Philosophical Friday question: how to make your marketing team "result-driven"?
Lisa Dziuba
10 replies
Result-driven is not a number of launches per quarter, the number of written articles, amount of paid sponsorships, or people who attended your community event. Neither is it the number of followers you have on your social or the weeks you spend on your user research.
It's basically two things: leads and revenue generated. Every marketing function will have key results that will lead to those outcomes.
So how do you make your team "result-driven"?
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Lisa Dziuba@lisadziuba
Don’t Panic by Lemon.io
Too often I see marketers who think only in "tasks" and "marketing activities" that drive.... nothing.
I get why.
It's easy. It puts less accountability. It makes life much better as you just did the task and happily closed the laptop.
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Don’t Panic by Lemon.io
But here is why it's WRONG (not only for the company but for the marketer itself):
- you have nothing to show on your CV/Linkedin; cool companies don't care what you did, they care why and what you achieved;
- you can not measure your success as a professional;
- you can not measure the success of your work or improve it (as you can not improve what you do not measure);
- you train your brain to be "tasks"-driven vs "results"-driven.
Don’t Panic by Lemon.io
So how do other marketing leaders make their marketing team switch to "result"-driven mode?
I've been in marketing for a very long time, I'm tired of telling people to directors how marketing works, now I just watch from the sidelines as companies die, and lend a helping hand, just for the money in my deposit up front.
Here's what I recently showed in the "legal services app" product. - ROMI in SAAS above 16.2% a month in Pittsburgh. But they never figured out how it all works....
From my point of view, regular retro meeting with all team + brainstorming can be really useful. Of course, if you combine it with planning.
During this regular meeting you can discuss what happened wrong or well, how it influenced on goals, and what is your next steps. When the all team included you can get full view and stimulate new idea. But it's important to keep focus on 'what our next steps to avoid mistakes and achieve success" instead finding of finding the culprits.
CAC must reduce.
The marketing portion of the total cost to acquire a customer must reduce. If it doesn't, valid justification must be provided. Or you can have this cost increase or stay the same , but profit per customer must be way ahead as well.
You can also try to use gamification.
Castofly
Compensation. If they get a commission on the sales from specific marketing campaigns that they've worked on, it should be motivating.
I worked in corporate sales for 5 years, and I always hated how commission is designed in EVERY company worldwide:
- Marketing folks don't get commission because 'it's hard to evaluate how exactly marketing affected the sale, and if sales people get paid for sales, then it's a sales rep's commission'
- Sales people get all the commission without questions if they made a hard sale of if the lead was 'super hot' thanks to the marketing efforts.
I think that it's as impossible for sales people to calculate their 'individual' impact as for the marketing people. But it doesn't stop companies from giving uncapped commission to the sales teams, but keep marketing teams on base salary.
That's why everywhere I worked sales guys laughed at 'idealistic and naïve' efforts of the marketing teams, and how marketing guys get credit and kudos for sales, but not commission. Sales guy are all flexing on how they close the deals and how important they are for companies, but in fact it's as impossible to calculate the 'exact' impact of a sales person on each particular sale.
So, my suggestion is to apply the same rules for both marketing and sales: if the company thinks that it's reasonable to give a sales person commission on each and every sale they make, without questioning their impact, then it should be the same for the marketing guys.
Of course, sales reps have lower base salaries and depend on commissions more. But before the industry breaks that inefficient division between sales and marketing, we won't see truly effective marketing teams. Most of the marketing people I met know less about marketing that I do, but I've never worked in the marketing - I worked in sales, and had to market my own business, so I learned how to focus on things that really CONVERT to sales.
Thanks for bringing this topic, because I hate the situation in these two professions. The bottom line of every business is to make SALES, and the direct goal of the marketing is to increase the SALES as well. They should be treated if not equally, but very similarly.
P.S. Yeah I know that marketing is responsible for more then just sales, but also brand building, reputation, communication with the audience. But guess what? Sales guys are also responsible for that, and they put their personal reputation at stake as well, because they are the ones who talk directly to the end customer. So I think that all the distinction between sales and marketing is inefficient and they both should be rewarded and penalized similarly.
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I believe that results orientation should be a side bonus. The foundation necessary for success is team building. First, you build a system of communication and a common language that allows you to understand what is going on. This requires building open and honest relationships through the direct exchange of truthful information. This leads to building trust within the team. It also helps create and develop emotional connections. Act with integrity. Be benevolent and have confidence that you are doing the right thing. This builds trust, grows it, and gives hope for the success of the team. Sharing information is important for understanding others and setting the whole team up for success in a positive way.
Second, welcome employee training. It is important for employees to grow both personally and professionally. If there is no sense of growth, there is no movement forward, and teamwork is at risk.
Obviously, any employee's potential is not fully unlocked. So help him unlock it! You must understand that learning encourages the creation of new things and sets people up for innovation.
Thirdly, create a positive team spirit. This is a friendly and warm atmosphere. Almost a family! And this means that family values are inherent in the team-the willingness to help each other, to do things for each other. Working and relaxing together, which is hard enough to do. But this is what makes this kind of relationship different from the typical one (for our companies).
Fourth, generate passion and tenacity to achieve the goals of the team and of each, individually, player on such a team. The passion of each individual combined with the passion of the others creates a synergistic effect - a superpower to produce good results.
These are the four pillars on which success rests.