What A Chief Revenue Officer Focuses On To Drive Growth
Tim Fitzpatrick
MSP & B2B Professional Service Firm Marketing Consultant/Advisor | Fractional CMO | Build and manage your marketing engine to get where you want to go faster. | Remove Your Revenue Roadblocks
Welcome to the Rialto Marketing podcast. Today's episode is a revenue acceleration series interview where we talk to seven figure B2B professional service firm owners that are actively trying to grow their business and get to the next level. We talk about the good, the bad and the ugly so that you can learn from their experience.
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What A Chief Revenue Officer Focuses On To Drive Growth
Tim Fitzpatrick
Welcome to the Rialto Marketing podcast. Today's episode is a Revenue Acceleration Series interview, where we interview seven-figure B2B professional service firm owners and executives who are actively trying to grow the business and get to the next level. We talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly so that you can learn from their experience. Hi, I'm Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we believe you must remove your revenue roadblocks if you want to accelerate growth, and marketing shouldn't be difficult. Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in today. I am super excited to have Mike Rhea from Intelligent Technical Solutions with me. Mike, welcome. Thanks for being here.
Mike Rhea
Yeah. Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. I'm excited to dig into this, man. So really quickly, I'm going to ask you a few rapid fire questions. You ready to jump in with both feet?
Mike Rhea
Let's do it.
Tim Fitzpatrick
So what do you do? How long have you been doing it?
Mike Rhea
Yeah. So I guess the easy answer is I work in sales. I've been doing that my whole life, my whole adult life, so 18 years. But I currently work as the Chief Revenue Officer, and I've been doing that role for about six months now at this current company.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Cool. Love it. So you're all about driving growth and driving sales.
Mike Rhea
Love it. Yeah, I actually love sales, ironically.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Cool. What's... You've been doing this 18 years. What's one of the most important lessons you've learned?
Mike Rhea
I think for me, always be learning, always be growing. I remember having somebody tell me, When you're young, you think you're going to hit this end goal? You're going to hit the end point and everything is going to be good the rest of your life. You're going to hit that number. And that person told me, Hey, it never ends. There's always something new to go after. And once I accepted that, it became more of a journey. So I think always be There's always a way to get better.
Tim Fitzpatrick
I had somebody I respected a lot early in my professional career who said something that always stuck with me. And he was like, Look, the day I stop learning is the day I start dying. And I was just like, man, I don't know. It's just for people that are-
Mike Rhea
It's either growing or it's dying. You're never just there. We're a part of nature, so why would we be any different?
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. That's a fantastic analogy. I like that one. In 18 years, you've seen ups, you've seen downs. Do you have any mantra or something motivational you say to yourself or share with your team to push through those roadblocks and hurdles?
Mike Rhea
I think for myself, when I'm going through a tough time, it's easy to be excited and positive when things are going well.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah.
Mike Rhea
I think when they're going tough, a lot of times I'll say to myself, I'm overcoming to become. I'm overcoming this to become something better. And so that's something that always stuck with me. And then in football, and I think even Dwayne Johnson says something to this effect, but no one will outwork me today. Because that's what I can control, is my output and my work ethic. And so those are the two things that go along in the back of my mind throughout the day.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I really like that. Because if you think about especially in sales and marketing, then there's so many things beyond our control that impact the outcome. And it's so easy to get attached to the outcome. But I think we're so much better off if we can let go of the outcome and focus on what we can control that may have an impact on reaching that outcome.
Mike Rhea
For sure. And also understand that we control more than we realize we control. And some people play victim to the It's like, oh, that was out of my control. And it's like, well, if you would have asked the right questions or weren't afraid to ask the question that you were thinking about, that was in your control and you chose not to do it. And so you have to be careful with that. But there are things that are out of our control for sure. That's why it's always funny to me when I hear people... I'm actively hiring right now, and I hear people like, Oh, I have a background in this, but I could do sales. I'm good at talking to people. Sales isn't hard. You just got to go through rejection. That's the least of the issues. When people say sales isn't hard, you just haven't sat through a real sales call. You're sat through a transactional event, not a strategic event.
Tim Fitzpatrick
I mean, that's a great example there, too, of talking about there are a lot of things within our control. It's easy to overlook those. But if we don't get the outcome we want, going back and looking at, okay, what could I have done better that may have helped me reach this outcome? And focusing on those things, right?
Mike Rhea
We can list some of them out, right? You're prepping. Did you prep before the meeting? Did you bring in the right resource for the meeting? Did you ask the right questions? What was your expectation? Did you expect them to move forward with you, or did you expect them to go with somebody else at the last minute? Did you expect them to say, I want a discount? Did you address pricing at the right time? Did you talk about the things the client cares about, or did you talk about the things you think they cared about? There's so many things that you can control that we often overlook.
Lessons from 10Xing in 5 Years
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I love it. So Mike, the last company you work with was Antiva. Yeah?
Mike Rhea
Correct. Yeah.
Tim Fitzpatrick
And while you were there, they 10Xed in five years. That's a lot in a short period of time.
Mike Rhea
That's not all because of me.
Tim Fitzpatrick
I get it. I get it. Being along for that type of ride is pretty significant. I don't care how small the company was when they started. 10Xing in five years is a lot, period. What are some of your top two, three learning lessons from that experience.
Mike Rhea
Yeah, and just to get some context, I was in a VP of Sales role. I was part of a sales leadership team. We didn't have a chief revenue officer at the time. We had a great executive team. That's still a great company. But when I say 10X, we were 80 employees and 18 million in annual revenue. In five years, we went to 800 employees and 180 million in annual revenue. And that was through organic sales, through mergers and acquisitions, which is big in the MSP world when you're private equity-backed, and client attention. So all three factors or pillars had to play a role here. I was leading our organic sales effort. So I think top two or three lessons that I learned in that process, number one has to be leadership. I had to grow and mature as a leader along the way. I couldn't always be... I was at a phase when I first started where I wanted to be liked. I wanted my team to like me and rally around me. And I had to learn through just development that good leadership is it's okay to be their boss, right? And it's okay to be a leader. That's what people want. They want somebody to to look up to and follow and somebody to make decisions when they don't know what to do. I think part of leadership is accountability, holding people accountable. I think part of leadership is having the right standards and culture, again, right? Being their boss and not their friend, and then making sure you have the right people in the right seats and being able to evaluate that. Outside of leadership, I think just having the right strategies for growth was something that I learned along the way. There's a blueprint to building a successful sales and growing it, and there's some time to build it up, but once it gets going, it's going to keep going. And part of that strategy for growth is organic sales. Like I mentioned before, so we had sales and marketing alignment, different channels that would drive revenue, and then proper alignment with sales and leadership within the company. There wasn't a conflict there. I think M&A, mergers and acquisitions, was another part, and then client retention. You can bring them in, but if you can't keep them, it's a never-end-earn. Yeah.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah.
Mike Rhea
Probably the last thing, if I give you a third point, would just be agility. We were able to adapt during COVID. Covid was a time where, if you look at it, all of our clients were going into the office, and seemingly overnight, they all went remote, and we had to be able to adjust within days to provide that support. And the companies who were agile enough to do that did really well. We did really well during COVID, during those years, especially on the new sales side. And so I think that was important. I think being able to adjust, our first couple of acquisitions were rough, and then we had some really good ones, and then maybe there were some acquisitions that were bigger than what we were ready for at the time. And so you have to understand and be able to pivot and adjust based on some of the moves that you make. And then also just the evolution of the sales team. That's part of being agile and adjusting which target markets you're going after based on what makes sense for your company. And so those are some of the big things that learned during that process.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. I think agility and flexibility is a big one, right? I mean, because you... Man, when you're growing that fast, I mean, as the Person leading the sales effort, man, they're acquiring, you're getting new sales people coming in that you got to acclimate, and you've got... When you're growing that fast, it's hard to see some of the things that are coming down the pipe because they're coming so fast. And you can't see them until they're right there. And you have to have the ability to, okay, we didn't see this coming, but we need to adapt and react to this. So Man, being flexible and agile, super, super important in that type of environment.
Mike Rhea
When it comes up to, right? Because we had, I believe it was 26 % organic sales year over year, right? Growth in organic sales year over year, which is pretty good. And we talk to operations and they would say, we have a backlog. And I said, well, why don't you staff up? And they would say, well, is this an uptick in sales? And is it going to go back down and steady? And there's always these conversations, right? And so being able to be agile enough to know, hey, this is coming, this is not coming. And then also proper forecasting is a part of that as well. But there's a lot of things that go into play in a business. A lot of considerations to make when you're growing at a fast pace.
Driving Revenue Growth for a New Organization
Tim Fitzpatrick
Now, you had mentioned you recently joined ITS as the Chief Revenue Officer. I'm curious, and I think a lot of people can learn from this. What are your top priorities for driving revenue growth as you come into a new organization? How do you approach that?
Mike Rhea
Well, you got to think, right? Some of this is going to be overlapped from what I learned at my previous company. And so number one thing for me was getting the right people in the right seats. So when you look at a lot of larger MSPs, from my experience, a lot of them are large because of mergers and acquisitions. And so they're a large company made up of a bunch of smaller companies. And so that's great. That's beautiful because those smaller companies typically have the white glove service and they have the relationships. And that's a beautiful thing. But when you come together as a big company, you have to also operate at scale. You have to have the right mentality And so sometimes you don't have the right people in the right roles. And so we've had instances where we've had people who are outside sales executives who are better fit as an SDR or a BDR. They were really good at booking appointments, but they weren't able to run a full sales cycle. But moving them into that role, we've seen a 5X in productivity with them in just three, four months. And they're happier. They always have a smile on their face because they're in a role that they're succeeding in, and it's the right role for them where they are now. And now we have a good as a starting point, and we can help them evolve into the role that they want to get to, whether it's management, outside sales, whatever that role is, we can now work with them to help them grow professionally. I'm always like, Hey, I want to help you grow personally, professionally, and financially. I think something else that I'm focused on is training. A lot of, especially in the MSP world, there's not a lot of training that's given to sales reps, and it's so focused on what is our offering and what is our differentiators. We're doing a lot of training on when When we have that first discovery call with you, what are the four outcomes that we want? Well, one, we want to help. First, we want to identify, is there a problem that we can solve? Do you actually have a problem we can solve? If the answer is yes, do you, as the business owner, recognize that it's a problem? Because I may say, Hey, you have a bunch of security vulnerabilities. And you may say, Yeah, okay, if we get hit with ransomware, we'll just go to pen and paper. I don't really care. Well, then you have a problem that I can solve, but you don't see it as a problem.
Tim Fitzpatrick
领英推荐
Exactly.
Mike Rhea
We really work together here. Then we're looking at, Okay, so you have a problem we can solve. You recognize it's a problem. Are you committed to solving it? You recognize it's a problem. Is there a commitment to solving that? Or is staying with your current provider still an option? Where that problem is not being solved. Then the last thing we look at is what is your timeline to solving that problem? Because if the timeline has no sense of urgency, then we don't need to have a sense of urgency on our end until it gets to a point where you're ready to start to make some decisions. Training salespeople on what is the outcome that you're trying to get out of every meeting, I think is important. Helping the sales reps understand what does the buyer care about? What do they care about? Not what I care about. I may do the proposal and really want to talk about these really cool features of differentiators that I think we have. But if they don't care about that, it's irrelevant. They don't know, what solution do you have to the problems that I listed out? And then I think part of training is just call reviews. We do a lot of film session in sports. We do a lot of call reviews so we can say, Hey, if you could do this over, what did you learn? So you don't repeat it. Teaching them not to rush discovery and get too quick into pitching our solution, right? Continue to ask the right questions. And I think just enough training and recurring training is something that's really important.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Are you guys doing that training in-house, or in some cases, are you bringing in outside support to do that?
Mike Rhea
Both. Yeah, both. So we have outside trainers who can give us an objective view of what we're doing. But what happens is you can also run into overtraining. So you get all this training and then reps are so focused on the training that they're not flowing really well.
Tim Fitzpatrick
And so they're robotic.
Mike Rhea
Exactly. And they're more worried about what the trainer is going to say than what the client needs, right? Because am I doing this the right way? And so the training is less about what to do and more about how to think. If I understand how to think, then I know the end result that I'm trying to get to, and it doesn't matter what I say. It's more of like, I have different ways of asking the same question to get to the same end result, and that's where my personality, my strengths, things like that come in. And so then in-house, we'll do some training just to bring it all together and practically apply it to what we do on a day day basis.
Tim Fitzpatrick
There's a couple of things I want to pull out here because this is freaking great. So you just said one of the big things with training is teaching your salespeople how to think. Okay. And what comes to my mind with that is that you can give them a methodology or a framework or a system to follow. But when they know how to think, they don't need a specific script that they say every single freaking time. It's I'm going to walk people through the framework, but it's going to be natural because I know how to take people through it.
Mike Rhea
Yeah. And that's a I think that's the difference between amateurs and professionals. When people say, Oh, salespeople make a lot of money, it's not because they close business. That's an end result of what they do. They make a lot of money because they think a certain way. I can sit down with a business owner and have a strategic, like-minded conversation and ask questions and see myself as just as valuable as you in this interaction, and that I can add value to you as a business owner, and that really I'm the expert here. If you knew how to do this, you wouldn't have engaged me in the in the first place. So let me ask the tough questions, the ones that everyone else is afraid to ask. Let me consult you. Let me educate you. Let me challenge you. But if I can think a certain way, that will elevate my sales skills. But if I'm dependent on a script, a script, that means once somebody asked me a question that's outside of the script or the objections that I have listed out, I start stuttering. I don't know what to do. And that keeps you... That's a lid on your growth. So teaching people I got to think. It takes more time. It's more of an investment. But once they get it, the sky's the limit.
Tim Fitzpatrick
As much as we would love the easy button of a script, when you're selling something as complex and complicated as IT, I don't believe you can do that effectively with the script.
Mike Rhea
Look, if you could, I didn't mean to cut you off.
Tim Fitzpatrick
No, no, no, totally okay.
Mike Rhea
If that be solved with the script and where AI is going right now, I could create an AI bot that uses that script that interacts with the client. So why do I need the salesperson?
Tim Fitzpatrick
Right, exactly.
Mike Rhea
So when salespeople can't be replaced by AI, why is that? Because there's a value that you bring that AI hasn't got to, at least not yet. And it's asking the right questions. And people say, well, what are you going to say next? I have no idea. What I'm going to say next is completely dependent on what the client says right now.
Understanding a Problem as Part of a Sales Process
Tim Fitzpatrick
I also want to jump back because you talked about these steps of understanding the problem. Does the potential client recognize that that's a problem? Are they committed to solving it? And what's their timeline to solve it? Is that the basic framework that you guys follow, to try and work through as you go through the sales process? Or where does that come into play in your process?
Mike Rhea
Yeah, so that's the framework for our first discovery call, right? Okay, got it. And look, it's not... I can give away the secret sauce because you still got to know what questions to ask.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, exactly.
Mike Rhea
But when those MSPs are having that conversation, here's how it typically goes. Okay, hey, tell us a little bit about yourself, your company, and what are some of the challenges that you're having? And they say, oh, it's slow response times, and we feel like we're not getting what we're paying for, and we're not really sure what cybersecurity looks like, and we feel like they should be telling us what we need to do with technology and not us asking them questions. Okay, great. So let me tell you a little bit about who we are and what we do. And look, we can solve all that, and here's how we solve it. And they go into pitch mode. But with what that client just said to me, there's so many questions I could ask. It's what I need to understand is, okay, so you have this challenge. How does that impact the business? And what's the ripple effect of that impact? And who else is voicing their frustration with that impact? And why haven't you done anything yet about it? How long has this been going? There's so many questions I can ask. Just to identify the problem, we haven't even gotten to, are you committed to solving it?
Tim Fitzpatrick
Right.
Mike Rhea
So many times you get to the end of a sales process and the reps are like, well, they didn't do anything. They stayed with their current provider. Or here's a good one. I'm forecasting this deal. Okay. Why are they making a decision? Well, they have to make a decision. They have so many security issues, and they're just not happy with their current provider. But it's like, no, the sales rep is emotional here. He's telling me that they have to make a decision because I think they have to make a decision. No, what evidence has the client given you that they are going to make a decision? Is staying with their current provider an option? I don't know. Did you ask? What's the delta between what we're charging and what they're paying today? Do they understand is the problem big enough that it's worth the delta? Because here's a good point. I'll pay a dollar for an aspirin when I have a headache, but I'll give my entire life's income away to get rid of a brain tumor. So the size of the problem determines how much I'm willing... The size of the problem, how I see the size of the problem, not the sales rep, how the client sees the size of the problem will determine how much they're willing to spend to solve it. So we have to help them realize and tell us how big the problem is by asking the right questions.
Tim Fitzpatrick
And your questions are just guiding them through this entire process.
Mike Rhea
That asker one was good. I just thought that.
How to Build a Sales Team
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, on your feet. I mean, I'm totally impressed. So I know having a sales function is a huge focus in the MSP space, but many of them struggle with it. How do you go about building a sales team? And what What metrics do you track? How do you run? We already talked about how you run that first sales call a little bit, but we can certainly dig into that more. But just can you walk us through some of your thoughts on that? How do I build? What are important metrics?
Mike Rhea
I think it depends on where your company is at. A lot of MSPs are owner-led sales companies, or they get a little bit bigger and they have a small team, maybe five reps or less, something like that. So it really depends. And then as you get bigger, the things that you're looking at and how you build that sales organization change. But if I were starting at the beginning level, when I came to my previous company, they had one rep when I got hired there, and we had to build out the sales team. Then through some acquisitions, we got more salespeople. Then we had to hire salespeople. If I was going to start from the beginning and say, I'm not going to be owner-led. I want to build out a sales team. The first thing I'm looking at is, I need hunters. The first mentality is, are they competitive? Are they hunters? Those are people I'm looking for. I, quite frankly, didn't care. Matter of fact, my top two producers didn't have an MSP background. They came from a payroll company. I think it was a paycheck or ADP or something. But they were still used to prospecting and hitting doors that they had work ethic. So I can teach you our services. I can teach you this, but I can't teach work ethic. So the first thing I'd look at is, do I have somebody who has a hunter's mentality? And hunter doesn't mean aggressive. Hunter means that they're consistently out there looking for business. And so that would be the first thing. And then I would be tracking and making sure we create a culture of excellence, a high performing performance based, is probably a better way to say that, or performance based sales team. And I would be tracking metrics around how many dials were made that week. And I can hear it already. Oh, cold calling is dead. Nobody answers the phone. Well, if that's the case, then why is my team, right? Why are they all booking two, three appointments a week from just phone calls? Why do we have an SDR team that only makes phone calls? They're not doing email sequences, right? People do answer the phone, but you got to get... There's a strategy behind that. But the phone calls do work, okay? That doesn't mean you avoid the email sequences. It doesn't mean you avoid LinkedIn and all that stuff. But that's where I would start. When we break it down into lists, we have a list of people that we've talked to in the past who know who we are, but it wasn't the right time, and we prospect them. We have a list of people that we've marketed to, but we've never met with. That's a warmer list. They've heard of our company. Then we have a list of ideal, the dream 100 or whale 100 that we'd love to bring in that's more strategic. You have these lists, and the sole purpose of that first call or that prospecting is to sell the meeting. It's not to sell them or why they should come to our company or why they have a problem. It's to just say, Hey, if you take a call with me, that call is going to be so good that it's going to be worth your time. There's value in taking the meeting, so sell the meeting. Then in that first call, I'm going to ask you some good questions to figure out if there's a problem that we can solve. The metrics we're looking at is like, how many dials did you make and the number of appointments booked? How many referral partner conversations did you have? Because the best lead is a warm referral. How many appointments did you book from that? We're looking at how much MRR did you close? What's the conversion ratio from one deal stage to the next? Because if there's a huge drop off, that's where we need to focus our training. What's your close rate? We know right now that 60% of clients stay with their current provider, and 37 of them, for us, close, which means we only lose to a competitor 3% of the time. So when people say, who's your biggest competitor? I don't really care because I don't lose to my competitor. I lose to them not doing anything. And so we're looking at closing ratios. We're measuring proper forecasting. So instead of you telling me why this deal, that this deal is going to close because they got to make a change, I'm going to ask the real questions to figure out if we can forecast this or if it's just the goal. And then we also track how clean is your CRM data? Because you can only be speed to market, you need good data. So that's how I would start. And then it would start to grow and we start to have more opportunities, then I would look at how do we align sales and marketing, and where's marketing bringing in that revenue? And then as we get a little bigger, we start looking at the channel. There's some TSDs out there who do nothing but prospect the same type of companies we do. How do we partner with them to increase It's the lead flow? But having a ton of leads means nothing if your sales team doesn't know how to convert them into closed deals.
Tim Fitzpatrick
One of the things you touched on, you're working multiple lists, but it sounds like your salespeople, one of the lists that they are working or one of their focus areas is building referral partner relationships. Oh, yeah. Am I hearing that right?
Mike Rhea
Absolutely. Okay. Yeah. So some industries call them CIOIs, right? Centers of Influence. You You can call them referral partners, but there's a long list of industries who prospect the same clients we do. They just offer a different service. So our services complement each other, and they're great people to work with, right? Especially if that company vets us and they say, Hey, you guys really have a good offering. All these referral partners we talk to, they say, You guys are different. You have a good offering. Yeah, just not enough people know who we are. And so if you can introduce us, your endorsement goes a long way. It's a beautiful thing. And that warm handoff, typically it's an immediate need, and we already have a reference, the person who referred us. So it's a smoother sales process.
Sales and Marketing being in Alignment
Tim Fitzpatrick
So Mike, you just touched on this. I want to dig a little bit deeper in this. Alignment between sales and marketing. I believe, and I know you believe the same thing, that they must be aligned. A lot of organizations, they are like two brothers that don't freaking get along and don't talk to each other, which makes no sense to me. Tell me a little bit, what are the benefits you see with sales and marketing being in alignment?
Mike Rhea
Well, if you don't mind, let's take a step back, right? Sure. It goes back to the mindset and the perception of marketing, especially in the technology world. So a lot of MSPs, specifically, don't believe in investing in marketing. Marketing is under budgeted, under staffed, and they want it to do everything. They want marketing to have a fantastic website. They want tons of content. They want SEO to kick butt. They want a lot of lead generation. They want internal communication to the employees. They want client-facing communication. If something goes wrong, they want immediate emergency communication. But we're only going to give you X number of dollars, and we're going to give you two people. As we acquire another company and as we double in size, well, you can automate your messaging, so we don't need to give you another person. And they have no concept of what's involved in marketing. And then they don't believe that it's worth investing in. And so principally, if I have the right salespeople in the right seats, that's number one. So I want to hire the right people. But then if my, let's say, my executive team, we're sitting down and we say, Hey, for 2025, this is our sales goal. This is our revenue goal. And so we want to increase quotas, and how many salespeople do we need? Mike, we need to increase by three or four salespeople. Ask good questions. Why are we increasing by three or four salespeople? Well, because they're going to have a quota of this and that helps us hit our number. Okay, that's A strategy. What's the salary for those people? It's going to be X number of dollars. Okay. And is our current sales team at max capacity? No. So why don't we give the salaries that we're budgeting for? Why don't we just give it to marketing and let them use it for their lead generation. Now we have more deals coming in. We already have a trained sales team who's not at full capacity yet. And let's just load them with more opportunities to do what they're doing, right? Because a trained sales team is a better experience for the client as well. It's not manipulative in any way. It's asking good questions. See, do you actually have a problem we can solve? And are we the right fit to help you solve it? It's asking good questions. And so in principle, if we want to increase revenue, the first thing I'm thinking is, give more money to marketing before I hire more salespeople. My ego doesn't say that I need a thousand people reporting to me. My ego says I'd rather be lean and mean and have my team succeeding and winning and our company growing. And so I just take a back step there to say that's my viewpoint on it. And a lot of people don't share that, but results tell the story. And the companies who market well, it's almost like having a whole another sales team out there warming up people for you. To answer your direct question, the benefits of sales and marketing alignment, at least the way I see it, first thing is consistent messaging to prospects. The messaging that is going out from the marketing team should be consistent with what our sales team is talking about in terms of what we offer, who we are, same type of messaging. It It can be different. There's no overlap in prospecting efforts. There's not this marketing effort or campaign going out to this certain industry, and then our sales team is coming on top and having a total, again, consistent messaging, a different message targeting the same person. And now they're getting 15 emails from us a month, and they go on the unsubscribed list because they're overhearing from us. So there's a strategy and there's clear lines of delineation, of who's going after what. I think when there's sales and marketing alignment, it also generates more warm leads. So when sales does reach out to them, Oh, I've heard of you guys before, or I've seen something. I don't know where I know you from, but I've heard of you. It's not like, Who the heck are you? We've heard of you. And sometimes it creates It's this image that we're bigger than we really are because they keep hearing about us. Then I think that when you look at the buyer's journey, everyone plays a role instead of everyone not knowing what their role is and trying to do everything. You understand that marketing is going to do this, and when it gets to this point, sales will be a part of that. And then when it gets to that point, account management and operations will be a part of it, and the whole customer's journey is a smooth process because everyone's on the same page. I think that's super important. I think that's what takes you from a really professional type of company. It takes you to being a professional type of company and not just a, I don't want to say mom and pop shop, but a less professional type of company. And people pay more for that because the experience is better.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Well, I think, too, if sales and marketing are communicating well, the sales team is having far more conversations with prospects than anybody in marketing is. And the information that's gleaned from that is incredibly valuable. I think there needs to be a two-way communication going back and forth because that communication is going to help everybody that's involved.
Mike Rhea
And that has to be part of a company's culture. It's not just going to happen. So we have bi weekly sales and marketing alignment meetings. We go over, hey, what questions are buyers asking? And should our marketing team create content around that? Because if they're asking you that, they're probably asking Google that. What things are you hearing out there? What are the challenges? You'd be surprised. Our marketing team has asked us, and they expect us to say, Well, everyone's asking us about AI, which some people are, or everyone's asking about cybersecurity. But a lot of them are just like, Can we just get onboarding and offboarding of users done correctly? Can we respond? They just want the basics. And if you can get the basics right, then I trust you for the newer things that everyone thinks are the shiny objects. But a lot of clients just want the basics. They just want IT to work in our world. They want IT to work. They want guidance on what else is out there that could help from a technology standpoint that would align with their business goals and maybe where technology can be used as an accelerator in hitting it. And they want to know that if something goes wrong, we're on it and that they don't have to reach out to us. We can proactively reach out to them. If those things are in place, then they're open to hearing about cyber security. They're open to seeing how they can use AI. But if those things are not in place, they're afraid to try those things because if this is bad, these things could only get worse. I think that whole thing is just important, that whole alignment.
Tim Fitzpatrick
In answering that question, you touched on everything that I would have typically touched on as well. I appreciate you for doing that. You freaking knocked that one out of the park, man.
Mike Rhea
Meant a lot, dude, from you. You're the marketing guru.
Conclusion
Tim Fitzpatrick
What didn't I ask that I should?
Mike Rhea
I don't know. I don't know. I think we covered pretty much everything.
Tim Fitzpatrick
We covered a lot of ground. So I mean, dude, you've been doing this 18 years. I mean, like no one wants you know now, anything you would do differently?
Mike Rhea
Yeah, I think there's always things that you could do differently. The problem with that question is if I did it differently, I'd be in a different spot. And I wouldn't know the things that I know. Sometimes you got to be far headed and go through certain experiences. And I would love to say, Oh, I would have done this differently because then I'd have been a CRO much earlier in my career and I would have had all this success. But had I not gone through some of the things that I went through and some of the setbacks, then that's what prepared me to be where I'm at today. And so what I've done differently, I probably would have worked harder, put more time in, studied more, like all those things. But the reason I value those things today is because I went through lessons. The unique thing about school and life, school, they teach you the lesson and then you take the test, whereas in life you get the test and then you get the lesson. You do the test first and then you get the lesson. And so I think that I probably wouldn't change anything, quite frankly. I'm still young, got a long career ahead of me and excited about what we're building.
Tim Fitzpatrick
I love it, man. Where can people learn more about you? I don't know, over LinkedIn?
Mike Rhea
Yeah, the easiest way is just go over to LinkedIn. You can check out our company through my LinkedIn profile. I'm posting things all the time, little tips here and there that have helped me in my career, and I'm pretty well connected. And so if you reach out to me on LinkedIn, I'd love to at least get to know who you are and see if anyone in my network is somebody that could add value to you.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Cool. Mike, we will make sure that your profile link gets in the show notes so people can connect with you. But look up Mike Rhea, and that's R-H-E-A on LinkedIn Connect. Mike, it's been a pleasure connecting with you twice now, so I appreciate that. Those of you that are watching, listening, we appreciate you doing so as well. You can connect with us over at RialtoMarketing.com head on over to revenueroadblockscorecard.com if you want to know which of the nine revenue roadblocks are slowing down your growth. So thank you. Until next time. Take care.
Chief Revenue Officer | Empowering Business Growth Through Technology | Strategic IT Consulting | Cybersecurity & Compliance | AI
1 个月Very grateful for the opportunity to participate in this podcast! I hope it's helpful to someone out there. Thx Tim Fitzpatrick for the opportunity.
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