Rethinking B2B Sales: Adapting to the Digital Native Buyer

Brandi Starr [00:00:35]:
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Revenue Rehab. I am your host, Brandy Star, and we have another amazing episode for you today. I am joined by Ray Hartjen. Ray is a writer, musician and songwriter living in Southern California. Throughout his professional career spanning five decades, Ray has pivoted on many occasions, from investment banking to pharmaceuticals, from consumer electronics to SaaS software. However, one constant throughout his career and life has been his deep passion for storytelling. Ray is the author of three published books including Revenue Orchestration & Today's New Era of B2B Sales and Marketing. Welcome to Revenue Rehab.

Brandi Starr [00:01:24]:
Your session begins now.

Ray Hartjen [00:01:29]:
Hello, Brandy. Thank you so much for having me on Revenue Rehab. I've been excited to have this conversation with you, so thank you.

Brandi Starr [00:01:38]:
I am excited to have you here. And before we dive into our topic today, I like to break the ice with a little woosa moment that I call buzzword banishment. So tell me, what buzzword would you like to get rid of forever?

Ray Hartjen [00:01:56]:
You know, a buzzword that was just so overused by a few of my colleagues, you know, probably 15 years ago was lean into. Whenever I get, whenever I hear lean into, I just have this reaction like, oh, it's kind of like a physical reaction. Although my favorite square in the buzzword bingo card is at Stanford, we dot, dot, dot. And as a guy who got his MBA at the University of Washington, I just think it's funny that somebody, you know, picked on Stanford. But yeah, for buzzword banishment, for me, I think lean into, I could, I could do with a little less leaning into. And to watch, I'll probably say it four times today.

Brandi Starr [00:02:36]:
And that's, you know, that's usually what ends up happening. We banish the word and then somehow it comes up in conversation. But we will try to not lean into anything today. Now that we've gotten that off our chest, tell me what brings you to Revenue Rehab today.

Ray Hartjen [00:02:56]:
You know, what brings me to revenue rehab is as a, as a professional marketer, as a person on a, on a revenue team, you know, in the last couple of years, I've really come to the realization based on Data that today's B2B buyer has changed. And, you know, in the, in the B2B space, we're kind of, well, we're kind of setting our ways. We are, we are so busy on the revenue team, sales, marketing, customer success and other functions that we tend not to experiment nearly enough as the way we should. And I think for a great many companies, they've been caught unaware that, you know, Brandy, increasingly the B2B buyer is a younger of a younger generation. They're younger and younger. These people are digital natives for the most part. What that means is that they are very familiar with enabling technologies, they understand search and they are masters at keywords. These buyers also don't work alone.

Ray Hartjen [00:03:57]:
They tend to work as part of buying groups. So there's a lot of different Personas within those buyer groups. And whether they're digital natives or not, the buying journey has changed so much over the last three or four years. In particular, you know, data showed that the buying journey was changing, you know, even a decade ago because buyers in the B2B space wanted to enjoy those same world class experiences that they enjoyed in their B2C journeys. Right. So they're looking for those same type of things, but they're kind of stuck in this, this B2B paradigm and that, that's just the way they, they, they had to go about it at work. The pandemic accelerated that change. And I think right now revenue teams around the country are, around the world are still maybe a little bit too much in the old style and the old paradigm of go to market and really need to learn to adapt to the buyer.

Ray Hartjen [00:04:48]:
That's what brings me to revenue rehab today.

Brandi Starr [00:04:51]:
There is a lot of that I agree with. And before I dive deeper into that, I believe in setting intention. It gives us focus, it gives us purpose, purpose, and most important, it gives our audience an understanding of what they should expect from our discussion today. So what is your best hope? What would you like people to take away?

Ray Hartjen [00:05:12]:
You know, I want people to be open, right? Open to some, some data that might be new to them, but also open to the fact that they have processes in place, they have people in place and they have all these wonderful plays. All of that is still relevant. It's not, you know, start off with a white sheet of paper for, for a go to market team and a revenue team. I don't want people to be, you know, to reach out is think about the data, think about the changing buyer and then think about what experiments that they can run, what sticks they can test and learn. Because, Randy, we're going to speak mostly today about plays that are digital, digital marketing plays, digital go to marketplace. Those things are They've worked very well in the past, they will continue to work well in the future. But there needs to be a change when you, when you meet the buyer on his or her buying journey, where they are at and when they get there and on their terms. That's one of the things that we kind of maybe take for granted and ignore as revenue team members.

Brandi Starr [00:06:12]:
So I'd like to start with the data you talked about showing how the B2B buyer has changed especially in the last few years. What is the data showing to you? Tell us a bit about what you're seeing.

Ray Hartjen [00:06:26]:
Yeah, you know I'll drop some data for me from the trust radius B2B buying disconnect report. You know it should come as no surprise that virtually 100 of B2B buyers want to self serve themselves in their buying journey. That should come. It really is as no surprise whatsoever. But think about some of these staggering types of things here. 41% of Gen Z buyers and 29% of millennials now look at customer referrals and customer reviews as the first step in their buying journey. Experienced go to market professionals in the B2B space. We frequently thought of referral customers and review sites is very bottom of funnel types of content.

Ray Hartjen [00:07:12]:
These are things that people expect to do on their own and they do it as their very first step. So for example, if you work for a, a, a SaaS software provider and you are not active on review sites like G2, you're going to get killed. You, you will never know that you were not considered for a purchase, for a purchase down the road because they, you've been, you buyers have never identified themselves to you because they've discounted you at the very beginning because some other organizations have more reviews and you know, more content and more assets up on review sites for them to be able to review. So I think that's an interesting statistic. Very first step 81 of B2B buyers want to examine pricing on their own. And you think about the typical kind of traditional B2B go to market paradigm for the revenue team. We always spoke about pricing at the very end of the buying journey. This was a negotiated type of thing and we do not ever have that on the website.

Ray Hartjen [00:08:11]:
People, 81% of them want to have a self service approach to pricing which means you have to have transparent pricing on your website. 16% of those buyers will immediately eliminate a potential vendor because there is not transparent pricing on the website. And so there's a lot of industries where it's not in there and you know, Brandy, I know in your experience you have faced, you know, pricing and packaging exercises. And you know, one of the things I'd like listeners and viewers today to understand, if you have not been involved in pricing and packaging exercises, they are difficult. It takes the entire organization and it takes months, maybe even a half a year to get this done. Hear me now, the expectation there in your segment in your industry, if it's not already there, it will very soon be there. Transparent pricing online. And if one of your competitors does it first, that immediately raises the bar for everybody else, if you haven't already started that step to think about how are we going to present our pricing online? Get started now because you will not be able to afford a three to six month transition period if one of your competitors beats you to it.

Ray Hartjen [00:09:20]:
So interesting statistic there. You know, pricing also, you know, if it's a self service function, it's very early in the buying journey now we always thought about that, like I said, at the very end of that and then some self serve items here, 71% of people want pricing as a self serve item. 70% want demos or free trials as a self service item. Customer views, of course, 35% the number one reason buyers are less likely to buy cold calling. So you know, when we think about how we, how we generate leads and the prospecting that gets done, you know, today's buyer can get turned off immediately by, by, you know, the timeless practice of cold calling, you know, and you think about Brandy, how, you know, the revenue team builds its legends right on people who just outwork others on the team. And at other companies, you know, there's almost this, this folklorish quality of the person just did not take no for the answer. And if they did get no for the answer, that's fine because then they went to the next person in line and they just outworked more boots on the street, more knocking on doors, more cold calling to get things done. Knowing that that's a tactic that while it's effective for some, it might not be effective for all.

Ray Hartjen [00:10:30]:
You might be, you know, running an inefficient, ineffective go to market operations.

Brandi Starr [00:10:35]:
Yeah, and I, you know, that is one thing that we definitely see as an outdated play, which is the true cold call, where it is, you know, we used to call it dialing for dollars or you know, back in the day where you pull out a yellow page and you know, you're just kind of going through it. And so in thinking about that journey and how much of it is self serving, Service. The question that often comes up that I'd love to hear your opinion on is there, there's a key component of capturing people when they have the need and in some cases, some will argue that businesses are able to create that need in certain scenarios depending on what you sell. And so that is where you get more of the outbound push things that are not as self service like, you know, thinking about the journey. And so I'd love to hear, since you're saying cold calling is out, how what tactics are you seeing that in today's buyer are more effective at getting those people to you and getting you in the consideration set?

Ray Hartjen [00:11:57]:
Yeah, it's a, it's a great question and it's a great problem to, for, for revenue teams to strategize around. You know, when you talked about like, you know, cold calling and this kind of, this idea that, you know, maybe this is, you know, an outdated practice, a practice that doesn't work well, you know, one thing that we, we have to start off with is this consolidation, this complete alignment in the, in the, in the revenue team. You know, I like to, to view marketing and sales as two wings on the same bird. Right. And it's possible to not work together and get to your destination, but it's kind of painful and certainly not efficient. You know, the best way to do it is if you can be in concert with that. There's also the customer success people as well that I also want to add into this, this scenario. So when you look at a tactic like, like cold calling, for example, a marketer will sit back and say we shouldn't do cold calling because it's gonna, it's gonna harm some of these relationships that we're trying to build, but with prospective buyers, maybe even existing customers.

Ray Hartjen [00:12:57]:
But that's a very difficult thing to say to a, to a salesperson who make, he needs to put food on the table. And if they're, they're behind quota at the time, there's a BDR SDR that needs to, to hit quota. Well, you know, that person is going to take matters in their own hand. What can they do? You know, they might go off script and start cold calling, start prospecting via LinkedIn, Sales Navigator or something like that. So you, you know, it's hard if you're not in alignment at the very start to say don't do that tactic because you'll go off script because you know, the sales department, I gotta meet my quota, I've gotta put food on my table. This is how I succeed in my career. And I'm not that worried too much at maybe if I am looking very myopically the short term, what the long term play might be for the entire revenue team. And that's a perfectly excusable.

Ray Hartjen [00:13:40]:
Right. There's these short term types of impacts. You also mentioned Brandi about outbound. And there's certainly a place in outbound. There's this combination of inbound and that starts, you know, as, as soon as you put a website up and there needs to be emotion there certainly in this digital first era of self discovery for buyers. Then there's that outbound as well. But it's these, you know, when you, when you look at the term of the idea and the concept and the strategy of revenue orchestration, it's the purposeful coordination of the, of your processes, your people and your plays help facilitate the buying journey. To take these buying signals from buyers and, and turn them into buying decisions.

Ray Hartjen [00:14:20]:
Right. And so there is certainly a, a room for, for outbound. You know, as soon as you, you are, as soon as you, you have earned the right for outbound, you need to have, you know, content that when those outbound engagements happen, you're adding value to the buying journey. So understanding who your buyer is, generating demand for your product, your service, your experience, your solution, you know, and once you're able to hopefully ideally identify if somebody's a hand raiser says I need more information about this, there's an opportunity I have at my company, there's a problem we're trying to solve for or what have you, once you've, you know, earned the right to be able to establish outbound with them is then, you know, add value to their buying journey. You know, raise their awareness, their understanding of it, get them into that consideration phase and be a trusted partner in the space.

Brandi Starr [00:15:12]:
And you talked about orchestration a few times and so that's a place that I'd like to lean into. I could resist. But no, seriously, orchestration and you know, we use that word often as well. And I think that this is an area where a lot of marketing leaders are not thinking enough or not giving enough attention to how things are actually orchestrated. And you know, using the, I know you're a musician, so using the analogy of how, you know, an orchestra conductor operates in how it gets all the different instruments and sections to work together to make those. The beauty that is, you know, what comes out at the orchestra, it is that ability to have everything operating on cue and very seamlessly and everybody understanding their role and when they're Supposed to, you know, when they're supposed to play and play loud versus play soft or fast or slow or, you know, all of those things. And when I think about that within the revenue teams, it's something that I see that is very lacking. You know, we talk about marketing and sales alignment, but that orchestration across the entire journey requires a lot of process.

Brandi Starr [00:16:41]:
It requires, you know, technology to work together. And there's just a level of focus that I feel doesn't exist in a lot of companies. And so I'd love to hear some of your thoughts around orchestration and where you're seeing challenges, where you're seeing that working well, because this is a, I think a key component that a lot of people understand that the buyer has changed. They understand the difference in the generations and you know, the, the need for digital first and self service. But actually pulling that together and figuring out how to orchestrate in an effective way is something, is, is a place I see a lot of gaps.

Ray Hartjen [00:17:26]:
Yeah, we, we all on the revenue team have to be, you know, swimming in the right direction. Right. And, and you know, you know, parallel to one another. And there's other times when we have to be in front of somebody maybe pulling, pulling another section for all have a role to play. And I can use an example, I think for if you're, you know, revenue orchestration, we can go to the old standby of the webinar. Right. You know, everybody at some point in time has had a webinar program in place. And even when you drop webinars off, you know, maybe there's a fall in some metrics and somebody says, hey Brandi, didn't we used to do webinars? It's like we need to get back into the webinar business.

Ray Hartjen [00:18:01]:
And you know, the general playbook for a, for a webinar is we're going to schedule a webinar on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday at 10:00 Pacific, 1:00 Eastern. And ahead of it, you know, for a marketable database, we'll have three emails and then after the recording of the webinar we'll have, you know, maybe a follow up email with the link and then we'll gate the asset on our website. So if anybody else wants to see it, they'll have to give us your contact information. That's kind of like the play, right? You know, and that's a play that's put out completely by marketing, except when it comes to like maybe the second email and registrations aren't high enough, then we, you know, the marketers will run over to the sales group and says, salespeople, we need you to drive registrations to the, to the webinar and all. And you know, it's, it, you know, they have varying degrees of success. You know, in some organizations, webinars are very much product oriented and they're, they're shills for the product or the solution or experience or what have you. And you know, nobody really wants to sign up for a thinly veiled sales pitch, etc. Etc.

Ray Hartjen [00:19:01]:
Etc. So, you know, thinking about that, you know, how can you reinvent and use the entire revenue team and partners to have a better outcome? You know, you, you want to add value to these potential buyers, existing customers as well that, that come see or consume that webinar. So, you know, with a little planning and foresight, because all orchestration takes a lot of rehearsal. Brandy, you know, use that music metaphor. We've got to get everybody together and kind of go through the paces, you know, and go through the rehearsal and practice and get going. You just can't, like bam here, you know, let's, let's open the doors. People come in and we're going to play something. So, you know, it's, it's this concerted effort, if you will.

Ray Hartjen [00:19:43]:
You know, think about the, you know, what are the, what are the learning points that we want to have from a webinar? You know, you typically tell a story probably in three chapters in your webinar. So those three chapters probably align themselves up for maybe three blog posts right ahead of time, maybe even an ebook. And so you can have some deliverables associated with that webinar ahead of time. You want to have people from, you know, subject matter experts and not the subject matter experts in the space are not just people at our company, but they're people at your company and other companies. So what subject matter experts can we get to partner into this? And then how can we have some of this preview topics, these, these topics, like these pre blog posts on the, on the theme or the topic or what have you, this ebook or some other collateral. How can we, you know, package those up into some social media bites that we can play from my company's perspective, the host of the webinar, but I can also create toolkits for our guests and their companies to be able to deploy through those channels as well. These are proven plays, right? So, you know, Brandy, you're going to appear on my webinar. I want you and your company to play it up socially.

Ray Hartjen [00:20:49]:
I can Give you little gifs and animators, animations, give you maybe little sound bites, little different things that you, to play through your network. We can play through our network and we can do the same thing at the end of the webinar as well. Because the webinar is going to live in infamy on the site, right? You know, and so let us get little audiograms, cut out little video clips from, from that. Just like the things that you'll do for, for this episode on, on on different social media episodes or social media platforms and the like. Do those same same things on the back end, right? Takes a lot of planning. These are things that we can do from people from the sales team, the marketing team and the customer success team ahead of a webinar and also at the, at the tail end of a webinar post webinar just to enhance that overall experience. It's no longer a month. Used to be a month of planning, right? We're going to have on our event go up three weeks, start our email cadence, then one week afterward.

Ray Hartjen [00:21:42]:
What I just described to you in this orchestration activity is now probably more like a, like a four month process, particularly creating content ahead of time that you can deliver with in parallel to the webinar. It takes more planning, takes a more conscientious effort, but it's going to be a heck of a lot more effective. That's just one example, Brandy. This is, you know, this time proven tactic of a webinar. But you know, think about a good old analog trade show, same type of thing where, you know, us veterans from the revenue team are always thinking along this. If we only close one deal because of this web show, this, this trade show is going to be worth it. Yeah, that's true about anything that we do, right? If we just get one customer. Yeah.

Ray Hartjen [00:22:24]:
Yes. But you know, at the end of it we always think what could we have done to make this better? You know, and so what can you do ahead of a trade show that get people, get people excited that they go, you know what, I want to see this keynote, I want to go to this panel discussion and I need to go to booth 1008 and talk to these guys about this thing, right? That, that we work all year long, Brandy, on the revenue team to have human to human interactions with prospective customers and existing customers. That's what we do. And here's a chance to have this human to human interaction at trade show. What are we going to do ahead of time other than just throw some tchotchkes on the desk. And hopefully that's going to get people to stop by and engage in a conversation if they do. You know, maybe you do have an espresso bar at your, at your trade show booth and. But you're at a top of funnel conversation.

Ray Hartjen [00:23:14]:
We have preceded this with content ahead of time and, and had them raise their awareness about our brand and our offering, be educated about the opportunities that they have with their company. You're all of a sudden having a deeper in the funnel conversation at the trade show. Much closer to a closing conversation than a, you know, hello, my name is Ray. You know, welcome to the booth.

Brandi Starr [00:23:35]:
Yeah. And I think what I'm hearing is there's a need to do less, but do what you do more effective. And in like, you might do one webinar, but you're going to make that one webinar way more effective with all of these other pieces, which requires more of the planning and coordination between the various teams so that we can make each of the things that we're doing really effective in how we are orchestrating this them. Is that a fair summary?

Ray Hartjen [00:24:11]:
Yeah. You know, optimize your plays. What can we, you know, we have all these, these, we have these great people, we have these great processes. Some of these processes are being tipped on their head. Right. You know, it's like, you know, customer referrals and reviews used to be on the bottom of the funnel. Now we're, now it's top of the funnel. So how do we get that.

Ray Hartjen [00:24:28]:
Those stories out there, right. But we have these processes, we have these people, we have these plays. They all work. But how do you put them together in a way that you optimize them and maybe less is more, you know, if you're getting, if you're going to have a higher return. You know, one of the things I think that we struggle with as revenue team professionals is that we are so busy and we have so many things to do. There is no more heavily scrutinized functions than sales and marketing. You know this. At the very least, those functions are evaluated on a quarter.

Ray Hartjen [00:25:00]:
Most of the times are evaluated on a month. And the entire organization looks at you. And if you don't believe that, go to your HR rep and just say, you know, what's involuntary turnover say for the engineering team as opposed to involuntary turnover for the revenue team? And if they can give you a statistic, you're going to see that one statistics much higher. You know, you eat what you hunt on the revenue team. Right. You know, and so, you know, what can we do to optimize what we go to market with? And a lot of times we're not optimizing what we do to go to market with because we're so involved in the day to day minutia of deploying these plays and these, what I like to call random acts of marketing, these isolated plays that you just kind of send out because they've always worked. Let's do more of this, let's do a webinar and we'll have that isolated. Right.

Ray Hartjen [00:25:45]:
But you know, how can we put a webinar into an integrated campaign, a go to market campaign that takes the entire revenue team and how can we optimize that one play? So you know, what can we do with all these plays? Let's not fire them out and just see what works. Let's see what we can consolidate together, integrate into a campaign, go from start to finish. And then, you know, most of what we talk about and most of what we deploy. Brandy is digital and focused digital marketing. Digital go to market aligns itself very well to one metrics. And then because of that there's this easy ability to correct, take course, corrective actions. You know, 30 years ago when you're printing off a big brochure, you open it up and there's a mistake and it's like that is timely and costly. But now we can change an entire website in a couple of hours.

Ray Hartjen [00:26:33]:
Right. You know, and if there's one little article on the website or one little, you know, pop up or whatever, we can do that in a couple of minutes. So, you know, what's our capacity to be able to test and learn?

Brandi Starr [00:26:43]:
Yeah. And that, that actually brings me to kind of the last place that I want to dig into is, you know, we started with data. I kind of want to end with data. In thinking about that course correction and how we look at the data of what we're doing in those experiments to see what's working. And one of the things that we talk a lot about is the need for data to be connected and looked at in context. So what's influencing what? And you know, how do these things fit together? But also being able to have those conversations between the different go to market functions in what are you seeing? What are you seeing? You know, how did this work for you? How did this pan out to really be able to take all of that and not just measure for the sake of reporting, but to really understand which of those revised plays are working, which experiments should we try and replicate, what things should we start stop doing and so I'd love to hear more of your thoughts around measurement and course correction and how you see getting that feedback and data to make those assessments on how to move forward, how you see that. That playing out.

Ray Hartjen [00:28:02]:
Yeah, Brandy, I think. I think that it starts off first with a, you know, a frank conversation of what does success look like? How are we going to judge this as being successful? Right. You know, a lot of times we, you know, we. We'll just want to have more is better, and more, you know, on the revenue team is almost always better. You know, I've never seen a head of sales that wasn't happy with the number of leads they had to work. For example, you know, that one more would be better, wouldn't it? It's like, yes, it would be, you know, but I also haven't seen a, you know, a CMO that, you know, doesn't ask, well, you know, how well are you following up with the leads that we already provide you? That seems to be a kind of a common thread as well, you know, so defining what success looks like and then, you know, establishing dashboard metrics around that, you know, what are. What are metrics that we can just glance at and see if we're going in the right direction? You know, some organizations have a sunny sky and a cloudy sky or a green light or a red light, yellow in between or whatever. Whatever it is something that you can just get.

Ray Hartjen [00:29:02]:
Can kind of quickly look on a dashboard perspective. See, are we directional? Are we going in the direction that we want to get at? And then, you know, if we're not then beginning to dig deeper and deeper into data. I think a big problem a lot of times with very strategic level thinkers and revenue or in revenue teams is that they get caught up in the numbers so much. There are so many possible metrics to go through. And so you'll have people that should be kind of focusing on strategy that are really looking at tactical results of what's going on. And that's because everything is measurable. So let's start first of all with directional types of focus. And then if we see like an opportunity, we can do better here, where maybe we're doing well, how do we optimize this? Or maybe we're not doing so well.

Ray Hartjen [00:29:50]:
Let's take a little deeper look into some of these things. And I love what you just said in your question is what are some of the things that we need to stop doing? For example, you know, so there's a tendency on the revenue teams just to add more. It's like we need to, we need to save this. But sometimes it's like, let's, let's pull the plug right now. This isn't working. But we have other things, contingency plans in place. Right. That we can go forward.

Ray Hartjen [00:30:13]:
So what do we need to learn, I think is important from our data, but what do we need to relearn is maybe something else that we can think about. And then the third thing is what do we need to maybe unlearn things that we've just reviews in the past, but because we have a different buyer, that the marketplace is dynamic in our sector, it's always changing. You know, sometimes we have to unlearn some of these practices and some of these plays and some of these measurements. It's like, you know what, we're measuring something. Looks like we're doing really good here. But if you look at our top of line revenue, ultimately where we're going to be judged for our growth, we're not getting that. What's, where's the disconnect there? I think a lot of times you see it in revenue teams by what customers you go for. You know, we, we are killing it in the SMB space, but where we really have a big margin and a lot of growth opportunity is the enterprise space.

Ray Hartjen [00:31:01]:
But the, the SMB space is a, is a different buying journey than the, the enterprise space. So, you know, trying to shoehorn in that square peg into a round hole isn't going to, isn't going to help us. We're, we're going to need to have a different type of approach. The same place might work, but we're going to have to come up with a different process to get them there. That answer your question, Brandy?

Brandi Starr [00:31:22]:
Yes, it does. And you know, one thing that I think about, the, the unlearn that you hit on is probably the hardest part of all of that, especially for us veterans, because there are so many things that for a very long time have worked. And so being able to take a step back and say, you know, just because that used to work, let's, you know, rethink this can be really difficult.

Ray Hartjen [00:31:48]:
It can be. You're looking at, you know, the heads of sales and heads of marketing, heads of customer service and organizations. A lot of times there's, you know, 20 plus years of experience there and they are proven success. You don't rise to those levels by not being successful. So it's, you know, sometimes very difficult to let go of some of the baggage that you're carrying along with you. But, you know, you know, being able to adapt and improvise and being able to. To move quickly. You know, years ago, somebody once told me about, you know, the change at some company I was with.

Ray Hartjen [00:32:18]:
But, you know, they. They likened a speedboat in the water to an aircraft carrier. You know, aircraft carrier, lumbering, lumbering along. Kind of hard to change direction, particularly if they're, you know, going very, very slow. But if you're a speedboat going super fast, you might be going in the wrong direction, but, you know, a quick little course correction, you can turn really quickly and get headed in the right direction. Right. And so, you know, it's. It's.

Ray Hartjen [00:32:40]:
The market's constantly changing, hopefully. I impressed upon viewers and listeners today that, that, you know, if you're not aware of it, your B2B buyer has definitely changed their behavior. If they're not completely new buyers to begin with, they have different types of behaviors, and a lot of those behaviors are really tipping what we thought was our funnel on its head, but we always thought was into funnel, bottom of funnel, you know, into the buying journey type of asset is now something that they're looking for right away. So how can we get our buyer what they want and when they need it? And I liken a good revenue team member as being like, at the aid station, Brandy, at the. At the Olympic road race, marathon road race, you know, and it's. The buyer is the runner, and they're running up. And as they come to this journey here, I have content for them. You know, you need some water, you know, hydration fuel, some electrolytes or whatever.

Ray Hartjen [00:33:30]:
Here's. Here's information, here's data that you need to become aware and to become educated. And then as they pass, I pop on my scooter and I hop up to the next aid station, and here I am. As they come on their buying journey, it's like, what else do you need to further facilitate your buying journey during all these steps? I don't care if you buy Brandy for me or not. I just want you to make a decision as quickly as possible. That's my job on the revenue team, give you all the information you need to make a decision as quickly as possible. Hopefully, you pick us, but, you know, if you don't pick us, that's fine too, because we're going to pick you later and, you know, we're going to remarket to you and do that. And so I just want to know.

Ray Hartjen [00:34:09]:
And that's, you know, one of the. That's actually one of the things I like to talk about when it comes to orchestration between sales and marketing. You know, a closed loss in your CRM, you know, a lot of times, you know, salespeople don't even, you know, bother with it. You know, we lost it. What's the big deal? You know, well, from the. That's a, That's a lot of sales people. Sales leaders will be out there. I don't want my sellers.

Ray Hartjen [00:34:31]:
My sellers are already inundated with administra. I don't want to put one more burden on them by populating salesforce or whatever the CRM is on details about a closed loss. I'd rather have them go out close some new business for us in the close win. But from the marketing perspective, it's like all that's valuable information for us. If they signed with somebody else, when's that? When did they sign? When's that contract going to be over with? You know, why did they pick somebody else? Was it a feature set, was it price or what have you? You're arming me with information because as a marketer, I'm going to remarket them. They're already familiar with our brand. We just lost out this time. Right.

Ray Hartjen [00:35:06]:
But you know, that's one aspect of where one wing of the birds going another direction because they're focused on their goals and one organization, another wing is focusing another way because they're focusing maybe on their goals. It's this consolidated effort, this, this purposeful coordination of your people, your processes and your plays to help facilitate the buying decision.

Brandi Starr [00:35:28]:
Well, Ray, talking about our challenges is just the first step. And nothing changes if nothing changes. And so in traditional therapy, the therapist gives the client some homework, but here at revenue rehab, we like to flip that on its head and ask you to give us some homework. And so, you know, it's one of those things. I'd love to hear your one thing. So you've given us lots to noodle over, lots to focus on. But for those listening who recognize that they are probably still running some old plays, what would be that one thing? What's that first action item that they should take?

Ray Hartjen [00:36:03]:
I think the first action item is don't be afraid to experiment, test and learn. You know, I think the marketplace will forgive an error that is made by, with good intentions behind it. Now, if you go out with hate speech or something like that, forget it. That's a fatal flaw. You're done. But if you, if you, if you try things out, try different campaigns and different plays, begin to get that information, Test and learn. Learn from that and Then continuously improve what's working, what's not working, what should we do more of, what should we do less of, what do we need to learn, relearn and unlearn and then repeat, Test that continuous improvement aspect of it. Don't be afraid to experiment.

Ray Hartjen [00:36:46]:
You know, we're kind of caught in our ways. Time is short, there's a lot of pressure. We need to generate demand, we need to generate leads, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We need to close those leads. But, you know, take a moment, step back. What can we do a little differently to affect different results, you know, for struggling to grow, you know, what we're doing, just doing what you're doing, but doing it harder might not be the aspect of that that really moves the needle. So don't be afraid to experiment, test and learn. Particularly in this digital marketplace that we're in, you know, everything is so quickly measurable and also changeable.

Ray Hartjen [00:37:22]:
So go out there and experiment.

Brandi Starr [00:37:25]:
Yeah, I definitely support experimentation. I can remember, I think it was about a year or so ago talking to a CMO and we were talking about budgets and budget plan planning, and one of the things that she had expressed that she consistently has done throughout her career is have an experimental budget in the plans of, like to give her team some focus on, we've got to be experimenting and you know, not a huge amount of money and not to say that that's the only time that they experimented, but like, really carving out that mentality of we should be trying some new things and, and if they fail, we learn, but, you know, we need to be trying new things. And so really adopting a mindset and a culture of testing and experimentation, I agree with you, is extremely important.

Ray Hartjen [00:38:16]:
Yeah, it's like that, that component of the Google workforce culture where, you know, you know, 20% of your time, you know, focused on your. Your passion project and something different. Right. You know, if you can carve out some time, some space, some money, resources, and say, you know, what if I used to love those old Hewlett Packard commercials, you and I can probably remember them, maybe some of the other viewers camping, you know, back in the 80s, where you'd have somebody like, you know, taking a shower and all of a sudden that light bulb moment would come up and they, you know, get out of the shower, wrap a towel around themselves, put their glasses on, go to the phone and say, hey, Brandy, what if? And then, you know, that's, you know, what f. And, you know, how can we. How can we, you know, activate what ifs into our go to market efforts and, and see what impact they might have. Test and learn.

Brandi Starr [00:39:02]:
Yes. I love it. Well, Ray, I have enjoyed our discussion, but that's our time for today. But before we go, tell our audience how they can connect with you.

Ray Hartjen [00:39:13]:
Yeah, I would love to hear from any and all of you. You can reach me at my name, Ray Hartjen. My website is rayhartjen.com and on all social media platforms my handle is Ray Hartjen. So please, you know, I would love to hear your stories and if there's any way that I can help you be more effective, more efficient going to market, I'd love to chat to you, chat with you about it because every conversation I have, I learn a lot more than I teach. So it's great to hear from anybody.

Brandi Starr [00:39:42]:
Yeah, that's the best part of being a podcast host is I'm constantly learning even though I'm the one asking the questions.

Ray Hartjen [00:39:50]:
Yeah.

Brandi Starr [00:39:50]:
Well, Ray, we will make sure to link out to your website so that people can connect with you. So wherever you are listening or watching this podcast, check the show notes so that you can connect with Ray again. Ray, thanks so, so much for joining me. I have truly enjoyed this discussion.

Ray Hartjen [00:40:08]:
Likewise, I appreciate the opportunity. I love what you're doing with Revenue Rehab and hopefully this episode. So it helps people bust through those, those growth ceilings that they're at and, and continue to. To excel.

Brandi Starr [00:40:21]:
Awesome. Well, I hope everyone has enjoyed my conversation with Ray. I can't believe we're at the end. Until next time, bye Bye.

Ray Hartjen [00:40:28]:
Bye bye.