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Franco Caporale:
Welcome to a new episode of the DemandGen Club Podcast, I'm your host, Franco Caporale. Our guest on the show today is Kathy Dunlay. Kathy is the Founder and President of New England Sales & Marketing which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. She started the company to meet the demand generation needs of B2B technology firms. Kathy works with companies of various sizes that may be privately funded or publicly traded. Before starting New England Sales & Marketing, she was Director of Marketing at CCSI and SimpleTuition.com. I'm very happy to welcome today, Kathy Dunlay, Founder of New England Sales & Marketing.
Kathy, it's absolutely fantastic to have you on the show today, thanks for joining us.
Kathy Dunlay:
Thank you, Franco. It's my pleasure to be here, thank you.
Franco Caporale:
I would love to begin with a little bit about your background and how did you get started with B2B demand generation and B2B marketing?
Kathy Dunlay:
Well, that is a great question because I had to take a minute, it was a while ago and I had to remember. And the nice thing about how I got started was I had an opportunity in my earlier jobs in the publishing sector, one publishing company I worked for had a market research subsidiary and it competed with those companies like Gartner, Forrester, IDC. and I ended up working in that subsidiary as a telecom industry analyst and it was a really, really great job, I enjoyed it very much. And it got me interested in these different technology companies in serving them as a resource.
Kathy Dunlay:
As an industry analyst I worked with many different organizations and some of them you will have heard of some of them are no longer around today, the earlier telecom companies. And it gave me an extraordinary background in understanding markets and strategic marketing. And as time went on I got more involved with specific vendors, so instead of serving a bunch of different companies at one time I would go on to work for a particular vendor and that was providing either a hardware or software or a professional service. And I got more specific into marketing and more specifically into the demand generation aspect of marketing. So it came from a big platform, if you will, of understanding strategic marketing and understanding the buyer and understanding the marketplace. And that has proven invaluable to me over the years, it's been really helpful.
Franco Caporale:
As the President of New England Sales & Marketing, what type of clients do you guys work with normally?
Kathy Dunlay:
Overwhelmingly, B2B technology companies. And my clients tend to have a long complex sales cycle for the most part, some do not but for the most part they do. My clients who are usually in sales and marketing themselves need to build trust and they need to develop great long-term relationships with their prospects and with their clients because they tend to be complex sales, they tend to take time to come to fruition. And so we're all sort of of that culture and everything we do needs to support that type of process.
Franco Caporale:
And what stage? Are they startups, are they mid-market companies, larger companies, do you have a segment in particular?
Kathy Dunlay:
They are all over the place, Franco, which is something that I really enjoy. As it stands right now they tend to be a bit more established, but I have certainly served the complete gamut whether it is startup or established and looking to be acquired or something in between. And they can be venture-backed, private equity-backed, privately owned, publicly traded, so there are all different types of companies and all different sizes as well. A small size for me might be 10 or $15 million and just go up from there to hundreds of millions of dollars and in some cases, a billion or more.
Kathy Dunlay:
It's really interesting though how demand generation is a unifier, it's an equalizer because it almost doesn't matter what size of company you are or at what stage of development you are, you're going to have those demand generation challenges. It's not easy for anybody whether they have an established brand or not, and I find that demand generation is something that unifies or equalizes all different types of companies.
Franco Caporale:
And when these companies approach you, Kathy, what do they usually ask you? What's the challenge that they have that prompt them to approach you?
Kathy Dunlay:
Well, they want to get better at filling the top of their funnel, that's something that they all have in common. They want to sort through what works and what doesn't work, they want to develop best practices for themselves because they know. I'm very, very fortunate in that I work with a lot of great accomplished people in sales and marketing and they want continuous improvement, they want a process of continuous improvement where maybe something has done well for them for a while but they can't rest on their laurels. They need to try, how can we adjust this, how can we try something a little bit different? How can we try something that we haven't done before?
Kathy Dunlay:
And a phrase that I like to use on them is test before you invest. There's so many options out there and they're very well-marketed as we know, all the different tools that are available, some of them have very strong marketing behind them. And it can be very confusing if you're out there as a buyer and trying to decide what direction to go in to strengthen your demand generation programs. They use me to sort through the noise and make sure we stay focused on what works and they use me to implement those programs for them.
Franco Caporale:
Obviously that requires different technologies, different processes. Is there a particular tech stack that you recommend to these clients and maybe have them implement, or it really depends on what they're trying to do and what stage they are?
Kathy Dunlay:
Well, I love that question because there is no set answer. I think in my experience a tech stack is a very personal choice and needs to match the culture of the company. And I like to be able to take a look at what different sales and marketing groups have available to them for resources, what kind of people do they have in the group? What are their goals? And I like to really look at how will this type of technology look in their culture, in their environment?
Kathy Dunlay:
In other words, if I know they have some internal resources that are going to help them with the implementation and they have that bandwidth to do it, then that's great. But if I know that they absolutely don't, that whatever kind of technology they use is going to have to be configured by an outside consultant, and that's going to come with a certain price tag then I help make them aware of that as well. I think a tech stack is as personal as clothing, and you really have to understand the culture of the company before you make any recommendations.
Franco Caporale:
And do you have any personal favorite, for example for CRM or marketing automation in particular?
Kathy Dunlay:
Yep. We know it's interesting, I don't. Because again, something that may have worked beautifully for one company may not work for the next so I don't have a particular stack that I say you use all these platforms and it will work for you. I think that you have to make different recommendations based on what you know about the company. For example what I see, and in many instances these are corporate decisions. I do love to be asked and I love to make recommendations but ultimately they're going to have to make their own decision. And one thing that I see happening, and this is a real trend, and I've seen this over the course of many years, CRM is incredibly important to the majority of my clients. And quite often they have something in place and then over time they might make a different decision.
Kathy Dunlay:
And a real trend I see very commonly is for an organization to start with Salesforce and then move to Dynamics. And now it's actually coming around again where I have seen some people literally over the course of maybe the last five or six or seven or eight years move from Salesforce to Dynamics and back to Salesforce. All this really is driven by their comfort level with it, how they have or have not been able to be successful with it, but at the end of the day it's about how they have been able to configure it either with internal resources or with consultants, have they been able to configure it in a way that they can use it without headaches every day in a way that makes sense? So from a CRM perspective people can sometimes float around.
Kathy Dunlay:
Another trend I'm seeing is there were companies that invested in HubSpot many years ago and it sat unused and I see them coming back to it these days to try to make use of it. And either they will have an internal resource, maybe a recent graduate that they will task with bringing that HubSpot to life for them, and that's just an interesting trend that I'm seeing lately. It's again, something that had fallen by the wayside but people are coming back to it. And sometimes they will in addition to the platforms that I've mentioned, another that I'm seeing more people take another look at after all these years is Pardot. It's really interesting, it ebbs and flows and it depends on the culture of the company and who's in charge at the moment.
Franco Caporale:
Yeah. I think the fact of leaving a system unused even though you invested in it is becoming quite common. And I've seen it for many different reasons, maybe the person that championed that system left and then nobody really wanted to take over and so it just stays there unused, which is pretty interesting. Perfect.
Kathy Dunlay:
Absolutely.
Franco Caporale:
I wanted to shift from technology and talk about metrics. Again, I assume these clients come to you with different challenges, maybe they're trying to optimize a variety of metrics. What are the most common KPI that these clients come to you to improve and what do you track on a weekly, monthly, quarterly basis?
Kathy Dunlay:
Most of my campaigns are multichannel and a very popular and important service that I provide is telemarketing and I consider that where the rubber meets the road. All of the investment in time and money that you've made in your platforms to try to support inbound lead generation or to support getting your message out there, really, the real reckoning happens on the phone, I find with my clients. They're not supporting sales processes that can happen without personal relationships. When you pick up the telephone, it takes all of that activity that might have been automated and it makes it make sense or not. Either you reach the prospect or you don't, either you qualify them or they're not qualified. I find that the real truth, if you will, happens on the phone and it takes all of that automation and it helps the automation work for you.
Franco Caporale:
The KPI perspective is a conversion on the phone or a demo set? What kind of methods do they look at?
Kathy Dunlay:
On the automation side they might be looking at clicks and downloads so they all do a lot with email, which I have the least support, I've done 800 email campaigns since 2003. And they're looking at who opened, who clicked, what did they click on? Or if they had content to offer online who downloaded what and when? And then from there, assuming we're doing a multichannel campaign, we're also taking a look at the conversation rate. How many conversations are happening? Nevermind how did they go because we're reporting on that as well but that's a very quality documentation, if you will, where you're documenting what transpired in the conversation and then you're scoring from there, but those are some of the top ones. What was the automated activity, if you will, and then how many people are we actually reaching and what direction are those conversations taking? Those are incredibly important measurements for all of my clients.
Franco Caporale:
Very interesting on the metrics. Especially I assume the largest the company the more they rely also on call center and telemarketing and so they need to track those interaction. And do they usually put them back into Salesforce or into Dynamics or how does that data flow back into their system?
Kathy Dunlay:
Right. Ideally, yes, it does but keep in mind everyone I work with is trying to tame technology, they're trying to get it to do what they need it to do and it doesn't always work out that way. Say they had a gig with a consultant and then it's over and then they don't necessarily have the budget to bring that person back again, so they're left hanging where they left off and that can be a real challenge. Ideally everything would reside in CRM. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't, but ideally yes it would and ideally every lead or a prospect would have a score associated with it and you would be able to see in CRM exactly all the recent actions taken.
Kathy Dunlay:
In most cases that works out but in some cases that just doesn't work out which is a real frustration. And that's unfortunate because then you have to keep track of things more manually. Which is fine, it can work but it can get really sticky. Especially if you have a larger sales team and you want to always keep track you should... As we all know, everybody wants a system where you can log in and see all of the relevant actions around that prospect or around that customer, that best case scenario, but unfortunately not everyone is able to achieve that.
Franco Caporale:
Yeah, I agree. I see that all the time. And so moving away from the metrics and more on the campaign side, in your career and working with all these clients, can you give us an example of a very successful demand gen campaign that you had them execute on that you were particularly excited about the results?
Kathy Dunlay:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). As I've said a couple of times now multichannel is so important. If I am working and it's a really well-thought out campaign, then that's typically going to lend itself to a more successful result where there were different components to it. There may have been different types of email, then you have the telemarketing as well. There might have been social media supporting that particular campaign. Those campaigns that are most successful typically have multiple channels behind them because I always say it takes a village to generate a qualified opportunity and I really do believe that, which again lends itself to really successful results, more conversations with more qualified people. You're reaching more people who really do have a problem, who are willing and wanting to develop that relationship with a new vendor. You have more education about each person that you're reaching out to, in each company that you're reaching out you have a reason for wanting that particular company. The thought-out multichannel campaigns tend to be really, really successful.
Franco Caporale:
What is on the other hand something that maybe you don't recommend or you tested as a campaign and actually didn't produce the result that you were expecting and you wouldn't test it again?
Kathy Dunlay:
Yeah. Well, this is an interesting one because this... I was really intrigued by this. I was working for an organization that wanted to meet new prospects so they wanted to make relationships happen with people that they didn't already know. It was cold, there was absolutely no connection between them. And what they did was of interesting. They had, in different markets they bought up some tickets to sporting events which on its face may have sounded like a good idea. Wouldn't it be fun? Wouldn't this person want to go to this hockey game or wouldn't this person want to go to, I think in Florida it was a certain tennis match? And it sounded interesting because you, or I, or a number of other people might want to go to those events.
Kathy Dunlay:
However, when it was offered as an incentive, as a prospecting incentive, as an incentive to get to know the company, it wasn't really well received. And I think that part of the reason was you had this company that you've never heard of before offering tickets to a sporting event but there was an awkwardness about it because it was an offer that might've made sense if they were more familiar with your company, if they had some interaction with the people that they would attend the event with.
Kathy Dunlay:
It turned out to be an awkward ask and I considered like it was almost asking if they wanted to go on a cruise, right? It was that kind of, here's an opportunity for a free cruise. It was a very awkward and unpopular ask, so some people were coming back, well, all people were coming back saying, "No." They either weren't allowed to accept tickets to a sporting event, it was against company policy, or for the most part people were just very straightforward with me and when I reached out to them and confirm whether or not they were interested, they were overwhelmingly not interested. And as I said somebody would say, "Sorry, it's against policy." Or, "I'm sorry I just can't make time for that." Or, "I don't want to waste your time. I would probably not do business with you so I don't want to waste your time having you take me to a sporting event and use that ticket."
Kathy Dunlay:
It was interesting because that was the result all across the board without fail. There was no other response, absolutely no positive receptivity to going to one of these sporting events and some of these were teams that you would have heard of. That was a particularly unsuccessful campaign and it's because there was a mismatch between where they were in the sales process, which was right up front, I mean, these leads weren't even near the funnel, much less than the top of the funnel. They weren't even near the funnel and they were approaching them with an offer that would have been more appropriate if the relationship had been warmer first. I guess that goes to show you have to pay attention to where you are in the sales cycle when you develop your campaign.
Franco Caporale:
Yeah, I think that makes sense. If there were already opportunities and you try to accelerate the opportunities I see that working very well because obviously the sales rep already know the prospect. They spent an afternoon together, that's always positive. But yeah, as a first interaction spending five hours or three hours with the sales team it's definitely awkward, I can see that. Perfect. I want to close the episodes talking about sales alignment. First of all I want to ask you, when you think about the SDR team both outbound or inbound SDR, do you see them reporting to marketing, to sales, or is better to have a hybrid type of a system or structure? What's your ideal situation here?
Kathy Dunlay:
Well, internal SDRs typically report to sales in my world. But sometimes they don't have a ton of SDRs which is why they might outsource to me, but generally speaking they would be part of the sales organization. But I'm very, very fortunate in that the types of organizations I work for would typically have a very strong relationship between marketing and sales, they are best friends. And whether they have one person who's VP sales and marketing or they have two different, one leader in sales one leader in marketing, those two individuals tend to be very close. I don't often experience that dreaded chasm or a two silo system marketing and sales, that's how things tend to be organized.
Kathy Dunlay:
If you're in a real inside sales situation then that person tends to report up into sales. However, the marketing team, I mean, sales it's their number one customer and that's the attitude and that's a winning attitude. Any kind of structural organization there's a lot of dotted lines in-between the people in sales and the people in marketing. The less experienced marketers, those who might be marketing coordinators, they are encouraged right from the start to develop very close relationships with people on the sales team. And one customer I had actually had a mentoring program, if you will, where the new entrants to their marketing team were... They had sales people take them under their wing so that they could fully appreciate the sales process. That's how things tend to be organized in the world that I work in and I am very grateful for it.
Franco Caporale:
That's awesome, thank you. That's a very good perspective. I want to close with one last question, which is, is there any way for a company to try to generate quality leads on a limited budget? Is there something that you tried that worked out that other companies can also test?
Kathy Dunlay:
Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting, I don't care what size your company is, no one has money to burn. They never do and they never will. You're always looking to keep the budget in line and I find that there are a couple of different things you can do, but at the end of the day what I would consider a real hack and it's becoming more and more of a hack with every passing year is picking up the phone to get the result that you want. Now, every once in a while you will run into a culture that just does... They're not as quick to use the phone and that's fine and you need to be aware of that prospect culture.
Kathy Dunlay:
But for the most part the phone call has elevated in importance in recent years because there's so much automation and there's so much going on online that to have a person-to-person conversation that is personalized, where you have a specific reason for calling that prospect and you've done your homework and you've gotten to know their situation before you reach out to them, that's prospecting gold and it's something that prospect doesn't experience every day.
Kathy Dunlay:
Yes they may be sought after, yes they may receive a ton of email, and yes they may receive some phone calls but to receive a personalized call, I'd say if you consider that a hack, pick up the phone to get the results that you're looking for or combine that with email communication as well. And I'm finding like I said, even though this is an instrument that's been around for how many years, in our world it's getting more and more important for meaningful conversation and meaningful relationship building and meaningful business.
Franco Caporale:
It's a little bit like direct mail that is coming back. The phone calls are coming back as well because everyone is sending emails today.
Kathy Dunlay:
Absolutely, what goes around comes around and there's never a bad time for meaningful, personalized outreach however you can do it.
Franco Caporale:
I 100% agree. Kathy, this has been such a pleasure. Thank you very much for spending the time with us today, I really appreciate it.
Kathy Dunlay:
Thank you, Franco. My pleasure.