How To Get Aligned At All Levels with Marketing & Sales Duo at Outreach

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Rhoan Morgan: Hey Rebels, thank you for tuning in to today’s show. Today we have a marketing and sales duo joining us, Steve Ross and Kelly Justice, lead sales and marketing respectively at Outreach. Outreach is a leading sales engagement platform that accelerates revenue growth by optimizing every interaction throughout the customer lifecycle. Steve, Kelly, welcome to the show.

 

Kelly Justice: Awesome and thanks for having us.

 

Rhoan Morgan: You guys know, we’ve talked about this a little bit. Our listeners know, we’re all about really spotlighting, rule-breaking, marketing and sales leaders. And it’s not very often in fact, we just have one other show in this whole series, where we’ve had both sales and marketing roles on the show to share ideas and it was a really exciting show that we had before, and it’s one of the reasons that I thought it would be fantastic to have both of you guys here, and especially after hearing more of your story.

 

So I’m really looking forward to hearing about your perspectives as it’s relating to alignment, reporting, attribution, customer experience and so much more. So let’s get started. Let’s dig in with what we call our rebel segment. And this is where we get to ask you to share a rebel act that maybe you’ve done yourself, that you’ve led or that you’ve participated in, been a part of, or just even witnessed that sort of addressed some specific challenges and inspired other people. So maybe let’s just start though by having you tell me how long have you two worked together at Outreach?

 

Kelly Justice: Yes, so I have joined Outreach about two years ago. So right from the beginning kind of jumping in partnering with Steve, on a couple different initiatives that will probably take a deeper dive into but I’ll let Steve kind of go over his history and at Outreach as well.

 

Steve Ross: I started with Outreach about four years ago, and then an awesome ride with how we kind of prayed our relationship with the marketing team in that time. So definitely excited about digging deeper into it.

 

Rhoan Morgan: So Steve, you’ve been there for four years, Kelly came in a couple of years later, during that time that you guys have been working together, have there been any rebel acts that you might be able to share with our listeners, either something you guys have done together or individually, maybe let’s start with Steve and then we’ll move over to Kelly.

 

Steve Ross: I think maybe counter-intuitively our story with Outreach, I started like I say four years ago, and we were entirely not bound shop, that’s actually kind of an interesting story. Our founder, Manny Medina, started the company and his original idea was to sort of drink his own champagne meaning use our platform to build a company. And so as the CEO, he was actually out-bounding, making cold calls, probably mails and generating clip-line for the company. And there wasn’t really much of a marketing team I got here four years ago, I think if I remember right, we had a product marketer and an event marketer, and that was sort of the entire show.

 

And then we had something in the neighborhood of probably 30 or so salespeople between our outbound prospecting team and our account executive team. And so we didn’t really know how to do inbound marketing, demand Gen, things of that nature, we kind of build a pretty good machine in terms of the outbound motion. So when we had a demand Gen person show, we had to think about how to integrate that, like we’re excited about, “Oh my gosh, to be awesome.” We also had to think about, okay, how does it plugin, right?

 

Rhoan Morgan: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

 

Steve Ross: We’re really getting after it in a different respects and so we had to learn how to sort of adopt that and get really good at it really fast because there was a huge opportunity out there for us to continue to grow and build, but it takes us a little bit of time and effort to mount that into our process.

 

Rhoan Morgan: Kelly, can you share more about that?

 

Kelly Justice: There are a couple of different parts to this too, one being Yeah, just kind of the enablement, what is demand gen, what is inbound marketing, what is a marketing qualified lead, there was a huge piece of this education, along with when I came on board as well is just a complete overhaul of our inbound motion as well. So with this particular initiative, our team really just kind of took a deep dive into what is the workflow of our sales team today, what is their day to day look like?

 

And again, like Steve said, how do we fit into that? How do we fit giving into where they’re doing their outbound motion today, so we kind of don’t take them out of that rhythm, just getting really in tune with that so we could develop this kind of seamless, inbound lead workflow. A lot of different elements of this just huge with Steve’s team, with the marketing team, with the outbound team, just a complete overhaul too, it was exciting and just kind of further developing on that quarter over quarter.

 

Rhoan Morgan: To me it kind of sounds like the rebel act was, the entire company was part of that in terms of bringing you in Kelly, embracing this big change that we’re about to go through and really working together. And I think that sometimes you might have an executive who says, “Okay, we’re going to move to the next level, we’re going to bring in demand generation, we’re going to start creating all kinds of leads in a different way.” You’ve got all these processes that are in place and you’ve got people that are just doing their day to day and not really interested in change, or sort of wondering how that’s going to impact their bottom line in a way.

 

But it does sound like there was this real sort of interest and acceptance right away. I’m curious, though, tell us, when you think back a couple of years ago as you came in Kelly, and you started to really focus on change and sort of elevating the entire organization to this next level, what do you think some of the key outcomes of the company going through this were?

 

Kelly Justice: Yeah, I think one of the biggest outcomes and something that set us up for the foundation to where we are today too, is that we had a lot of key stakeholders in this initiative, and we built the funnel together, we built one funnel. So it wasn’t just here’s one, the marketing funnel and then separately here’s the sales funnel.

 

We were establishing the stages, the funnel, how we push leads through the workflow, it really became one complete full funnel with buy-in from ourselves and with buy-in from the marketing team. So it’s not kind of a divided we look at them separately, we built it to look at it together, and how each of the stages, each of the levers impact each team. And again that set the foundation for us and on what was the outcome that we got from this initiative that we continue to kind of build upon.

 

Rhoan Morgan: We have had clients in the past who are working with us on creating their lead management programming, within our systems. But we’re only allowed to work with marketing because they’re so siloed, like they barely talk to each other and it’s so frustrating. I know the team at demand lab is not really jazzed about that kind of a project because they know that there’s so much more and there’s a limited amount of reporting that you can get, there’s so much more insights that you could share with sales when you’re really working together. So it’s exciting to hear from the very beginning that you guys were coming together just think about that entire funnel or sort of lead management into the sales cycle and then back again.

 

Kelly Justice: That’s great.

 

Rhoan Morgan: Why don’t we go into our sort of Dream Team segment, because based on the quick call that we had beforehand, I was really impressed with how you two and your teams have worked together. And we’ll just let’s focus on that work and what you have built at Outreach because I remember during that call, I think I might have even said it feels like you guys are kind of living the dream that so many marketing and sales leaders are looking for. When you guys have gone through that process of alignment, tell us a little bit more about what that looks like at Outreach, maybe even go a little bit into the weeds about what that looks like, what is the process look like for you guys?

 

Kelly Justice: From an alignment perspective, I think it’s important what we’ve kind of felt at Outreach alignment at all levels. So alignment from Steve and I looking at higher-level pipeline metrics, volume metrics, conversion metrics, really kind of higher-level where we performing against the pipeline goal, at the end of the day, alignment really stems from that North Star metric of pipeline, incredibly important both for sales and for marketing. So from that level looking at performance goal, we look on a weekly basis, monthly we review quarterly as well, just kind of getting into the tactical piece of it.

 

I talked about alignment at all levels. So weekly meetings with our inbound team, jumping on our SDR weekly training calls, having monthly kind of lunch and learns where we really get into the weeds of tactical feedback too. So for me, the alignment is I truly want to understand from the front lines where these leads are going, what feedback that they’re getting from these leads, if we’re converting them, how are we doing that well, versus what do we need to improve on. So alignment for me is really staying in tune and in touch with our reps, and understanding their pain points and taking those into consideration on an ongoing basis, not a yearly, not a quarterly but really kind of that day to day. And so we can become more of an agile team, holding ourselves accountable for alignment at every single level.

 

Steve Ross: Yeah, I think I would double down on the North Star which we decided early on was going to be pipeline. And as simple as that might sound it’s so important because there’s all the metrics, the KPIs, the things that we could have looked at, we decided pipeline was the number one sure thing that we wanted to focus on as a united team.

 

And so yeah, we do meetings where our executive teams ended out as well, and that we’re talking pipeline, we’re talking build, and we’re talking each quarter, what do we have as coverage coming into the quarter? So we look at that’s the metric that we kind of really focus on when we’re talking about that alignment. I think the one thing I would add just in terms of the sales side is accountability.

 

I think there is a pace that you get this goodness called demand generation, which it’s an investment, there’s a cost there, there is a responsibility from the sales side to convert on that and part of that is making sure that we have a really good handle on following through and so I think we have over time really created some ways that marketing and sales can kind of really get into like, how are we handling them, that’s really important. And then we got some process and things, rewards and maybe some stakes along the way on the sales side to make sure that we’re following through because it is, it’s really important to focus on the fact that we’re investing here.

 

We’ve made that decision a long time ago and it is, there is an accountability piece. And I think I have pride in how we do it. I think our teams respect it and I think marketing if they need to call us out, they’ll call us out. We respect that too. But there’s that mutual piece of how do we come together to make sure that this all works together and one of the things we talked about is we have to convert. It’s all a system and so we have to be able to convert on what we receive.

 

Rhoan Morgan: That’s super to hear. I mean, I think that it sounds to me there’s really an accountability between both of your teams. But I also think as a leader of that team, Steve, ensuring that they know the value, the investment, the value that marketing and demand generation brings, especially with a pretty big group that was really established in their prophecies, it’s just critical to have that from your leader. I have a question though, I don’t think we covered this before. Do you guys both report into the same person? Or how does that work for you guys at Outreach?

 

Steve Ross: Yeah, we both ultimately roll up to our CRO.

 

Rhoan Morgan: Yes.

 

Kelly Justice: That’s an important note because we roll up under the CRO, we essentially have a go to market team, which is essentially like a kind of circling back to the one funnel. And then North Star metric, I think that helps our team holistically from a go to market strategy perspective, to keep us in mind on that pipe.

 

Rhoan Morgan: That’s great. So when it comes to the pipeline and you guys have talked about this as your North Star. It’s the number one focus, Kelly what portion of the pipeline does marketing own or is held responsible or accountable for?

 

Kelly Justice: We essentially have two different funnels from a marketing organization that we’re looking at, we have our typical persona-based, just general prospecting funnel on air cover generating new leads on Outreach as a whole has a huge account-based strategy as well for ABM programs. So, marketing focuses on a couple of different things as far as what we hold ourselves truly accountable for. One is both focused on that lead volume, top of funnel conversion metrics, that’s something that we talked about one funnel, but essentially new lead to marketing qualified lead is essentially what we own prior to passing over to sales, however, we have a full-funnel kind of custom attribution model as well. So we’re holding ourselves accountable both for those leading metrics and then what we term as lagging metrics as well.

 

So pipeline created funnel, the impact of what we’ve done throughout the funnel. Again we’re kind of just taking that into where we need to optimize throughout the full funnel. So I would say, as far as like solely owning, again it’s those leading metrics but we do hold ourselves accountable for touchpoints, on prioritized accounts, pipeline creation, closed one pipeline, we have a set of probably 15 different KPIs both leading and lagging, that’s our quota from a marketing perspective.

 

Rhoan Morgan: That’s great. And it sounds like you guys built all of those KPIs, I’m very familiar with the leading and lagging sort of indicators and I love that you guys are focusing on that, I think it’s an important approach. But it does sound like you built all of that together so you sort of working backwards, you could know what you need to get done early stages to meet those goals, the goals and then when you’re handing those over into pipeline and monitoring that, sounds like you’re also really closely aligned with how things are progressing once they get into the sales cycle, all of the work that you’re doing with the SDRs and the other sales groups.

 

Kelly Justice: I think the foundation there is to building the go to market kind of operating model holistically. Again, that foundation of having one funnel leveraging this historical data, leveraging the conversion rates, and building the marketing funnel, to coincide with the overall business funnel, has been super important for us. And then also allowing ourselves like I said, kind of reviewing the pipeline on a weekly basis, where do we need to pull different levers? Ideally, we would all like to hit certain conversion rates, hit pipeline goals, where do you need to adapt? Where do you need to pull different levers both on the marketing and the sales side. To keep in tune with those overall business goals.

 

Rhoan Morgan: So Steve, kind along the same lines, obviously, the portion of the pipeline that you’re managing is the pipeline, right? Once it gets into the opportunity stages, maybe can you share a little bit with us around how your team communicates back to marketing so that they can continue to support your efforts? I mean, we see this as sort of a really important feedback loop. And I’d love to hear how you guys have grown and developed that alignment over time.

 

Steve Ross: Couple of things, first of all what I would say, “Okay, how do we look at it?” And I think we might be doing a different than some companies and because you kind of ask the question of like, what portion does marketing, what percent of sales and I think one of the things that we do, which is super interesting, is we haven’t done that, we just said, “We both own 100%.” That changes the game, I think quite a bit.

 

And because now you’re not saying battle and fighting this is my dollar, your dollar, whatever. But in terms of the feedback loop, I think a real practical example that we just did, was on a campaign that we had a bunch of leads come in and the volume kind of increased, which is always a good thing. The amount of time that was being dedicated to those leads would have increased and so there was a little bit of a hiccup in how we were operating our day to day.

 

And so we were able to get with Kelly and her team, give them feedback and within 12 hours, if it was even that, we had changed our approach as to how we’re going to go out and message the activities that we’re going to put around them. And it took a lot of stress off the sales team but we’re still going after the same outcome. And so we’re able to partner really well, I think we get into the room and we say, okay, here’s what we’re seeing, this is the impact we see from the sales side, let’s make a change in real cooperation and collaboration how we do that.

 

I think the other thing that we do in terms of feedback and how we kind of pull levers, is we’ll walk in a meeting that we have once a week or maybe once or twice a month on a pro rata basis. Okay, meaning we’ll look at rep number three, who is soft on pipeline and we’ve created sort of a map of all the levers that we can pull. So there’s an outbound lever, now is the outbound team making enough phone calls, for example, on that reps, accounts, selling outbound account based strategy, that’s one lever we can pull.

 

We could look at a gift-giving campaign for marketing, right on those same accounts to kind of help drive some things. So we actually get down pretty granular to a rep level and figure out how we can help make things move. And there’s also a piece, which is the sales rep is accountable to creating some of her own pipeline as well as part of that whole metrics of things that we can pull on.

 

And so we look at it again, from a pipeline, big level, drill down to the rep level and then what’s happening within that rep’s own book, to create pipeline either from outbound demand Gen or self generated. I think we’re pretty good at coming together and figuring it out pretty quickly too. I mean, as last example it was literally, Kelly will keep me honest, I think we made the change in certainly less than one day.

 

Kelly Justice: Yeah, and I would just add on a couple other examples too just Steve, Yeah, I think that it’s that quick turnaround it’s that quick feedback loop that really helps our teams. And so for another example too, is like if there’s a rep struggling with pipeline, their activity levels are up there and they’re doing everything and maybe they’re struggling a little bit with pipeline, we have kind of like a core team of tactical marketers on the sales management side too, what it will take away kind of insights from that pipeline lever meeting.

 

And then have individual kind of brainstorming meetings with that rep, we kind of all jump in and marketing will meet the rep along with managers, their SDR, etc and brainstorm. So as Steve said, kind of we all get in a room I know with today meeting fatigue, but ever like having those meetings, getting all in one room together and coming up with a quick plan, really impacts on teams, reps, pipeline, everything to their worth. They’re worth that 30 minutes.

 

Rhoan Morgan: Well, it’s funny because as you guys are going through this, I always take notes when I’m doing these calls, and him writing time consuming, so methodical, which it sounds like super methodical and I love that the last note that I wrote as I’m hearing this is, it’s actually doesn’t sound like it has to be super time consuming. It sounds more like it’s real time solution creation in a way that ultimately is probably really energizing for your team’s both on marketing and sales, because they’re solving problems and able to make quick changes that are moving the business forward. Is that what it feels like to everybody internally?

 

Steve Ross: I’d say so, yeah.

 

Kelly Justice: Very much just action driven.

 

Steve Ross: Kind of that’s how we did and so I think it just plugs right in and we’re a fast growing company. And so like that action, those solutions, it’s just part of the culture and I think we long pretty well between our teams.

 

Kelly Justice: Absolutely has to be something that is, I think core in the culture, otherwise, I think it can get a little bit exhausting or I think I kind of feel like if there’s not an alignment with culture what we’ve seen in some organizations is that, that’s where you just get a lot of people butting heads in a way.

 

Rhoan Morgan: What I’d love to be able to hear about from you guys, and definitely doesn’t sound like that there’s any barriers to achieving this sort of full funnel alignment there in Outreach, but from your experience from other maybe conversations that you’ve had with peers, what do you think are some of the greatest barriers to really achieving that kind of alignment?

 

Kelly Justice: I think from my perspective and I think something that we all carried over from kind of previous experience to I think it kind of falls into different areas for me. One, again, having a clear perspective on what is your North Star metric, we talked about that. But I think for us too, it is really like marketing really understands sales as marketing’s customer, marketing can’t generate or drive pipeline without sales. And so really understanding the sales function, understanding the sales workflow, understanding their day to day, and how we can be in tune with that, and just truly understanding the impact of one another’s day to day for the overall business, I think that sometimes teams really get siloed.

 

Here’s the marketing gap, here’s what we do, why doesn’t sales understand why we’re driving these leads, why we’re putting this out there, why we’re putting on this event, I think it’s just the understanding of each other’s roles and how they both play into the overall picture. And just like putting myself in the rep shoes. I think that for me is what I’ve seen in the past that that does put a barrier to that alignment, just that misunderstanding and not understanding and not being in tune with the function in and of itself here in Outreach and just like Steve’s buy in and getting Steve’s buy in, everyone’s buy in for whatever we’re doing, I would say that for from my perspective.

 

Steve Ross: I would just add for my own like history, the number one thing that I think of when it does not work, Kelly kind of mentioned it, which is marketing doesn’t always appreciate or understand the quota carrying role, right?

 

Rhoan Morgan: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

 

Steve Ross: Sales is responsible for delivering a revenue number whether it be every month, every quarter, every year and not having an appreciation for how that emotionally can impact a sales rep. Right?

 

Rhoan Morgan: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

 

Steve Ross: So when there’s something that comes in and this is not here but like in a previous company, it can kind of combine blog by marketing and think of a campaign and they got in a room together and it’s creative, it works awesome to some degree. But it may not be driving ultimately revenue and salespeople being asked to take action on something that isn’t driving revenue and maybe there wasn’t a clear explanation of it or sales wasn’t at the table when it was being devised because they may have said, “Hey, well hold on a second, what are we actually trying to accomplish here?”

 

And that’s what I see the breakdown typically is no understanding how it’s going to impact the day to day of a sales rep, because they’re literally claiming the job is to generate revenue and that’s how they think, right? Every single minute of every day is how do I generate revenue for the company? Well, that’s a disconnect at the top of a company where I see things just go sideways really fast.

 

Rhoan Morgan: And that impacts I think you touched on something that was really interesting, you talked about how that can emotionally impact a salesperson. And in a sales role, you’ve got to be on top of your game. And so you’re on stage in a way, right? Especially if you’re making calls and that sort of thing so when you’re feeling the stress of maybe uncertainty or an unclear expectation or a lack of involvement. That’s got to be really, really difficult. I think that’s interesting that you’re talking about it from that perspective. Also, Steve, for me, I think that’s a whole other podcast conversation.

 

Steve Ross: Yeah could be. Yeah, I think it’s super interesting if I’m not invested in the campaign, as a rep I can think of like, okay, I gotta go hit my quota and I got to do this versus this is going to help me hit my quota. And those are two very different feelings, right? I feel like oh, well being support, this is awesome, versus I got to go now because someone’s just asking me I got to go do this. So I’m not going to do well probably because I’m not falling in. And then I’m also thinking like, okay, I’m going to miss my number and how two, I’m going to trouble the boss and all the rest of them I could have the income that I’m expecting, so it’s super important to think about when that kind of comes out, could just don’t end up hitting a wall and then the campaign’s and everything kind of falls apart.

 

Rhoan Morgan: What I think is really exciting in terms of this conversation, what I think we’re sharing with the listeners is a great example of marketing coming in and getting that and as you said Kelly, understanding the day to day of sales you’re with them sounds like side by side and I just feel this is a great, I think, sort of inspiration or aspiration for some of the listeners who might be thinking, how can we make a change and really drive growth and revenue and this is definitely, this is obviously how to do that.

 

So let’s talk a little bit about the customer experience. So as folks know from listening and reading our stuff, for the past few years, and definitely over the past few months, we’ve been really digging into this quite a lot. We’ve been talking about what we call marketing-led customer experience here at DemandLab and now that marketers own more of the complete journey, although in your case, it’s obviously very, very shared. But marketing is the team that’s typically on the journey with a prospect, the first sort of 80% of that experience, we are really digging into that with our clients quite a lot.

 

And so I’d love to be able to share and learn actually more about how your team is thinking about customer experience. Kelly, if you could share a little bit about who owns customer experience there and how do your teams think about that jointly?

 

Kelly Justice: The customer experience is really critical for businesses and it’s a lot for one particular team to really, as well. And so similar to new logo, new AIR, marketing and sales alignment, at Outreach, we kind of have two core teams that really aligned together to hone in on a customer experience from signature all the way through implementation to renewal expansion, kind of that particular funnel and of itself. So we have a customer lifecycle team and so they’re there from day one. And they actually sit under our customer success organization, they’re very in tune with the entire process there and kind of hone in on the strategy for that entire customer experience. Second piece to that is actually does sit under marketing. So the customer marketing function, from referencing from just kind of that holistic view, as well. So I would say those two teams, and then of themselves kind of really drive the customer experience.

 

From there, we do have other key stakeholders, like for example, my team from a demand generation perspective we support customer expansion. And so we play a role in that along with sales, we play a role with the customer experience as far as field marketing events, etc. So, like I said, having one team solely responsible for it, we found having kind of like three or four different critical areas that work together and align has really supported and expanded on our customer experience over the last couple years.

 

Rhoan Morgan: Yeah and one of the big things that we’re looking at is oftentimes when you have multiple teams there, and they’re siloed. And not only they are, but so is their data, the systems that they’re working in, I think that happens to companies that have been around a little bit longer, and maybe they’re still dealing with some legacy processes and legacy systems and that sort of thing whereas the younger companies sort of are starting with systems that are already fully integrated and thinking about this at a just a different level.

 

What kind of tools or platforms are you guys using to make sure that you’re sharing all of the information that you’re gathering with all of the teams, for instance, one example, sometimes you’ve got expectations that are set through marketing, through the engagement that they’ve taken with prospects, and then they move into sales and hopefully those expectations are being met when they’re having those conversations within sales, when they move into onboarding and which would I think be your customer lifecycle team, and you want to ensure that once the deal is closed and they go into onboarding that there are still the same expectations that are very clear and getting carried over throughout. So I’d love for you guys to just tell us a little bit about how you ensure that there’s that clear alignment through the organization?

 

Steve Ross: For us, obviously, Outreach is a big one.

 

Rhoan Morgan: That’s good to hear.

 

Steve Ross: Yeah, it’s important that you can really get down into the details and I think along with the messaging, all those sorts of things in terms of, are we communicating the way we ought to be or reporting the activity that we ought to be, and that can go through the whole life cycle. So as you come through as an inbound lead, for example, we’re an outbound pasting, we’re running a certain sequence and then information gets passed off to sales and into your onboarding team. There’s also just generally, we’re using tools like Tableau, that kind of help us surface that information and insights as well.

 

There’s also a piece where we use a conversation intelligence platform, which can also give insights and things that would be that feedback loop or guidance as the customer goes through the lifecycle. Because there’s notes and things that kind of get passed on down the line. Well, those are a few things like I think on the sales side that we kind of take a peek out and also have like a joint relationship with.

 

Rhoan Morgan: That’s great, that’s really helpful. And I think that in today’s world where you can have so many different platforms, what’s most critical is having those platforms communicate with each other, right? So that it makes it easier for the different teams and different players to communicate with each other, ultimately, all to support your prospect and customer.

 

Kelly Justice: I was just going to say to like the foundation for that too is the data on knowing the system, you can have all the systems out there, but the way that we operate like Steve said, having Tableau and our CRM as our core data set, to drive all of these activities, one mostly being an outreach and then two, how do we automate and process onboarding and start that customer lifecycle kind of nurture program too, so the foundation to that and all the teams are aligned on this is Tableau and the data set that we have there is how we drive systems to operate.

 

Rhoan Morgan: Key data is key obviously, and if every team member is tuned into that and I imagine you’re all equally caring about the quality, the accuracy, the completeness, all of that which is huge actually when you have an entire organization whose teams understand how important that is.

 

Kelly Justice: Oh, that’s great.

 

Rhoan Morgan: So we’re getting near the end here. But before we wrap up, I’d love to go through our lightning round with you where I get to ask you and since we’ve got two of you, I’m reducing the number of questions. I’m keeping it lighter this time. I’m going to ask you a few questions, and if you can quickly respond with the first answer that comes to your mind, that would be really great. Are you guys okay with that?

 

Kelly Justice: Let’s do it.

 

Steve Ross: Let’s do it.

 

Rhoan Morgan: Let’s start with Kelly. If you could have dinner with one marketing influencer, who would that be?

 

Kelly Justice: First person that comes to mind is probably Elisa Pink or Guillaume “𝑮”. He’s a growth advisor, both incredibly smart, data-driven leaders.

 

Rhoan Morgan: Okay, cool. We will link to them in the show notes.

 

Kelly Justice: Yeah.

 

Rhoan Morgan: If you could share your top few marketing tools, the tools you just can’t live without?

 

Kelly Justice: Okay, top three, an attribution tool, multi-touch attribution tools, critical to full-funnel marketing. This second is an enrichment tool like zoom info reveal. Absolutely cannot operate from a marketing standpoint without good data and so I think overlooked sometimes. And then the third obviously for me is Outreach, having that in tune with the sales cycle I could never operate without a tool like Outreach ever again.

 

Rhoan Morgan: Cool. And what’s one piece of rebel advice that you would give to future Marketing Leaders?

 

Kelly Justice: I would say just to kind of add on to what we’ve already talked about, look beyond the vanity metrics, make sure that you’re building actionable reporting and quickly taking that feedback and actioning on that data too.

 

Rhoan Morgan: Thank you for that. Not too much pressure I hope. Steve, let’s move to you. What is the top resource that you’re looking at on a regular basis to stay up to date on sales and sales trends?

 

Steve Ross: I’m going to cheat and go with two, I would say one would be LinkedIn and a couple influencers I follow are KD Dorsey at PatientPop and Lauren Bailey at Factor8, and then revenue [?]. There’s a lot of just really smart people in that organization sharing best practices asking and answering. So those are the two sources.

 

Rhoan Morgan: Okay, so can you share one fun fact that our listeners would be surprised to know about you?

 

Steve Ross: Sure. How about I am a skydiver in three different countries.

 

Rhoan Morgan:  Cool. That sounds like you go on spying missions or something?

 

Steve Ross: Maybe, no, just a trip [inaudible 00:41:08].

 

Rhoan Morgan: Fantastic, very cool, what countries you’ve got to share.

 

Steve Ross:  United States, Fiji and Costa Rica.

 

Rhoan Morgan: Oh well, those are pretty great countries to be skydiving and I’d say that-

 

Steve Ross: Go all over the water but then I’ll do a landing on land.

 

Rhoan Morgan: That’s awesome. And then for you what’s one piece rebel of advice that you would give to a future sales leader?

 

Steve Ross: A future sales leader, I would say be willing to just test and trust in your marketing partners, right. I think ultimately, everybody wants to do the same thing and be willing to be a participant in that experiment and they’re willing to iterate and get the best work out of your team.

 

Rhoan Morgan: Great advice and really great lightning round for both of you guys. Thank you so much for allowing us to do that. Kelly, Steve, I really thank you both for taking the time to join today. It was great to have you on the show. Just one last thing before we go. What would be the best way for our listeners to reach out to you if they had any follow up questions?

 

Kelly Justice: Yeah, thanks so much for having us, this was fun, I always enjoy this conversation and especially Steve too. Yeah, if you want to connect with us, me personally on LinkedIn, feel free to shoot me a message and we’ll get in touch.

 

Steve Ross: Yeah, same for me LinkedIn would probably be the best avenue.

 

Rhoan Morgan: Okay, cool. So we will LinkedIn both of your LinkedIn profiles. It’s Steve Ross and Kelly Justice.

 

Steve Ross: Awesome, this was fun.

 

Kelly Justice: Yeah, thanks so much.

 

Rhoan Morgan: A big thank you to our listeners for tuning into Revenue Rebels. Remember, you can get our show notes, links, and other content related to today’s topic at demandlab.com/revenuerebels. While you’re there, let us know if there’s a leader you want to hear from or a topic you’d like to hear more about on this show.

 

I’m your host, Rhoan Morgan. And you can find me on Twitter at @rhoanmorgan, it’s R-H-O-A-N Morgan. And of course, look us up on LinkedIn. Look up DemandLab or search, or R-H-O-A-N Morgan. And finally, only if you think we’ve earned it, please head over to Apple Podcast, Spotify or wherever you’re listening to us right now and subscribe, rate and review the show until next time. Rebels. Thank you.