Video Transcript

 Reid: Alright, Joe. So we know about the value of external research when you’re trying to solve for different issues in your marketing, right? Your positioning or messaging. But we oftentimes ignore the value of internal research, right, speaking to your teams. Can you talk to me a little bit about the value there?

Joe: Yeah. Well, I think where this comes up is we’ll do very often some form of research with our customers at the beginning of an engagement. And we like to get a feel for how does the organization have alignment or misalignment around problems with their marketing in particular, but also with the organizational go-to-market as a whole. And we’ll see discrepancies where, let’s say brand positioning as an example, where perhaps the marketing leader feels like it’s an eight out of ten leadership feels like it’s a four out of ten.

Joe: And sales feels like it’s two out of ten. Right. And what that identifies right off the bat is, oh, we have a problem in positioning because internally there’s a lack of understanding clearly across the organization. People working inside of it think there’s a lot of clarity. Leadership feels pretty wonky about it, and sales feels like it doesn’t exist, to use that example. So as we see that, what it gives us is research into what are the problems that marketing can solve for in the immediate future that are already problems inside of the organization and will make an impact. So it starts to give us that clarity very quickly.

Reid: Yeah. And one way that we’ve done this, you know, Joe and I have a weekly meeting where we’re getting feedback from what he’s been hearing in sales conversations, where friction has been, where there are gaps in our messaging or materials that he didn’t have available to use that would have helped move a prospect along. So that’s a really quick, easy actionable way that we just have a regular touchpoint between sales and marketing to continually refine positioning and messaging and marketing materials.

Joe: And that meeting doesn’t move. We don’t skip that, it’s not optional. Right. Which is a really key point. And I think inside of any organization, you don’t necessarily need to go out and hire somebody like Element Three to do this for you. If you have a very complex organization, that can certainly help with depth, but if you just need to create some understanding between your team about what should we be looking to prioritize right now?

Joe: A very quick Google form survey with some context built in ahead of time to your leadership team, your sales team, and maybe a few key decision-makers inside of the organization can at least start to bring to the surface. Oh, I’m seeing it this way in. My assumption is that everybody else is as well. But this is telling me that, no, we’re actually not that close together. So that can be a really quick, easy way for you to do that inside of your company without having to go out of house. Just to get clarity about, do we all see this picture similarly or are there big discrepancies? And instead of doing external research, I can actually learn that from my team itself.

Reid: For sure. Hope this helps.