Guest

• Matt Widmyer

More Data vs. More Deals – Part 2

• Part #2 Episode Page

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Kevin Dieny: Hello, welcome to the Close The Loop podcast. I’m your host, Kevin Dieny And today we’re going to be talking about more deals versus more data. And this is one of those topics that came from internal discussions. There’s actually a whiteboard here with data and deals written on it and arrows going to the left or to the right over which one is the better use of time, better use of resources, a better priority to spend on it.

[00:00:32] Kevin Dieny: It’s also one of those fun and interesting topics that, can be a little controversial. Out there. A lot of, I think sales organizations will be like, why would we care about data at the absence of deals or some, you know, operations people going, well, you can get deals, but if we don’t learn anything from it, we’re, we’re not able to help.

[00:00:51] Kevin Dieny: We’re not able to do anything, you know, to contribute. We’re not able to help the sales team and in a meaningful way that we would provide. Sales may counter and be like, well, how does data is going to translate into value for us? So this is a pretty back and forth one. So we decided to bring this into a debate, sort of a discussion around, you know, the counterpoints, the pros and cons of emphasizing data and emphasizing, um, the sales need to, you know, Not gather so much information.

[00:01:26] Kevin Dieny: So just to ground, this we’re not talking about, we’re not going to be talking about how organizations value data. We are going to be focusing on how the sales organization, the sales team within your business, the sales leader, the sales reps, anyone who’s, you know, selling to a customer or a patient, a consumer, anything like that.

[00:01:50] Kevin Dieny: The value that they have on and the way they look at data versus maybe the rest of the organization. Sometimes this clashes with sales and marketing, sometimes it clashes with sales and operations. It can be a clash it could be a clash everywhere. This is a pretty hot topic. So, uh, to bring this into the debates sphere, I am joined by Matt Widmyer He’s also my colleague here. So welcome Matt.

[00:02:16] Matt Widmyer: Hey Kevin. Hey guys. Thanks for having me back.

[00:02:18] Matt Widmyer: Good to be back here.

[00:02:21] Kevin Dieny: So just to open this up a little bit, Matt, um, we are, when we say data versus deals, we’re kind of like, right. Like we’re talking a little bit more about intuitive-driven selling versus data-driven selling. That’s closer to what we’d like to talk about if we’re talking. Okay. would would I trade data for more deals?

[00:02:45] Kevin Dieny: I think everyone would say yes, right? Matt.

[00:02:47] Matt Widmyer: Yeah absolutely yeah.

[00:02:49] Kevin Dieny: It’s not exactly like, uh, it’s not even a debate that, so what we’re really talking about is, okay, well, does data is data getting in the way of deals?

[00:02:59] Kevin Dieny: So Matt, what do you think of the whole data versus deals debate?

[00:03:04] Matt Widmyer: It makes me laugh every time. Uh, I think data, data is one of those things where it’s tricky to talk about, because if you don’t understand it, you’re going to, it seems like it’s pretty useless. And sometimes it is, but you don’t really know whether it’s gonna be useful or not until you, until you, uh, measure It.

[00:03:20] Matt Widmyer: Right. So you might end up with a lot of extra fields or a lot of extra data points that you don’t need, but you only know you don’t need them because you analyze it and everything. So you don’t know if you will need it at some point, but it’s, um, the data itself is we’re playing with mathematics, the intuition part, that’s a psychological piece.

[00:03:40] Matt Widmyer: Right? So if you’re, if you’re a football team and you want to try to get a first down and you have the ball it’s fourth and one. And the data says that in this situation, um, you probably won’t, you know, get the first down based on your team’s previous track record. But in this game also, you have the brand new quarterback in the, maybe the backup that replaced the starter.

[00:04:04] Matt Widmyer: There’s a few other things going on. The first half of the game went really well. Um, in situations like that, I say, if I’m the head coach, I say, we go for it. So there’s a time and a place for both. So neither one of them should be completely dismissed, but I feel like if you’re going, uh, they, they, they go hand in hand, but it always, usually does go back to the data.

[00:04:26] Matt Widmyer: And if you had enough data on maybe on that brand new quarterback, maybe you could then assess that a little bit better, but. um You’re not going to, unless you actually have data to rely on, you’re not, you’re just going to have to make a gut call.

[00:04:41] Kevin Dieny: Yeah, you make a really good point. I, I think that it’s really important to note that we’re not necessarily looking at this, like, should we be a hundred percent intuition or a hundred percent data? I think both extremes are bad, right? Data is only going to tell you the information that’s necessarily happened in the past that’s data is sort of in itself, historical it’s.

[00:05:05] Kevin Dieny: It’s what it is, is information that you’ve gathered. That has happened in the past, right. It’s telling you what has occurred, what has happened, maybe what’s happening right this minute, um, to, to go into the future is requiring a forecast, right? To see your impact on it requires you to measure, okay, well, I touched this or I did this, and then, you know, data’s going to tell you, okay.

[00:05:26] Kevin Dieny: After the fact what happened, the problem with data, a lot of times is like, look at the look at the financial investors, right? Like we have all this amazing plethora of data historically down to the milisecond Around the trades that have happened, uh, on the stock exchange, but there’s no one that is able to perfectly predict where every trade is going, right.

[00:05:46] Kevin Dieny: Where every market price is going to be. In fact, they have a hard time predicting even more than a few days or weeks or months ahead of time like data. So in a sense, data has its limitations and the intuition side has some pretty stark Limitations as well. I think, like you said, like the intuition of the coach and the football example is based on their experience, it’s based on their data in their own head.

[00:06:13] Kevin Dieny: It’s based on a lot of skill sets and stuff they’re evaluating in the moment to make that decision. Anyway, it’s not like they’re, you know, flipping a coin and going with that, like pure chance or anything they’re basing intuition is based a little bit on data. So that’s how do you see the difference between intuition and data-driven?

[00:06:34] Matt Widmyer: Yeah, I mean, I think, um, I think one is using logic and only logic and the other one’s using emotion. Right? And the data is using logic and the, um, the, the gut calls and the other piece intuition is using the emotional thing.

[00:06:52] Matt Widmyer: I don’t need data to tell me that if it’s snowing outside to, to wear uh A jacket. I’m probably gonna just do that. Right. Um, think that like, you know, I, I’m not dumb enough to, to walk outside without my t-shirt on. Right. Because I can look outside and see that it’s snowing. So I think that a situation where somebody doesn’t want to use the data, they, they think that.

[00:07:19] Matt Widmyer: They have the answer already. They don’t need to bother looking at, it or in a lot of situations based on my personal experience. I think that, either they don’t understand the data or they don’t want to take the time to understand the data. They just want to move, move, move, and go. So, um, fair. Right. If you’re held to the fire with like a, you know, hard quota or something like that.

[00:07:41] Matt Widmyer: But at the same time, uh, It’s funny too. Cause you know, you, you know, I was in marketing with you for a while and I was on the sales team for a while. Now I’m kind of in between, I mean, I’m technically on the sales team, but I’m sitting now in between the marketing and the sales team and the marketing, the marketing teams in general, I think wants to analyze everything and they want data points with everything And sales.

[00:08:05] Matt Widmyer: People just want to go, go, go. And I feel like. Um I’m sitting in the middle. I feel like I’m, you know, um sitting there with like two parents arguing with each other and I’m just the kid sitting on the couch watching TV. But, um, so that’s, that’s right. Sometimes I feel like I don’t even have the right to chime in, but, um, I feel like if we, if we want to marry the best of both worlds, I think that we do, um, If if it, it depends on so many different variables, it’s not, um, against not one or the other it’s it’s, um, really going to be based on, okay.

[00:08:46] Matt Widmyer: Is this person’s track record, you know, or do they, when it comes to making a call like this, um, do we go down the road? There’s they’re suggesting we go down or do we sit here and stop and, um, You know, take a look at things. It’s, it’s just a tricky, it’s a tricky one. I always compare it to running. Right.

[00:09:07] Matt Widmyer: So if your move move, move, you’re going really fast. At some point you have to slow down and take a breath or take a drink of water. If you keep going, going, going. And you’re not really confidently knowing where you’re going. Um, you’re only doing tactical work. You’re not doing any of the strategic stuff.

[00:09:24] Matt Widmyer: Right. So it’s, um, a lot of salespeople are okay. with You know, minimum strategy, as long as there’s things are always moving and there’s always action. There’s always volume. Um, in high quantity things, marketing’s usually the department that wants to add the quality into the. quantity So it’s interesting though, but you know, I mean, we’ve how many fields have we created that we, you know, it’s and it does make it hard in honesty.

[00:09:52] Matt Widmyer: And in fairness, it does make it harder for some salespeople to be like, to find the right fields. They need to input stuff. Like you could only configure a CRM to a certain degree where it’s like, oh man, I don’t even know where to put the person’s email or the first name. Cause there’s like so many other fields in here.

[00:10:08] Matt Widmyer: So. It is exciting to have all the data points, but it is, you know, it is one of those things where it’s like, okay, what are we over measuring here? Or what?

[00:10:20] Kevin Dieny: Yeah, yeah. So you, you just hit on a lot of things, right? So it, and to some degree, like you’re, you’re putting it, you’re putting a lot of this stuff out there in balance. Like the, the need from the sales side of the, of any organization is to generate revenue as quickly as possible.

[00:10:37] Kevin Dieny: And to do that, you know, given the resources and stuff they have, which to them, a lot of times is time Like anything, that’s a relationship driven, right? You’re talking to other people. Sometimes that takes time. It’s like an unavoidable thing. Sometimes it’s just like one call close Someone called in.

[00:10:53] Kevin Dieny: They wanted a service done and that’s it. So there’s not really much relationship building there, but there is a little bit, there is, there is some, there is like maybe a conversation on a phone call that has to happen. And so there might be data points. around What happened on that call? You know, where did that call come from?

[00:11:08] Kevin Dieny: Where are the good calls coming from? Where the bad calls coming from, uh, who on the team is doing well with, you know, converting customer or converting callers into customers who isn’t doing as well? How could we improve that? The, lot of those, a lot of that need to, okay, we’re doing well. I’d like to do better to me.

[00:11:25] Kevin Dieny: It comes from like a data point of view, but there are a lot of things that don’t necessarily. Come from data. So the side, the sales sides, like asking the question, right? Like, well, it’s difficult to quantify the sales process, so why should we bother?

[00:11:46] Matt Widmyer: Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, that’s, that’s the thing, right? I mean, you could sit here and map out the stages and all that stuff. And, um, at the end of the day, if they aren’t being used and, um, it doesn’t really matter. So it’s usually the same, uh, if that’s why the inputs have to be very straight forward, right.

[00:12:05] Matt Widmyer: Because if they aren’t straightforward, you’re going to have bogus inputs in those fields. And then you’re not going to be able to. Um, you’re not able to feel good about using the data the data’s not going to make it’s not even going to be reliable anyway. So. If you’re, but at the same time, that should be managed by somebody, right?

[00:12:25] Matt Widmyer: And whether it’s a sales manager or marketing manager, or a combination of both or sales ops or something, depending on the size of your company, um, those, the way data gets inputted should be closely managed. If there’s things that should be. in a CRM that are not in the CRM, you need to get them in this CRM otherwise.

[00:12:45] Matt Widmyer: Yeah. It is going to be very hard to be able to use data, to be able to make business decisions. Right. We’ve seen that on both on both sides. Really?

[00:12:55] Kevin Dieny: Yeah. So we prepared a lot of like things to go back and forth on this on. But is there anything in, in what you were looking at Matt when researching this topic, that for you is a tough nut to crack like something maybe on either side of the debate that you know, too much data’s impeding sales.

[00:13:15] Kevin Dieny: We should be a little bit more intuitive driven. Or on the other side, look, data’s king, you know, intuitive driven, keeps and impacts, other teams from seeing stuff. We should be gathering lots of information. How does it has anything stuck out to you there?

[00:13:33] Matt Widmyer: Well, you want to start You always want to start with gathering the information that you absolutely need. And then once you get that piece down, you want to be able to, okay, let’s start introducing. Maybe we start asking this one question capturing this one data point Ooh That’s interesting. Let’s start asking this question. So I think it’s, it’s a general, very generally speaking, sitting in the middle as the innocent child, again, with your parents arguing, I would say that. Its this requires a great deal of patience from both sales and marketing, because, um, how, and this is a fair question for any marketer or salesperson listening to this, how much time have you actually spent trying to understand the nuts and the bolts of the other side?

[00:14:23] Matt Widmyer: Right. Um, based on my experience. It it it doesn’t, there’s not a whole lot of that going on. How often do marketer’s sit with salespeople and listen to demos? Listen to phone calls. It doesn’t happen very often and it’s because they have their own stuff to do. It’s it’s fair. Right. But at the same time, you aren’t seeing salespeople sit back behind you.

[00:14:47] Matt Widmyer: Kevin, I’ve never seen a sales person sit behind you and kind of watch your day to day and kind of look at the stuff that you go through or. Even if you put data in front of them, they won’t even know where to start and understand it. A lot of them, you know, a lot of them are not super Excel savvy or anything like that, but, um, you know, something that just like the, the gray, even the groundbreaking stuff, how can rely rely on something if it’s not, if you’re we’re not confident enough of the.

[00:15:14] Matt Widmyer: inputs Or, you know, how can we rely enough to be able to change anything if we aren’t even sure, absolutely sure about what’s currently happening. Right. So I think that, you know, it is, um, I guess from your experience as a marketer, I mean, what, what is the thing that, that, um, I guess what is your. ask From a sales person that truly wants to understand, or what is it, I guess, what is your pitch to a sales person?

[00:15:42] Matt Widmyer: Why it might make sense for them to truly understand everything that you go through to crunch the data, because it’s a big piece of it, of this whole thing.

[00:15:51] Kevin Dieny: Yeah. Well, so there’s this concept of like data maturity and that is the absolute first step, I think, because in the way that the data maturity model works is.

[00:16:04] Kevin Dieny: uh The first question is usually, okay, what is the, what does the data say? And it’s basically like, well, we did $50,000 in sales. Okay. The next maturity level. to to want to know more is when it’s like, well, okay. That that’s what’s happened, but I want to know a little bit better about what caused that to happen?

[00:16:28] Kevin Dieny: I want to look in the past and see what were the sources of the, let’s say the sales. And it’s like, well, they’re broken into products that could be broken into different reps, different people, maybe different times. There’s lots of ways to break that down. And then the next level of maturity is okay, now that we know where things have come from.

[00:16:49] Kevin Dieny: We know maybe what campaigns it came from. We know where we spent money and we know where has come out of that. So you kind of know your inputs and outputs. That is the third level of maturity, which is like called like a forecasting or prediction, because then you’re like, well, cool. If we do the same thing, if we hold everything constant, it, we kind of assume it will repeat itself again.

[00:17:10] Kevin Dieny: And then the last level of maturity is when it’s like, okay, we know what’s happening. We know where it’s coming. from And we can make predictions about what’s going to happen, but let’s put some marketing budget over here. Let’s do a sales initiative over here. Let’s run a campaign. Let’s trim costs here because they’re not working and let’s put that much budget here, or let’s just trim costs at all to get a leaner, you know, end result.

[00:17:38] Kevin Dieny: And when you do things like that, that’s the final level of maturity when you’re measuring your impact, when you make changes. Right? So. Connecting with another organization and other team at the company is sort of first assessing, okay, where’s the maturity at And sometimes it’s like, look, I just want to know a number.

[00:17:56] Kevin Dieny: And sometimes it’s, I want to know the sources of the number other times. It’s okay. We, you know, how are we looking in the months ahead or what are we planning in the future? And other times it’s okay, what can we do? to Change this, you know, based on the historical information, I think that this will See how you see how, there’s different maturity levels there.

[00:18:17] Kevin Dieny: So on the marketing side, at least the way I look at it is at least the way I approached it is okay. What’s the maturity level first. And then second, I got to know what their goals are. So what do I mean if I don’t know what your goals are? It’s kind of hard for me to even begin the conversation, like, like, oh yeah.

[00:18:38] Kevin Dieny: I, I, I know I can help you cause I don’t really didn’t know what, what, what helping you means. So that’s usually like that and that’s, that seems like such a simple question, a simple thing that everyone should just inherently know sales, just one sales, but it’s a little more than that. Right? Matt.

[00:18:54] Matt Widmyer: Yeah, it totally is. I mean, it’s sales wants sales.

[00:18:57] Matt Widmyer: That’s great. But how, how do we repeat and scale? this Um, if you’re not looking at data, which forecasts, if you’re doing any kind of a forecasting, you need to look at data and those inputs need to be very accurate in order to be able to somewhat even ballpark how your next month is going to be. But if you’re not, um, if you’re just kind of living by the seat, you know, flying by the seat of your pants, as they say, like it’s, it’s kind of, every month is a crap shoot.

[00:19:25] Matt Widmyer: Uh, this guy might hit his numbers, but he might not. I, I don’t really know, but I guess if. If um God willing, you know, this month, maybe not next month. And it’s just kind of like a guessing game every single month. If you’re using the data, you can turn it into a little bit more of like, okay, now I’m technically managing sales, right?

[00:19:45] Matt Widmyer: Because I’m, I, I’m not gonna, um, throw it up. I’m not throwing up a bunch of spaghetti up against the wall to see what sticks, um, now knowing that, Hey, the data has shown. us That, uh, we need, if you want more sales, next month, you need to be prospecting more this month. Right? So even if this month is going great, cool.

[00:20:09] Matt Widmyer: Let’s, let’s keep going, keep doing what you’re doing this month, but next month is you’re looking a little bit dry in your pipeline. So, um, you should start planning into that because if you start planning next month, next month, you’re probably gonna miss your numbers,

[00:20:24] Kevin Dieny: Yeah, that I think one really cool thing you’re describing there is. Is when you break down what it really takes to make a sale for your company. So if you, if you’re looking at like, well to sell, I need to collect payment information. Okay. To get that I need to have my rep or my person either on the phone or in person, the customer or the patient, or whoever needs to know what they’re getting in, or have received the service that we’ve provided.

[00:20:49] Kevin Dieny: Okay. How do we get there? And if you just kind of plot your way from. The sale backwards. You can see all these little points and you’re like, okay, these have to happen. Maybe not necessarily in the, in the order, but these are maybe some pertinent things that have to occur and that’s called the pipeline The way I understand it.

[00:21:07] Kevin Dieny: Or the journey customer journey or something like that. Those points along the path are not always in your control Okay. So the more in control they are, the more of an influence you have, right. If you’re like, well, I don’t have any control over this then there’s really not a whole lot. You can do, but let’s say the marketing team is the one in control of that.

[00:21:28] Kevin Dieny: Right? So, or if you don’t have a marketing team an agency, if you don’t have an agency, okay. Someone is in charge of some, you know, putting on a marketing hat. So that’s their job. Someone’s got to own each point along that journey. And so. If we’re not, if we’re not, you know, going along that journey to see what can help, it’s not, it may not be a hundred percent clear how data’s going to help your business at all.

[00:21:51] Kevin Dieny: Right. And it’s like, well, look it selling is a over selling as an in-person over the phone, human, to human interaction. What does data have to do with any of that? So, uh, well, okay. If you know, if to make a sale, you need to have a phone call first. Okay. How do we get more phone calls? Because if you, if you’re, if you’re closing, let’s say 20% of phone calls or 30% of phone calls that are coming in.

[00:22:13] Kevin Dieny: Great. Will that stay the same. If we add 20 more calls to your thing to your pipeline. Okay, great. It will. So how do we get the 20 more? Okay. That may not be a hundred percent of selling activity that you’re, that we’re talking about here, but that’s how teams, that’s how you, that’s the very simple way to describe how a team would work with sales, you know, like to, to improve the selling, using data and.

[00:22:38] Kevin Dieny: Some of that one of the big things. One of the things I was going to ask you about was data gathering. Okay. So this is where it leads to. Right. So like great. It seems like we’ve made a strong case for gathering data. Okay. But does data gathering get in the way of selling,

[00:22:56] Matt Widmyer: Um, it shouldn’t, but it does.

[00:23:02] Matt Widmyer: I mean, it’s try having a conversation with a sales person who’s struggling that month and saying, Hey, um, I need you to, uh, we, we added a couple more data points. It doesn’t look like you’re filling this one out. Um It doesn’t, it’s not going to happen because it’s there, it’s already too late to have that conversation.

[00:23:22] Matt Widmyer: Right. Um, any bit of extra time and salespeople are kind of known for not making the best use of every minute of every day, you know, it’s exhausting, right? So they take breaks and they walk around and they, you know, they just kind of need to recharge their batteries a little more often. Right. They deal with a lot of rejection.

[00:23:41] Matt Widmyer: That’s why, um, It does, and it is, uh, It’s when marketing meets with salespeople, or if, if these internal conversations are happening, you got to bring value to the table and you have to make it. Every person every person walking out of that meeting should have their minds blown. Um, that’s why you probably don’t want to have it daily or even weekly, or sometimes even monthly.

[00:24:07] Matt Widmyer: You want to have, Hey, we’ve gathered enough data. This is what’s happening. This is what needs to change. If, if you want to, because. Assuming you’ve now gotten to a point where you understand their goals. If you keep operating on the path you’re currently on, you’re not going to make your goals. That’s the message they need to hear.

[00:24:27] Matt Widmyer: Right? And if you want to reach, and surpass your goals, then these changes are critical to make. So if you’re, if you’re a sales, if I’m a sales person, You don’t have to say it like that. But if, if I’m a sales person, my both of my ears are open and I’m listening too right. And taking notes and making those changes because I want to hit my numbers.

[00:24:51] Matt Widmyer: I want to keep a roof over my head.

[00:24:53] Kevin Dieny: Yeah, a lot of this is communication capability, but at the same time, there’s a, so yeah, there’s empathy involved. But what we’re also talking about is like generally viewed as like the greater good, like the idea that success for the company is probably the penultimate goal. So the company has some goal or thing that they have to achieve.

[00:25:18] Kevin Dieny: to stay alive And that’s everyone that, that affects everyone. And then there’s, you know, marketing is parsing to do what selling teams are parsing to do support, um, technicians, um, doctors, staff, uh, accounting. There’s a lot of different functional things that are happening in the business, and they all have like a specialized.

[00:25:39] Kevin Dieny: role Right. So everyone’s doing their part, like a, like a football team. Everyone’s doing a different role in the team to make sure the whole team is effective. Now sometimes like a person, a person who isn’t necessarily holding the key, carrying their weight, I think is the right way to describe this. A team or position a role is not performing as well.

[00:26:00] Kevin Dieny: It can impact the whole. team In some cases, the team can kind of carry the weight like this person’s job or role is not as great. We made plays like on a football team. We made plays that don’t incorporate them as much. Cause it’s not our strongest part. You know, we’re gonna utilize our strengths. Right.

[00:26:18] Kevin Dieny: And so it gets a little bit, it gets a little hard, let’s say for a team, like, let’s say, let’s go, I’ll go switch on the other side for a second here. On the marketing side, there may be data points that if I had them, I could do my job a lot better. And that’s important to me, maybe important to the whole marketing team on the other side, on the sales selling side, right on the sales team side, those data points.

[00:26:47] Kevin Dieny: Those maybe two or three more data points are not just two or three more. There, there are two or three more on top of, let’s say a mountain of other things I’m having to do. Uh, maybe a backlog of stuff I am behind anyway on. So how am I going to, you know, I have more important priorities than that? So it, the, the tug of war.

[00:27:06] Kevin Dieny: Can happen because on the marketing side, it’s look, this is critical and essential and what I need to do our job better on the selling side it’s well, look, there’s no way, you know, like you’re, if you’re going to get data at all, it’s going to be minimal and then it’s not going to be as important to you.

[00:27:20] Kevin Dieny: So why even ask us to do it and that tug of war goes back and forth. So there is an aspect here where the top down the management comes into play. So what do do, what thoughts do you have on how. important All of this is for like the culture and management of a company to decide how much they want to be intuitive-driven or data-driven.

[00:27:43] Matt Widmyer: Yeah, it’s, it’s tricky, right? The example you just gave it’s, um, you know, Hey, I need this, I need this data point to do my job better. Um, that’s great for you, but I don’t think, I mean, really right at that point, it is, it is about you, but full circle, right? It’s going to end up being. About them. Right. They just don’t.

[00:28:09] Matt Widmyer: I think that the short-term is like, okay, I don’t care. I don’t want, you know, it’s just more noise to me basically, if I’m a salesperson. So if I’m a sales person, what do, I mean, I guess I’m going to turn this question back over to you because if I’m a sales person, why do I care? If Kevin can do his job better By introducing this new field or whatever it is, right.

[00:28:31] Matt Widmyer: Why, why should I, why should I care? And it, of course, it’s going to depend on what the data point is or whatever, but like what, what are you going to do now that you have this new data point? Kevin?

[00:28:42] Kevin Dieny: Yeah. So there’s two things that are gonna happen, right? So the first one is we lose the battle because we’re not able to explain to them the value that they would get out of it, the organization would get out of it, their management, their leadership, it doesn’t, it doesn’t hit that point where it becomes a necessity and adopted, and that that’s one outcome.

[00:29:02] Kevin Dieny: And that, that can be a failure on our, on any teams. part To not fully understand, let’s say what the data is, how it contributes to the organization. That could be, you know, the onus of it is, is primarily, I think the responsibility is on the marketing team to really explain, okay, here’s why this is important.

[00:29:17] Kevin Dieny: Here’s why this is going to help us. This is how it’s going to help you help us. There’s a lot of things. That’s why I’m being kind of general here, but there’s a lot of ways that data that it helps marketing ends up helping sales. And that could be. like More more leads, more, uh, quality. That could be a better return.

[00:29:36] Kevin Dieny: That could be faster deals that could be higher margin. There’s a lot there that it could also just be us seeing whether we’re spending our budget. Right. And so, you know, that helps us not to overwhelm them with, with crud, with time-wasting stuff. Now, the other side, the other, the other direction it goes is it is adopted.

[00:29:57] Kevin Dieny: So they’ve agreed. Okay. We’ll take on these other data points. Now, those, like you mentioned before, those better be valuable. Those better be interesting. Those better be contributing. Cause you know, if I think in three or six months down the line, if we say, Hey, you know, we ended up gathering enough of this information, but it actually doesn’t help or improve what we do at that point.

[00:30:18] Kevin Dieny: You should cut them out, should drop them out. It’s like they’re not needed anymore. If they do end up having a deriving value You may owe it to them to tell everyone here is what we’ve received and gotten out of this. There you might also, you might also get to the point where they’re now really happy and excited because they’re seeing the difference

[00:30:45] Kevin Dieny: if they are really excited about what they are now seeing in their pipeline and some result, they may be the first ones to come over and say, Hey, this is this something’s changed. Some things better. Uh, most often you only hear about the bad stuff. You’re only going to hear, oh man, things are terrible.

[00:31:03] Kevin Dieny: Now things are not working out. Um, it’s just because it’s more salient, it’s just, you know, more recency bias. There’s more it’s, it’s when you’re used to rejection all the time, but you get like strings of them and you know where they’re coming from. Oh man, these are all marketing ones. Like, man, they’re just terrible.

[00:31:20] Kevin Dieny: That anecdotal feedback can can come over. The data can say, Hey, these are actually better, but an individual’s premise could say, no, these are terrible. So sometimes at the end of the day, data kind of wins arguments data can prove or show or be the, uh, the voice that is not biased in a sense. It can be the thing that.

[00:31:47] Kevin Dieny: Proves to everyone. No, this is working. This is needed. And one, sometimes it takes one battle at a time. I, I think when you try to fight too many things at once, you’re going to lose from either side.

[00:32:03] Kevin Dieny: That’s all for part one, stay tuned next week for the thrilling conclusion of the episode. Thanks for listening. And we hope you’re getting a lot out of each and every episode that we do.