The Pipeline Velocity Imperative: Aligning Marketing and Sales for Better Results

Brandi Starr [00:00:34]:
Hello, hello, hello and welcome to another episode of Revenue Rehab. I am your host, Brandi star, and we have another amazing episode for you today. I am joined by Mark Osborne, recognized by Ad Age magazine as one of the world's top 25 marketing technology trailblazers in 2017 and the number one best selling author on b two b marketing and sales. Mark brings decades of experience creating revenue growth systems for b two B SaaS tech and boutique professional services firms. Mark has delivered tens of millions of dollars in revenue for his clients, often doubling revenue in 90 days through his focus on building systems that emphasize strategic approaches to growth. He is the founder of modern revenue Strategies, offering a ten x Roi B two b growth guarantee and a free diagnostic tool to identify your fastest path to growth. Welcome to Revenue rehab, Mark. Your session begins now.

Mark Osborne [00:01:42]:
Thanks so much brandy. It's a real pleasure to be here.

Brandi Starr [00:01:45]:
I am excited to talk to you. I have looked at a little bit of your message and what you talk about, and I think you've got some great insight to share with the audience. But before we jump into that, I like to break the ice with a little woo saw moments that I call buzzword banishment. So tell me, what industry buzzword would you like to get rid of? Forever.

Mark Osborne [00:02:10]:
So the buzzword I'd like to get rid of forever is actually a concept that is hate to see people sort of spinning their wheels and chasing their time on. And that concept is growth hacks. So you were kind enough to read my bio earlier and talked about that. I've been deep in data and technology for marketing for a long time, and for a long time you could sort of hack the algorithm and try to outsmart things to beat Google at their own game. But that's just really not the way that modern marketers are really getting results and success. And so many times I see companies that have chased one growth hack for 90 days and it didn't really pay off, and then they chased another one for 90 days and didn't pay off. Next thing I know, they're six months down the road and they don't have anything to build on. Whereas what I have seen really build sustainable growth, even accelerating growth faster than a lot of these hacks, is building systems based on fundamental strategies in marketing and sales.

Mark Osborne [00:03:12]:
And so that's why I'd really love to banish that word growth hack and instead get people to focus on marketing and sales systems.

Brandi Starr [00:03:20]:
I am with you on that one. I think growth hacking has been banished, I think, a few times since the beginning of the revenue rehab because it is one of those things that for so many reasons, that approach is just not it. And I am definitely a systems and process person. So we are on the same page there. So now that we've gotten that off our chest, tell me, what brings you to revenue rehab today?

Mark Osborne [00:03:50]:
Yeah, so something that I've seen be both an opportunity as well as a potentially stumbling block is the integration that comes between marketing and sales around a really important metric, and that's pipeline velocity. And so your audience is probably familiar with pipeline velocity as sort of the number of leads, and we'll talk about how we define those leads as either marketing qualified leads versus sales qualified leads times the average deal size, then times the percentage win rate. So that kind of gives you how much money is out there, and then you divide that by your length of the sales cycle. And this can be such a powerful metric for bringing together two aspects of the business that are focused on revenue. But I oftentimes see some missteps in how that's used, and I think that's something that we can really tackle today and really expand the thinking for your audience.

Brandi Starr [00:04:48]:
Awesome. Yeah. I've got some thoughts around pipeline velocity, and before we dive into that, I want to, I believe in setting intentions. It gives us focus, it gives us purpose, and most important, it gives our audience an understanding of what they should expect from our conversation today. So what would you like people to take away from this discussion?

Mark Osborne [00:05:10]:
Yeah. At the end of the day today, I'm expecting or hoping that your audience will have better integration between the objectives of marketing and sales. That's going to lead to more success in driving revenue faster across the organization.

Brandi Starr [00:05:28]:
Awesome. So let's start with. I always like to ground in just some definitions and perspective because there's so many words in our business that, you know, have different meanings for different people. And I think you hit on a key one in your first answer, which is around defining leads. And so I want to, you mentioned that you would expand on that thought. And so I want to start off there and let you give us your perspective on how we define leads.

Mark Osborne [00:06:01]:
Yeah. And this is actually one of those key components of pipeline velocity that's so often overlooked, which is quality. And oftentimes there's a perennial friction between marketing and sales, where marketing is saying, well, sales can't close the leads we're giving them, and sales is saying, well, all the leads you're giving us are junk. But whereas if we can get better integration on the how we define a qualified lead for the organization, that creates a whole new dynamic in the way that marketing and sales organizations work together and in what real revenue and velocity looks like. And so one of the components that we often see missing from this definition of a lead is that they're actually in market. And there's a lot of conversation today around Medic or Medpic or sort of this qualification criteria that's being used to define is someone actually in market? And very often you've heard this statistic many times that 95% of your target market is an in market at any given time. In fact, only about 5% of your market is in market. And so if we treat everyone that visits our website and gives us an email address in exchange for a white paper or for a newsletter as a qualified lead, then we're really sort of jamming into the sales process a lot of people who aren't really qualified yet because they're just not ready.

Mark Osborne [00:07:37]:
And so they should be nurtured through potentially automation sequences that sort of get them more nurtured and ready to be brought into that sales pipeline first and oftentimes educated and sort of brought there. The other sort of key thing that I see is not only are we bringing in sort of too many that aren't qualified just because of where they are in terms of being in market, but there's also oftentimes a miss in comparing a lead to our ideal customer profile and our buyer Personas and moving beyond just the firmographic definitions of, well, our ideal customer profile is a company of this size that's in this industry that has this problem. What we like to do is really go beyond that and describe, well what's the context that they're operating in, that's actually sending them to market to look for a solution. And does that context align with who wind up being our best customers? Because if there's not alignment there, oftentimes they won't really buy into your product or buying vision. And so there's a lot of mismatch between that prospect and your solution. And then additionally is the buying Persona of the folks that we're talking to actually aligned with who winds up being our best customers. Because again, if some companies don't do well when it's a procurement led RFP, for example, and if that's what's coming in. Maybe that doesn't deserve sort of the attention that a really qualified opportunity does.

Mark Osborne [00:09:16]:
And with a finite amount of attention, having that extra layer of qualification against the Personas and the buying committee is really important to put your best efforts and all of your most important resources on those best opportunities to make sure you win them.

Brandi Starr [00:09:34]:
Yeah. And I really like that where you talked about the context of the Icpenna, because I think that that is something that is not taken into account often enough. And there was the equivalent of a business meme that I saw years ago, and I can't remember which two celebrities they compared, but basically they were both men in their sixties over a certain net worth. All of the demographic information was identical, but they were so extremely different in terms of personality and what they might buy. And the point there was like, we can't just look at these basics. Like, these two people are not at all the same, shouldn't be marketed to the same. And I do think that, like, that firmographic and demographic information, those buyer Personas, that is a foundation. Like, I don't think we should, like, toss that away.

Brandi Starr [00:10:34]:
But I do think that there is that piece of that context because for those same buyers, it's like, if it fits into this bucket, you know, and I even think about our business, there are certain scenarios, and we put them on our website. Like, these are the four scenarios. If you're experiencing these things, we're your agency or consultancy.

Mark Osborne [00:10:57]:
Right.

Brandi Starr [00:10:57]:
You know, and there's some other places where, like, yes, we could help those other people. We could potentially win that business. We have clients that fall into different, you know, other buckets, but that place where we nail it. And I don't feel like I've ever seen a company when they are, like, passing over leads from marketing to sales that is also communicating that context in a meaningful way. And I know you talk to lots of companies as well. Have you seen that done well?

Mark Osborne [00:11:32]:
Well, not typically. And that's one of the big problems we fix. And in fact, the template that we use for defining an ideal customer profile includes what is the context that they're operating in. And then we also include that throughout sort of the life of sort of account intelligence documentation that we use is, you know, what was the original problem. And I remember that same meme. And I think that it was Ozzy Osbourne and Bill Gates.

Brandi Starr [00:12:03]:
Yes, because on paper, I thought it was Ozzy Osbourne. I just couldn't think of who else it was. But yeah, I think it was Bill.

Mark Osborne [00:12:10]:
Gates, but on paper, they look exactly the same, but they couldn't be more different. And the same thing is true, you know, even describing companies, because so often those firmographics are just not really that descriptive of, not only are they likely to sort of fit with you, but are you likely to win? Because that's the other thing that I see so often. And this comes back to wanting to banish growth hacks. Some of these growth hacks will generate a large volume of leads, but they're really unqualified. And so what we see is that when companies don't have the systems to do a good job of qualifying the right leads, they kind of spread their efforts evenly across all of them, which then means that they don't give the really good opportunities, the resources that it needs to win. And so as a result, their competitors that have better systems in place for identifying those best opportunities take all those best opportunities out of the marketplace, and then companies that are lacking those systems are of kind of left with the table scraps of what their competitors don't want.

Brandi Starr [00:13:18]:
Yeah. And that, that's such a, such a great point. I was like, my brain, you know, I think the hardest part of hosting a podcast is when my guests say something really insightful. My brain starts brainstorming, and I'm like, wait, focus, focus. Come back. And so I want to jump back to another point you made at the very beginning, shifting jews a little bit and talking about pipeline velocity, because I do think that this is a metric that also doesn't get enough attention. You know, I see a lot of focus on how much pipeline is marketing generating. How big is the pipeline? Like, there's, you know, a lot of emphasis on what we're getting into the pipeline.

Brandi Starr [00:14:02]:
And again, not that that's not important.

Mark Osborne [00:14:04]:
That's right.

Brandi Starr [00:14:05]:
But a key place that I think marketing has significant influence that I don't think is always paid attention to is that velocity. And there are ways that once that pipeline is created, it's not that lobbit, over the fence like sales. Now it's yours. There are ways that marketing can support what the sales efforts are to help improve. And you talked about deal size being in that formula to improve velocity and increase deal size. And so I'd love to hear your opinions on that as well.

Mark Osborne [00:14:41]:
Absolutely. You're hitting that nail right on the head, which is if there's just this kind of siloed handoff, you really missed the opportunity to take advantage of the skill sets from both teams. Whereas when we see marketing and sales more integrated, sales, marketing has done the work of really defining what's that customer journey look like. Knowing that even after they enter the sales process, they're likely to restart that customer journey. It's not linear. They may go back out to the market larger and bring in more competitors. They might add different criteria to their evaluation checklist or whatever they're using to evaluate and make their selection. And so if you know the key topics that they're going to be searching for information on, you can target them using traditional kind of marketing mechanisms, like delivering content to them in ads and or delivering content to them through an email blast or things like that.

Mark Osborne [00:15:45]:
So that when it feels like it's not coming from the salesperson who's saying, hey, here's another reason why you should buy me, but instead it's being delivered to them. Maybe in their feed on LinkedIn, maybe in the things that they're watching on YouTube, it feels like it's more organic research that's taking place, and marketing is really expert at using those mechanisms, but they can help support some of those kind of informational needs that the client has, that sales needs to overcome in order to move them down the pipeline. And so that can really do a good job of accelerating those days in the cycle by sort of answering those questions really even before the client knows how to enunciate them. Because sales has been through the process with enough clients, they know what those informational needs are. They can tell marketing and then marketing can say, I have an idea on how we can do that. We've got this white paper or we have this webinar that we recently did. Why don't we make sure that that shows up in their newsfeed and that creates a much more robust way of accelerating that pipeline than just relying on the salesperson to send over another email or try to schedule another call to talk to them about that could be a much more powerful mechanism.

Brandi Starr [00:17:03]:
Yeah, I can think like way back and this was probably 15 years ago, but one of my most successful campaigns when I was in marketing manager role was the objections campaign where we had, I can't remember, it was one field, multiple fields, but we had some way in the CRM for sales to identify objections that they anticipated from an account. So they hadn't been expressed yet, but based on what they learned, they were kind of like, oh, this is probably going to be a problem. That information was fed to our marketing automation platform and we had trigger campaigns that felt organic, like, felt like we were just sending you more information. But they were designed to overcome those objections before they were actually articulated, and it was really effective. And, you know, the only way we could measure it was more for sentiment from sales, because the objections we were trying to overcome, they weren't hearing them from the prospect. And so that was the key that, like, okay, you know, we got this right, and it's another place in the communication journey that I don't see people tackling all the time.

Mark Osborne [00:18:21]:
That's right. Well, and to come back to that sort of lead qualification thing, you know, so often when it's just sort of throw it over the fence where marketing says they're now ready and then sales goes, this lead is either not ready or a bad lead, sales will just dump it off then, because they don't have the knowledge of how to set up a nurturing campaign, because that's where all of that expertise lives within marketing. But when there's better coordination between the two and they sort of together collaboratively decide on the criteria for qualifying, not only that it's the right ICP, but also that now is the right time. If it's not the right time, you can throw them into a nurturing loop where they don't fall off the planet, but instead get nurtured. And then when they move in, that I love that objection campaign, that's such a smart way to do it, too.

Brandi Starr [00:19:12]:
And so we talked a lot about what the challenges are that we see. I'd love to hear from you. What does good look like when companies actually solve this problem and get it right? What does that look like? What does it mean for the business? Like, help me understand that if I we solve this, what's the future?

Mark Osborne [00:19:33]:
Yeah. Well, I mean, oftentimes this is what opens transformational growth of doubling quarter after quarter. Just because today, if you don't have this unification between marketing and sales, then there's almost definitely misalignment. And I actually like to bring in customer success, too, so that you've really got a revenue team. Everyone's focused on revenue, whether it's new revenue or recurring and upgraded revenue or even referrals that come from existing clients that generate new leads. All of that really sort of works together. And that's where you start to get a better understanding of who your customers are, what they love about you, why they stay with you for a long time, and leveraging the expertise across the organization to take that to market, to sell it with the same consistency of storytelling in the sales cycle, and then to deliver that consistency and even sort of your, you know, the deliverables that you're creating and delivering to your clients so that when you ask for that renewal or that upsell, it feels like a continuous story rather than, well, you promised me one thing with your marketing, and then sales kind of shifted that promise a little bit again. And then the experience of working with you has actually been totally different.

Mark Osborne [00:20:54]:
When that happens, that you ruin trust, you ruin credibility, and that's how you get companies that churn out. But when you bring all those things together, that's how you really dominate a marketplace in a really powerful way.

Brandi Starr [00:21:08]:
I love it. So let's talk about how we get there. So I know that you've got strategies and tactics that can help with that velocity, help to solve this problem. So give us good stuff. Tell us, how do we actually solve this problem?

Mark Osborne [00:21:26]:
So step one is make a unified revenue team. And even if it's just marketing and sales, that's a good start. I again like to bring in marketing, sales and customer success. And that way you have a team that's working together with one objective, which is grow company revenues. And then I like to build a scorecard that has KPI's from across the entire sort of revenue system, which includes volume of leads being generated, the quality of those leads being generated, the number of deals that you're closing, the number of referrals, upsells, upgrades that you're getting, so that it's really throughout that when you create this scorecard and it's shared by all members of the revenue team, that's when you really get coordination and alignment on making sure you're telling the right story in the right way. Now, we typically will see companies, the marketing lead might be incentivized based on a weighting of that scorecard against more volume and quality of leads or efficiency of the leads that you're bringing in. Likewise, the CS lead might be incentivized with a little more waiting on renewals, upsells, referrals. Sales might be more incentivized on just the volume of deals that they're closing, how fast they're closing it.

Mark Osborne [00:22:51]:
But when everyone is working off the same scorecard, it creates a lot of unification and removes a lot of friction. It becomes a lot harder for sales to sell a deal that could never be renewed when they've got to look the CS person in the face on a regular basis and keep that promise. Likewise, it gets a lot harder for marketing to bring in a high volume of bad leads just so they can hit their lead target and then sort of set sales up for failure if they're working together on a regular basis.

Brandi Starr [00:23:27]:
I could not agree more. It's so funny. Like I have the other shoulder, I have our book over my shoulder. And like literally what you're saying is the premise of what we wrote about in unifying revenue teams, making sure that everyone is measured, like that things are measured, kind of aligned, so that one metric impacts the next and that it creates that accountability. And so, you know, it's always really exciting to talk to someone of very similar mindset. So that was your step one and step two. Are those the only two steps or we've got some more?

Mark Osborne [00:24:07]:
I mean, once you get there, the next thing is to once. So you've defined, you've got your team together, you've defined your KPI's, now come up with, you know, sort of a system of how do you improve those KPI's and how do you come together on an ongoing basis to set up those systems, improve those processes. The other thing that happens by being focused on the system itself instead of the people is you remove an additional layer of friction because now it's not, well, you let me down because you didn't deliver the leads. It's, well, the system let all of us down because it didn't deliver what we want. Now how do we collaboratively improve the system? And having this regular cadence of collaboration to improve those systems means that a, everyone is doing a better job of achieving the KPI's that they're after. And so if their incentives are tied to that, everyone's having better success, the company is accomplishing their objectives of increased revenue. And you get better. You know, it's just sort of interpersonal alignment and interpersonal communication across the team.

Mark Osborne [00:25:14]:
But those three would be the first steps and then the other thing. And we sort of started this based on a specific problem. We oftentimes define where's their fastest path to growth. It might be on attracting more of the right prospects, it might be on accelerating those best opportunities through the sales pipeline, or it might be activating existing clients for faster renewals, larger upsells, more referrals, creating some focus there. Once you get that team together and once they've got shared scorecard, that's an important step too. But we kind of started today by really looking at the pipeline velocity metric as a key for starting to create some unity between marketing and sales. And I still stand by that as being a really powerful metric that can be that gateway to bringing this together.

Brandi Starr [00:26:04]:
Yeah. And I also love what you said of systems versus people because a lot of times, you know, being a consultant, I see the dynamics in a lot of organizations, and I do see that finger pointing. No one wants to be the problem, you know, so people are naturally defensive, and, you know, sometimes you can really spin your wheels and not solve anything, trying to play the politics, you know, so to speak. Whereas when we take that out and focus on, this is our system for delivering on this or that or the other. Okay, this system's not working. How do we collectively modify the system? And I do think that that's a way, because there are, like, the amount of friction that exists between revenue teams in some organizations blows my mind, and it's like we're all working towards the same goal here.

Mark Osborne [00:26:59]:
That's right.

Brandi Starr [00:26:59]:
But I think that is a great approach to really being able to remove some of that friction, because it does become us against the problem and not us against each other or us, again, department against department. It creates more of a center of collaboration.

Mark Osborne [00:27:21]:
That's right. And those systems don't have to be overly complex. You don't have to, you know, define everything about, but you just got to define sort of the critical path. And then what are the processes that move deals through that critical path? And we also are big believers in visually mapping it. So, you know, something like, you know, 40% of the population is primarily visual in the way that they interpret the world. So if all you've done is written down what the process is, you're not getting your best work out of probably about half of your staff. But if you can create that visual representation of here's what our system looks like to move deals through the pipeline, that opens up a whole new layer of creativity and bringing those teams together.

Brandi Starr [00:28:09]:
I think that's a great one. I know. I love a good lucid chart to map things out because I am definitely one of those visual people, and sometimes the words just don't do it, but I do. I also think that helps you to be able to analyze and refine the systems, because even if I think about, like, I, you know, I lead ops and marketing, so I do a lot of process documentation and even just writing out the process in words and steps, it's really hard to look at that and say, oh, here's where it may break down, or here's what's missing. Whereas if I'm trying to follow a flowchart, I can think, okay, this person has to do this and that, and it's like, oh, there's a gap here. We need another step, or we need a tool, or we need a, you know, whatever. And, you know, I do definitely believe that a lot of the struggle, I was going to say failure, but failure feels a little too strong. A lot of the struggle in organizations is lack of systems, process like things that are repeatable, because if we've got something repeatable and we see something not working, we know where to lean in to try to fix, whereas if we're consistently winging it, we have, you know, and something's not working.

Brandi Starr [00:29:32]:
You don't have any idea. You know, you're just kind of like, oh, let me try this, let me try that. And, you know, cross my fingers well.

Mark Osborne [00:29:40]:
And you can set KPI's at each of those kind of critical steps in the system. And so that you can then together hypothesize, what could we do to improve this KPI? What could we do to improve this one? What could we do to improve this one? And that really creates this exponential growth, because once you improve one upstream, it has all these effects downstream. And when you bring together the great thinking across your revenue team, that's how you get there.

Brandi Starr [00:30:08]:
I love it. And one, you know, my last question is one that I love because it's a. I don't know what, I don't know. And so I want to ask, is there anything that I haven't thought to ask you about that you feel is important for our audience to know in, you know, being able to tackle this problem, to understand it? You know, I know sometimes there's things I just don't think about to bring up. So I'd love to hear if there's anything that you want to add on this.

Mark Osborne [00:30:38]:
That's a great question and certainly glad you asked it. And we had a nice, wide ranging discussion. The only thing that I would say is sometimes in fast growing organizations, it's not the teams themselves that are the stumbling block, but it can be sometimes the executive leadership, because they are resistant to creating systems that they then are removed from because they want to, you know, they've had so much control for so long, it's hard for them to let go. And so that would be the other thing, too, is to make sure even the executives have in mind that we wanna create a system that enables people to do their best work while eliminating bottlenecks so that we can move faster to achieve that speed and velocity that you're looking for.

Brandi Starr [00:31:24]:
And that's such an important point, because as leaders, we do always have to look at ourselves and identify, like, am I the problem? Am I the bottleneck? Am I holding us back. And not that, you know, any of us are ever intentionally doing that, but sometimes overwhelm resistant to, you know, resistance to change, not wanting to fight a new battle. Like there's so many things that can allow us to be stagnant that it is good to, you know, take that sort of initial look of like, you know, let me get out of my own way, so to speak.

Mark Osborne [00:31:59]:
That's right. That's right.

Brandi Starr [00:32:01]:
Well, 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. So I love Ted to hear your one thing for those who are listening and they recognize that this is an area that they have struggled and they need to do better, what's that first step? What's the one thing?

Mark Osborne [00:32:29]:
Get that revenue team together, whether it's just sales and marketing or if it's, you know, across sales, marketing and customer success, have someone representing each of those roles. And in small organizations where someone might be wearing multiple hats, really take the time to think through it. Putting on your marketing hat, putting on your sales hat. Not just, well, my job is to get dollars in the door, but to think about, well, if there's no one leading that customer success function, what are they going to care about? They're going to care about those renewals. They're going to care about that percent of referrals and sort of those lead sources. So think about it through those roles and really define the system that way, even if you don't have distinct sort of folks within your organization that own that.

Brandi Starr [00:33:18]:
Yeah, and I know we do have a lot of our listeners that are in more of that startup, you know, fast growth mode and often have, you know, departments of one. And so that is important when, you know, to really think about, like, what hat am I wearing in this moment and to think things through. And I know that's something I always do is like, literally I'll think something through, like wearing this hat and, and then like, okay, now let me completely start over and think this through from the different perspective. That's right. Well, Mark, I have thoroughly enjoyed our discussion.

Mark Osborne [00:33:57]:
Me too.

Brandi Starr [00:33:57]:
Randy, time for today. But before we go, tell our audience how they can connect with you and definitely give us the shameless plug for modern revenue, revenue strategies and what you guys offer.

Mark Osborne [00:34:10]:
Sure. Absolutely. So we work primarily with early stage but not startups. So as companies get that initial traction and they've sort of achieved that initial success, they're at an inflection point of, well, do we hire a full time CMO or do we outsource it to an agency? Both of those things can be risky, whereas we can come in and really help craft a system and a plan for folks so that they can know how to act on that without the risk of a full time hire or the risk of an agency that's likely to sort of focus on, well, how do we spend money? And they're a little bit like a power tool. So that's sort of why folks like to work with us and specifically folks that are sort of into the idea of building systems rather than chasing those growth hacks. And we published a book about it last year that went to number one in ten plus categories on Amazon. And I'll give a free copy of the book to your listeners. All they have to do is go to modernrevenuestrategies.com freedownload and they can download the book there.

Mark Osborne [00:35:14]:
In it, it's got templates and calculators, including templates for that ideal customer profile and buyer Persona that includes some of those elements we talked about today, about the context that the company's operating in or some of the sort of personal and emotional triggers that lead them to purchase.

Brandi Starr [00:35:31]:
Ah, super exciting. Well, we will make sure to link to both just your company website and to the download. So thank you for that. I so wherever you are listening or watching this podcast, check the show notes so that you can get your download and also to connect with Mark. Awesome. Well, Mark, thanks again. I really appreciate it. I have enjoyed our discussion.

Brandi Starr [00:35:57]:
I've got a few ideas that I'm going to pass on to my team. I always love to figure out how we can do better learning from all of my guests. So to everyone listening, I hope that you have also enjoyed my conversation with Mark. I can't believe we're at the end. Until next time, thanks so much, Brandi. You are welcome.