Video Transcript

Reid: Hey what’s going on, everybody. I’m Reid, I’m E3’s internal marketing manager, I’m here with Joe. He’s our biz dev guy. And Joe, sometimes what we experience in the sales process is an organization that’s trying to get internal alignment within the organization by working with an outside agency. Can you just talk to me a little bit
about the dynamics there?

Joe: Yeah. So the first time I get queued into this being the case is when we’re talking to somebody and they say, “Hey, my boss will be the final signature on this,” but that boss is not included in the process. And that’s the first little red flag for me as a salesperson that, oh, they might not be totally aligned in this purchase. And the reason that matters, the reason we experience that, is that sometimes the company and particularly the people inside of the marketing department, so it could be marketing director, VP of marketing and then the people who actually execute. So whether it’s like a designer or writer, somebody on the creative side. Is trying to show leadership that marketing is an important driver for the business, but leadership hasn’t come around to that yet.

Joe: And so they’re thinking, Oh, if I can go out and get a good agency to help me with this, I can showcase that we should be invested in it the same way that you do your finance department, your sales team, whatever And so they’re trying to create this alignment about marketing being a strategic business driver by hiring an outside agency. And the issue is that that process is flipped, right? Because now essentially you walk in with a request to purchase some outside services that are not inexpensive, as we all know, cheaper than hiring a full internal team, but not an inexpensive service. And you’re saying to your boss, Hey, trust me, without any involvement in this, can you please sign off on us doing this agency purchasing.

Joe: Right? And maybe what you’ve done is you’ve asked for some examples of things that we’ve done for companies like yours that could get them really excited about what could be. This is not how this goes right. The way that this goes well is that people inside of the business have all decided that, the executive sponsor, highest levels of leadership, have decided marketing is a strategic element of our business. And now we evaluate, do we have the skill sets and people and capacity for resources internally to make it strategic and allow us to drive our business forward? Or do we need to look outside? That’s alignment, right?

Joe: That is understanding that marketing is going to be something that we believe in, invest in and want to work for us. So we’re all rooting for victory here versus let me try to prove to you and convince you, when’s the last time you got convinced of anything? Doesn’t happen, right? We just get defensive. We hear, we were like, “Why are you trying to push this on me?” That’s the feeling. And so when you do that inside of the sales process you, person inside of the marketing team, have set yourself and your marketing partner up for failure, right?

Joe: Because at the end of the day, marketing partner is going to get fired and the leader is going to come back to you and say, Why did you make that purchase? And you degraded your trust value with them. And you degraded your trust value So before you go and try to make a major purchase like that, that needs to be part of the strategic direction for the business, you need to make sure that there is internal alignment that everybody’s on board with it.

Reid: Makes sense. Appreciate it.