Marketers of Technology
00:07:07 · Ralf Paschen
[00:07:07] S0: I do typically IT operations, IT automation, DevOps, workplace management, which is my sweet spot because I know the competition there. I know the whole market there. I know everything there. IT automation is really the case for it. But I do this for all others as well, because the messaging position is all the same. It's just the structure, get the structure in place, understand your target persona, what's the problem, solution. And that, for example, also in ServiceNow, I experienced a bill in two years as a CMO from scratch. They were a full marketing up, 6% public contribution to sales with an area I had no clue with... A clue about what ServiceNow, because I come from SAP. I build over ServiceNow, I build over ServiceNow, build the partnerships, build those partnerships with ServiceNow, build the engagements, the stores, everything. So the mechanics are always the same, but it takes a little bit more, one or two months to understand what is exactly what you're solving, because that's what I do first thirty days, understand really what are you trying to solve, guys? And there are different companies in different stages. That's the reason why I define 3,000,000 ARR to 75, not bigger, because then we are talking about corporate again. I can help corporate as well, sure, but they are slower. They're like a supertanker, takes time. And what I say is that if you're interested and hungry enough to build a go to market which scales, that's something which I'm interested in. Just see you say, just try it out, I'm not interested. You're hungry enough to change because when I come in, it's like a storm. Because I look at everything. I look at absolutely every piece because I understand execution and I understand excuses very, very well. I know where to look for. I know what to look looking for the sales of what I'm telling people. Can you look for that I can replace my head of marketing? That's not what I'm doing. I look for that I can help the head of marketing to be great. That's what I'm looking for. Okay. You people you have get better and greater because maybe they have a lack of getting dimensions behind them to get going. This is often the case because the... You know, marketing is a cost center. Just... You cost me money. So you get the most pressure. That's all it is. And that's what I typically approach in here.
00:09:17 · Ralf Paschen, Andres Figuera
Looking at the challenges, looking at the problems, and how much supportive a CEO really is to his team and to his company. [00:09:24] S1: That's amazing, man. And Ralf, do you have certain regions that you work with? Do you work globally with every single company that reaches out and looks for your assistance. How does that look like for you?
00:09:34 · Ralf Paschen
[00:09:34] S0: I give up Asia Pacific. I'm not doing Asia Pacific. I cannot help with that. That's not my that's not my gameplay. It's a total different play. What I typically do is help companies to scale from the German market or from the German speaking market into The US market because I know the playbook of The US market, but also the other way around. Because US market to the German market, everybody believes they can utilize The US playbook, it doesn't work. And I can explain the reason for it because most people missed it out. Maybe they get something out of this studio today of podcast, which is everybody kind of know it, but nobody follows it because they all try to go to London first. And London is like, let's say UK is like US kind of a little bit. Now they're trying it go into the German market which is a big market. All the brands is a big market. Okay. And now they try the same. We sell features. We are doing the cowboy shooting. We're doing everything. Let's bomb. We're doing the full presentation. We're doing a harbor tour of our products. We're doing everything. This is happening. This is happening as of today. And I can tell you, this is not working because there's not one person in Germany who makes a decision. Not one person. There's always a seat of people making the decision. It's called in the Gramium or in a in a, you know, in a kind of roundtables. They all make the decision. I guarantee you, in this room there's no vendor, absolutely no vendor allowed. So if you want to get a fast decision, let's say a 2 k, 20 k deal, yeah, of works. If you go higher in enterprise sales, talking about 100, one hundred and fifty, two hundred k deal, definitely happened. Okay. So that's the point you're running into. That's the point you're running into. And then you have another person which is called procurement. You have another person which is called legal, which can overrule anybody before, including the CEO, by the way. Okay. So to understand that market here, you need to understand how to play that book. It's a trusted advisor approach here in sales. You need to know somebody who knows somebody to help you to get on the game. In The US, you can call call someone. Here call calling, you get fired up on this call call. Okay? So you have to be prepared to do call call.
00:11:46 · Ralf Paschen, Andres Figuera
It works, but you have to be much more prepared in The US, which is good paying up. Remember there's this movie with Will Smith, he played a role with being a guy who being like a Wall Street guy, have a lot of calls, doing all the calls with his son, right? You need to look it up what the name was. [00:12:03] S1: I think that was the pursuit of happiness, right? [00:12:06] S0: Perfect. That was it. Pursuit of happiness, happiness where his son played. Remember the scene when he did not drink water to do more calls? Try that in Germany, try that in Germany. It doesn't work. [00:12:17] S1: Okay, so there's this whole cultural difference, I was not aware of this, so I'm also learning this on this episode to anybody who's listening to us, that's amazing man. And Ralf, in terms of companies that you've worked with, problems that you've seen and that you've helped out with, do you have any anecdotes or any other lessons that you can tell us about? [00:12:36] S0: Yes, absolutely. I'm old enough to have anecdotes. I got this quickly last two years. I'm not a guy of the anecdotes, funny. So yeah, I'll you one anecdote, which I faced almost in every customer. Marketing and sales are always clashing. In any company I start with, they're always clashing. [00:12:54] S1: It's true, it's like cats and dogs.
00:12:54 · Andres Figuera, Ralf Paschen
[00:12:54] S1: It's true, it's like cats and dogs. [00:12:56] S0: You know that, it's kind of normal, right? Because, hey, you cost me money, I make the revenue, I don't need leads. Leads aren't good enough, blame game, sales blame game, marketing blame game happening. They're not taking care of all my MQLs, their MQLs aren't good enough. You all know this, right? Do you know what the reason for that is? [00:13:13] S1: I believe I could, but I'm not even sure now, so I'll wait until you tell me.
00:13:18 · Ralf Paschen
[00:13:18] S0: And I tell you everybody in the room now, when they listen to this podcast will know it quickly, because marketing does not have the same KPIs than sales does. So... And that is the main problem. If you're being paid on... Your bonus is paid on impressions, CPC, CAC, ROAS, whatever. You're not in sales. Sales get paid on revenue. So why is the revenue team like marketing not paid on revenue? So every marketing team I joined, I switched the bonus to next level after the, you know, the bonus payment date, all the revenue. Do you know what the difference is now? Everybody's interested in the deal. Everybody's interested in what's the deal moving forward. Everybody's interested in the MQL being a high quality. Everybody's interested in CSQL high enough or where we are staying in the M1 deal, why isn't moving forward sales. And now it's a clashing, how can you support you after the POC to get this going? What kind of customer marketing can we do to help you to get this ongoing? So that's their interest. And interest stops when you're doing this impressions, CAC, ROAS, whatever thing at MQL stage. The interest stops there. So therefore they never talk the language of sales. So they cannot force anyone. I delivered you a 100 MQL, they give you a 100 meetings a day, whatever you kind of LinkedIn thingies. That's not a thing I can tell you about. It's all over the last six months about, I booked with AI a 100 meetings. My first comment under every post I saw, you can look it up on my LinkedIn profile is, and how much revenue did you generate with these meetings? There's absolutely never an answer below that because there was no meeting with revenue. It's because that's what I'm interested in. Right? I'm interested in revenue. So you book 100 meetings, you can book thousand meetings. I don't care how much revenue did you deliver with few thousand meetings. If it's zero, you had thousand meetings with my salespeople being all sitting in there, including SDRs, whoever did these meetings, if people sitting there, which cost me money, you didn't do anything for the revenue. So you have to explain it to the board. You have to explain it to me as a CMO. Why did we do that? Because it's revenue driven.