Mike Geller, Rolly Keenan, and Brandi Starr: CMO to CRO: The revenue takeover by the next generation executive

Transcript

[0:00:42] DA: As your company’s chief marketing officer, you’re responsible for your organization’s growth and reputation but you don’t have enough control. You’re not the only one who notices this but you’re the only one in the perfect position to do something about it. In their new book, CMO to CRO, industry experts, Brandi Starr, Mike Geller, and Rolly Keenan show you how to discover how to reach your potential and stand out as more than a marketing professional and how to bring revenue to the forefront, making every team’s number one objective a seamless customer experience. The book shows you how to create consistency by reorganizing your business, following the customer, prioritizing revenue, and using customer experience technology to succeed where your competition fails. It’s a revolutionary approach to not only unite the silos but position you as an innovative leader and finally uncovering what customer experience is really about, revenue growth. Hey Listeners, my name is Drew Applebaum and I’m excited to be here today with Rolly Keenan and Brandi Star, author of CMO to CRO: The revenue takeover by the next generation executive. Rolly, Brandi, thank you for joining, welcome to The Author Hour Podcast.

[0:01:47] BS: Thanks so much for having us, Drew.

[0:01:48] RK: Yeah, thanks for having us.

[0:01:49] DA: Let’s kick it off, can you give us a brief rundown of your professional background respectively?

[0:01:56] BS: I can start. I am a career marketer, I’ve been in marketing now 21 years, totally dating myself and my sort of claim to fame is when I started in marketing, I was designing marketing collateral for a fax machine and now, I’ve got teams who I don’t think have ever even used a fax machine and so, what that really means is, I have been a part of the digital marketing boom from its inception and the introduction of technology into marketing and being able to see firsthand how technology has shaped my career and how it has shaped the industry. That is a huge part, the majority of my life has been spent focused and understanding how marketing works and how technology influences that.

[0:02:46] RK: For me, Brandi’s got such a beautiful linear career path, I don’t have – mine is more like, “What’s he doing? What happened?” My background started in pro-amateur sports and volleyball to be specific and I switched to business development in technology and software. In that first decade or that decade of work, I got my MBA from Northwestern Kellogg School of Management in Chicago and went into management consulting as a lot of people do from there and I focused on marketing and market research. My MBA was in marketing, I did a leadership development work as well, and then starting in around 2017 is when I focused my work on Martech, which is kind of a combination of everything I’ve done before and that’s what brought me to Tegrita and Martech now, which points a little bit to our book is evolving into Revtech so if there’s one thing that’s been consistent, once I got out of the sports world, it’s my focus on revenue.

[0:03:56] DA: Now, why was now the time to share the stories in the book? Was there something inspiring to everybody, was there an “aha moment” or is there something as simple as you had a lot of time on your hands because of COVID.

[0:04:11] BS: Really, this actually started as a light hearted conversation during one of our executive leadership meetings. We were talking about the challenges that we see between Rolly and myself and Mike Geller, the third author and our CTO. We were talking about everything that we see in the industry the challenges that our clients face and how there’s a lot of similarities between the issues with customer experience and technology and all these things and we were like, “You know, between the three of us, we’ve got the collective knowledge and experience to solve these problems.” I think it was Rolly who joked like, “Yeah, we should write a book and put it all in there” we all “ha-ha-ha” like we actually have time to write a book. Then, the more that we talked about it, the more that it became a situation of not, “Do we have enough time to write a book?” but “We have to write this book and we have to actually tell the story.”

[0:05:12] DA: Now, when you three came together and say, “Okay, we are going to write this book, we are going to tell the story.” A lot of times, you’ll get together and say, “Okay, this is what it’s going to be about and this is how we’re going to outline it” but during the writing process and sometimes just by digging deeper into some of the subjects, you’ll come to some major breakthroughs and learnings. Did you have any of these major breakthroughs or learnings during your writing journey?

[0:05:34] BS: When we initially started on the book, we were really focused on Rev tech or revenue technology and the role that technology plays because that’s the space that we operate in, we live and breathe technology day to day. As we started getting into the brainstorming and outlining of what this was going to look like, we had an “aha moment” around all the reasons why you can’t focus just on the technology and we started to walk it backwards from there and that’s where we realized that it’s a shift in leadership and the mentality of leadership that needed to change and needed to really line up behind the technology and you know, wrap its arms around the technology. That really started to shift for me at least, where we needed to focus our message and not just on the technology highlighting how that fits in but really focusing from the top down in how we completely unearth the way that it’s been done in order to be able to do it better.

[0:06:39] RK: Yeah, I would add to that. My experience when you start having these meetings to write the book and we’re all talking about a particular chapter or a topic, what I think the learning for me during that process was, we knew that we had something to say but I don’t think I appreciate it as much at the beginning as I did as we got into it how much individually we were contributing from our own professional perspective. Me, more of a revenue side, Brandi, more marketing and Mike, more tech. We were working out details of where we’re going in a particular part of the book. I think I was learning so much from Brandi and Mike along the way and understanding like, “Okay, I know this part of it, I know the management part of it or the organizational development part of this” but it’s interesting how that intertwines with what Mike is saying around tech and what Brandi’s talking about and marketing operations or strategy. For me, that was a big learning and I think what’s happening pretty early on when we started writing the book.

[0:07:54] DA: Now, when you sat down, you said, “Okay, we’re going to write the book” and you actually start writing in your mind, who are you writing this book for? Is it in your mind for a current CMOs or can any marketer have takeaways here?

[0:08:06] BS: We were writing the book for current CMO’s and marketing leaders in mind first because these are the people that are in the role and are most positioned to really have a true change take place, to really take charge and be the leader of a significant change within not only their organization but within the space as well. However, as we get into it, this really does become a roadmap for anyone who wants to one day be a marketing leader. The marketer that is very new in their career can read this book and really adapt or adopt some of the thoughts and processes and approaches that we share in the book as they are growing in their career and so that when they one day become the head of marketing or the CMO that they really already have this experience of implementing as much of our process as they can. It’s written for the current CMO but definitely, any marketer who has aspirations of being a CMO can get a lot from this book.

[0:09:15] RK: Yeah, I’ll just add to that, we also, somewhere in the middle of writing became pretty aware that you know, there’s probably going to be a lot of entrepreneurs and CEO’s that are going to see this and say, “I want my marketer or my head of sales or someone in the organization to take a look at this.” Our primary was always the CMO and then as we got into it, we could definitely see situations where someone who is trying to change the way that they run their business, the way that they attack revenue growth, this could fall into a CEO’s world or an entrepreneur’s world.

[0:10:01] DA: Now, in the book, all three of you talk about the world of customer experience. Can you tell us, you know, what exactly is customer experience and what does it actually mean to brands currently?

[0:10:11] BS: I can start there and I’ll give a really brief definition and then I think Rolly does a better job at really diving into this, but customer experience is really every interaction that your prospects and customers have with your organization. It’s not just related to a, lot of times people focus on user experience and you know, just the journeys. It’s literally every single interaction from digital to in-person, to how they interact with your sales and support, et cetera.

[0:10:44] RK: Yeah, it’s kind of a big answer, I’ll do my best to kind of not ramble on too long here. The CX became an overlay, let’s throw some CX, a line right through the middle of two or three areas, there’s some CX teams that are going to keep the customer in mind and work with retail, work with operations, work with inside sales and they don’t have their own sort of business but they sort of almost like an HR partner group that kind of floats in and out of their – out of each function. What we are trying to unearth here for everyone is sure, CX is a bit of a concept and not so much a function. We’re saying, to all these functions of which you might normally put this overlay in, we’re saying, this is what the CRO should be basically handling, this should all be aligned and together under one umbrella versus, “Hey, we should try to get retail to pay attention a little bit to what this other function is doing and we’ll do that through this sort of like glue group that we’re going to put together.” That’s where we’re getting at with this is CX, customer experience has just been kind of thrown in there without the difficult work of, “Hey, we need to kind of rethink the way we’re organized here and not just throw in some corporate internal consultants that will jump into the middle of things and make sure that functions understand that there’s a customer perspective.”

[0:12:37] DA: Now, how big of a disconnect is this issue and is it a big company problem, a small company problem, is this limited to any one industry?

[0:12:47] BS: I’d honestly say it’s an all-company problem. I do think that there are some organizations that do better than others at really weaving in the function of customer experience into everything. For the most part, it really is large, small across all industries, B2B, B2C, it is a challenge in that a lot of companies really try to put customer experience as this separate thing that can be contained so to speak, when in reality, it touches everything. It is a very common issue across all types of organizations.

[0:13:30] RK: Yeah, what’s interesting is I think that a lot of opinions from professionals and marketing and sales would probably answer it as you know, more of a big company problem, teach your first small business to pay attention to their customers, that kind of thing. What’s interesting is, if you look at startups and you look at a private equity fund that kind of goes in and grabs a whole other company and it’s going to attempt to turn it around and sell it later, they basically put in big company thinking into their – these small companies. They come in and say, “Here’s the head of sales, I’ve worked, these guys done, work at these companies, has a head of marketing, they’ve done work at a bunch of similar companies” and they basically divided it up as if it’s a big company. There’s a history, a momentum around how everybody thinks about these customer facing functions and so it really has no designation in terms of how big or small the company is that has this issue.

[0:14:42] DA: Are there companies out there that you want to name, just to give people perspective, who are really doing it right currently in terms of customer experience?

[0:14:57] RK: It’s hard, I was like, I know when Brandi went off, she’s like me in thinking, I don’t really know of any but I would say that the source of our book is a bit of the answer, which is, “Not really” and yet, with all of our clients and all of our past professional experience, we know of a lot of companies that are doing one, two or three things well and you know part of the motivation to get together and put this book together was we actually know what it would take to make this happen because we’ve seen it all in parts and so we would love to combine all of these practices of different clients we had and that would be someone that’s doing it right. I think we would always have examples of will they do this part right, you know, the dev part right. Of course we reference some of those stories in the book as well but I actually don’t – can’t think of one right now that does a great job.

[0:16:01] DA: That’s totally fair. Now, in the book you say that transactions that generate revenue are largely driven by customer experience and that a positive customer experience turn prospects into customers and customers into repeat buyers, so I ask you this: Is this the end of the traditional sales department?

[0:16:22] BS: Not at all. Sales is a part of customer experience. If you think about and I’ll just use a common consumer example, you walk into a big box retailer, you’re looking at a particular product, you see something that you may like, this happens a lot in car sales and then you meet and talk to the sales person and they totally rub you the wrong way or give you a poor experience. You no longer want to do business with that brand even though you may have come in the door planning to make a purchase. The traditional sales function very much is a key part of customer experience because as I said before, it really is every single touch point and the key is all of these things have to be aligned. You can’t have an amazing web experience, great nurture campaigns and then go to this hardcore sleazy used car sales person or sales team that’s going to try to say anything and be unethical, like that’s a disconnected experience. Likewise, sometimes I see the opposite. I see some people who have horrible marketing on the front end but actually have a really great sales team on the backend who cares, who listens, who’s really focused on the customer needs and that’s the key. The experience needs to be consistent and effective end to end and even after they have made a purchase that’s kind of the other part – point where customer experience often falls off as like, “Okay, we got your money now. We don’t have to keep treating you nicely.” Your customer marketing and advocacy efforts need to also stay consistent and be effective.

[0:18:09] RK: Yeah and there is even a way to look at what Brandi is saying and to say that you can almost say that yeah, it’s the end the sales as we know it in some ways because quite often, even some of the biggest were, I think some big companies that people would recognize as big software companies, “Oh they’re so successful” they still very much silo their sales team and they expect sort of the same old things from them that we’ve seen in sales for decades versus something that is very much under the umbrella of a customer facing function, a modern front office. A customer experience basically structure and where’s digital involved, there’s ongoing, in software, ongoing renewal and all of this is taken into account from that sales, that traditional sales team who now isn’t saying, “Gosh, I wish marketing would stop what they’re doing. They’re getting in my way” or “I don’t care if they renew, I just got to hit my number.” In some ways, it is an end to it but Brandi’s point of you still need them and they’re still very critical and the things that someone in sales that is very talented and gifted at doing, those elements are still necessary but no longer would they be in isolation from other things.

[0:19:47] DA: Now, let’s take this and move it to the higher level and to the executive level. What would the benefits and especially the transition look like if a CMO moved to a CRO or a hybrid role with marketing effectively leading the charge for company revenue?

[0:20:04] RK: The way that you worded it, I would pick apart a little bit, which is our thinking is that from an experience and skill and kind of talent framework of what CMO, some of the best CMO’s look like, they would be the right candidate for a CRO but I wouldn’t say that now marketing is leading the revenue. I would say that talent and person is now taking on a broader role that’s basically handling all revenue-related functions that include marketing, sales, customer support, things like that. That kind of transition takes time and it takes a series of I guess you could call events or projects or efforts that go in sequence to set it up so that when that CMO does make a transition into the role, they’ve already laid all the groundwork from the tech groundwork to some organizational shifting, taking control of teams that are spread out and separated into functions now bringing those together. By the time the CMO as an example, it doesn’t have to be the CMO but if the CMO transitions to the CRO and becomes that, there’s already been three, four business cycles of work of slowly basically building that foundation for them to make that transition.

[0:21:45] DA: Realistically, it is not an overnight fix. It is not just a title change and then everything is good but after the transition happens, after the groundwork is done, what really are the results a company can expect to see when the revenue takeover has happened?

[0:21:58] BS: If I were to summarize that, I would say cohesiveness and velocity of growth. There’s a level of cohesiveness within all functions that touch revenue that exists once you’ve gone through this process in where everything just works like a well-oiled machine and as a result of that, you are able to take advantage of the velocity to be able to really accelerate revenue growth.

[0:22:36] RK: To be really specific or like grounded down to simple stories of the overall velocity of revenue and cohesiveness is right now, if someone in sales is supposed to have a deal size of a certain amount, so they’re supposed to average a million dollars for each contract that they sell in an enterprise software and I’ll just keep sticking to that industry for this and it’s just – they just are half of that. You know, $500,000 contracts that’s all they can do. When you’re running basically a revenue function and versus separated into support and marketing and sales, you know now, the idea here is that that sales person doesn’t throw their hands up and go, “I can’t get a bigger deal size so I am going to maybe do some things that aren’t great for the company and great for the client and inflate cost or add on things that the client doesn’t need” or whatever but instead of doing that now at a CRO with function, now that person is going to say, “Well, you know this is all of us, so let me go talk to more upstream here and where marketing is basically in touch with these prospects before I am.” “How are we marketing to them because they seem to not be thinking this is a million-dollar contract?” and so this becomes like a team work around like this is all of our issue, our revenue issue not just a sales issue and not just a marketing issue or some other function. In a snapshot of what to expect from this kind of change, it’s those moments that are so historically common that we all can tell stories about them from past work and companies that we worked with, that’s just common. That’s just how it goes and this is a way to change that story.

[0:24:52] DA: Now, in terms of reading the book itself, do you suggest that readers come in and they really follow the chapter structure and build a foundation or is this something where they can open it up and really learn about a lot about one specific chapter without building that foundation and having that build up?

[0:25:11] BS: This is definitely a book that you want to read cover to cover. It’s organized in three sections. The first section is really the problem and this is the section where we really show how much we empathize with our audience and we talk a lot of the challenges that we see and our readers should really see themselves and their organizations in that first section and we lay a lot of foundational groundwork there. Section two is really where we give everyone hope and we paint the picture of the future and so, the second section is really focused on if we’re able to solve all of the problems, here is how glorious the future can be and then section three is the how and this is “How do we get there?” and that’s where we walk through our four steps. I mean those four steps are meant to be sequential and done over a period of time. You know, there are some chapters that you can definitely get some value out of by just popping open the book and reading, but in order to really get the full essence and the full message, you would want to start right from page one and continue on to the end.

[0:26:27] DA: What is the end goal of the book for readers? What takeaways do you hope they’ll have and what changes do you hope they’ll bring to their company?

[0:26:35] BS: I can start by giving what I would want to see as the immediate change and then Rolly, I’ll let you elaborate on the bigger picture. My goal for readers in the immediate, so you get to the end of the book and what you do next, there should be some ideas and steps that you take away from that book that you can implement in your organization as quickly as possible and I won’t jump into all of the steps. You’ve got to get in there and read for that but there are some takeaways that we articulate throughout the book that can give you some measurable growth in the short term and so my goal would be that reading the book would spark a commitment to make a change, to do what you can right out of the gate and then really make the organizational change to move the needle within your team and then it grows outside of the marketing team into the organization as a whole.

[0:27:38] RK: Yeah, my big picture goal would be to attract and motivate leaders and future leaders to do what just is not very often done, which is you know, to solve a very big issue that everyone has I am going to really – you go outside of my comfort zone, have some courage. I am going to change the way that this is played and I say that I hope I don’t sound too cliché about it because I actually think it’s a very big deal and very difficult to do because everything around you supports the old way of doing things. You know, to get a new head of sales, you get the search firm that has all of the best sales leaders on speed dial and you know that is separate from the marketing person who works at the competitor, I am just going to go take them and you know everything is structurally in business, it in itself creates the problem that we’re trying to solve in this book and to show people how to solve. I’m hoping that the book itself will just reach those motivated courageous leaders that really want to make a move into solving the revenue problem.

[0:29:11] DA: Well Rolly and Brandi, I just want to say that we just touched on the surface of the book here but writing a book that really educates on the importance of customer experience and just the power of the marketing department and the CMO role is no small feat, so congratulations on publishing your book.

[0:29:27] BS: Thank you.

[0:29:28] RK: Thanks.

[0:29:28] DA: This has been a pleasure and I’m really excited for people to check out the book. Everyone, the book is called, CMO to CRO, and you could find it on Amazon. Rolly, Brandi, besides checking out the book, where can people connect with you?

[0:29:39] BS: You could always visit the website at revenuetakeover.com. We are both on LinkedIn and our main company website is tegrita.com, which is Tegrita.

[0:29:51] DA: Well, I want to thank both of you for coming on the podcast today, and best of luck with your new book.

[0:29:56] BS: Thank you so much, we appreciate it.

[0:29:58] RK: Thank you.

[0:29:59] DA: Thanks for joining us for this episode of Author Hour. You can get Mike Geller, Rolly Keenan, and Brandi Starr’s new book, CMO to CRO, on Amazon. Also, you can also find a transcript of this episode and all of our other episodes on our website at authorhour.co. For more Author Hour, subscribe to this podcast on your favorite subscription service. Thank you for joining us, we’ll see you next time. Same place, different author.