from their sales department in a really effective way that marketing can go and build campaigns off of. So I think the use, the collaboration and the use of technology and building a plan, having training around that within your organization, whether you have 10 reps, whether you have one rep, whether you have 100 reps, right? All over the US, whether they're territorial or whether they have a very geocentric focus, training around how to leverage the technology that you're utilizing is going to drastically increase the ROI that you have off of the expense. If you're spending a lot of money on Salesforce, you're spending a lot of money on HubSpot and you're not leveraging the data that you're collecting effectively, then the cost of that software goes up significantly and you're not getting the ROI that you could. But when your marketing team is able to take data from the sales team, when the technology is utilized effectively and build campaigns directly off of that, then that's one ways that's one way that content is created by both the marketing and sales teams. So they may not even have to interact on the content as long as marketing has data that they can use. The sales team has to input the data, right? A CRM marketing automation tool only knows what you tell it. And oftentimes that's through online interactions or via the sales team. So I find that there's this this vast quantity of insightful data that marketing teams can use to create campaigns from existing in the brains of the sales reps. So a company has to be very intentional about collaborating together and getting those teams together in a way that the marketing team can then mine that that information and actually pay that forward, right? Create campaigns that are going to be effective from it. Steve, man, thank you for joining me on the show today and talking about this. Like I said, this is the word of 2023 is the convergence of marketing and sales. And I think we're going to see more and more of that. And your last point about data I think is critical because as companies advance and as these big platforms like Google restrict more and more data access to the company or the user, the more the organizations are going to have to rely on their own proprietary data to be successful in their marketing and sales efforts. So it's very cool. I agree, Zach. And I think one thing that executive teams and leaders of manufacturers and building material manufacturers should be looking at is how effectively can I integrate my marketing team with my sales team? Vinvio, more and more we live in that centric location in between those two teams. And we're I think the way that our team is thinking in the way that we're ideating as a company is how can we exist between the two departments and help them be successful? I think to for too long in the building space, you have digital marketing over here and you have the sales team over here. That that has changed. And I think the reason that it has changed is because the audience wants a really cohesive experience. I want to be able to interact online. I want to be able to use a visualizer. I want to be able to use a, you know, a calculator and then talk to a rep and have a synchronized conversation. And that makes an impact on me that I want to know that that brand has crafted that experience specifically for me as an architect, as a builder, as a homeowner. So I think for companies to win in 2023, it's not it's having a good user experience is not a choice anymore. Having a great user experience and digital presence is totally a choice. You can totally choose to have a great digital presence. But having a good one is absolutely necessary. And I think the success that a manufacturer can experience organizational impact revenue impact is substantial when they can successfully bring their marketing and sales teams together. Steve man, thank you again for coming to show and for our listeners. If you enjoyed this episode, check us out at bambio.com slash podcast to subscribing at more till next time. I'm Zach Williams.