Rishi Dave: How to Make the Day1 List

Hey everyone, welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays, where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. And today's conversation is with Rishi Dave. Now Rishi works for Bain & Company and is a member of their commercial excellence practice with real deep expertise in B2B marketing and digital marketing. He serves as an expert on the implementation of Bain's B2B marketing diagnostic and sales play system. He's held global positions and CMO roles at publicly traded companies like Dun & Bradstreet, Bonnage, and MongoDB. And with this conversation, it's centered around the alignment of sales and marketing, which is still as bad as it was when I got into this industry.

And we talk about the challenges of it, but also how sales professionals need to become mini marketers these days and marketing needs to be working much more selectively and specifically with sales. He talked about this concept of the day one list and how companies, when they're making decisions on vendors, they have a list of day one vendors that they originally think about and 90% of them end up going with somebody on that day one list, no matter how much analysis that they've done at the end of the day. And so the question is, is how do we get put on that day one list so we have a much higher chance of being selected? So we talked about everything as far as sales reps' abilities and how they should be doing outreach, phone, email, all these different pieces, but how to really work together.

And he has a great structure that he outlines of how sales and marketing should work together to become more agile and drive better results in today's market. So I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Let's make it happen. What's happening, make it happen, family? Big shout out to our partners today, Gong, Vidyard, and Chili Piper. Gong's data is more than valuable. It's cornerstone in any organization looking to collect the data that's going to tell them where they can improve and where they need to spend their time making changes. Vidyard makes it easy for people to use videos anywhere. No matter whether you're sending videos in email or on social media, posting them somewhere or sending them in a DM, Vidyard has got you covered.

Our friends at Chili Piper are so much fun to be around. They make it easy for people to get on your calendar. And every sales rep has got to have this function locked in. It's one of the most important things we can do as a seller. How can I get you on my calendar easily? Chili Piper can make that happen for you. Be sure that you're checking out all these great tools. And now, let's pass it over to John to find out who's joining him today. See you soon, everybody. Rishi, Dave, how are you, my friend? Welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast. Nice to be here. I've been looking forward to this conversation. It's actually, matter of fact, for the audience, we're going to be talking about sales and marketing and a bunch of other stuff.

But I just submitted a speaker thing for InBounds, the conference coming up in Boston for HubSpot. On what, you know, what they want me to talk about. And it was sales and marketing alignment. But from a messaging standpoint, because that divide has been there for the 26 years I've been in this industry and I don't see it getting any better. So I'm really looking forward to this conversation, Rishi. But before we get into it, let's talk about, give us your background. Give us kind of where you're coming from and what you're up to these days. And then we'll dive into it. Yeah, definitely. So I am a partner at Bain & Company, and I focus on B2D marketing, as well as our sales play system, which is our kind of go-to-market methodology between sales and marketing.

And I do a number of other things as well. And prior to Bain, I was a chief marketing officer of several public tech companies, including MongoDB, Vonage, Dun & Bradstreet. And before that, I was global head of digital marketing for Dell's B2B enterprise business. And so I have a lot of experience working with sellers, both as a chief marketing officer, but also at Bain. And it's funny you talk about the sales and marketing alignment. I cannot believe that we're still having this discussion. It's never gone away. And it's just so surprising how it just continues over and over, over 25 years. It's always the number one issue facing CMOs, or at least top five issues. Yeah. And it is frustrating because you see so much tech thrown at the problem.

But ultimately, my opinion is it's a people problem, right? It's about getting people to work together and then, okay, have some technology to make sure that they can do it more efficiently. But with that, what's the difference these days? Because quite frankly, I think marketing is creeping further with all the tech out there, right? I think marketing is creeping further and further and further into the traditional sales world of value, right? There was usually a pretty solid divide between the two. You had marketing that did their stuff and they put out a bunch of emails and whatever it is, marketing, branding, whatever. So, so let's start with, you know, kind of the definition of what you think the difference is right now between sales and marketing alignment, because I'm seeing marketing, you know, really creep into our world.

It used to be a pretty divided line where it's like, okay, give us some air cover, but then it's hand-to-hand combat on the sales side of the house. But with all the tech, with all the now real personalization at scale with stuff like ChatGPT and those type of things, what's the difference these days in your head between sales and marketing? You know, I think that, you know, there's a couple of things going on, one of which you alluded to. Some of it is new. So, and it all starts with kind of customer behavior in B2B. So, you know, we know now that customers are kind of far, much further down the process of their buying before they even talk to a seller. And we know it's because of kind of three big things.

One is that, you know, they were already made aware of this, of the potential vendor that they could buy from a colleague, they had maybe used the vendor before in a previous company and when they came in. And obviously the big one is they're nurturing themselves digitally and finding a lot of information digitally before they even talk to a seller. And so they're much further down the process of buying before they talk to a seller. And, you know, we did this research recently with a large group of B2B buyers across a bunch of industries, across a bunch of sizes. And what was interesting is we found that 86% of buyers, when they begin their buying process, they already have a list in mind of the vendors they want to use.

They do a bunch of their procurement stuff and have long convoluted buying processes. But I think it's like, depending on the industry, almost 90% of the time, they end up buying off that initial list, regardless of their convoluted procurement processes and complex and long various cycles. I mean, they'll sometimes add one or two, but most of the time they'll buy off that list, that kind of list they had on day one. And so then you ask the question, well, how do they form that list? And it's essentially, you know, a colleague of mine recommended you, I used you before at a previous job, and I want to use you again, potentially. And, you know, I was made aware of you before I even began my buying process through digital or through your website or through content or through communities.

So that dynamic has shifted, putting a lot of that early stage burden on marketing to make sure that they're building that brand so that customers know what your company does before they even get ready to buy, you're digitally discoverable. So you're at the places where the customer is looking and doing research, your website is rich with content, so that you're driving a lot of organic traffic, and you're educating your customer. All of that is really critical. And then to your point, you also have a strong process by which you, when you actually generate opportunities, you're tied with your sellers in how you pass those opportunities to the sellers for them to close. And so all of that with technology and data has made things more complicated.

So all that's there. The second thing is the basics are still a problem. Like, it baffles my mind. So I will tell you, I will have clients say to me, look, we have a sales and marketing alignment issue. And you dig into it, and it's the basic stuff too. Like, we don't go after the same target accounts. Marketing has one list that they're going after from an ABM perspective, sellers care about different ones. They don't align on what is the definition of a lead that you should be passing over to sales, and what should you be just not passing and nurturing. Like, they don't have an aligned perspective. They don't talk to each other, you know? Exactly. Literally, like, let's just, you know, sometimes the solution is, why don't we get together every week and sit down and look at the leads that we passed and go through them and say, why is this one not good?

Why is this one good? Et cetera. And then really fix those issues. So, you know, there's a lot of kind of old school stuff that has not changed. And then there's a lot of kind of stuff that's driven by the changing nature of the buyer. Yeah, and I think that's the key, that's why I said it. I think it's a people problem more than anything else. But it also reinforces how I think sales reps and the evolution of where things are going, specifically in the SDR model, right? I think the AEs or the, you know, full cycle sales, if you call them, there's obviously a part for them in this equation from a brand recognition standpoint. But that's a little bit more specific, right? Like, hey, I'm, you know, maybe a thought leader or something like that in the industry, been around for a while, so that's why I'm coming out to you and that you can leverage that.

But the SDRs, I tell them all, you know, we have to become mini marketers right now because it's an impression game. It's a positive impression game. That's what the world is at this point. So, I consider a cold call very similar to a display ad, right? And I actually had this and I'm actually, you know what, I'll pick your brain on this one because I've gotten into arguments before with people who, about this, thinking like, because this one guy rips me apart for teaching people cold calling. He's like, cold calling is the absolute worst. It's like, it's such an invasion of my privacy. I didn't ask you to call me. I said, how is cold call different? Cold calling different than me opening up Facebook and seeing a bunch of ads I didn't ask for.

How is it different than me driving down the highway and seeing a billboard that I didn't ask to have it put in my line of sight? So, what you didn't ask for a cold call? So, what you didn't ask for that email from that? It's the same thing. We're trying to make an impression to get them to do something or have a positive image in their head of our brand. So, when they're ready, they come to us. So, that's kind of where I'd love your thoughts on, you know, how dissimilar they are or are they at all when it comes to that type of outreach and those type of things. Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. I think cold calling definitely plays into this. But you can be much more sophisticated in your cold calling.

So, let me give you an example, right? Like, we do this all the time. Like, we have this thing called sales play system, which is basically architecting sales plays to achieve a specific mission. So, let's say, you know, an example would be we are trying to sell, you know, new set of products to existing customers or we have, you know, we acquire, we acquire a company. We're trying to sell it to existing customers or we're trying to penetrate new customers with this, you know, offering. So, we kind of define a very specific sales play. When we define that sales play, we say, here are, you know, we know data on every single B2B buyer basically on the planet or most major countries. So, we can leverage analytics to really prioritize based on, you know, a bunch of demographic information, a bunch of behavioral information whom we should be targeting.

And we can build propensity models, all of that. So, that all we can do today. So, we can build very specific, prioritized set of named accounts that we want to go after for a specific sales play. We use propensity modeling. So, we know, you know, these are the highest propensity to buy from us based on who's bought from us before, offering, all of that. Here are the personas we have to go after, right? And so, when you're calling against something like that, that's analytically driven, where you know they have a propensity to buy from you, you have much more success in that cold call. And you can actually be beneficial to them. And it's not just cold calling, right? You may be warming them up with an email.

You may be warming them up with, you know, digital. So, you know, in these sales plays that we talk about, we kind of orchestrate a set of cadences between sales and marketing. We kind of orchestrate what sales and marketing say, and then we get very specific on the target list they go after together, based on where the biggest opportunity is, the highest propensity to buy our stuff. And when you put all that rigor, analytics, data, and, you know, programmatic go-to-markets together, that cold call is just one of a set of activities, and it's much more effective. Because I think when you say cold call, people just have this notion of old school, Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross type thing. Yeah, that's right.

But, you know, it's very different now, because you can very programmatically go after accounts now. And that's, and I think what you're painting the picture of here for me is what I've been thinking about as the future sales rep. The future sales rep, I think, is going to be looking at a dashboard that uses, you know, BI and analytics to scrape through their existing customer base, find the nuanced commonalities and the reasons, port that into something like, you know, I'm playing around with a tool called like clay.com right now, where you can really, really get nuanced with that. Then put them into a system where you can start to market to them and see the intent data and what are they clicking on.

So now I'm going to open up a dashboard in the future, and there's some out there already where I can look at you, Rishi. Like, I'm not, I'm not now thinking of who I should go after. Like, hey, who do I prospect into today? No, no, no, no. It's telling me, Johnny, you need to call, not email, Rishi. You need to call him because he just did this, this, this, and this. His company is doing this, and this is the indicators in the marketplace. And by the way, here's three clients that are very similar to what he's going through right now. Oh, and here's some talk track points that you can use when you make that phone call. So now, instead of doing all the mundane research and collecting of lists and all that other stuff, which I think the stat, I don't know who has it out there, but I think there's some ridiculous stat out there that sales reps only spend like 37% of their time actually selling.

Yeah, I've seen that. And it's like, because the rest is admin and bullshit and stuff that ChatGPT and a lot of other can replace. But that's the future. That's, to me, the sales rep of the future. But unfortunately, that's going to be a very small group of people because it's going to get rid of the need for quite a few. I mean, I look at SDR teams right now, and I'm like, if you're just sending out templated cadence emails right now to your list, and it's not supported by anything else, and you're not making phone calls, and you're not sending videos, what's your value? Why do I need to spend 100,000 OTE for somebody to push buttons when I could do it a thousand times more efficient with technology now?

So that's, do you see there being a, because my theory is that the current model, SDR, BDR, because I'm watching it, they're going to roll up under marketing more and more and more and be more data insight analysts type of stuff with a bit of a propensity to make a phone call. So they have some sales skills, but I think a lot of them are going to move under marketing and ops for true ABM, leveraging AI, and then forking over to AEs to make the phone call when it's necessary. So AEs are going to go back to full cycle sales. Do you see that trend? Sorry, that was a lot. That is a, that is a hot topic. Where do the SDR sit? Now, I agree with you. Where should they sit? Definitely in marketing, right?

And that's why I've seen a lot of success for the reasons you described, right? They need to be tied into the inbound leads. They need to have that, um, analytic, energy driven targeting, um, the content need to know what to say based on the dashboard that you described. However, what I see is theoretically, it makes a lot more sense to go into marketing. However, practically the sales org always wants to own the BDRs, whether it makes sense or not. Right. And there is an element of when you give the BDR team or SDR team to the sales organization, they, that reduces one area of disconnect where they can say, well, we're not getting good leads. Well, you own the SDRs and BDRs. So, so, so the, the, you know, and the reality is like, it is the right, I have seen much more success of SDR, BDRs and marketing.

However, there's a pragmatic element that often puts them still in the sales organization. Um, and, and, and so, you know, you know, to the point earlier, you should be in marketing and then there should be very strong alignment and between sales and marketing. Well, and I also think there's a, the reason that sales thinks that way, at least my opinion is because they're stuck in an old mentality that this predictable revenue model worked for a while, but it was very, very us focused as, as, as organizations. It wasn't customer centric in any way, shape or form. Nobody wants to be handed off 15 times before they actually talk to somebody who knows what they're talking about. Um, but it really, you know, I don't know.

It's, uh, it's interesting to see the, the challenges because they have the tools, they have the abilities. We just are, I think are putting them in the wrong direction. And because sales looks at it as we're, we're building the sales reps of the future, right? Cause that, that's theoretically, that's what the model was. We bring in cheap labor, basically, you know, $50,000, $60,000. We beat the crap out of them. They learn the pitch. Then they become, the problem though, is I think the average tenure of a, of a sales rep right now, forget about SDR. I think the average tenure of a sales rep is something like 14 months. Right. So sales, they're, they're with the mentality of, well, that's our, that's our pool of talent that we're going to get from.

Right. But that is that, I think that ship is sales. Um, these kids are sitting behind their computers and if I'm going to be in a, just, you know, Rishi, if I'm working with you and I'm your SDR and you're paying me X and I'm sitting at home in front of my computer with a value statement and, uh, you know, Sally over there at company Y is going to pay me more to do pretty much the exact same thing. I'm going to go talk to Sally. Right. So I think that's the problem where we're, we're, we're, we're in a world where a lot of people are going through the motions of what they, they've seen work in the past. They've, they've, you know, again, I've been the biggest benefactor of this Salesforce quote unquote invented predictable revenue and I trained Salesforce.

And so, you know, every other company out there was like, Hey, you know, could you train us? I'm like, well, do you need this type of training? Well, yeah, but Salesforce does it. I go, eh, but you're not really structured to do it the right way. And I mean, I'll take your money, but so, I mean, do you see it continuing? Well, let's talk about this. Cause I think this wraps in, in your main point here with how to be day one ready, right? How to be on that list. Yes. So, and, and let's talk brand too, but what are things that sales and marketing can do so that when the customer is ready to make a decision or start the buying process, um, we can be on that list. Yeah. I mean, you know, there's kind of three things, right?

Um, you know, one, as I mentioned is making sure like one of the, one of the primary ways to get on the list is obviously, um, referral from somebody else. Sure. And then secondly is, um, uh, you know, I worked with you before and I loved you, so I'll work with you again. So that lends itself to, you got to make your existing customers extremely happy and you got to make them your evangelists. So that's not just the responsibility of the sellers or the marketers, but it's also customer success and the people who are kind of delivering your solution. Um, the second thing is, uh, what I mentioned around digital discoverability, right? So making sure that you are fully aware of where your target customers are hanging out, what content they're reading, what are they searching for and making sure that when they do that search, you show up, um, and not your competitor.

Um, so really building your content strategy, your digital strategy, um, where you show up in terms of blogs and PR, um, so that you're educating that customer way before they're ready to buy. Um, you know, all of that is very critical. And so that's kind of from a channel perspective. And then from a messaging perspective, you know, a lot of companies do not spend enough time really building great messaging. Um, and so that's pretty fundamental as well is making sure that people, um, are aware of what you are doing now, but where you're going. So for example, when I talk about this day one list to some of these big, huge companies, they're like, look, we're a humongous company. There's only three or four of us on the planet who do what we do.

So we're always on the day one list where I'm like, well, are you on the day one list for what you do today and where you're going? Or are you in the day one list for what you did a hundred years ago? And they're like, oh, that's true. We don't get into those sales cycles. Um, and so, you know, you always have to be educating, um, your perspective, uh, customer. The second thing, um, which I kind of alluded to, um, is, you know, how do you make sure that you're programmatically going after those opportunities? And that's something, you know, we call it sales play system, but it's kind of being very programmatic about how you go after. So, you know, the way we look at it, and it's been very successful in terms of really driving pipeline is, um, building plays.

So, um, what is the mission of the play? I want to sell this new product to this, a new customer. I want to sell these existing products, these products to an existing customer. Um, I want to, uh, you know, um, you know, I want to upsell. I want to win back a set of customers, et cetera, really kind of defining those plays and then building those plays, uh, between sales, marketing, and product. So what exact companies are you targeting for these plays based on your analytics? How are you going to orchestrate the cadence between sellers, uh, marketers, uh, in the product team? And then what content are you going to build for your sellers and for your marketers? That's consistent to enable them to execute a play and who's going to do what?

Um, and then, you know, that's kind of the building the play. And then there's kind of the, you measure the play and you, in an agile way, you're constantly optimizing it based on what you're hearing back in the field. And then you're always training your sellers so, you know, both making sure you're, you're, um, you know, taking care of your existing customers to get that day one list, making sure you're digitally discoverable. So people know who you are before the buyer begins buying and then really orchestrating in a programmatic way. These sales plays, um, against a very targeted set of accounts to make sure that you're executing those opportunities from, uh, you know, getting into them all the way to closing them.

Um, and that's really kind of, I mentioned those, that's kind of three big activities. One is you build the play. Two is you measure the play and optimize it. And three is you, um, you know, really drive the training and the change management into your sales and marketing organization to execute the plays. So with that, um, brand matters, obviously, and, and the company's brand being on the short list is obviously that's, that's, that's what you want. But, um, obviously we're in the world of personal branding and influencers that you talked about there too. And I've been talking about this for a while. I haven't seen it come out. And obviously I think right now is, is probably not the best time to hire one of the, well, maybe it is, but, um, you know, the, the chief evangelist officer, basically somebody whose job it is to evangelize the organization as a person, not as the company.

And let's take that down a little bit to organizations who are sitting there. And I, it still kills me to this day when I see people who are not allowed to do anything that isn't sanctioned by the company on social, right? The only thing they can share is social content from the company. But if they are their own brands, uh, they get, they say, you know, sorry, you can't do that. And I, I take the exact opposite position. I want all of my reps, all, I want every single person at this company to be their own personal brands who has their own personal following and then can, you know, obviously influence the buying process here. So where, where's your head at when it comes to kind of the chief evangelist all the way down to the individual rep related to brand related to engagement?

Yeah, I agree with you. Um, you know, I think that, um, everyone should be an evangelist for the brand. Um, you know, sellers, um, obviously, you know, they know who they need to go after. They should be sending them content on LinkedIn. They should be nurturing those contacts, um, um, continuously through social, um, educate them way before they're ready to buy. But I do agree with you that this should be a whole company activity. Um, so, you know, for example, you know, many times, even when a buyer is, you know, just finding out information, they don't want to talk to a seller. They want to talk to a product person or they want to talk to somebody who's used the product, um, and talking directly to them and getting feedback directly to them, um, through social, through content, um, through great thought leadership, I think is very important.

Um, and so, um, actually having your employees, your sellers, um, your product people, all your team, team members, um, out there, you know, pushing great content, helping customers, um, creating advocates. I agree with you. It's absolutely critical. Um, and, and there's, you know, ways scalably that companies can do that, um, in terms of enabling that, you know, first of all, giving them permission, as you say, and secondly, enabling them with great messaging and content to do that. Yeah. And then also allowing them to just help customers, um, you know, wherever they need help. Yeah. I mean, I think we're seeing the rise of customer success, uh, in a lot of ways, right? Because especially right now, um, most companies net new revenue is hard to come by.

So they're hyper-focused on reducing churn and upselling their existing because to your point earlier, it's much easier to work with somebody who already knows you than it is to find that new. So that, well, and, and, and also don't forget, like they're your biggest advocates for your next set of new customers. That's the most powerful way to get the next set of customers is having your existing customers evangelize and talk about what you do and that they're happy. So what do you say to the, the leader out there who's like, yeah, okay, I got this brand and I got a bunch of reps who are kind of doing it, but I'm scared. I'm scared about what they'll say. I'm scared about, you know, us getting in trouble because of that.

And I'm also scared of the fact that we allow this kid to build this whole brand here or her whole brand here and then they leave. And now what? Right. Cause I've actually seen, you know, I'll, I'll use a very, you know, specific example on this gong, for instance, right? Gong was great, but you know, at the beginning gong chorus, you know, whatever kind of tomato, tomato, all of a sudden, um, Chris Orla, this gentleman over at gong, he started putting out content, free content, using their stuff and data and statistics about what the sales reps do. And you saw gong explode from a marketing standpoint because of this, right? But it was Chris Orla doing that. And it was his personal following that was doing that.

It wasn't the gong corporate page that Chris Orla was on. It was Chris Orla coming out there. Now, when he moved to a different section of the organization, it almost felt like gong disappeared, at least in, at least in my lens of what I look at. Right. And then all of a sudden they got, you know, Devin Reed back and he started doing it and, and kind of had to build up his career. And so there is a danger of being identified as that. I mean, let's, let's look at this from a social standpoint. Look at how long it took Trevor Noah, for instance, to take over from Jon Stewart. And now he's leaving and it's like, well, wait, wait a minute, Trevor. I felt like we were just getting started here, man, even though he's been on for 10 years or whatever it's been.

But it was like the, the, the company took the hit with Jon Stewart as he left. And it took a lot of effort to bring, you know, Trevor to the point where he was. So how do you balance that as a leader? I don't think you have a choice, right? Like, yeah, I mean, that is a risk, but the upside is way too much. Both in terms of, um, as I mentioned before, you know, buyers are doing all of their research. Um, you know, I think the number is like 60 to 80% of the exact number down the buying process before they even talk to a seller. Yep. So they're in digital, they're doing research on their own. Um, they're in the search engines, asking questions, you know, content in social and content that individuals post, um, always shows up well in SEO.

And so, you know, if you want to win that customer and get on that day one list, you know, you have to allow that dynamic social content from your evangelist. And also people want to talk to people, not corporate entities with kind of corporate language. Um, and so, you know, I think you have to allow that to happen. And I think the benefits of it fall away the risk. Yeah. Um, and so you just have to allow that to happen. And look, like to your point, you could have one evangelist, they may move on, but you could create other evangelists as well. I mean, there's a lot of opportunities to do that. Uh, but, but, but again, you know, I think the key thing here is that when you allow that, like when you, it's not just about the evangelist.

It's posting great content. It's about the company posting great content on the website. That's actually not just about selling, but about helping, um, customers answer critical questions. It's about putting great documentation on your website, um, for your product. It's about letting people kind of play with your product online, um, or virtually or whatever you could do. All those kinds of things, um, you know, putting training and learning on your website, um, for your product, on your product, you know, especially tech companies. Tech companies do that. Not only is that just good for your customers, but man, Google loves that stuff and, and you're, you're going to show up as well. So, you know, I, I think companies have to feel comfortable to put all that content out there to help, you know, um, and, and, and if you don't write, your competitor is, and they're going to win over that, that day one list over you.

Even if you're a big company. What's up everybody. I know you're enjoying this conversation. John does a great job with genuine curiosity on these episodes and our guests consistently bring the heat. We want to take a moment here and let you know that you've got an opportunity, an opportunity to become better than you were yesterday. And you can do so by gaining access to all of JB sales content. All of their training tips, techniques, tactics, and takeaways can be yours for $1 a day. $365 for the year gets you annual access to everything, including our private Slack channel for members only, which you get access to all of us directly a hundred percent of the time, 24 hours a day. And then at the same time, you're going to get access to our bi-weekly ask me anything sessions, where you can bring real deals to the table and get the help that you need where you need it.

This is very, very important. Sales reps that invest in themselves are often found at the tops of their leaderboards. Join us today and get the help you need to become the seller that you deserve to be. That URL one more time is joinjbsales.com. Let's get back to the show with JB and our guest for this week. I think one of the other reasons, you know, again, sneaky reasons of why a lot of them are nervous about it is it forces you as a leader to be a good person. And I say that like kind of in jest, but not really, Arishi. Like if I'm, if I don't treat my employees right, right. And there's, there's discontent in the organization and all that other stuff. And I promote somebody to represent our brand.

Well, if, and when that person leaves, oh, you know, now all of a sudden it's not like glass door. Like they're going to, you know, air the dirty secrets of what happened in that organization. I'm very scared. So I think a lot of organizations are playing kind of a short term mindset and afraid that, oh my God, if this person becomes the voice of our brand and has this massive following and we do something that isn't aligned or make a mistake or whatever. Now all of a sudden that person turns on us and it's a compounded negative impact, right. I mean, I, I look at it as if Chris Orlop didn't leave Gong, right. But if he just went to a different position, but if he did leave Gong at that time and started disparaging them, like that's a death blow right there.

I mean, hopefully your reputation is held, but I think that's another piece of this is that they're a little worried of, they can't control the message. And that's what I, that's what, and this is, let's keep talking about sales and marketing because let's, let's solve this problem. There's two, the two sides I see on messaging. Marketing comes up with the messaging in their own little bubble, puts it into some cadences, does not allow, does not allow reps to be, uh, you know, creative at all. It's nope, you're running this play. Okay. Yep. Go. Um, or Hey, sales reps, uh, we got these new cadence tools, have fun and let them make a mess out of it. Right. What is, what's your suggestion right now?

It's just, you know, honed it on messaging and alignment of how, how to work together to create sales ready messaging that the sales reps will actually use because they'll feel bought in and they'll see value in it and then provide feedback. What's that feed? What's that loop look like for you? Yeah. So, uh, let me, um, I actually, we've dealt with this, um, and gotten great results. So let me, let me actually talk in a bit of detail on how we address that. Yeah. Um, so I talked about sales plays. We've actually architected what we call a sales play system, which actually we've implemented at a lot of very large companies and small companies. And to drive this type of top line growth and drive pipeline and being agile and adjusting to what you hear from the field is fundamental to this.

Yeah. So let me explain how it works. So let me explain how it works. You have kind of three areas. The first area is what, you know, I call what we call the sales play factory. That is the place where you build the play. So what does that mean? That says you, um, decide on who you're going to target. For sure. Um, you, uh, build the right content to enable the sales sellers. Um, you define the cadences between sales and marketing, um, and the processes. And in that process, that factory process, you take three weeks to get a play out the door. It feels fast, but it's totally doable when you have the right people together. And what I mean by that is you have like the marketing team there, most likely product marketing.

You have, uh, somebody from product often and you have one or two sellers right there who are part of the process saying, yes, we need that content. We don't need that content. This works. This doesn't work, et cetera. Um, and you're working together in an agile daily 15 minutes standup and maybe a weekly 30 minutes standup and just pumping out the play over like a three week period. So you do that, you get it into, into market, um, and this training, et cetera, all of that. And then you have what we call a win room, which will sound familiar to every seller, um, which is where we kind of see, um, you know, how is this play doing? And what do we need to adjust based on the front line feedback, which could be not just on content.

It could be the customer targets, the cadences, all of that. Um, what are we hearing from the front line? And so we get that feedback very quickly, that win room, um, and we, um, adjust the plays. We also use that win room to get feedback on, look, we need a play to do this, or we need a new play. Um, and so we get additional plays from the field that they need, and we add that to our backlog for the factory to kind of work on. So the factory has a backlog and that's also where you measure the pipeline. Are you getting pipeline or people adopting it, all of that? So that's the second piece. And then the third piece is what we call kind of, um, sales and marketing execution. So that's, you know, you can build all the plays you want and you can build all the win rooms you want, but if you're not driving change and doing the change management with your sales and marketing teams, nobody's gonna do anything.

And this is what we've been talking about. Um, and that's where you really think about, okay, do sale, can sales leaders coach on how to execute the play? Um, we train the sellers, um, on the play and how to use it and where to go, uh, how to give us feedback and how to suggest new plays. Um, all of those kinds of things, um, you know, um, we do in that kind of change management piece. Um, also, you know, you mentioned predictability, right? We help them make the place part of their account plans so that, you know, when these plays are in market and you have them in for a while, they become very predictable. You run this play, this is your average sales length. This is your close rate, put it in your account plan.

Now you have predictability in your account plan. So you kind of drive that as well. Um, and so you drive these kinds of three things. I know it's a bit processy, but it's a very agile process. And that's how you really kind of get sales and marketing to work together and also build in that agility. So that if something is not working, it doesn't take six months to a year to fix it, you get the feedback very quickly and you adjust very quickly in an agile way. And I think, you know, agility and putting these agile processes in place, what we found is absolutely critical. Otherwise you start to get disconnects and you don't not able to change fast enough. Um, and you know, it's funny. Um, sometimes the best play, and I've actually done this, like, you know, you know, one of our customers says, Hey, look, you know, we need to scale, um, selling this new product to this new set of customers.

You look at the performance of sellers in selling that new product and you see like these one or two sellers are killing it. Everyone else is doing okay. Sometimes all it is, is sitting down with those sellers, seeing exactly what they're doing. And by the way, they're making up their own stuff. They're not using anything off the shelf. They're making up their own emails. They're building their own collateral many times, all of that. And you're saying, let me just sit with you and learn everything you're doing to sell this thing. And then I'll use this kind of sales play system and build into a play so that all the other sellers are as good as you. Yeah. Right. And so like starting with that mentality of like outside in is so important.

Um, and having some type of agile process where sales and marketing are working together are so critical against the same set of target accounts. Yeah. I mean, I think if with all of that, I think I keep hearing it, it comes down to a people problem, not a technology problem. There's a process, but it's about getting people involved. So, you know, as an example, you know, those pods that you have where you work together, sales and marketing, we're coming up with those plays. That's the, you know, we train that where best case scenario, I actually, you know, align sales, marketing and CS because if say we want to run a play about, um, uh, you know, CFOs and financial services, whatever. Well, let's go get some existing customers who are CFOs and financial services.

Let's have a conversation with them in front of the sales team. So the sales team can put a face to it. So instead of getting a, uh, you know, one page product slick of Sally, the CFO, and she likes to save money, right? Like they're actually listening to Sally say, Hey, this is what my day in the life looks like. This is what it, you know, and so extract that information, then go craft messaging based on that, based on their priorities, based on how your solution aligns with it. Create a play. Maybe, just maybe create a customer advisory board where you give it back to them and they say, Hey, would you, is it, what do you think of this messaging? Would it resonate with somebody like you? Cool.

Execute that pay because now the reps are the ones learning and you're guiding them through the creation, the messaging. And then we give it the feedback loop from the customer and us. Then we execute and then we look at the data. Okay. What works? And if you do that just once a month, as far as us, even a singular play, pick a lane, right? Because that'll, that'll, that'll show the structure of how individual reps could do it moving forward. But if we do this as an aggregate with everybody, then the statistically that the numbers can get to a statistically relevant number to be able to look at and say that worked or that didn't work. Right. Split, I talk about split testing a lot, but as an individual rep, it's hard to get there with, with your activity as a team, you could get there pretty quick.

So that alignment right there is what absolutely has to happen. And I'm just curious why it doesn't more often. Yeah. I mean, look, like you make a great point. How do you get play ideas, right? Like what the plays you run, look at your best reps, talk to your freaking customers, you know? You know, and by the way, you made another great point, um, earlier, and by the way, your biggest opportunity is to sell maybe to your existing customers, right? Yup. Well, you know, we've run very successful plays in this whole sales play system just against existing customers, right? Um, because if you are actually, um, building great customer relationships and delivering great solutions for your customers, they will buy more, right?

Well, we, we have this, uh, we have this other concept called the earned growth rate, like the growth that you earn versus the growth that you have to buy. And the growth that you earn is the growth that you get because your existing customers are buying more from you or your new customers are buying from you because somebody else referred you to that, right? Versus, you know, buying, buying new business through kind of marketing and, you know, um, and, and spending money, which you have to do both. But obviously successful companies are really, you know, they, they earn their growth. That's why a company like Tesla doesn't spend any money in marketing. Right. Because every customer comes to earn growth.

Right. It's all referrals and it's all, you know, it's, it's all referrals and, and previous experiences where they've already, you know, there's people who buy, you know, have two, three Teslas in their house. So does that mean you have to, well, Tesla is a, definitely an interesting example, but in the sales and SaaS world, does that, I see a lot of things moving to PLG, right? Product-led, you know, product-led growth, getting it to the hands of the consumer so they can test it out and try it. And that aligns with my trend of seeing sales more like marketing, but also more like customer success to help educate them as opposed to close them. Um, so, you know, is that where we're headed, where it's like the majority of these products are, are going to be try it before you buy it type scenarios.

And we're going to start getting, and sales, like SDR, BDR is going to be the marketing piece of this that helps drive that awareness to get people to use this, to then see what's happening with the intent data, to then have an actual sales rep, really customer success rep, call them and saying, Hey, what's up? Let me show you how to do this better. Yeah, well, PLG is definitely here to stay and definitely going to grow. The challenge is, uh, PLG in the strict sense of, you know, the companies you think of as successful PLG companies, you know, it's hard to implement PLG in every type of SaaS company. Because it really depends on, you know, um, your product, like, is it, you know, does it, you know, does the end user have the ability to start using your product without having to get corporate approval?

Is it a product that doesn't require a lot of consideration, implementation when you get on and all that kind of stuff? However, your point is well taken where this, what PLG is doing is this conditioning, this try before you buy mentality, which even if you're not, um, a SaaS company, you know, um, you can still have that try before you buy or test, you know, or get a feel for the product online and digitally before you use it. Um, and it all goes back to that previous thing around customers want to do things themselves before they talk to a sales rep. What's interesting is what you see in PLG companies many times is, um, when a customer goes into the PLG product, the self-service product and starts using it, um, you know, you do see that there's still a value of somebody calling in.

And if it's a super complex product or technically complex or whatever, you know, you know, um, what I've seen is that, you know, when you actually call in, you can see accelerated growth versus, um, you know, a control that doesn't get called, you know, of people using your PLG product. However, what's interesting and you alluded to this is, you know, um, I was working with a company where initially we said, Hey, let's just, just test this out. You have, you have companies in your PLG channel. If we call a sub-second of them, can we get them to accelerate growth? So we had the sellers call in and we were like, Oh wow, this actually works. Like, so, you know, certain sub-segments of customers have complex needs.

They can't, they don't grow without help from a seller. Then you're like, wait a minute, why are the, why do we need a seller to call in? Right, exactly. I mean, these guys, these guys are already using the product. They're already excited. They just need help. That's true. So then, so then it's customer success. Yes. Or a specialist calling in and saying that our sellers, they're just like helping you, um, you know, better use the product for your needs to grow. Then you're like, Oh, wait a minute. Um, some of this stuff doesn't even have to be done in the U.S. It can be done in a low cost location. So then when you move some of the low cost, then you're like, wait a minute, like we're seeing consistent themes from people in the PLG channel on where we're helping them.

Let's build that in the product. And so now, now you're like, now you have a nice, you know, um, a positive cycle going on where you're, you have people in your PLG channel. You're constantly testing, you know, calling into them. You're seeing whether you can accelerate their growth versus the control. You're hearing consistent themes. Then you're like, you're, and then you're building those into the product either as a function or a feature or as just content or education. Um, so that they can self-service and grow. And, and that's kind of how these PLG companies are creating this kind of very positive, um, growth and lowering the acquisition costs. But you do see, you know, I, I will be clear that you do see, you still need enterprise sellers, but their role is very different.

Right. Um, they're going after the big whales. They're also, you know, when they're in sales cycles, they'll sometimes leverage the PLG channel in selling cycles in the other direction. So there's all kinds of, you know, the enterprise sellers don't go away, but it's a very different dynamic now. Yeah. And actually, I think this is, uh, I've been talking about this a little bit with my positioning on the evolution, right? Not the rip and replace, right? Because technology, yeah, it could replace a lot of stuff, but the evolution, for instance, we, in the sales world, you know, SaaS world of predictable revenue of you have segmentation of roles. You know, the historical thing, again, is you go SDR, BDR, and then you move to an AE and then see what happens.

But that dip off is pretty hard, right? Taking an SDR whose main job is to make phone calls or send emails to get like a fraction of a second of somebody to then flip it right over and then flip that and then have them turn into closers is brutal. So with marketing, still with the, almost the ABM side, I'm sorry, with SDR is still really, in my opinion, being more ABM than they are sales. You roll those up into marketing, you beat, you know, have them cut their teeth on phone and email and all this stuff. But then instead of promoting them to an AE, you actually promote them to a CS or an AM. Totally. You could, yes. Then they help the client figure out problems, they have use cases to pull from and stories, they understand the real value of what they're doing with the client, and then they get promoted to field sales, AE, whatever.

That's pretty interesting. I haven't thought about that. That's interesting. Yeah, because I've always thought about, like, if you're a BDR, your life goal is to become a, eventually become a field seller. But it is interesting to say, like, look, you should spend time on customer success, given what you've learned, and then those skills become very critical when you become a seller. Massively critical. Because now you have empathy. Now you know. You're not just reading it off of your product sheet. You're not just listening to your VP of sales tell you the value of this stuff or on your website. You're seeing in real life, this client only uses 10% of our stuff, but man, that 10% is rock solid and they need it.

So why am I selling all this other shit when I'm out there? You know what I mean? Why don't I call in and just talk about that thing? Because that's obviously a very critical piece of what we do here. So I just think that right now with what's happening with all the tech and everything, I'm begging reps to double down on business acumen, curiosity, emotional intelligence. Because, you know, you could argue that technology can do that stuff too, but at least when, as long as there's a human on the other end of that phone, those skills are going to become exponentially more important than how to write a good email sequence and, you know, how to do quote unquote personalization at scale, which I always think is bullshit.

No, and the thing, just look at history, right? Like PLG, right? When that kind of concept came into play with SaaS, you know, those companies were like, we don't need sellers. It's also PLG. And, you know, and there are certain companies, I won't name names, who said like, we only have one seller or we only have two sellers or whatever. And, and, and we're growing like crazy in the PLG channel. What we found now that PLG is kind of mature, every PLG company has now built an enterprise sales team. Why is that? Because, you know, the only way you're going to go from, you know, having a bunch of developers, let's say, in your PLG channel to actually, you know, going, you know, you may have a bunch of developers from a single company in PLG channel.

But to really penetrate that account and have a enterprise deal with them, you need that seller in there. And so now the issue is really around the ways of working and the operating model between your PLG channel, your customer success, your BDRs, your sellers, your marketers, it all comes down to that. And what's, what we're finding that's interesting is, you know, we, we live in a world and I don't think it's changed where, you know, board members and CEOs and CFOs are saying, they're constantly looking at kind of sales productivity, right? And, and, and, and they're constantly saying, is how, where is my sales productivity trending over time? And, you know, what we found is that, you know, very few companies can sustainably increase sales productivity over time or go to market productivity, let's include sales and marketing consistently over time.

But the ones that do are just killing it, right? What are they doing? They are excellent and understanding which customer is served by whom, right? You know, you, you know, like which customer needs to be served by the enterprise seller, which one needs to be served with by an inside seller or a virtual seller, which one, you know, is served by the PLG channel, et cetera, et cetera. And what are the rules and ways of working? Because, you know, now if you're constantly kind of reinventing how you serve customers based on their needs and you kind of realize that, okay, not every customer needs to be served by, you know, expensive sellers. Like my PLG example, or there's a lot of buyers who don't, who are perfectly happy talking to an inside seller and buying big deals because digital can, can address a lot of the issues that they previously would talk to a seller about.

Once you get more methodical and analytical about that, that's how you really drive productivity over time. Yeah. There's a whole host of other levers that we've seen that drives productivity, but that's like one tactical example. I love it. Yeah. I mean, I think efficiencies, efficiencies are good up to a point, but again, there's not a technical, there's not a technical, there's technical answers to ensure to help coordinate, but it's a people problem. It's, you know, and I actually think it makes, I think this remote world we live in makes it an easier thing to deal with because historically, if I was in this field, you know, sales, I was out and about doing my thing, driving all over the place, meeting with customers, marketing was up on the fifth floor.

I was on the fourth floor and whatever now. Well, thank you for putting marketing on the higher floor. I don't think that's true, but okay. Yeah. Anyway, right. But I think that's the key is just to, when I say business acumen, I think marketing plays an incredibly important role in helping a sales professional become more, have more business acumen so they can have more. Definitely. Business-oriented conversations and less script-oriented, let me ask you a bunch of questions and then flip you over. So, yeah, we still got a long word. Oh, no, no. And Jeff and John, vice versa is true as well. And we talked about it, right? Like, marketers need to learn from sellers. Yeah. Right? And need to learn from the top sellers.

What's, why are they top sellers? Yep. Because frequently at most companies, they're not using any of the marketing material. Oh, they're not. They're ruling their own and they've figured it out on their own and they're succeeding on their own. And so, you know, marketers need to learn from that and then scale that. Mm-hmm. From my previous conversation on sales plays. Yep. And need to be talking to customers and talking to successful sellers and all of that. So, it kind of works in both directions. Totally. And that's why, you know, last point I'll make is, you know, that's why I wish that if I were to ever start another company that had, on-site, you know, people coming into the office, I would have marketing and sales on the same floor.

And marketing would be on one chair, the next chair would be sales, the next chair would be marketing. Because I actually want marketing, all that wonderful messaging that marketing comes up with. Listen to what it sounds like when a rep actually says that. Okay? And then tell me you still think your messaging is awesome. Because it's not. That 60-second elevator pitch that you gave me, the guy hung up on me after four seconds of me starting the conversation. So, thank you very much for that. And there'll be that real, true, genuine appreciation of, holy shit, whoa, that's, yikes, that's what that sounds like. I didn't think it's, like, when we were whiteboarding this in our little marketing room, it didn't sound like that.

But, man, when you put this over the phone, I hear it and it sounds horrible. So, that to me is just the empathy for each role about what they do, how much effort was put in, might give a different perspective from each about how to work together. Yeah. And that's why, you know, when I talk about sales play system, like the reason why that works is it's built to be agile so that you can very quickly get feedback. The time from getting feedback from the field to when that feedback is implemented into the sales play is very fast. And you need that speed and agility because you will never get it right the first 10 times. It takes a continual iteration and feedback from the front line and from, you know, digital and et cetera until you get it right.

Yeah. And then it changes again. Exactly. Then it changes again. And it wouldn't be, you know what, look, it wouldn't be fun if it didn't constantly change on us, right? It'd get boring. Right. So, I... Well, the sales and marketing would not be as much fun as it is. Yeah. So, let's wrap this up. We're coming up on the hour here, Rishi. So, let's tell everybody where they can find out more information about what you're doing, where, you know, they can find out just more info on you, everything else. Yeah. So, my first name is Rishi, R-I-S-H-I. Last name is D-A-V-E, Dave. You can find me and definitely look me up on Twitter, R-I-S-H-I-P-D-A-V-E, as well as on LinkedIn. And you can check me out on the Bain.com website.

I have a big profile there. Just, you know, go to Google and type in my name and B-A-I-N, Bain, and you can see my full kind of profile and all the content that I've produced and all of that. And so, there is some great content, you know, the sales play system content, there's PLG content. You know, there's this topic on how to sales and marketing, how can they work better together, all of that. Love it. Awesome, man. Well, I really appreciate you coming on board here and sharing some of your insights and knowledge. And I hope the audience enjoyed it and got some value out of it as much as I did. So, thanks for coming on. Well, I enjoyed it. So, you and I had a good time. There you go. That's usually what matters.

If we have a good time, then at least a few people out there listening might be having a good time with it, too. So, I appreciate that. All right, everybody. Well, look, thanks for joining, as always. And like I always say, go out there and make somebody smile today. Because no matter how bad you think your day is going or how bad you think it went, if you make somebody smile today, you know you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now. So, thank you all very much. And I'll see you on the other side. Thank you so much for your time today and listening to the podcast. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. With your support and our incredible guests, we're one of the top sales podcasts in the industry with over a million downloads.

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