#102 - The F'in' Marketing Fundamentals, Chris Lynch from Mindtickle and a Wicked Problem over a Cocktail Episode

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This transcript was automatically generated by a machine, and as it becomes sentient it may have its own ideas of what we said....

"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that"

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Chris Lynch  0:00  
pitching a old eliquid deck pre Oracle acquisition

Ian Truscott  0:18  
Hello and welcome to episode 102 of Rockstar cmo F. M the M Mr. Marketing and F isabelline. Besides, you're probably wondering, does the world need another effing Marketing podcast? I'm your host Ian Truscott and this weekly podcast as my excuse chatted marketing friends, old or new that I've met through my career from techie to cmo and hopefully share with you some marketing st Onge that my guests and I have picked up along the way. Come say hello, we are Rockstar cmo on Twitter and LinkedIn, and a proud member of the Marketing Podcast Network. This episode is recorded on Friday the 18th of February hope you've had a good week and you are well safe and staying the same as you feel you need to be. This week, Jeff park and I will kick off a new series we're calling the five F in marketing fundamentals. I checked in mine tickle CMO, Chris Lynch, about his career and sales enablement. And I will of course wind down the week in the Rockstar cmo virtual bar with Robert Rose for cocktail and emarketing. But first, we need to pay the bar tap. I'll be back in a moment.

On to our first segment, my chum Jeff Clark is a former research director at siriusdecisions Forrester and is a sought after marketing strategy advisor. And this week, we entered the fray of marketing models, a suggestion of era.

Jeff, welcome back to Rockstar SEMA FM. How are you my friend?

Jeff Clark  2:09  
I am doing very well. Jolly good, Jolly good. We've

Ian Truscott  2:13  
enjoyed two weeks of you being interviewed. I had to split it. Two weeks.

Jeff Clark  2:19  
Sorry if I got a bit long winded.

Ian Truscott  2:23  
Well, I got some good feedback. So I think I think people enjoyed that conversation. And what I think I need to do is stitch it back up again, and then release it as one whole thing for people that want to Yeah, yeah, I might do that on our brand new YouTube channel that currently has one video on it. Alright, so this week, we're going to do a little bit of a reset. So we've been talking about marketing education. And I think what was interesting, prior to our interview is we were talking about the five things five,

Jeff Clark  2:54  
five p, there were five, seven, there were

Ian Truscott  2:58  
Yeah. And we were going to look at some other models of what it is that people need think about. And then I thought, why not? Why don't we get involved in the whole business of numbers and things? Right? Yes. So if we were to invent our own five effing fundamentals of marketing, which I think is what we'd need to call it, what would they be? What say you, Jeff, and that's what's going to kick off the next series for next five weeks, six weeks?

Jeff Clark  3:26  
Because we're going to dig into each each of them. If we get to five, let's see. Let's see if we can get to

Ian Truscott  3:34  
that. Well. That's it. And that, and that's the plan. Really? Oh, it's right. On the show.

Jeff Clark  3:40  
There's a six? Oh,

Ian Truscott  3:44  
I think I think we need to keep it down to I think we need to keep it down five mean, when when we were looking at the four P's turning to 5pm, and 7pm. And 8pm. I think they were getting a bit carried away. So that's right. Because

Jeff Clark  3:55  
we, because we all know that the brain can only remember up to seven and then after that, it's all

Ian Truscott  4:01  
Yeah. So when it does, it does depend on the human brain. I'm not even sure. All right, hopefully we also. Yeah, that thing I was also thinking about was, if if we were forming our marketing band, and going on to what would these you know, if we can make some kind of Rockstar analogy from that?

Jeff Clark  4:22  
Wow, cool. I think that's so we could cool

Ian Truscott  4:26  
stuff. Yeah. Well,

Jeff Clark  4:27  
I you know, and I think that they just, I mean, the other thing, just to as the premise is that, you know, we got we got onto this sort of marketing education bandwagon because, you know, there are you know, there's very little formal logic X there's very little formal education that's required in marketing because as we both came from different disciplines and then and we everybody we work with, you know, I mean, there are very few that a marketing degree along with a business degree or whatever, so it's, it's some I think it's important for CIOs and marketing leaders to say, you know, if we got to get everybody on the same page, and understand the kind of the key things that people should at least have an appreciation for, in our marketing department, what would they be?

Ian Truscott  5:19  
Nice kind of what I said yesterday, fundamentals.

Jeff Clark  5:24  
But it was really the thing about, like, the 70s was all about the marketing mix, which, which is Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting, but it's, but But again, it's like, you know, and so we could be teaching or our team about the seven P's. Yeah, lowly, right, may not give them the the sort of the basis for understanding or gins kind of what the role of each of sort of more of the skill sets are, yeah, that they come into a marketing department. And so, so So where I would start, and you know, which I think is, when you think back to the 50s. And 60s, marketing was almost solely about branding. And, and, and I think that that's, you know, that's just you're defining the story of the brand, and the, you know, kind of where the starting point is, and if we, if we take it to our rock band analogy, it's kind of like defining the sound like, who are we are, we are we are we the new punk band from Birmingham, are we the, you know, with the glam band from New Yorker, you know, and obviously, you can get, you know, it's got to be a little bit more organic, just kind of creating something, but, but it's really important, you know, to be, when you boil branding down to its fundamental, it's like, is the name of the company in the hand or the logo, and then what's the attribute you're trying to project or you know, what, you know, that, whether it's been assigned by the customer base, or whether you're trying to be you got to define it, you understand what that is? And then, you know, you want to you want to make sure, hey, man, this is our sound. This is what this is how we're going to project our image. And I think everyone in marketing needs to know, the importance of that. But both the importance of defining pretty precisely what it is and then being able to project it consistently. Because if you don't do that what goes wrong is, you know, you can confuse the customer. Yeah, the team doesn't, you know, with the cliche, does the sing off the same song sheet. And if you get dissension about Well, I think, you know, I think and, you know, given the I think we're both in blood companies that were at, you know, had been around for a while that were either trying to reinvent themselves or, you know, move into a different market, then you get this tension about what, you know, we're, this is what we're known for, but that's not where we want to be, yeah, how do we make the move? It's got to be very, you know, very

Ian Truscott  8:01  
well, I like that. And these and the music analogies don't stop coming with this. I love this, that you're saying the team is singing the same song sheet, I like that. But also that defining the sound because I think if we were a band, and we were forming a band, and we decided we're going to be a punk band, you have to be authentically punk. Right? You can't, you can't pretend to be punk or anything like that. So it has to run through. And then your point about trying to change your brand and move forward. It's like these, the you know, like a band that's been around for 20 years. When you go and see him in concert, you want to hear the hits, right? You don't want to hear that new stuff, you want to hit a hit. So how do you as a manager position,

Jeff Clark  8:35  
there's very few bands that successfully go from you know, we were the pop band, and now we're into the blue. And now we're into this this in, you know, I mean, we can count on probably on a hand of those have been able to be successful doing that.

Ian Truscott  8:47  
Yeah, yeah. So that's the first one. Number one branding, defining sound defining who we are as a band. So what will be the second of our five I

Jeff Clark  8:56  
would put number second, and then these these kind of go in some sort of, I don't know if it's, it is a logical order, but I would say market research. So so, you know, when a company gets started, they have to do a lot of research and do you know, who's your what are we going to create as a buyer, what's the name and stuff like that? And that's kind of a continuous process. And, and, you know, really everything we want to do in marketing, we need to be able to know who we're talking to, we need to know, what their needs are, what their why maybe there's some issues we've talked about on an online and, and, and it's like, you know, it's like things change over time. So you constantly need to be going into third party first party research, testing things, understanding what works and what doesn't. And you and I think what's really important is you want to make sure everybody in marketing should be empowered to do the research that makes their work more effective. So if I'm, if I'm, you know, if I'm running email tactics as part have a larger campaign and obviously I can look at my click through rates and my you know, some of my, my own metrics, but I really should be looking at well, does this audience do they react to email you also for getting into understanding who they are, where they, where they go for information, where's email important, what types of email length, you know, all these things, you know, types of offers, etc. It's like you want to you want to give that person the freedom to say, you know, go spend some time to figure out what, what really is going to work, right. Because otherwise we start executing blindly, which is, yeah, experiences too often the case is where you just okay, we got to, we got a campaign, we're gonna hit go, we're just going to create stuff, we're going to blast it out. Bree was created by an agency, it's got to be good. And you know, what you don't want to do is be singing to the empty bar halls. So you know, so you

Ian Truscott  10:53  
got to know something about your audience that you want to play to where it is that people like to listen to this particular peculiar bunch of punk bands that we decide we are what Well, I

Jeff Clark  11:04  
was gonna say you're probably right about the SP is but the the musical analogy, at least I thought for this was kind of the Muse so it was the Muse is what is it that's inspiring us to be able to create that piece that connects with our audience and and the news, you can look at it as being something that pops up kind of in from inside or, you know, if you want to do a better job, you probably should do your research.

Ian Truscott  11:30  
Yeah, I think there's a good so so we so we're branding or so. So number one is branding, defining the sound that we are, then we've got our market research, the muse of is there an audience for this kind of punk craziness that we're going to put together? What's your third one

Jeff Clark  11:47  
is communications and communications, both what how you communicate who in your organisation makes influencers and how they're telling the story. So this is kind of like, here, we got to write some material. Of course, we could be a cover band. So we're basically other other people's material. But even if we're, even if we're a cover band, we got to figure out how we're, you know, how are we telling the story different from whoever the original songwriter was, but, but you know, you've got a, you know, I mean, this is, it's, you're telling the story, so it's songwriting, it's the vocalists, it's the, it's actually it's the music as well, I mean, it's not just the spoken part of this, but it's you know, you know, who's playing what instrument? You know, you know, and and also, if we get really good at this, how are we going to make sure that other bands cover our tunes, so we can make some money on the royalties. But yeah, but you know, it's, and you know, this because you, you know, you're, you're a content marketer at heart, and it's like a need to understand the value of storytelling and how it connects, you know, your audience's need to your value proposition, tied, supporting your brand promise. And you know, and so, if you don't, if, if people within marketing don't understand the importance of this, then, you know, you just don't, you just, you're just firing stuff off, you're not really engaging customers, you might have sprayed messages that fall on deaf ears, because it really wasn't what they wanted to hear. Right. And it wasn't extra, I'd say it wasn't tell told in a way that really engages them, what's that's the, you know, we've we've figured our brand out, we've got our muse, now, we got to figure out how we connect to the audience with an engaging story.

Ian Truscott  13:34  
So, so this is different than from the branding, then in terms of that we've decided to be a punk band, and but we're now putting with fleshing this out of what it is that we actually want to say, as a band that we actually, you know, what we want, and what the individual songs will say,

Jeff Clark  13:50  
Yeah, of course, you know, punk band, I can just say that I'm, you know, I don't know, yeah, I might have teenage angst, and I'm crying and yeah, blah, blah, blah, and I can't understand the lyrics anyway. Anyway.

Ian Truscott  14:02  
I, this is the song right in the interview site. And it also it's also the, if we think about it as comms and influences and stuff like that is it's also not just the songs, but also the publishing of the music. Are we just thinking about the songs at this point?

Jeff Clark  14:17  
I think Well, I think it's also that yeah, it's the publishing of it. Because because again, if you're working with your influencers, you know, you you're going to basically create a story that somebody else is going to pick up, you know, this is the holy grail of thought leadership, we've come up with something that somebody else is going to echo because those guys really know, you know, how to how to solve this particular problem and everyone's having out there and so I'm going to value what you know, ABC company does because they're the best punk band and you've got the best product.

Ian Truscott  14:50  
Oh, we've just written the latest American classic for the American Songbook.

Jeff Clark  14:57  
I've noticed that you keep coming back to punk bands

Ian Truscott  15:00  
Well, I don't you said at the beginning, we were a punk band. I'm just trying to sing from your song. Hey, I know we did a little bit of prayer I

Jeff Clark  15:07  
was we want some of this more new wave in that era.

Ian Truscott  15:10  
Yeah, no, me too. Alright, so what's the fourth? So

Jeff Clark  15:15  
is is, I think are the cycles, the customer life cycle, the buying cycle the sales cycle? Right? And and, you know, it's like, you know, every every song needs to you know, figure out what's the what's the arc of the story that we're engaging the the audience and what's kind of the the rhythm? Where are we are we, you know, trying to understand where in a particular cycle they are, that we're actually communicating the right thing. I mean, it's, it relates a lot to the, the storytelling we were talking about, with, with communications, but it's really more about we know things happen in cycles, we know things, you know, every process that a customer goes through has a rhythm to it, how do we make sure we're executing at the right point in, in connecting with them? And, and marketers don't mean this, but I think this is important for all marketers to understand is that, you know, you use different engagement tactics and different content at different stages and different. And so everything has got this, this different rhythm to it that, that if you if you don't get it, right, you know, you really I mean, your your performance of all your tactics, and everything suffers. And basically, you're not going to get the kind of outcomes you're looking for.

Ian Truscott  16:39  
Yeah, yeah, like start with a slow song at the beginning of the evening. This would be you

Jeff Clark  16:45  
know, like the setlist I mean is the perfect is somebody who played in a band, it's just like, the first song was said, it's got to be high energy. And then we figured out how to work in the complex stuff. And we end with a high energy. Because we know we got to send them off to the to get a drink, you know, feeling good. Yeah. And so So yeah,

Ian Truscott  17:03  
if we were thinking about this as individual songs, it would be the beat because I was I was thinking about when you were saying that is, and I think people are gonna start turning off for all the rock stars, Song analogies. Because many of them, but it's being in a dead end even say Allah is being in harmony with your buyer, right?

Jeff Clark  17:24  
That's right. Be in harmony. That's right. Yeah.

Ian Truscott  17:29  
So having that cadence of communication or whatever you're doing, and make having that in harmony with what your buyer needs or wants at that particular time. Right? Absolutely. Absolutely rented, right, that's four. So we're doing that I think we are gonna have five, I think,

Jeff Clark  17:46  
five, we're gonna hit five, because that's what you That's what you told me. Yeah,

Ian Truscott  17:52  
I know, you prepare. So. So we've defined the sound, we define who we are with this. We're now a new wave band. We've, we've found our inspiration and our muse from our market reset. And we've written the next great American song for the American Songbook, with our communications, and we decided how we're going to publish that what channels and we're in harmony with our buyer with our customer lifecycle buying cycles and sales cycles. What's our fifth? what possibly could be?

Jeff Clark  18:25  
Operations? Because I think, in this, this is a broad bucket term, your marketing operations, and certainly, that's where I love my personal experience in. But it's like the tech the process, the data, the, the, you know, what tech do we need? How do we get the sound right? What's the process to record to play? Like, you know, get on a tour or what, you know, you know, are we outsourcing certain skills, and there's more than the band. And so, you know, we might have got our five piece band together. But, you know, to do anything, we need to produce her we need we need a crew for production, we need you know, engineers, we need Roadies. And, and so, I mean, I think one of the things in obviously, as I said there's a lot of elements to this, but I think that it's really important for marketers to understand the kind of the underpinnings of processes and data that flow in the execution of any set of marketing campaigns is that there's this this this work that has to happen to make everything execute well together. And And technology is certainly part of this because you know, you can buy a piece of tech or you could silo your data off and all of a sudden you're you're breaking the process that is going to turn your your band that had the one hit wonder you're trying to get a the next hit or you know, put your mouth or get on the streaming service or get your act on the road. And if you don't really coordinate the efforts around around tech process and data then You know, you're just not going to be effective, you're not going to be efficient. And and, you know, and you'll you'll you'll just burn out. Because, you know, you didn't understand what were the all the mechanisms that were required to support a more action.

Ian Truscott  20:14  
Right, right. So you could you come up with a great song and you've got a great band and you're singing, but you're in your mom's basement and you've not getting much further than that, because you haven't set up the channels or the way of recording or haven't got the equipment or that kind of good stuff. I think that's a Yeah. So that is that is is, is that like, because I there was actually somebody wrote an article like this rockstar a couple of years ago that was comparing, comparing, I think it was product managers, to to roadies, you know, the people are doing the heavy lifting and product marketers. But you'd say this is like the marketing operations guys that are setting up the mix decks. They're the producers, the crew, the roadies, and all that. Other people are gonna help us. This is take this on tour, right?

Jeff Clark  21:03  
Yeah. Yeah, let's get our act together and put it on the road. And yeah, and it's, I mean, it's just as you know, if you if you watch any of, you know, these like little rock documentaries, you know, digging into the, like, the Beatles get back or anything where you're digging into what actually happened to put something out that, you know, it's like, oh, there's this nice little tune. I really like it like the band, and then you realise everything that went into that. I mean, if the guys just sat in your guys and gal sat in your living room and played, you know, it's like, that might be great, but actually to make something work commercially. Yeah. You know, you just have have to have the people process technology nailed down.

Ian Truscott  21:45  
Yeah, yeah, no, I think that's excellent. So we've got our five effing marketing fundamentals. And it's a shame we couldn't get them all to start with F but I know we tried. So I could just put effort in front of everything F in brand new.

Jeff Clark  22:02  
Get your brand together.

Ian Truscott  22:06  
So we got so we got branding divine the sound legal market research, that's how I'm using our inspiration. We got our communications, our influences, our Songwriting, our, our getting out there, getting in harmony with the buyer through the customer lifecycle, buying and sales cycles. And finally, Marty operations, the crew, the producer, the roadies, and now we're gonna that's the next five weeks, right? We're gonna talk about these five. Yeah. Great. So listeners, see what you subscribe to. We're going to now go into these and try and

Jeff Clark  22:36  
be where you might learn something.

Ian Truscott  22:39  
Or while you're, let's say, in a load of very lame music for me, all right, so we got to finish this with a commendation of a song from you, Jeff, what are we gonna go with?

Jeff Clark  22:52  
You know, this, this was a tough one. It's got a hit. It's kind of hit on so many different levels. So pick the fundamental thing by Bonnie Raitt from 1998. Song with a great groove. Good message. It says fundamental, I think most of the signs were about love. So that's not bad. I'll go with and

Ian Truscott  23:19  
I have to confess, I think the only option I came up with was, was take five by Dave Brubeck, which was taken us in 1959. So I think we've done quite well with

Jeff Clark  23:28  
well, it wouldn't take. It certainly is not new wave or punks.

Ian Truscott  23:32  
But I have to confess that because I used to usually made familiar. So we'll close with fundamental things by Bonnie Raitt from 1998 and you're going to join us again next week and we'll kick off with branding or the start with worry defining our sound and what is this crazy band that we're creating gonna be about? We'll see. Thank you very much. See you next week the city's street cruiser let's cross samples simple skin, skin. Yeah.

Jeff Clark  24:39  
Let's dance barefoot, walking us through the wet coat.

Ian Truscott  25:06  
Thank you, Jeff. So that was the fundamental things by Bonnie Raitt from 1998. Again, not attract familiar with the music selections here are nothing if not eclectic, let us know what you think of this new series. If you have any suggestions, get in touch with our rockstar, cmo on Twitter and LinkedIn, or email us at Hello at Rockstar cmo.com. But on to my guest, Chris Lynch is the Chief Marketing Officer of sales readiness platform mine tickle. Chris oversees all global marketing functions, including product marketing, demand gen brand and creative. As you'll hear, he has deep experience in product positioning and messaging go to market strategies and the alignment of marketing with sales objectives. Before joining mine tickle, Chris was the CMO, a director consumer apparel brand Kuyou, where he built a team focused on data driven strategies and customer engagement. Previously, Chris was the CMO at scission, where he led a global team and pioneered a new approach to messaging and campaign development, culminating incisions IPO. Prior to that Chris had senior marketing roles, Oracle Bagotville Tibco, and social tech. I enjoy this conversation

Hi, Chris, welcome to Rockstar SEMA fn. How are you?

Chris Lynch  26:21  
I'm Wellington, how are you?

Ian Truscott  26:22  
I'm very good. Thank you very much. And for people that don't know you, Chris, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Chris Lynch  26:28  
So I've had a career in b2b marketing now for over a decade. You know, interestingly, I kind of got into it by happenstance I had started in the professional world way back, when, as a journalist, I had been covering technology, business and sort of got really embedded in the world of Silicon Valley, started through my contacts started talking to a lot of different companies. And so found my way into the world of marketing. Really kind of by accident, to be completely honest, but realising that I had those story, telling capabilities in my background, I just sort of realised that some of the similar skill sets would apply, you know, being able to kind of talk to different types of roles and people inside of the company, it reminded me a lot of working on stories where I was talking to different sources, and then figuring out different ways to translate those stories externally.

Ian Truscott  27:25  
Yeah. And I saw that in your background. And as we sort of get to know each other, that your background is actually as a writer, right? That's right.

Chris Lynch  27:32  
It's a writer, and then specifically, coming out of college, I decided that I really wanted to pursue a niche in technology, you know, at the time, even back then, media was declining at a pretty rapid rate, it was being disrupted very heavily by, you know, everything moving to the internet, and newspapers and magazines, and everyone sort of figuring out what that was all going to look like. And so in my journalism school, it was sort of a dime a dozen of people who wanted to go into politics into sports, some of the more in those times, it was still more sexy to kind of go into those areas, right? That's the stuff you saw on TV, or that everyone, the general populace would read about the most. I was like, Well, I want to go try something different, where I feel like there's a lot of growth still. So I ended up in technology. But relative to your question, I think what what ended up happening was, I realised that I had a knack for sort of sitting at the intersection of the sales and marketing and go to market functions, and the engineering and product function. So while I wasn't a technologist by background, I would sort of apply some of the skills, I had to understand a lot of technology, conceptually, from engineering product types, but then translate it into something that I felt anyone could understand. And so first, getting into marketing a little bit by happenstance, but then getting into product marketing sort of ended up becoming this natural extension, because I realised that I could kind of sit and straddle those two worlds effect.

Ian Truscott  29:12  
Yeah, yeah. And if answered a couple of questions, I was gonna ask you, you had a great career with Tibco, Oracle and sissy on I think, is the way you pronounce it. And you came into that from your writers background, and you spent some time in Product Marketing. I know that point you're making there? Is that what you learn from product marketing? So I've got product marketing background as well. And is that interpretation is it's that translation of product features and functions and stuff into what the customer cares about. Is that what you found in that experience?

Chris Lynch  29:41  
Absolutely. So one of the things I learned about product marketing very quickly is that so much messaging that exists in the marketing world kind of exists on this spectrum, right, you have the more brand oriented, lighter value oriented messaging that you'll see coming out of a lot of companies. And that's super important. You got to get that right, you have to nail that. And then on the other side of the spectrum, you also have the more heavyweight product, feature functions, speeds and feeds types of messaging, at least as we're talking about tech marketing. And what I kind of found was with product marketing, you have to find a bit of an equilibrium relative to Yes, you need to demonstrate value to prospects and customers, yes, you want to deliver an insightful idea or story to them. And then at a certain point, customers do want to know what you do. And I Yeah, it's a jarring thing for how many times in like your sales and marketing life if people said, Well, I'm a, I'm a relationship person, or I'm a value person. And yeah, I actually don't think that's quite enough to thrive anymore, you do have to have some insight about the products, the competitive landscape at the appropriate time. And so, um, that was very much my experience with product marketing. And then I think the other thing that was interesting for me, or where I started out in additional specialty in product marketing was really in the world of portfolio marketing. So when I was at Oracle, I was running global product marketing for the marketing cloud business unit. And it was a highly acquisitive business unit, we bought Eloqua, respond to a variety of marketing tagging providers, and there was going to be heavy work on our product and engineering organisation there to integrate, pull that stuff there. But ahead of that, my job was sorted to be the chief storyteller. Absolutely. About all of those things coming together. What's the vision for that, even ahead of some of that being delivered? Yeah, from a roadmap perspective, and so that, I feel like in a lot of ways ended up being the MBA I never got. It was a really complex business landscape to kind of triangulate between engineering, sales and the rest of the marketing organisation. But it was a lot of fun. And I think we did a pretty good job of it.

Ian Truscott  32:14  
Yeah, I love what you were talking about there. And the fact that people are getting a bit carried away, I guess, with I mean, b2b has a reputation for just talking about features and functions. And then there are people that are saying, you should just tell stories people buy from, you know, from, from the story you tell, and but you're right, as the customer, the customer, that you need to map that against the customer journey. And as it gets deeper in, they're gonna want to know what the features and functions are. Right? Yeah, absolutely. And making that coherent. I love that. But right now, your your mind tickle. Tell us. Tell us a little bit about what mine tickle does, because I can't say the name without you explaining what it is that product does, because it's got such a great name.

Chris Lynch  32:54  
Sure, no, no problem. So we're a sales readiness platform. So it's core. What we help organisations, particularly sales organisations do is define the ideal profile of their sales reps, what is the ideal rep profile that you want in market, and then develop and build the knowledge and skill sets required for those sales reps to go and thrive and succeed in market? Yeah, um, and so I think that, you know, typically, what really intrigued me about mine, tickle was going back a little bit to my Oracle days. Just a brief story. To me. I did one of these kind of old school enablement, tours at Oracle, where when I was head of product marketing, right, you, you kind of go to a lot of those dog and pony shows where you know, you get up you speak in front of 1000s of sales reps, and I literally went New York, Amsterdam, Singapore, Sydney, all the way back to San Francisco. And I get back to my office in San Francisco. And after putting out all that new messaging, I saw that a seller, someone who had come over from our elico acquisition was on a WebEx pitching a old eliquid deck pre Oracle acquisitions. Go directly to his desk, and he turned white like immediately, he was just like, mortified. I think he thought I was just gonna really let him have it. Yeah. And I said, I'm not mad. I just want to understand why, you know, you aren't using what we provide. It goes Chris. What you provided is fantastic. Number one, I couldn't deliver it the way you do. And number two, I've made my number using this. Yes. And so with mind sickle, and this is really inherent in the name. The founders really understood that the driving the behaviour change and adaptation within your Your sales organisation is as important as the content component you put in front of them. And so a lot of what we do within the platform is find different ways to engage sellers really weaving into what is a very busy schedule for them. Right? So I think what we're seeing is that the traditional sales enablement programme of certifications and completion metrics is a bit of a thing of the past. And it's really more about hey, can we send them a question today, like of your top four competitors, which two are the most similar to us in this context, pick A, B, and C or D doesn't have to be complex, but leveraging some of those micro learning techniques, we're finding that you can drive some of that behaviour change even in parallel with some of the bigger programmes.

Ian Truscott  35:47  
So it's a two way thing, then you're, you're capturing data and insight from the salespeople and then sharing it amongst a team?

Chris Lynch  35:54  
That's right. I think one of the things that I've been talking about is this notion of the science of sales or the quantified seller. You remember back in like, the early 2000s, when, like Fitbit, and Apple watches and all that stuff was coming out there was the notion of the quantified self, I want to know, how many steps did I do today? Like, yeah, oh, look, I walked three miles, and I've exceeded my activity quota for the day. Yeah. I think what sellers, what's been vastly missing is sort of that exercise, you know, what are they doing? What is the work going in to becoming a great seller? Are they indexing really high on negotiation skills? Or messaging delivery? I think that sales is obviously the most measured function in a b2b company, but it's measured really largely from an outcome perspective. Yeah, it's close, won or lost? Did you? How many marketing leads? Did you convert? You know, you just look at these very binary, yes, no markers. And I think the data that we have available in our platform, where it gets interesting, is being able to quantify the skill sets and then minimally be able to correlate them to some of the outcomes. But I think that's just the tip of the iceberg. I think as we start thinking through how you can pull some of this data out leverage AI, and all these other platforms in the world right now, like the Clarys, that people AI's. The boost up AI is like, I think, putting data into those platforms as well, where you say, hey, it's not just about prediction based on previous revenue and business outcome numbers, but all of this contextual data that we know about our Salesforce.

Ian Truscott  37:42  
That's amazing. So as you say, I mean, sales is usually measured by a simple metric, you won or lost, you earned this amount of money or you didn't. So that's really interesting. And is it? Does it encompasses the fact that many salespeople have a different approach to success? And it does it try and sort of understand what that is?

Chris Lynch  38:01  
Yes, we want to understand what that is that is this concept of the ideal rep profile. Not only is that an object within our product, but I actually use it as a construct to have a lot of my customer conversations because you get a head of sales enablement, a chief revenue or a chief sales officer in the room and you ask them, what's the ideal rep profile, even at an organisation that might pride themselves as being aligned on different things, you'll actually get a lot of different answers. And for me, that's a really fascinating thing. But what I think we're also talking about here is moving beyond the cliches that have really contributed to the 8020 rule. 8020 rule being that 20% of your sellers are closing 80% of the revenue. Yeah. And the reason that that has held as a construct, it's called The Pareto principle for so long, is that I think sales is used to play that numbers game, well, I'm just gonna go I know these people, I'll hire them in, they'll help carry the load. But eventually, what ends up happening is, is you'll miss a month or you'll miss a quarter because even your best people, yeah, and have a bad go of it sometimes. So what I think is important is moving beyond things like oh, well, this person has the it factor, or this person has gravitas. It's like yeah, does that stuff even mean? And I think that now that we're becoming a more modern workplace in parallel, I think we're all learning relative to diversity, inclusion and showing how powerful it is to grow your workforce with different ideas, different perspectives coming to the table. I think sales is very similar. I think you're going to find that in certain organisations, you can index high in certain areas and still find a path to making your number. But gosh, I would love to know what that is. If I

Ian Truscott  39:52  
Yeah. Yeah. So a couple of questions from that. One is you know, the typical stereotype typical The statement that we make about sales is people buy from people. So how are we? How are we understanding that through technology? And that the second thing is that struck me immediately was, we can't even get salespeople to fill in the CRM. So how do you how do you get? How do you find engagement with the tool with the sales team?

Chris Lynch  40:20  
Sure. So I'll take the latter question. First, I think what we have found to be critical is a depth of what we call engagement, mechanics, different levers that you want to pull in order to find the right person. The second, so what I mean by that is, yes, there's always going to be a time and a place where you're going to do the maybe for compliance reasons, the much more traditional, hey, here's a module, you need to show that you have actually consumed this, take a quiz or a test before you can move on. Right, there's always a our platform has that some of our competitor platforms have that there's always a need for that.

Ian Truscott  41:07  
Right. But I have, sorry, it's part of the sort of HR function of being a sales guy at this organisation is your commitment to the fact that you that part of your success of that organisation is to commit to this programme?

Chris Lynch  41:20  
Right, I think that it does have to be woven into your culture that yeah, the notion of getting proficient and getting sharp at all of these pieces is critical. What I would say is that, in addition to that, you need to be able to leverage other types of engagement mechanics that make the sellers develop certain skill sets, even when you're not overtly aware that that's what they're doing. Or an example of that is kind of the what I said earlier, right, of just pushing out different notifications in more smaller bits, where they could be sitting on the subway, they could be sitting in an Uber, whatever. And it's not that much of a thing relative to everything that we all do with our phones and screen time. Yeah, just answer something quick and easy. And so one of the other things that we think is really critical is in between sort of the Big Bang programmes, you do a lot of this micro learning, you do a lot of spaced reinforcement. So after they learn something in that, one of the questions you send out is something that is just reinforcing something that was already covered in a much larger context. So right, I think there's a little bit of a sleight of hand involved, quite honestly, where you try to make them not be so overtly aware that their money through a training programme? And if you do that, then they don't feel like it is the traditional training programme. It's a more more one with those types of techniques.

Ian Truscott  42:57  
Right, right. Right, it sounds really interesting. And you've been there almost a year. So one of the things I was gonna ask you about as well, you also do your first 90 days as the CMO there is probably still fresh in your mind. What advice do you give to new CMOS? And you've been through this a few times, you've been seeing a number of large organisations what's what's your, what do you kick off with without spoiling the experience that he had a minute ago sharing too many secrets? But what's it what's your approach?

Chris Lynch  43:25  
I think my approach is generally to bifurcate things happening around the department into two parallel paths. So one is what are the immediate low hanging fruit things that I know I can tap into, I know I can make impact on quickly. And where we can kind of show a quick win. From a marketing perspective, the second piece is on the other side of that you have to look deeply at your infrastructure, your business processes, the team you have in place, those things are harder and a longer burn. And, you know, the CMO job, it's similar to a head of sales or Chief Revenue Officer job in the sense that eventually time is your enemy. Yeah, I mean, it's a people give, always give product, engineering, other functions, sort of a wider berth to figure a lot of things out. So you have to be cognizant of that. But you can't let it make you make knee jerk decisions.

Ian Truscott  44:36  
Right? Right. You gotta balance the tactical with the strategic right. So while you're throwing off these tactical wins and demonstrating value from that perspective underneath, there's actually some strategy going on that you can point to in sort of month, two or day, or maybe even

Chris Lynch  44:55  
a year, an example and my first 90 days at mine too, right. So one of the things like we talked about earlier I knew that I'm at the top of my game from a storytelling perspective, at this stage of my career, I was very quickly able to go in and have my conversations with product engineering, the sales team, customers. Yeah, collect a lot of those data points do a lot of my market research. Yeah, come back with, Hey, here's a brand new vision and first call deck that we will operationalize across the organisation to articulate what we mean by sales readiness and where we are differentiated, right. And the field facing stuff at a b2b company is nice, because you can have quick impact when you're manifesting that stuff through PowerPoints and keynotes and demonstrations and some of those pieces. A longer burn as an example was okay, now that we've built this messaging backbone in parallel, we now need our entire website to become a reflection of that, that takes more time to build. Yeah. loves that in December. And we're really proud of it. But it was a much bigger project, a lot of people involved. It's one of those projects. It's high visibility, everyone wants it yesterday. Yeah. But you have to kind of keep your head down and do it the right way. So that would be my advice to other CMOS in their first 90 days is find a couple things that you know, can make immediate impact. I've talked to CMOS before who I think are so intellectually righteous about everything that they're just like, well, they'll have to wait. And yeah, he can't Okay, and I just don't think that ever really works effectively. But I do think it's fair on the flip side of that, not like you shouldn't roll over on everything either. And I think there are things where I've said to my boss and others, like, look, you're right, we have to up our game in that area, but it's gonna take time, here's the resources that we'll need. Yeah. And you just have to kind of politely sort of talk about where the patients needs to be.

Ian Truscott  47:04  
It's like a puzzle, isn't it? It's like figuring out a puzzle. And you know that the problem, the squeaky wheels, and all this kind of stuff. And it's building a plan that you can demonstrate that will solve that. And it may not be in the next 30 days, it may be a little bit longer to do that. But try and try and show that work, right?

Chris Lynch  47:19  
Particularly in b2b. Yeah, I mean, I actually did a brief stint in consumer for a couple of years, just because I wanted that experience to see what it would be like and yeah, the difference with a direct to consumer business is like you can in marketing, you can see immediate impact really quickly, because you you're putting campaigns, and then you're transacting business directly, not through a salesperson. And b2b, particularly in our case, you know, we a big portion of our businesses in the enterprise segment. Yeah. You know, their sales cycles, our sales cycles, when you're going and selling a product to a large enterprise organisation, marketing's ability to start impacting that number is a bit delayed. And so I think that's especially true in b2b.

Ian Truscott  48:03  
Yeah. And it must be, I think, must be interesting, being a CMO of an organisation like yours, where you're dealing with sales, and you're selling a sales readiness form. So, you know, I, on the one hand, I guess you've got all the tools, which is excellent. But on the other hand, it's like if I don't get this right, with all the tools, and then I'm in trouble. And I've just, I've just realised the time really enjoys conversation. And I also understand that, on that we were talking about empowering sales guys and working with sales guys that actually, and I like to talk about podcasts with a podcast, but you guys run a podcast, it's actually run by sales.

Chris Lynch  48:39  
Yeah, so we've recently or I believe it's coming out, sequentially over the next few months, we'll we'll keep releasing them. It's called Ready, Set sell. Mm hmm. And, yeah, we've been having people come on, we've had one of our sellers. Come on to talk through just challenges he sees in the market with sales. We've brought in another consultant who's worked with us on with our business development rep group. So a lot of inside sales background there. And really, what we've found is there's an interesting avenue there to hear things from the sellers perspective, but I've also gone on to give marketing's so that'll be coming out pretty soon. Yeah, so look out for that.

Ian Truscott  49:24  
I will and I'll include a link to it in the show notes as well if you if you send me a link. And then finally the last question, we have a regular feature that Rockstar cmo called the Rockstar CMS simple in tribute to all the rockstars that threw things in Hotel Swimming pools, but it's our pools at marketing, health all the overhyped trends, Bs and snake oil from this practice we love what would you like to see chatting to our pool?

Chris Lynch  49:45  
I think that Account Based Marketing should be chucked out and really just accepted as a best practice, but I think it's an Interesting that the whole marketing world for the b2b marketing world for last three to four years has suddenly thinking it's like a novel thing to point out that you market to companies. Yes, I think that is like the nature of b2b. So, and I, and I just really feel that it also doesn't mean that decade's worth of marketing best practice that isn't necessarily completely related to contemporary changes are just things that we know to work. Yeah, I think it's fair to say that all that stuff gets thrown out. Because we now have intent data that might tell us whether someone is in a warmer or hotter state die. Number one, I don't really trust those 10 models that much to be honest with you. I mean, I view them as guidance. But again, having done my stint in consumer marketing, you you really get your PhD in audience data. Yeah. And you learn a lot, which is a that like, yes, you need to, in your targeting, have some perspective on who you want to be reaching? And what are the attributes of that. But I still don't think it's possible, particularly with companies that are becoming complex, combined with the fact that, you know, now that a lot more people are working remotely. So yes, that data is collected. Yeah. So I still think there's this thing called inbound marketing, that matters a lot. And it matters even in some of the more outbound motions that you do. So I think that we need to not just try to keep changing the goalposts in video game. And that's what I kind of feel like the APM fervour has done, it's been sort of like this Sleight of Hand of going, oh, we'll go from MQLs 10 Q A's, and it's just let's we didn't like we weren't doing well with this vanity metrics. So let's just reset. And do another one.

Ian Truscott  52:03  
Yeah. So anyway, it's something we often discuss on the show the fact that you know, what's old is new again, like a conversation that I have with, with Jeff Clark, who's also on the show, and just before this segment, and, and we we've discussed Account Based Marketing, it's like, that's what we've always done in b2b. But now we have these tools and this very narrow definition that that's and we see that so often with us as marketers, we like Oh, shiny thing, let's call it a thing. And it's really a best practice. So that's an excellent candidate for the Rockstar, cmo simple. Thank you very much, Chris. And when the listeners spin the dial on the interwebs, where they're going to find you,

Chris Lynch  52:40  
Oh, mine tickle.com come and find us there. And we have great content on there, whether you're in sales or a marketer, in particular, we have a lot of great content for marketers that are looking to improve their relationship with sales.

Ian Truscott  52:55  
Cool. And you Chris, they find you LinkedIn tweet, LinkedIn

Chris Lynch  52:58  
is the best spot these days. I mean, I used to have a blog and website and all that stuff, but who can keep that?

Ian Truscott  53:05  
I love it. All right. Well, I'll include links to those in the show notes as well. I look forward to speaking to you again, Chris. Thanks so much for your time.

Thanks. Thank you, Chris. I enjoyed that. An interesting platform, a great topic and yet another vote for IBM to make a splash in the Rockstar CMOS simple. I will of course, include all of Chris's links in the show notes that you can find on Rockstar cmo.fm Right? Time to wind down for the week and we're better than the Rockstar cmo virtual bar and join my friend and content marketing guru chief troublemaker at the content advisory once described as a likeable Mark Ritson Robert Rose to be transported away with a cocktail

didn't love it? What are you drinking?

Robert Rose  54:05  
Oh, hello, my friend. It's good to see you in the bar. I you know, it's noisy.

Unknown Speaker  54:12  
crazy busy. You know, if somebody with a leaf blower have a leak of a leaf blower doing it in the bar is It's madness at annoying.

Robert Rose  54:28  
You know how good that seems that they're they're moving on now. I didn't know you had gardens and lawns here.

Ian Truscott  54:35  
Anyway, right? That? That it's that kind of bar. Anything Goes we've had Marissa

Robert Rose  54:41  
is a big open bar here. You know, so we have a wonderful drink this week. I'm sort of coming off of net last week. It is still warm here in Southern California. And so I have missed my trips to Asia. And I used to get to Singapore at least once every year. Yeah. And, and of course, I got to, you know, Japan, I've gotten to I've gotten to the Beijing it's been a very long time since I've been to China, but certainly Hong Kong, and other places in, in and around Asia and, and I missed a, what I realised was I haven't had a Muy Thai in a long time. Now, one of the things that I decided to try and that we're going to try this evening is, you know, a little fun thing that we're calling instead of a Muy Thai, it's a my tequila.

Ian Truscott  55:43  
I see because

Robert Rose  55:44  
I'm not a fan of rum. As you know, as we heard last, in the last episode, you know, I changed up the Mohito into into something that wasn't about rum. Yep. But this week, we are going to replace the rum again. Because I just don't mean my ties are lovely. By the way, I love a good Muy Thai but you know with rum, but we're going to change it up. And so what we have here is a my tequila, which is a your favourite, and this time you do use a reposado, tequila, something that has and one of the best ways to do this is to look for some of the infused tequila is some of them with a very vanilla e taste. So you can go with a reposado or something like that. There's a particular brand of tequila called classes Zuul, which is not my favourite to have on its own. But as a reposado with a heavy vanilla taste, it makes a great addition to a my tequila here. So you take that, and then we mix of course, the classic pineapple juice, three parts, pineapple juice to two parts, orange juice. And again, the Muy Thai normally calls for a little bit of grenadine or more syrup. I don't use that if you're into that, go do that. But basically, so you have basically three parts tequila, three parts, pineapple juice, two parts, orange juice, and then of course over ice. And you know, I mean, if you're going to have a proper my tequila or my Thai, you're going to be an umbrella in there. And then SIP that as you sit out on a porch somewhere.

Ian Truscott  57:23  
And nice, right? I'm going to attempt to replicate that. And I think it's it's crazy that you decided to swap out holes in your drinks and your cocktails, Robert I mean, who would do that? Yes, talk. Yes to stay faithful to the recipe. So I'm going to I'm also gonna go with a very light No, you went with the episode? I don't think so. I think the most English of reposado tequilas some Hendrix, Jim I'm still enjoying this joke. Bit of gin, lovely chapli And you've added pineapple juice. What else was it?

Robert Rose  58:05  
Well, we have pineapple juice, of course. And then orange juice. Okay. And again, if you're if you're into the, you know, if you're into the grenadine, you do the granite again, but I'm not so.

Ian Truscott  58:20  
Okay. Well, I am. Well, I'm very into those things as an international cocktail drinker. But for now I've I've trusted the folks at Fevertree to pull together a number of ingredients forms that are very similar to what you've just described. They're called cucumber tonic water. I'm not sure if you are Yes.

Robert Rose  58:39  
Yes. Most English are pineapples. Really? I mean?

Ian Truscott  58:44  
Yeah, a cucumber. Actually a cucumber. That is a great analogy. I think if you think of a pineapple is that is South American fruit. And definitely the kids

Robert Rose  58:55  
come together with them.

Ian Truscott  59:02  
I'm gonna try this. Oh, that is delicious. Robert, very refreshing. I could drink one of these every single week.

Robert Rose  59:11  
And suspect you could No Yes,

Ian Truscott  59:13  
I do my best. And where are we going to be sipping these wonderful cocktails?

Robert Rose  59:19  
Well, you know, again, it feels like with this kind of drink. We need to be somewhere warm and on a beach. And and, and my again, falling off of last week where we went and spent a little time in Brazil. I felt like we needed a little more time at the beach. And another place that my wife has been but I have not been is Fiji and oh wow. I would really love to get to Fiji and and she brought back all these pictures from her trip to Fiji with a friend and I was very jealous. And so I think now to sort of support that jealousy we have to make our way there and Again, probably probably not on the beach sipping these cocktails. This feels more like we're sitting on the porch or a bar or something like that. And there's a little bit of music, no leaf blowers, of course. But sitting in a bar somewhere in Fiji, watching the water lap up and do those kinds of things.

Ian Truscott  1:00:19  
Yeah, sorry about those leaf blowers. Yeah, I don't, I wouldn't have thought the leaf blowing was was gonna be in the ambience of where we are from from in, in Fiji. But what some? So how does that work with you with you and your wife then that you've been to these these different places? Because you've been just about everywhere. I mean, has she got many places on you?

Robert Rose  1:00:40  
She has no, she does not travel? Well, I neither of us travel very much these days. But she travels differently than I do typically. Because she's going on fun vacation tight. Yes. And I'm going to speak in Detroit or somewhere. You know, or Florida, which is even worse. You know, apologies to those in Florida. No, not really. Hashtag Sorry, not sorry.

Ian Truscott  1:01:11  
Oh, pick up the guys in Detroit. Yeah,

Robert Rose  1:01:14  
well, Detroit. I you know, the funny thing is, is that I prefer Detroit to Florida. But, yeah, it's um, she she travels quite a bit, not quite a bit. And again, none of us travelled this much these days. But in the past, she was she was going with friends to on trips, or, you know, those kinds of things.

Ian Truscott  1:01:33  
Yeah, I've got the same here. Um, my wife has hasn't done much business travel. But there was a few years where she went San Francisco and I hadn't been. Yeah, and then I got to go quite a lot. That was that was that was that ticked off? So while we are, aside from discussing the different places we've travelled with our lives, and what, what would we be discussing on this trip? Well,

Robert Rose  1:02:00  
have you ever heard of the term a wicked problem?

Ian Truscott  1:02:06  
Well, it sounds like it sounds like many of my many videos.

Robert Rose  1:02:11  
Yeah, there's actually a term and it's not just like a boss thing, either, like, you know, it's, it's called a wicked problem. And it's defined as a problem that is really difficult to solve because of either incomplete, contradictory or changing requirements that can. And, you know, and then there's, there's, there's, there's another one, another definition that I really like, actually from an information researcher named Jeff Conklin, who says, it's basically a problem that you cannot recognise until there's a solution for it. And that really fascinated me because that's content strategy in a nutshell, right? You know, and I'll give you an example of this, right? So a wicked problem is, so my wife and I, we get about our kitchen, right? We you know, and we get about our kitchen just fine. We could, kitchen gets messy, we cleaned it up, put things back where they go. And we do the same thing at the next day. It's a repeating process, right? It works fine for us. So But recently, we had this friend come over who wanted to cook dinner and, and was going to cook dinner with us. And it was chaos, right? Nothing. Place. You know, our guest was basically going to the junk drawer looking for silverware. She opened up the spice cabinet looking for plates, and she was like, Don't even get me started with how your refrigerator is completely disorganised. And of course, we were defensive about the whole thing. We're like, this is how we do things. This is how we've been doing it for years. It works for us. And then I was like, this is our governance process, right? You know, this is our optimised process. And she was like, No, this may be the way you do it. But it's not optimised. And as she started to point out where things could be more efficient, or more, you know, more optimal. We realised that there was a thing there. That's a wicked problem, right? You know, you can't really see it until somebody points out a solution to you. And interestingly, in content strategy, one of the things that, you know, certainly at CMI we point out and certainly we've seen in other places is that this idea of documentation, right is at the core, right? So but then you go, Wait a minute, really, is it about creating a Google Doc or a PowerPoint that's going to be the linchpin of our organised content strategy, and it's like, no, spoiler alert, the document doesn't matter. The actual document isn't important. What the documentation means is that it assumes that you've thought through all the details of who's responsible for what how content works, where the optimal governance thing is it basically it's sort of the talisman for how you've thought through everything and because if you've thought through everything, and you've written it down, there's your document. And the interesting thing to me about all of that is how many times we see wicked problems in this idea of a content strategy. So, as an example of this, you know, we've worked with a client not too long ago, where basically the senior leaders, you know, when we presented sort of the new, you know, the the new person, there was the person who hired us. And we presented all of our findings, you know, sort of here's where the problems are, basically, here's where your challenges are. And in this, you know, your content governance and strategy programme. And all the new people were like, Oh, my God, this is amazing. They loved it, right? They were like, This is exactly what we're looking for, and senior management and the people who've been there for more than five years, we're all like, I don't get it. We don't see the problem, right? Yeah. And that's the wicked problem, right? So we get this question a lot, from CEOs from CFOs, from CMOS, that are looking at this problem of content strategy. And the question we often get is like, Well, tell me what the benefit is of fixing a problem that I don't recognise right? In other words, I don't see this as a problem. Tell me what the benefit of fixing it is? And the answer has to be, before you've done the work before you actually started to point out the solution? We don't know. Right? There is no good answer for that there is no you know, you can't if they can't see the problem, you cannot tell them what the benefit of fixing it is. Because you don't know what the benefit of fixing it is. Now, if you hunt it down, you can start looking at and there's another term here that I've just learned. And I think it's it's my favourite part of actually doing any sort of Content Strategy engagement with a company, it's called a current behaviour. OCC, you RR e and t a current behaviour. And what it means is like, how things really happen, versus how they're perceived or should happen, right? In other words, to bring it to my kitchen metaphor, there's how me and my wife really make food. And then there's how it, you know, we have in our heads about how it goes.

And this is the classic, right? You know, if you're hiring an employee, you know, when the employee's first day on the job, and you go, look, the HR manual says, You got to fill out this form and send this email to this department to get an answer. It's like, no, no, no, don't do any of that. You just email Jane and Jane will get you the answer. Right. So there's how things really happen and how things should happen. And with content strategy, this is exactly the problem. And, and so, one of the ways to think about fixing this is to go through and find all of that occurrent behaviour with the people that you're, you know, dealing with in maybe one part of the buyers journey, or one department or one group, and start to identify all these things, like, you know, like my friend went through my kitchen and start to identify this is where it can be better, this is better. So in other words, it's about pointing out solutions to problems that illuminate the problem for the people that don't see it. And that's the only way to do this. And it's a, it's a challenging thing. It's not it's not easy, because they're not wrong to not recognise the problem, you have to actually solve it, actually, before they see it. And I know that's a little bit of a chicken and egg thing. Because if they don't realise they have a problem, why are they going to hire you to solve it? Well, you got to sort of look and sort of look for the problems before you can actually see them. And it's a really interesting phenomenon and contest strategy, I find, yeah.

Ian Truscott  1:08:28  
And the tough part of that is in other disciplines, then that would be part of discovery, wouldn't it? That would be, I don't know, if you're optimising your supply chain, for example, everybody knows that supply chain needs to be optimised. And you would go in and do your discovery, you'd find where all the bits are, that they're all wonky. And then And then, and then make a recommendation on where they need to be fixed. But people don't think about content production in that same way as a supply chain, that your organisation is actually a publisher and, and that kind of stuff. So I think sometimes we start those conversations with an assumption that people understand those things. And they don't do

Robert Rose  1:09:02  
that. No, that's right. That's the other challenge, of course, is that yeah, you know, you have this, this level of complexity over subject matter expertise, where, you know, and content unfortunately, is, is is one of those things where, you know, as we often say, content there, you know, 90% of Content Strategy has nothing to do with writing down words or making pictures, right, and it, you know, most of Content Strategy is around communication. And, you know, and so it's communicating with each other about how things are getting built. And that is in a in a big business and a small business and a medium sized business that can be a complex process. And so, understanding that level of expertise of how the business can actually communicate more effectively with each other, is at the heart of a content strategy. And it's really hard in some cases for you know, senior level leadership who don't have any training or knowledge or experience in that, to recognise that. But of course, what you're talking about is something that everybody feels they should have an experience in, right. In other words, for years, since we've entered the job market, as professionals, we've been told that communicating clearly, and creating great content must be able to write well must be able to communicate well, is sort of a precursor to any job and certainly the precursor to any leadership job. So there's, they're sort of feeling at the senior leadership level, like they should understand it. And in some cases, they actually pretend like they do. But you know, but there is no problem with it. Because it is actually is a very complex thing, it's a hard thing to figure out. And so it's helping them recognise that they actually don't know, what they don't know, then can be one of the most illuminating things about fixing something that they don't see. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a little bit like, you know, it's a little bit it's not an unlike, you know, I bring my car in now, you know, when my when my dad had a car, right, yeah, you know, he could, he could, like, literally walk me through the engine of a 1965 Mustang, or, or, you know, basically and, and, and basically point out through the engine about how it all worked, and what happens when you turn over the ignition and how that fires this and what the hell, you know, what all these things do, and you sort of get it right, you can sort of pull it all apart, I never got a PS, by the way. But he can, he could do it, like he could pull apart an engine and then build it, build it back together again, and oh, great. But today, you know, you look at an engine in a car, and, you know, the the the fracture sensor in the computer modulator and the, you know, could be, could be down. And there is no mechanism for that you have to be a computer scientists to be able to understand that. It's a very different idea of what complexity means, in today's world and in today's digital business than it was then. And we just have to recognise that it's that it's okay, that that's okay.

Ian Truscott  1:12:17  
Man, I love that story. And it's a great analogy. And it is that interesting thing that where you're in an audience, were you with a group like that, where you said, were half of people got it, the fresh people and the older B and the people that had been in the business for a while thinking, you know, why? Why do I need to change where the mugs are, you know, in the kitchen. And then, and I loved your your kitchen story, because I and I say mugs, because one of the things that annoys me about our kitchen is the mugs are not above the kettle. Now that's where they should be. But my wife, right, exactly. That is my wife doesn't put them there. But that's just the way we operate. And that seems to be quite seamless. So I like both of those. And I just Well, that's fantastic. Thank you very much, Rebecca. And I'll get this question right this week. If we looking on the internet for thoughts like this written by you and directed by you and curated by you, where are we going to find those?

Robert Rose  1:13:14  
Well, you know, you probably find it at our little hobble on the website, you know, our little kitchen as it were organised and just the way we like it. Our own wicked little problem called Content advisory dotnet.

Ian Truscott  1:13:28  
Splendid. And when people spin the dial on the interwebs, and they're not on Tik Tok, where they can find you.

Robert Rose  1:13:34  
I've been spending a lot of time on LinkedIn lately. So I would love to connect with people on LinkedIn. But of course LinkedIn and Twitter are always great places.

Ian Truscott  1:13:42  
Splendid. And of course you have your podcast. So marketing, which I love to promote every time we get marketing.

Robert Rose  1:13:47  
Yep. It's a wonderful little couple of chuckleheads myself and my friend Joe Polizzi, chatting about the the week's news arguing about NF T's you know, all that kind of stuff.

Ian Truscott  1:13:59  
Yes. Well, splendid. And will you be in the bar next week are important. You will indeed. I look forward to thank you very much, Robert. I'll see you next time. Cheers.

Thank you for bringing us a wicked problem there and I don't just mean testing my podcast editing skills. That's a wrap on episode 102 of the Rockstar cmo effing Marketing podcast. Thank you for dropping a dime into your podcasting jukebox, selecting our track and joining along with us. I've been your host Ian Truscott. Thanks again to Jeff Chris and Robert for sharing their insight please say hello follow their work and check out all their links in the show notes which you can find on your favourite podcast app or Rockstar cmo.fm You can also find all our previous episodes. So does the world need another effing Marketing podcast? Please let us know and help other people find Whatever this is by dropping a rating or review in your favourite podcast app, or just keep listening. I'm glad you're here. Next week, Jeff and I will focus on the first F in fundamental. I chat with Stephen Hedbanz, co founder of dream data.io. And Robert, we'll be back in the Rockstar cmo virtual but until then, have a great week and I hope you can join us here next week. On Rockstar cmo F

Transcribed by https://otter.ai