MTM Ep#20: How to automate your way to operational effectiveness with Moni Oloyede

– [Moni] It’s not about making it perfect out the gate, it’s making it scalable. Right? Because you have to grow into these tools. You’re not gonna just do one campaign and then shut the tool down and walk away. No, you’re going to do several campaigns.

– Hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of More Than Marketing. I am your host Arsham Mirshah, and I am joined by none other than Moni Oloyede.

– You got it.

– Yes.

– She is a marketing ops manager at…

– Fidelis Cybersecurity.

– Fidelis Cybersecurity. And I’m excited about this one, Moni, because you and I are cut from very a similar cloth. Both went to UMBC.

– That’s right.

– Go Retrievers.

– There you go, put it there.

– Let’s do this.

– I think we were there around the same time.

– Yeah. We had a little overlap.

– And I think, if I saw correctly, you studied like American Studies there?

– Mm-hm, yep.

– And then you went on…

– I did American Studies and then I interned for a cyber security company and then started working there. And then did my master’s at Johns Hopkins.

– Okay, master’s at John. So MBA?

– MBA in marketing, or masters in marketing.

– Oh masters in marketing? Okay that’s different than an MBA. Awesome, at Hopkins. Good for you.

– Yeah, I kind of knew I was gonna want to focus on marketing. No offense to like finance or the rest of them. I was like, yeah, I’m in marketing.

– Funny you say that. If I were to go back to school and do it all over, I’d go finance. Everyone touches money, no matter you’re a plumber or marketer or whatever. But we’re the same because I studied Bioinformatics at UMBC, American Studies. Neither of those are marketing.

– Nope.

– We’re both in marketing now.

– Exactly.

– You know what I’m saying, like?

– Yep. People were always like what are you going to do with that, be a teacher? I was like, nope, I don’t know.

– I don’t know.

– No I haven’t figured it out.

– That’s how I was too, it was like, the path is either research, or doctor for me. A lot more school, but we both ended up here, and I think it’s because of our personalities. You know, you’re extroverted, it seems, but you’re also analytical.

– That’s right.

– Right? And you knew that about yourself, figured it out or what?

– No, I actually I did one of those self assessment tests, I forget-

– Personality tests.

– Personality type tests and one of them obviously was like an analytical personality but I also like relationship building. So I was like, okay. Exactly.

– So I build relationships with numbers.

– Exactly, kind of fell into the perfect job for me.

– Good. Well I’m happy to hear that because marketing ops, this is like a, I don’t know if it’s growing, if it’s new or whatever. You tell me.

– I think it’s growing.

– It’s growing right?

– I think so, yeah.

– I think it’s relatively new, too.

– Yes.

– I think with the advent of Martech, or Marketing Technology.

– Absolutely.

– You know, however many years ago, and I think Forester said that in two thousand twenty, or 2020, the CMO will spend more on technology than the CIO, or something like that.

– I can see it.

– You can see it right?

– I can definitely see that.

– It’s crazy. So with that comes this need for this role of marketing operations.

– That’s right, because all those technologies have to kind of work together, and that’s where the operations part comes in pretty heavy.

– Tell me about that, tell me about your role. Tell me about what’s marketing ops even mean.

– Yeah, I mean like, if you ever been to one of these Marketing Technology shows, one of the biggest draws is show off your stack.

– Oh yeah that’s right, yeah, yeah.

– The stackies.

– Yeah, the stackies.

– How big can your stack get. So it’s that and it encompasses, I call marketing operations the center of excellence for the marketing department because we touch every part of the marketing department, and sales as well. And you know primarily it’s around managing the technology, but also the lead management process, those two things together. And then analytics. So when you have a technology stack of tools, usually it falls into one of those three categories. Executing campaigns, the analytic part of what are the results of that campaign, or some lead management process.

– Sure.

– So those are kind of the three heads of marking operations. So, you know, it’s only gonna grow. As soon as the stack grows, I can only see the role growing too.

– Yeah I can see, no, I completely agree. And it’s because is this similar to a Salesforce admin at all?

– It’s kind of like the inverse of Salesforce admin ’cause the Salesforce admin, like everyone comes to that person for whatever their thing is within the one tool of Salesforce, whereas, the marketing operations part is kind of like the inverse, ’cause you’re the person for every tool outside of that. Outside of the one tool, right. So like you’re sending, my center of excellence, Markel, it’s my hub of where everything needs to run from a marketing standpoint. Then, I have SalesLoft over here, I have Wistia for the video recording over here, I’ve got Google Analytics for my report. You know what I mean, like, there’s a bunch of different things that kind of revolve around that outside of it that I have to kind of manage, too.

– Yeah, so then… marketing ops is kind of at the center of marketing technology. You’re making sure the data from all the different tools is feeding in and feeding out?

– That’s right, exactly.

– Defining that?

– Defining that process, exactly. Making sure that campaigns kind of align to that process. We talk about it when you’re setting up, when you’re not basis pursing and people are setting up campaigns, like, they have to align to my lead management process. And, track properly if you’re using TAM tracking codes on, set up the right campaigns in SalesForce, right? Making sure the data’s coming in clean so I can send it to all these other outside tools, or whatever. There’s so many nuances to the process that you have to be literally involved in everything to be the same.

– And you know why it’s so important? Now that you just said, everything you just said made me think. Because, the CEO, or the CMO, what do they want? They want reports.

– That’s right.

– They wanna know, where’s the budget working, where’s the budget not working, right? And there is no way to answer that without clean data.

– That’s right.

– And there is no way to have clean data without having these nomenclatures in place, without having the SLA in place, or, in place is not even that good, in place, fine, but it’s gotta be actually used.

– Used, properly.

– Yeah, used properly. And administered, and held accountable.

– That’s right.

– That’s your job.

– A thousand percent. That’s where I spend the majority of my day, right? It’s just like making sure that these are set up properly, and the bigger team you have, the more you have for variation in that process, the more you have to be on top of things. So, it is like 24, it never gets old, which is the part that I love about the job, but it’s also like, constant, right?

– Yeah. It’s funny, you know, Moni, I wrote down a bunch of questions. One of the questions, I was thinking, okay, marketing ops, okay we were buying this marketing automation platform, we’re switching our CRM, or whatever the task at hand might be.

– Yep.

– So we need someone like yourself, so you have this experience, to come in and help us. Definitely, implement it.

– Yep.

– Probably help us integrate it.

– That’s right.

– And so what I was thinking is, is that a one-time job, and then it’s just done?

– Oh, no. It’s an ever-evolving process. And one of the things actually, that I tell younger marketing operations professionals, and one thing that I’d like to impart here is, when you talk about operations and tools is, it’s not about making it perfect out the gate, it’s making it scalable, right? Because you have to grow into these tools. You’re not gonna just do one campaign and then shut the tool down and walk away. No, you’re going to do several campaigns. And you’re gonna learn, and you’re gonna change, and you’re gonna adjust. And you’re gonna wanna do more and more and more. So, making it perfect out the gate is actually a detriment of what you’re trying to do, right? You’re trying to make it scalable and grow. So, a lot of times with marketing operations tools, or marketing technology tools, they’re not perfect, right? You know, when leads come in, they don’t come in quite right, you don’t follow the right necessary process. There’s things you didn’t necessarily account for when a lead comes in. And you wanna adjust for that every time, but you can’t, because then it doesn’t make it as scalable. So you have to kind of like, sort of like a good example is, so, a lot of times, sales wants to territory routing by, like, zip code, and post code, and these nuance-y things, or whatever. But, what if that changes? What happens when the rep leaves?

– Yeah.

– It becomes hard to manage. It’s not scalable.

– What if the platform doesn’t allow for that?

– Allow for that, exactly.

– What if the data is not enriched or, right, we don’t have a zip code for this person, or whatever.

– Exactly, exactly. So, trying to adjust for one issue, you create a bunch of other issues.

– Wow.

– That doesn’t make it scalable. Right, so those are the things that come with experience that you have to learn and adjust for. It’s like, no, let’s just do state and send it to both reps. The reps will know, based on the account name, who it should go to, and the other will just ignore it. It’s fine, you know what I mean?

– It’ll work out!

– It’ll work out. Let’s just have them deal with this one issue and not create 50 other issues.

– You just articulated, Moni, the reason, like, I know that there’s ongoing obviously, like, I do it for our own company, like, I’m in our house plus CRM. I’m making sure that we’re attributing things to the right places, and so is our director of marketing, who’s kind of playing that marketing ops role, now that I think about it, right? But you just articulated, like, oh look, there’s going to be new challenges, you’re going to want to do this campaign that’s gonna not fit in. Listen, now I gotta bend and be flexible to be able to accommodate for that, and also get the data to then report back to you on how it did and how, you know…

– Exactly.

– How it did with all the other touchpoints of campaigns we’re running.

– Exactly, look, hey. There are a million analytics tools out there. They’re all great, but, I have yet to get out of Excel.

– Oh, yeah, yeah, right.

– I’m not out of Excel, like it’s not gonna happen.

– Excel is not dead, you heard it here first.

– It’s not dead, Microsoft will be just fine. You can’t get out of it.

– I agree, that’s good.

– So again, like, don’t let perfection be your achilles heel, right? Get it to 85, 90, and then if you gotta do the 10 percent Excel, that’s fine.

– So then let me ask you this. How do we know if marketing ops, now I’m selfishly asking for myself, we’re growing and hiring these people in our agency, because our clients, and the reason we are going, is because our clients need this help. They just need the help, period.

– Absolutely, a thousand percent.

– And we are lucky enough to identify. ‘Cause we’re really good at getting the leads in, but then, I said to you earlier, ROI doesn’t happen until the sale is made.

– That’s right.

– So we need to do some sales enablement. So how do I know if a, whether it’s here, or at our client, how do we know if marketing ops is doing their job right?

– That’s a good question, and I can’t, I’m gonna kick that back on, that’s gonna be based on the business, because my biggest thing when a CMO comes to me and goes, “we want a report on analytics”, I go back “what’s the goal”, right? What’s the goal of the campaign, for example? Goals of the campaign can be just making MQLs, or they can be setting meetings, or they can be actual revenue. Now how you set up that campaign…

– It could be brand awareness.

– Brand awareness, but that’s a different campaign, personal to all four goals.

– Yes, yes ma’am, of course it is, yeah.

– Exactly. So, my measurement, then, is different based on the campaign goals you put. So let’s say it’s meeting sets, right? Getting the meetings. So, there’s going to be a sales component of setting that meeting. There’s gonna be a marketing qualification part if they’re ready to actually take that meeting, in it. And then when, how often, do you report that? So, my second thing that I always say is, like, the missing metric in marketing is time. Right? We like to report on things on like, a monthly, or quarterly basis and your customers don’t necessarily fit that timeframe, on your monthly reporting, or whatever.

– That’s a good point.

– So I just make those caveats when I am reporting, it’s like “guys, our sales cycle is a year, this is a quarterly report, this is where we’re at right now” and I always put a “here’s future state, what I expect to have happen”.

– Right.

– Just so, you know, I get it, CMOs gotta report to CEOs, CEOs gotta report to the board…

– Yeah.

– Just saying “wait” is not an option, right? You know what I’m saying?

– Sorry Moni, that’s not going to work.

– That’s not gonna happen.

– But you could do things like, say like, “okay this is how many deals were created, or opportunities were created”.

– In this stage.

– In this, right.

– And this is based on my conversion numbers, this is what I expect moving forward.

– Yeah.

– So yes, there’s definitely things you can do. But like, back to your kind of metrics of what I expect, I set those up based on the goals.

– Yeah.

– And then I report them in a shared time space, monthly or quarterly, whatever the CMO requires.

– And that’s a very good point on the monthly and quarterly and the, you know, your sales cycle may be longer than that.

– Right.

– Or whatever. And that’s right, so you’re just seeing that snapshot. But I think what you just answered, and this could just be differing opinions, but, was that, like say okay what’s the goal, and I would agree with you that like, you need the goal, and you just work backwards from there. And that’s kind of like the marketer’s job, or marketing’s job, in a way.

– Yeah.

– But then marketing ops, specifically, like, is it, let me ask you, is it fair to say, marketing ops is doing a really good job, or a great job, if when I ask them for a report, they’re able to turn it around. Or… our dashboards being kept up to date in realtime and the numbers are, you know, not only accurate, but they’re precise.

– Yes, I would say that is a big key of marketing operations. Measurement, right?

– Yeah.

– The accuracy of the data I think is key as well. When I came into my current role, the data was not accurate, and we reported completely false numbers.

– Yeah, yeah, yeah.

– ‘Cause the data wasn’t accurate. Yeah, that’s key.

– And you’re making decisions off those numbers.

– You’re making decisions off that. A thousand percent. And judging sales based off that, too, as well. Yes, absolutely. The accuracy of the reporting is one thousand percent a key of marketing operations.

– Awesome. Okay, cool. I’m glad we’re aligned there, because that’s, that’s super important to me. Like, I, you know it, you said it, if the data doesn’t… I mean, if all these tools run off the data.

– The data, thousand percent.

– So the data data doesn’t work, you can’t, the workflow’s not going to work.

– Right, a thousand percent. Or not necessarily the data is inaccurate, people aren’t following the process, right?

– That’s why the data might not be accurate.

– A thousand percent. So that was one of the things, like, sales wasn’t managing the opportunities in SalesForce correctly for it to be reported on. That’s inac, it’s not the data, it’s a process point.

– It’s process, yes.

– So that’s two, that’s your data management, and process management. It’s just important, they go together.

– Oh, dang, see, we didn’t even guess right. Yeah, so that’s right, process management.

– Yeah, that’s huge.

– So do you find yourself holding accountable, like, holding people accountable to the process.

– A thousand percent.

– That’s part of the job.

– So, defining the process, is part of my job.

– Sure.

– Managing that process is part of my job. Making sure it’s executed on is also part of my job. Right? A thousand percent. Because that’s how I get the accurate data. So, and also, making that process less difficult on everybody else, as well. Less difficult on sales. I try to keep it, you know, stop banging your head against the wall with sales. They’re only gonna do so much, right? Make it easier on yourself. You don’t have to update a thousand fields, change this, and make a bunch of fields mandatory. You’re just gonna hurt yourself. Make it as simple as possible. Anything you can automate, that’s what the technology is there for, automate it. Anything that you can kinda do yourself, do yourself. Anything that you can do up front, do up front.

– I love you right now. You’re preachin’ to the choir. Look, sales people, love ’em to death, I don’t, like, too often do we find, do we see in organizations, a sales marketing kinda like fist fighting.

– Yeah, yup.

– Like they’re kind of at odds with one another, but that’s not how it should be.

– No.

– How should it be?

– Exactly. I’ll tell you from my personal story.

– Yeah, please.

– Right now, I have my guys update one field in SalesForce reporting.

– Wow.

– Status. That’s it. I automate everything else for them.

– Wow.

– So just change the status, tell me if you’re working in a progress, if you’ve connected them, if you’ve got it qualified. That’s it. Then, if you do have a meeting, you convert it to a zero-stage opportunity, so it doesn’t hit pipeline, nobody has to be scared, that they’re gonna get yelled at for the opportunity. But then I get to track it because the RSM or the main sales person is gonna manage an opportunity. That’s their main job. They’re not gonna manage an account, they’re not gonna manage a contact record, they’re not gonna do all that.

– Just op.

– Just opportunities. So give ’em what they want. It’s a zero-stage opportunity that nobody sees, but it’s an opportunity, you know. If you wanna push it forward, cool. If you wanna disqualify it, cool. That’s how the conversion metric for me, that I can know if it’s good or not…

– Yeah, yeah.

– That’s gonna be real, ’cause you really talked to them. You really had a conversation with them. So that’s a real kind of conversion metric, not a false one. And it gives sales something that they’re already doing, that’s already part of their main sales process. I think that’s the biggest thing. Don’t give them a separate process outside of what they’re already doing.

– Yeah, that’s good advice right there. Yeah, I like that. So what about like, the deal amount? They put that in, right?

– So, our zero stage is a zero dollar amount. That’s because it’s just a meeting. Basically, right, there is none. So, once they kick it down to the next stage, then they have to put in an amount.

– I see, so your SCRs are only updating one field.

– One field, exactly.

– But then when it goes on, then there’s other fields.

– Then it’s the RSM and it’s in the pipeline process, and that’s their job.

– And that’s a different process.

– That’s the process.

– And that’s the job, right.

– That’s the job.

– Right, no, okay, I like that. Okay. Yeah, and just to speak a little bit to, this is an issue that’s out there. Every company has some flavor of it. We have a prospect, and I don’t wanna look like I’m talking smack on prospects, or whatever, but this is just a real issue. And we said “hey, can you get us” I forget what report, “can you get us this report out of your CRM” or whatever, and they said, “maybe”. Okay. Uh-oh. They’re like, “Well…” I’m like, what does that mean?

– Yeah.

– “Well do you want it to be exact, or would you like it to be directional?” And I’m like “oh man…” “‘Cause we can get you directional pretty quickly, but exact, we’re gonna have to tie this to this and that.” Which I get, like, I’m not, we’re not perfect.

– Right.

– But I think the job of the marketing ops is to strive, not for perfection, but iterate.

– You’re bringing up an excellent point for operations, and just analytics in general. This is why you kinda can’t get outta Excel. Because the tool is only as good as the data, and if the data is, not necessarily inaccurate. So I’ll give you an example.

– Please.

– So, people fill out our contact us form. 30% of the people who fill out the contact us form are solicitors, junk people that I don’t necessarily want in these reports, right? The tool is not gonna know that. It’s just seeing someone filled out the form, which is how I have it set up. They’re not gonna know that this solicitor, or student, or some junk number.

– That’s right.

– So it’s like, I need to account for that. That’s why I have to go in Excel and disqualify those out of my reporting. So if you’re relying on the tool 100% to do analytics, I don’t know anybody who’s doing accurate reporting, relying 100% on the tool, I’m sorry. If you, please let me know, I’m happy, I would love to know you.

– It doesn’t exist. I mean, I think they could, to your point, like, no, you’re absolutely right. You could make that change in the tool, like, oh, this is students. And then…

– But then how nuanced are you getting, right?

– No, yeah, right.

– You’re gonna get super granular, and that’s our scalability point, was just like, even if they put in a proper email address, there is still gonna be junk. You know what I mean?

– That’s true, yeah.

– So, if you have a process for DQing those, then you don’t count DQ, or whatever. But it’s just one example of… you’re gonna have to be in Excel at a certain point. I just don’t know how you get out of it. But you need to account for that. And again, if my Excel job is just excluding those, then that’s fine.

– Yeah.

– And then that’s my report, and I send that report off to you.

– Yeah, yeah.

– You know what I mean? Or I let my CMO know that, “hey, there’s 10% of what you’re seeing on the dashboard isn’t accurate, it’s actually really this”.

– Right, right.

– They appreciate the real information versus the pretty dashboard.

– Sure.

– Know what I mean?

– Yeah, yeah yeah. The honesty, also, of like “hey, just so you know, this isn’t, don’t go singing to the board and try to raise money quite yet.”

– That’s what it is, right. You can get the dashboard to give you a sense of what’s going on.

– You still gotta drill deeper.

– True, exactly. It could be 90% right. You’re just trying to get a sense of what–

– Directionally.

– Exactly, what’s–

– That’s what to me, dashboard is like, okay, directionally. And even if it is precise, the numbers are fine, but, it’s you’re looking for that trend to say “where do I go and dig deeper?”

– Exactly. Again, don’t let perfection be the death. You’re just tryin’ to get a direction of where you’re tryin’ to go. So I’m not tryin’ to diss dashboards, or diss technology at all. All I’m saying is it’s not going to be ever 100% accurate.

– It’s not.

– And don’t try to build it that way, you’re not going to be able to scale it out. It’s gonna be so nuanced, and so tight that you may end up excluding good things, to again, try to account for these anomalies sometimes.

– Okay so now do you mind if I get a little technical?

– Yeah, let’s go.

– So, I know you’re in B2B.

– Yep!

– Right, you’ve been in B2B for a while, right? Do you, with data enrichment nowadays, like Clearbit, or Datanyze, or Hubspot, for instance, has HubSpot Insigts.

– Yep.

– So it’s a B2B and they know it. They’ll enrich–

– Love that.

– Isn’t it nice.

– It’s awesome.

– It’s so nice. So let me ask this. So, on a form, do you need to ask? I have an opinion by the way, so I’m gonna ask you. Do you need to ask: how many employees in your company, their industry, like, their local… You don’t need, do we need to ask that?

– Don’t even ask that. I don’t even know, it’s been reported so many times, it’s like four or five questions. That’s all people are gonna fill out.

– Yeah. Well, yeah! So for conversion rate, you gotta, you wanna, generally speaking, the lower number of fields, the more likelihood that you’re gonna get a conversion.

– A thousand percent.

– And so, if you’re B2B, and I put in WebMechanix.com, your CRM or your Clearbit or your whatever, Datanyze can enrich that data.

– So fast. We have DiscoverOrg.

– Discover, there you go.

– We do it upon inbound, I mean, like that. Exactly. I’m not asking a billion questions on my form.

– What do you get outta that?

– I mean…

– Like, industry?

– So, yeah, industry. We get everything, address information, phone number information, industry information. We get so much data. We get everything that we basically need. All I need is your email address and your company and a name.

– Yeah.

– That’s it.

– Done.

– That’s it. I just wanna call you the right thing and make sure we’re referring to the right company.

– Yeah, exactly, and sometimes just the email address gives you first name, last name, first-born son…

– Exactly.

– It’s crazy, though, the world that we live in. You work in cyber security, so you’re stradling this line of privacy. It’s like, I’ve got your email, I kinda know everything about you.

– Yeah, exactly.

– In some cases, or, most cases, not all, obviously.

– Not all, yeah.

– Alright so what about sales enablement? So this is like, I hope it not like account-based marketing and sales, I hope it’s not just like a buzzword that’s kinda floated around. But I know that in your job, you’re doing sales enablement.

– Yeah.

– Whether you call it that or not…

– Yes absolutely, yep.

– You do?

– Yes, we have an SDR team.

– Okay.

– So, we have reps that are just there to outbound call, and to call and set meetings. That’s their whole entire job. So our sales enablement team 1000% around that. I help manage that for them, and it’s super important. And it’s super important as just like a liaison between reporting and sales.

– Yes.

– That is they key team to, like… I get that RSMs, they’re busy. They legit are out in the field, knocking on doors, tryin’ to get in front of people. That’s a lot of their time. They don’t have time to call, cold call, thousands and thousands a day.

– That’s what the SCRs are?

– Exactly.

– They’re doing that and inbound, right?

– And inbound, exactly. And they’re more open to your process and what you wanna do, because that’s how they get credited.

– That’s how they get paid, yeah.

– Exactly.

– Right.

– Some SCR is not gonna give you that.

– Well, yeah, that’s their job. So what’s in sales enablement that’s like, you know what I mean, like, give me some tips.

– So, I mean, I have a basic package for our guys, like call scripts, and, objection handling.

– Good, that’s fun, that’s great.

– So, sale enablement now is all these tools, and all this content. Like, you have case studies, and all these packages of videos, and stuff, to send prospects.

– Right.

– Which is important, for sure, don’t get me wrong.

– Right.

– I feel like people do that thing and ignore just the basic foundation of, like, “how are these people sound on the phone?”

– Yeah, that’s a good call.

– You know what I mean, like, they’re your first line of defense for your potential prospects on the phone. Do they know what you do? Do they know how to communicate what you do well? Do they know how many times to properly follow up? Do they have a sequence of following up? There is a strategy to that, like, some nuance to that that they need, that I think should be more sales enabled focus than the other content. Which, doing the videos, and stuff, that’s cool. I know a lot of SaaS companies right now are kinda doing like the whiteboard video, where they say your name and show you email of that.

– Yeah.

– That’s super dope, that’s cool. I support all of those things.

– Yeah, yeah yeah. Personalized.

– Personalized content, exactly. And I support all of that, I think that’s great. But if you have that but don’t have the foundation it is kinda pointless.

– It’s gonna crumble, yeah. That’s a good point, ’cause, when I think sales enablement, I think, like, okay, call scripts, objection handling. I love all that. I also think some lead scoring, some notifications, like, “hey this lead is on your pricing page”.

– Yep.

– Call them right now, type of thing.

– Yep.

– But to your point, if you don’t know what you’re talking about…

– Right

– Then that’s…

– Or how to handle what went, right?

– Yeah.

– I wouldn’t have the same conversation with somebody who’s on the pricing page that someone who’s down in the generic white paper.

– Absolutely.

– That’s all–

– That’s your point of scripts, and understanding the process.

– That’s my main point exactly. Because in a lot of B2B companies, SDRs have that same conversation regardless, right?

– Yeah.

– They don’t bring up the type of white paper that you download, or the topic. You know, you have an interest in… We at Fidelis have four different products. Those have four different audiences. So if you just have a generic conversation, and they want a network security product, and you’re talking about something else, that’s, you’re missing the whole point.

– Not only–

– You just lost that person.

– Not only that, you have four different buyers. Four different products, four different buyers, But each one of those has all these different buyers too. You got the user buyer.

– Yep!

– You got technical buyers.

– Yep!

– You got the…

– Legal.

– Legal, the economic buyers.

– Economic, CTO, right.

– You got it all.

– The executive, all that stuff.

– So you need to know your persona.

– You have to know it very well, and you have to have those conversations, what triggers those individual personas too, as well. It’s not the same.

– Yeah. This is fun stuff. We could talk about this for days.

– I could go on and on.

– Days on days. And you know that it’s gonna keep changing.

– I can’t keep up sometimes.

– I’d say, it’s crazy. All the technology, it’s like… But it’s fun, too!

– Yeah.

– It’s like fun to get in there and get your hands dirty.

– It is. But, the biggest thing I see is, like, yes, technology is moving rapid and super fast, and changes all the time. But, a lot of people miss just the core foundational stuff.

– Yeah.

– You can talk to it probably too, as well, how many times you go into companies and they don’t have like, a core brand message.

– Sure.

– And, like, a good web site.

– Yeah.

– And, like, a value proposition. Or like a 30 second pitch. They say they’re competitors to everybody underneath the sun. They don’t have, like, a set competitor set. It’s like, let’s focus on the core stuff like this. This is marketing 101 type stuff, guys. You can thrown in as many tools as you want to, but if this isn’t done, none of this stuff really matters.

– That’s so true.

– Yeah.

– So true, Moni, and because, yeah. You throw that technology, actually would make it worse.

– Exactly.

– ‘Cause if you don’t, the first thing I need if you give me a brand new install, like a CRM or a MA platform. I need to know your business process.

– That’s right.

– I need to map that business process to your point of knowing the different buyers, knowing your value prop, when do you hit them with that value prop. Okay, they saw it in your marketing, are your sales people reinforcing that?

– Yep.

– When, how, in email? In calls? Where?

– Yeah.

– So, yeah, I gotta know your business process, so I can map that, not only just to make sure everyone’s aligned, but also due, for reporting.

– That’s right.

– I need to understand where am I creating data, and then where am I reporting that data, when am I reporting that back out?

– Yeah, yep.

– This, so we can talk all day. Will you do another episode with me sometime?

– A thousand percent, I’d be happy to.

– Because what I’m gonna do, I’m gonna rein some of this in, and maybe you could help me do it.

– Okay.

– And then we can go, ’cause I wanna do like a “six things that every marketing ops person needs to know”–

– Okay.

– or something like that, later on.

– Yeah, yeah yeah, that’d be dope.

– Cool. Moni Oloyede.

– Yep.

– Cool last name. UMBC grad.

– Yes!

– We’re gonna come back. Marketing ops. It’s hot. Not hot, it’s growing. Every company needs one, they have one, whether they know it or not.

– Yes. If you got technology, you’ve got a marketing ops person, just not called that.

– They’re just called something else.

– Exactly.

– Right, exactly. Thank you for your time today, we’ll do another episode.

– Excellent, thank you so much.

– My pleasure.