The Main Things That Work in Enterprise Marketing (and Cost $0) 

A couple weeks ago I railed against relying solely on data-driven metrics that have given us a false sense of effectiveness in the enterprise marketing function. Today I’m going to start talking about the things that actually work.

If you haven’t read the first piece, I think it’s critical to un-wire your brain from thinking people are variables in a math equation (SQLs, MQLs, CAC, etc.) so you can start thinking about them as human beings again. Your CEO may hate this, especially if they know how to code. But they’re actually going to be really excited, because you’re about to tell them this:

I’m going to reduce our budget to zero. Then we’re going to do things that matter, and only those things, until we can’t grow any faster without spending some money.

I know, fuck me. You fought tooth and nail for what little budget you have (what is it, like .1% of revenue?), you tie it dutifully to “marketing generated revenue” or some other made-up nonsense. Well, it’s doomed, so you may as well get ahead of it. Better if this comes from you.

March 2020: Global Pandemic, Layoffs/Hiring/Budget Freezes

I was CMO at Beeswax for a mere two months before we stayed at home for a few days to feel things out. And then a few more. And then until further notice. Nobody in the industry had any idea what would happen to digital advertising; heck with all the layoffs and budget cuts we could only assume we were all absolutely screwed. We did a small RIF, froze budgets, and all execs took modest pay cuts. Whatever I had in our marketing budget (I think it was around $500k pre-pandemic) I deferred indefinitely. It wasn’t like in-person events, the bulk of the budget at that point, were going to happen anyway. 

It was a forced budget-zero exercise. And wanna know the truth? I was relieved. I think at this point I knew that whether Beeswax was going to be successful or not didn’t depend on deploying the kind of cash I’d seen peer companies spend. Now nobody could just throw money at the problem. Yet we had our best year ever (due to stuff we did but also of course due to macro recovery) and drove a successful exit by the end of that year. We did a lot of marketing that year, most of it no-cost or low-cost, and the first lesson to learn from it is:

Enterprise marketing is sales-led, sales-focused, and sales-dependent 

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard marketers complain about how Sales just doesn’t get it, ignores the rules, uses their own decks, doesn’t push the right products, makes things complicated, sells things we don’t have, gets the story wrong, or constantly asks for more materials. Get it out of your system now because 100% of these things are your fault. 

There is no marketing-generated revenue. There are salespeople who convince prospects who aren’t paying you money to sign a contract that says they’re going to pay you money now. Your job is to do stuff to make that more likely to happen more often. I’m not suggesting you’re at their beck and call, or should defer to what they say they want because they generally have bad ideas about what you should do. They’re just like customers; in fact they are your primary customer. Meaning: you need to figure out what their needs are, build a “minimum viable product” to serve those needs, and iterate constantly. First, you gotta know what the problems are.

If you’re not at the Sales Pipeline Meeting, you don’t know what Sales needs

It all starts with Sales Pipeline Meetings. I could do a whole post on how companies should do these. This is your customer research session where you understand their pain. And boy will you hear pain. A good CRO uses this meeting to rally the troops but most importantly to expose anyone who isn’t going to hit their number. Sales is refreshingly binary. Pity the poor soul who has to tell their sob story about how something “petered out” or “it died on the vine.” 

Except now you’re there. You unmute yourself and you save this person’s life:

Hey, let’s dig in a bit on this offline - but what would you say is your biggest impediment? What could you use more of? 

Maybe this sales rep sucks. Or maybe they’re just in a tough region, have a tough remit, or some other more structural problem that marketing can help with. Not to belabor the military metaphor, but it does kinda work like “air cover.” You deploy where you’re needed. And the rep with the cushy region who’s killing it doesn’t need the air strike. Marketing plans never take into account actual battlefield conditions that change month-to-month, or in the case of your pipeline meeting, week-to-week. Yet this is where your tactical brilliance shines. Maybe you can help them throw together a dinner around a conference you didn’t put in your budget, but that their top 10 prospects are likely to be attending. Or maybe you can whip up a thought leadership piece about the one thing this sales rep knows their top prospect hates about your competitors. You’ve got a toolbox of tricks like this to draw from, most of them won’t cost you money, and they’ll mean everything to that sales rep (and, ultimately, your CRO who will think you’re awesome).

I talk to a lot of companies who either do not have a consistent weekly Sales Pipeline Meeting or who –and I’m turning red as I type this– don’t allow Marketing to attend every week or even at all. This is your #1 way of driving more revenue, mark my words. Total cost: $0

If the story is wrong, Sales can’t sell

“You know, that’s the classic thing: a new CMO comes in and they want to do a big rebrand so they prove they did something,” an idiot told me once. Because of this perception, never say the word “rebrand” if you can help it (and again, especially if your CEO knows how to code). Call it a “Sales Story,” but really it’s your entire messaging from the first time a prospect hears about you to the words and images Sales uses to close them. But you need to own this to be successful, and it’s really simple. Talk to 5 customers who like you and ask them why. (In fact, don’t do anything else until you talk to 5 customers who like you and ask them why.)

When you do that, you will have the outline of the right Sales Story, which will lead to the right sales deck and supporting materials. And, you’ll be forever insulated from Sales telling you the deck isn’t quite right, or we need these 85 other slides, or from them “going rogue” like so many of us complain they do. 

Now, there are great firms that can help you do this and really knock it out of the park. This is part of what I do for companies I consult for nowadays. But I told you this would be a budget-zero exercise and you can absolutely do this yourself. Bonus points if you can get other execs or cross-functional team members to join you on these research calls. This process, by the way, is nothing I invented and is actually something I adapted from Pivotal Labs’ User Research Process (thanks Jessica!). Total cost: $0

If Sales doesn’t know who to sell to, Sales can’t sell

Part of what you’re going to learn from talking to 5 customers who like you is what they have in common. This is where you’ll need to cash in some of the goodwill you’ve earned throwing a rope to that poor bastard who isn’t hitting their number, because you’re about to tell your CRO who they can’t sell to. Yes, Segmentation, loved by marketers, CEOs, sometimes VCs; hated by Sales. Because left unchecked, Sales is going to want to sell to everyone. And why not? It’s not their job to not pick up the phone and start dialing. 

At Beeswax, we sold a somewhat esoteric product that had incredibly tight product-market-fit for a particular type of customer, and fleeting or episodic product-market-fit for everyone else. Asked to describe themselves, each of our successful customers would say something to the effect of “well, I guess I’m a control freak…” When evaluating our sales pipeline and customer base, we would consistently see those types of customers do well and non-control-freaks churn out (or drag out in interminable sales cycles that would give us all false hope). Our entire messaging plan and Sales Story was then built on top of this foundation. And I remember it wasn’t very popular with Sales initially. A lot of concern around “but I have [Prospect X], and they definitely aren’t control freaks!” to which our CEO would say “okay, show us one customer who’s successful on our platform who isn’t a control freak, and I’ll tell Paul to change the messaging immediately.” This is what I mean when I say you aren’t at their beck-and-call. You’re building them what they need to close more deals, not what they say they want. That way you don’t get stuck in the cycle of constantly reacting to requests for more materials. Minimum viable product.

You’ll figure out what defines your key target segment. Then you’ll sit with sales and actually map out a list of 50 prospects you, together, will go after and assign the right materials for each outreach. Total cost: $0. 

There’s a lot more to it than this, but effective Sales Marketing will get you 85% of the way there.

None of this helps you come up with that toolbox of tactics to throw at Sales Pipeline problems, nor is it at all proactive or strategic. But it’s the most important place to start and will quickly earn you the faith you need to do the things that do cost money or are are higher risk/reward. More in Pt 2!