Episode 24
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Richard Ellis: [00:00:00] According to Forrester B2B, organizations with aligned sales and marketing teams delivering consistent messaging experience 24% faster revenue growth over a three-year period. Yet most organizations struggle to align messaging across sales, marketing, and customer success. Today we're looking at how consistency in your message can be the differentiator your customers can't easily copy.
Richard Ellis: Welcome to some goodness where we engage seasoned business leaders and experts to share practical guidance and tips to help new and future C-level leaders maximize their impact. My guest today is Stacy Leidinger In her product and marketing leadership roles, she has led major transformations at firms like IBM Nuance and SecureWorks, often by clarity and consistency in messaging as a strategic weapon.
Richard Ellis: Well, Stacy, welcome.
Stacy Leidwinger: [00:01:00] Thanks, Richard. It's great to be back.
Richard Ellis: You've said before that people underestimate the power of words. This was in a conversation that we've had about messaging, and I'd love to just dig into messaging today if that sounds good to you, and specifically what makes a good message or message consistency, A differentiator for companies.
Stacy Leidwinger: Yeah. And so my highest belief in anyone that talks to me, messaging is so critical to everything the organization does. And where I see people often fall challenged is trying to come up with the perfect message. Hmm, how are we going to stand out? How are we gonna talk about the value? How are we gonna say we're unique?
Stacy Leidwinger: How are we gonna make sure people really understand everything we do? And one of the things I often say is, you know what? It doesn't matter while words matter. It doesn't matter having the perfect words, it matters. Being consistent. It means that what is on the website is the same words that sellers are using when they're engaging and SDRs are calling.
Stacy Leidwinger: It's the same words when an executive gets on [00:02:00] a phone for an executive call. It's the same words in the RFP. It's the same words from customer success after you've acquired a customer and are retaining them. When an organization all uses the same words. That's when you get power of brand, power of message, and it's less about finding the perfect word.
Stacy Leidwinger: It's all about being consistent in your delivery of that. And yes, it will evolve over time. I. I think sometimes people seek out for the perfect message. And I say it's really about consistency that drives success for a whole organization.
Richard Ellis: That's interesting. 'cause you're right, I think there is this desire, it's gotta be perfect and it's gotta be the right sentence.
Richard Ellis: And we're not really writing scripts 'cause nobody in sales is gonna memorize a script and say the same words every time in all conversations. But it's the gist of that message and it's probably some phrases that we want to get right and be consistent in the usage. The message has to be good, right? It may not need to be perfect.
Richard Ellis: And so where is that balance for you in terms of [00:03:00] what's good enough? And it's like, okay, we have enough to rock and roll with. Let's go to market with this versus, you know, we could get wrapped around the axle and analysis paralysis and never get there if we're striving for perfection. So just kind of help me understand good enough versus perfect.
Stacy Leidwinger: I think there's first two things that need to be done, and then there's a format that I think really helps you drive the perfect message. So first, the two things that need to be done is don't ever sit in a conference room with a group of, you know, executives, marketers, sellers, and say, we're gonna come up with the right message right now because you're missing the most important thing, which is the voice of the customer.
Stacy Leidwinger: And we've talked about this. And so before you even sit down to write a message, make sure that you've talked to customers, you've talked to partners, you've talked to individuals that are in that role, you've really understood what is their day in the life? What are their pain points? What are they trying to achieve?
Stacy Leidwinger: What are their business objectives? What are key metrics that they're concerned about? Understand the words they use because your message should be playing back to them. [00:04:00] And that's the first thing to have a good message is truly understand who your audience is and how they speak. 'cause you don't wanna be speaking differently.
Stacy Leidwinger: Now the next piece of that element is after you do, now you can bring that back. Now you can brainstorm and collaborate. Make sure you cross-functional product should be represented, and marketing and sales, and have an executive, people that are talking to customers every day. Test the message. And this is one of the things I love about marketing.
Stacy Leidwinger: It is not that expensive to put out an ad, to do a blog, to do a webinar, to do a social post. You can test messaging before you ever have. Now, run it through the entire company. See what some of that engagement is. Take it to partners. This is a great way to engage your channel partners. And these days in business, very few don't have a partner somewhere that they're trying to work with.
Stacy Leidwinger: Does it resonate to them? Go to a customer. One of my favorite things is to go to old customers. They're not a current customer of the company I'm working for, but I've built [00:05:00] great relationships with them and I'll go, Hey, I wanted to pick your brain. Do you have 30 minutes? People love to be the expert of their domain.
Stacy Leidwinger: You just have to ask. So those are the two fundamentals to make sure that you're getting the right message is first the words come from somebody else that's not you. And second, you're testing it along the way. Now that other piece is what makes a good message, and this is something, you know, we've actually worked in together quite a bit on over the years, but it's the, you fundamentally need to know who you are as an organization.
Stacy Leidwinger: So everyone needs to consistently say, this is who we are. You need to know what you do. What are you delivering? How do you do it? What customer benefit are you providing? How are you unique? And then how do you deliver it? Why should I get all of this from you over somebody else? And I think if you start breaking down those questions, you get those sound bites.
Stacy Leidwinger: You might not deliver them all in your two minutes pitch or every pitch you do, or every white paper, but you're gonna deliver the right elements at the right time. And it's simple enough that [00:06:00] everyone in the organization can start getting behind.
Richard Ellis: So good man. Such great practical advice there. And I love the testing 'cause I think that's overlooked.
Richard Ellis: People you know are in the office. Struggling meeting to meeting, trying to get that message and not thinking about, we have some makings of a message. Let's go test some ideas. Right. And even whiteboard stories. Right. And we do that for clients all over. And we'll often test that with customers and say, Hey, does this resonate?
Richard Ellis: Or third party analysts. Or channel partners, right? So I love this idea of testing, but I also mentioned analysts. I wanted to find out, you said, you know, test with customers and also start with the voice of the customer. What about the analyst community and where should they be involved in this process?
Stacy Leidwinger: So I'm always a big fan of pulling an analyst, but make sure you're pulling in the right analysts. So not every analyst is created equal, and anyone that has been around this business for a while knows that. But I always like to use an analyst because they talk to more customers than I ever could.
Stacy Leidwinger: They're hearing day in and day out. So that's why I [00:07:00] say pick the customer or the analyst that's truly talking to customers. 'cause they have that voice and say, do you think this will resonate? Will it, and then get multiple inputs, not just one. One of the advantages is not only do you get that feedback, but then when you're going and you're like, we've got a new product launch, you helped create the message for us.
Stacy Leidwinger: You've done this, we heard this from you. So I do think that's a critical area. I also think depending on what industry you're in, getting to some of those analyst events, I'm amazed this is an endorsement for Gartner, but I'm amazed at the senior level of individuals that go to the Gartner events. And so it is one of my must go-to events every year, and I sit in the audience.
Stacy Leidwinger: I hear what they're saying. I make sure I eat lunch. Sometimes I have two lunches 'cause I'll randomly pick a table and I'm just picking brains. What was interesting? What did you like? It's a great place to test messaging. Put me in the booth. I try new messages on the spot. I never wanna enable a seller to give a message that I haven't tried to deliver myself.
Stacy Leidwinger: So these are the ways [00:08:00] to also infuse that analyst community. And I deeply believe that if you're paying the money to have an analyst s firm work with you, use them. This is all part of their services.
Richard Ellis: Absolutely. That's such a great reminder and I love your practical tip of multiple lunches. In fact, for all my sales team out there, multiple lunches at all conferences, not just one.
Richard Ellis: Um, that's great. Well, in terms of driving that consistency of message so you get a good enough message or a perfect message, you're ready. It's gotta be consistent as you said. How do you drive that consistency across the organization?
Stacy Leidwinger: Mm-hmm. I think having fundamentally a playbook, right? That people can go and react to.
Stacy Leidwinger: I've told this story I think to Richard in the past. One of the reasons I love the playbook is having someone that's own messaging. I often get pinged, Hey, do you have something? Do you have a word? Do you have a phrase? I'm working on this. And like, go to the playbook. It's in there
Richard Ellis: already.
Stacy Leidwinger: Go to the playbook.
Stacy Leidwinger: It's in there already. And if it's not, I'm like, Hey, that's a great question. We should add it to the playbook. Yes. And so these things should be [00:09:00] evergreen. They shouldn't be long, they should be short phrases. They don't need to be full sentences. But this is where you're putting your messaging, your positioning, key stats.
Stacy Leidwinger: This is something that gets every organization wrapped around the axle. Everyone wants stats. They want stats of the pain points so they can articulate how big of a pain it is. They want stats, proof of value that you deliver to your customers. Have them be consistent. It's amazing. And it drives customers crazy when they're talking to one person and they'll say, we have over 3000 customers and 50, you know, countries across the globe.
Stacy Leidwinger: And they're like, well that's interesting 'cause your website says you only have a thousand customers and 25. So which one's right. Customers pick up on that. And so I believe in stats. I think it makes it tangible and real. But adding those in, those insights into the playbooks, that allows you, again, that consistency that people are seeing time and time again, and all of a sudden you own the stat.
Stacy Leidwinger: I've had it in past organizations where I'd be talking to someone and you're like, you know, your competitor tried to sell me, and they used your stat like it's everyone's [00:10:00] stat, but they've seen it so much from us that it was our sat. And so these are the type of things, case studies. Not the long four page case study, but real tidbits around what were their pain points.
Stacy Leidwinger: Why did they buy? Why did they buy Now? I know that's our favorite question, right? Like there's a lot of things they could do, and then what's the value you drove for them, right? And so these are the things that you put in as, here's the message, here's some stats to reinforce or insights. And then again, bring that customer voice back in.
Stacy Leidwinger: Tell them how you've already solved this problem, and here's proof points around it. It doesn't have to be long and heavy. But it really allows organizations to start feeding off of one playbook to say,
Richard Ellis: I like that. And sometimes even the shorter success stories. What was the challenge? What was the solution?
Richard Ellis: Or why did they need to change? Why now? And then why did they go with us? Right? Whatever framework you use, having a collection of those. It's almost more powerful than having a four page glossy of a few because, you know, I, I've seen companies [00:11:00] struggle where they'll just have a few that are really well written and they've got all of these customer quotes and stuff throughout, but then their sales team ends up using those with accounts that it's not a like industry.
Richard Ellis: It's not a similar situation, but that's what they have, so they gotta use it, right? Whereas in a playbook and shorter format, you can have a collection of 10 or 15 or like we've done with you in the past, organize it by industry. It's like, oh, okay. If you're serving a retail client, you know, here's three or five short success stories, and you can just kind of reference that ahead of your call, stick it in your brain, refer it to them, you know, in your call, and now you're insightful, you're credible, and you're highly relevant.
Stacy Leidwinger: I'm like nodding my head a thousand times, and I have a story around this where it really was evidenced the power of storytelling with customers. So I was working with a startup. It was all about customer value. And we had case study after case study, after case study. We were driving real value. And so we were having some acquisition discussions and we were talking with [00:12:00] IBM at the time and they were looking at somebody else.
Stacy Leidwinger: We were like a check the box, not as good, pretty good, but check the box. And even later on, the individual that came out said, I didn't expect to come back. Right. And one of the things that stood out. Was he said, Stacy, you never stop giving case studies. We went through the case study section. You gave six.
Stacy Leidwinger: Then throughout the presentation we'd ask questions. You're like, well, we had another customer and this is what they did, and there was another customer. He goes, I had to pause. Anyone that had the amount of case studies with real value and just coming one after the other, there was something real here that I hadn't necessarily heard, and that wasn't the only reason.
Stacy Leidwinger: Ultimately, we ended up being acquired. But it was enough to get that second meeting. And I think that's the power of messaging too, is you don't have to share everything day one. You don't have to share everything day two, you don't have to share everything, even day 50 in your last call. You just have to pull the right piece of information at the right time by listening to [00:13:00] that customer.
Stacy Leidwinger: And when you have a playbook, when you have all this messaging ready to go, then you're listening because it's already, you know what to say. You're listening for those triggers of when to bring in what from the messaging. 'cause that's where the magic really happens.
Richard Ellis: Yeah, so good, so good. I think the value to sales of having kind of a master messaging playbook of, you know, here's some talk tracks, here's some stats, here's some trends, here's some success stories, and they have that at the ready for their conversations.
Richard Ellis: The value's obvious, right? But I think you've done a good job of leveraging kind of this idea of a master messaging playbook for other functions outside of sales. So tell me a little bit about your thoughts there.
Stacy Leidwinger: Yep. And I think, again, anyone that is go to market facing, which is most of the organization, right?
Stacy Leidwinger: So mm-hmm. Marketing should be using this and this is one of the side effects. The first time I think you and I ever worked together, it was actually when marketing got it. They were like, this is a gold mine. I. They're like, I don't need product marketing to write anymore. I'll just keep pulling nuggets.
Stacy Leidwinger: Our social team was pulling [00:14:00] nuggets. Our PR team was taking stats. The product marketers were grabbing content, and so you're able to now create a much more efficient machine behind that. You also have customer success. We had customer success playbooks because how you talk to an existing customer. Is different.
Stacy Leidwinger: You know, you get to talk about all the value you have delivered and the customer goes, yeah, but what did you deliver for me? And so there are some slight different messaging and a lot of it's questions to ask. It's how to engage. It's understanding, are you talking to the right persona? How do you talk to different personas?
Stacy Leidwinger: How do you still get to the stakeholder that's signing the check? 'cause that's who ultimately matters. SDRs, discovery for SDRs, sales engineers, SES being to get to that next technical level. We've done partner playbooks, so it's a higher level. We've done industry playbooks. Let's do a deep dive in manufacturing.
Stacy Leidwinger: So there's a lot once you have that foundation. The other thing I think that's really interesting that I've only started to play around [00:15:00] more and more with is ai. Once you have a message. Then you can go to some of these generative AI systems and say, here's my core message. Can you optimize that for A CIO?
Stacy Leidwinger: Mm-hmm. Can you optimize that for this industry? And so a lot of stuff that I've looked back on and going, man, I had to do a lot of work to take this core message and now improvise. Amazing. Take your core message and say, can you get me six stats around this for manufacturing and how would you tweak the language if I was talking to a VP of IT and manufacturing and a lot of those, you still need to do a review.
Stacy Leidwinger: It's not magic I. Sure. But I think there's a lot of power that you can take that foundation and scale out even quicker than I've been able to do in the past.
Richard Ellis: Right. That's a good way to think about it. Whether it's for an AI tool like that for summarization or tweaking or just other alignments needs in your company across functions, that playbook can be an important input.
Richard Ellis: Because the team that's put together the messaging, done the research to pull together those stats and [00:16:00] those trends, you know, all that stuff. A lot of work went into that, right? And so it'd be a shame to not leverage that. In fact, I'm reminded of one marketing leader that saw this playbook. So the playbook was sponsored by.
Richard Ellis: Sales, and so it was a sales project and we interviewed marketing as part of it, and they kind of weren't really too interested. They're like, okay, you know, we're happy to interview you and provide you what you need, but this is y'all's project with sales. After they saw the results, they said, wow, I. You did such a great job of answering why do something different.
Richard Ellis: And we're reflecting on all of our website work has all been why us? We need to put some of that. Why do something different? And some of those stats and some of those visuals, right. And even they took part of the whiteboard story. Uh, 'cause we had a nice whiteboard picture of the current state and the challenges and implications.
Richard Ellis: They're like, that should be on our website. Really driving the customer to recognize they've got real needs that we understand that we can then solve. And so just kind of [00:17:00] using that as a base to say, how does that influence marketing content? Or in the case that you mentioned, the customer success team, right?
Richard Ellis: Making sure consistent messaging as is the topic of the day. How are they consistent in the way they're communicating value and quantifying the value that they are delivering to the client? What about partners? We've done a few recent projects with clients on partners. Any interesting advice or takeaways on just kind of the channel partner community?
Stacy Leidwinger: So, and again, everyone's always gonna be different, but one of the things that I learned, again early in my career that's really helped me is you think that your own sales team has a lot of products they could sell. Your channel partner has. Thousands of products that they can sell. And they have hundreds of sales teams, marketing teams, all trying to tell them what to do.
Stacy Leidwinger: And one of the things that I think often falls short is I see organizations take the same enable material that they've created for their sales team and said, great, now we're gonna enable our partners. You're enabling someone that has to learn your [00:18:00] product. The partners, they don't actually even have to sell your product all the time.
Stacy Leidwinger: They need to create an introduction. And so to me it's really important to get kind of that next level of like, it's almost as old school as the one to two ba, you know, page cider. But it's enough to understand, again, who are you, what do you do? What problem do you solve? So give me the trigger things. If my customer says, I have this problem, that problem, I should be thinking of you.
Stacy Leidwinger: Mm-hmm. And then give me one or two insight, stats, customer stories that will say, are you willing to take a call with this company? 'cause they're doing really interesting things and just keep hitting the partner over and over and over again. And to me, some of the biggest things is the trigger. Because what partners are going in doing is they're gonna sit down, but they have the relationships, they're talking to the C-level.
Stacy Leidwinger: Once a month, every quarter, and they're like, what's on your agenda? What are some of the things that you're thinking about? You better make your messaging so simple that when they hear those words, they're like, I've got a company for you and [00:19:00] this is why they're good for you. That's what you have to enable.
Stacy Leidwinger: So calling it a playbook, a hundred percent. Is the scale to get it out there, but it's never simple enough. And I think always remembering that you need to stand out in front of thousands of other products. And that also means you need to understand what are those customer pain points? What are the words that customers are gonna read back?
Stacy Leidwinger: 'cause the partner's not gonna be able to say. Oh, you know, I have this product, it's this acronym. 'cause we love acronyms in software especially, they're not gonna ever ask for your acronym, but they are gonna tell you about the pain they have and the partner needs to be able to provide the acronym that fits that pain point.
Richard Ellis: So good. Yeah, that's great. And it's such a reminder that yes, the complexity of enabling them and the complexity of their world, of selling thousands of products across hundreds of vendors, right. That is a challenge and one of the things that we'll add to that. So I like your guidance on making it simple, making it clear, tying it to triggers so that they can immediately be reminded, this is for [00:20:00] you or we should lead with your product.
Richard Ellis: But also putting in there maybe a particular chapter around what's in it for them. I. Right, because so much of the message is about the end customer and the value and the differentiation that you can bring, but what's in it for them to lead with you, partner with you? Can they make more money? Can they scale?
Richard Ellis: Can they, you know, grow a market? Can they penetrate a market? Right? And um, so put those two together and that should really create some acceleration through your channel.
Stacy Leidwinger: Yeah. Richard, you reminded me of one of those stories and I was working with a startup and they actually had a great partnership and it was an EMR vendor.
Stacy Leidwinger: It wasn't about the end customer value. Yes, there was value, but what we found out is our product, which was relatively inexpensive, helped unblock million dollar deals for them. And once we knew that, I spent 70% of my time marketing inside, I. That partner base saying, here's a deal, here's how we unlocked it.
Stacy Leidwinger: Testimonials from that partner. And so I think what you brought out is so important, [00:21:00] especially depending on the type of partner framework. If you have go to marketplace with other products in their portfolio, you're gonna go up. 'cause it's all about selling more goes back to what's the most important thing.
Stacy Leidwinger: It's always revenue. And so if your product helps them sell more product or helps unblock a deal. It is gonna get moved up in that line. Yes, they wanna help customers. Everyone at the end of the day has a strong mission to do that. But what's also a strong mission is how do I make money? And so the ability to identify how your solution helps them make money, that's where the gold happens.
Richard Ellis: That's so good. I love that story. I may have to borrow it. So one of the key themes here is consistent messaging, right? Not only internally, but externally, and then also not only just internally, but thinking through the different functions, right? Marketing has to be consistent with the way sales is, conversations are happening, and that has to be consistent with the way the channel partner managers.
Richard Ellis: Are working with the channel and then the channel is messaging. I know there's kind of a trend these days, and I do [00:22:00] want your perspective and opinion on this. I've seen a trend where there's a lot of new moves towards A CRO owning both sales and marketing to try to create better sales and marketing alignment, and naturally you would hope that that drives more consistent messaging, et cetera.
Richard Ellis: But what's your perspective? Is A CRO and sales and marketing pointing to one person, is that a good thing? Is that a requirement for success going forward? Any thoughts on that?
Stacy Leidwinger: I mean, I think we could have a whole podcast of should marketing report to the CRO. There's a lot there. I can even pull in some CROs with different opinions and good opinions.
Stacy Leidwinger: I really take a step back, 'cause I had this question even when I was in product management, product marketing, and where does this person report and all of that. I. To me, it fundamentally comes back to what is the pain point that the company's trying to solve. Mm-hmm. So, I have been standalone, you know, the CMO reporting to the CEO.
Stacy Leidwinger: I've been CMO reporting to the CRO. Okay. And so I've been in both circumstances, I think when an organization is really struggling to get that go to market motion, there is [00:23:00] value in having one person, one owner, stop the finger pointing, which tends to happen. Right now with that caveat, you can't take someone that is a chief sales officer and has done sales their entire career and say, now you own marketing.
Stacy Leidwinger: You need someone that really understands the value of brand and awareness and messaging and content, and voice of the customer and demand. Because if all you do is skinny marketing down to be a demand function, meaning it's all about leads. You're eventually gonna dry up because I always say you need to grow brand just above the demand line, right?
Stacy Leidwinger: You don't need to put a ton, ton, ton, ton into brand without demand, but you can only grow as fast as everyone recognizes your name. So I think to me, it's more important about where the company is in that evolution. Then also the dynamics of who's leading. And then the third piece that is incredibly important is you cannot take marketing seat away from the table.
Stacy Leidwinger: So when I reported to A CRO, I was in every strategy meeting that happened once a quarter. I was in [00:24:00] the voice of the customer conversations, I was in the roadmap approval cycles. And so to me, that's one of the risks sometimes that happens is if you all report into the one individual, in this case, the CRO.
Stacy Leidwinger: Now you're not in those conversations and that I fundamentally believe is a mistake. Marketing has to be in these conversations. They typically are understanding what's working from an awareness. They're doing a lot of the competitive research. They're talking to analysts, they're talking to customers, and so I don't think it really comes down to.
Stacy Leidwinger: Should marketing report to the CRO? Is there a one and only answer? What I'd say is you need to have a good relationship between sales and marketing. Marketing needs to still maintain a seat at the table in those strategic decisions, and then it's making sure that everyone's aligned on the metrics that matter.
Stacy Leidwinger: And does that mean A CRO? A CMO to CRO? Great. If it's CMO to CEO, great. But it needs to have those dynamics
Richard Ellis: really good. Great insights, and that's a great way to kind of wrap up our session today. Thank you again for your time. But before we turn off the [00:25:00] recorder, do you have any other goodness you'd like to share with us outside of consistent messaging?
Stacy Leidwinger: Yeah, and actually this one relates a little bit to messaging. I've been playing around more and more with AI tools, and I know everyone goes, oh, AI. It's changing our world, especially in marketing. Like SEOI swear in five years is gonna be gone. It's going to be all about ai and now there's a EIO and GEO.
Stacy Leidwinger: And so one of the tools I've been playing with is Notebook, lm. It's a free product from Google. And one of the things is really simple that I love doing it is give it a podcast, give it a webcast, give it a paper. Tell me to summarize it. Give me the tidbit, help me understand, and then maybe I'll invest my time.
Stacy Leidwinger: So I sometimes do that with podcasts. Let me find a 20 minute podcast on a book, and if I really like the podcast, then I'll go listen to the book. Right? And so think about it that way. And how many times in your career in life you're like, really wanted to catch that webinar. I really wanted to do this.
Stacy Leidwinger: Now I can automatically summarize and you get a whole notebook of areas. [00:26:00] So it's one of those new tools. I can't say I've totally expanded use. It actually was recommended by A CRO to me. It's my latest AI tool that I've been trying to play with.
Richard Ellis: Oh, that's so good. And thank you for that. Because Heather, one of our partners has been using Notebook and I logged in.
Richard Ellis: Right. And that's as far as I got. And so that gives me encouragement to go actually use it for some of my own personal productivity. 'cause you're right, I mean there's blog posts, there's podcasts, webinars that I just can't get to. There's just not enough time in the week. And so that's a great way to use that.
Richard Ellis: Well, thank you for that and thank you for the half hour with us today. Always a pleasure to be with you.
Stacy Leidwinger: Yeah, thanks Richard. Thanks for having me. Talk about my absolute favorite topic, which is messaging
Richard Ellis: anytime.
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