The Chat - Why B2B Growth Fails Without Sales, Marketing & Product Alignment

In this episode of The Chat, we sit down with Rusty Stapp, a seasoned revenue leader and fractional CRO who has helped countless B2B companies realign their go-to-market functions for scale. Rusty shares hard-won insights about why silos between sales, marketing, and product are no longer sustainable – and how leaders can create alignment that unlocks real, measurable growth.

From the evolving B2B buyer journey to cross-functional KPIs and leadership’s role in fostering collaboration, this episode is packed with strategic and tactical gold for anyone serious about scaling.

Key Takeaways:

• Silos are a growth killer. The modern buyer journey demands tight coordination across sales, marketing, and product.
• Alignment = acceleration. Shared goals, KPIs, and customer insights create speed and consistency across the GTM motion.
• The 3-legged stool. Growth happens when all three departments operate with trust and visibility – not in isolation.
• Leadership’s role is critical. Without intentional leadership driving cross-functional collaboration, silos will win by default.
• Look for the signals. Disconnected messaging, friction between teams, and inconsistent buyer feedback are red flags of misalignment.

Memorable Quotes:

“The buyer journey isn’t a relay race – it’s a team sport. Sales, marketing, and product all need to run the play together.” – Rusty Stapp

“Silos don’t just slow you down – they cost you deals.” – Rusty Stapp

Topics Covered:

• Why silos still exist in modern B2B companies
• What true alignment across GTM teams looks like
• How to spot and fix early signs of team misalignment
• Creating shared KPIs and metrics that drive behavior
• Leveraging the buyer journey to guide team structure and strategy
• Leadership strategies to foster collaboration, not confusion
• Examples of successful GTM alignment in action

Who This Episode Is For:

• B2B sales and marketing leaders
• Founders and CEOs of scaling companies
• Product and growth leaders
• Revenue operations and GTM strategists
• Anyone frustrated by internal friction or missed growth opportunities

Connect with Rusty Stapp:

LinkedIn: Rusty Stapp

00:00- Terry: 

Welcome to the chat, come behind the scenes of some of the world’s fastest-growing companies for the past 10 years. As chat metrics. We’ve had an exclusive inside view of how these industry leaders are revolutionizing inbound marketing and sales. Across diverse sectors. Each week we bring you conversations with top minds in marketing and sales who share insider secrets and strategies for driving inbound success.

Join us on the chat, your front row seat to the future of inbound.

So today on the chat, I’m thrilled to welcome Rusty Stapp, a powerhouse in the world of revenue leadership. Rusty is a fractional CRO, VP of Sales, and business development expert with over 25 years of experience in driving revenue growth and navigating the most complex sales cycles in B2B and B two G Industries.

He’s been instrumental in launching companies to new heights, streamlining go-to-market strategies, and creating millions of new revenue streams from guiding sales teams. Through challenging multi-decision maker cycles to reshaping broken sales processes, rusty has done it all beyond his professional acumen.

He’s a cancer survivor and a passionate advocate for men’s health, as well as an avid cyclist. Rusty’s Insights will resonate with any marketing or sales leader looking to unlock revenue growth, overcome the hurdles of today’s sales landscape, rusty.

Welcome to the chat. Thanks for joining us today.

Rusty: 

Thanks. I appreciate the time.

2:00- Terry: 

Look, I’d like to jump straight in and, and get right on, uh, right on topic for this one in particular, the silos in sales and marketing in that, in that separation between the two departments, why do you think the silos between sales and market and product persists in B2B companies when the even, there’s a clearly, you know, that negatively impacts growth.

Rusty: 

Yeah, I, I, I think this comes from just historical growth. I think if you look at companies, you know, when I first got in my career 30 or 40 years ago,

Terry: 

Mm.

03:00- Rusty: 

could have a separate sales and marketing group. Uh, marketing was supporting sales. I, I would say, again, in my early portion of my career, marketing was a very much a support mechanism for sales.

They were very siloed in what they were asked to do. It was some promotional material. It was trade show booths. didn’t have the complexity of outbound. We didn’t have the complexity of constant communication and nurturing of customers. Um, and so for many companies, that’s how they grew, that’s where they’ve been.

Or if you have a senior leader who’s been around for a while, that’s what they’ve experienced in their career. worked 30 years ago. That worked maybe 20 years ago. Uh, but buying now and the buyer journey of a B2B client is, it’s a continuum. It, it’s not, you know, they go from here to here to here.

There’s very much a continuum. By being siloed in sales and marketing, not really marching together as one, it prohibits working that continuum in a positive manner. run the risk of stops and starts, losing the prospect. And I think if you’re not tightly aligned and really working the whole process together, it makes it hard, and you’re at a disadvantage to your competition.

04:00- Terry: 

Do. Do you think that organizations persist with that problem even though they know it negatively impacts growth?

Rusty:

I’m not sure

Terry:

Well, I’ll, I re I’ll, I’ll rephrase that question. Yeah. I’ll rephrase that question. Why do you think they do? We know they do. Why do you think they persist?

Rusty:

I think part of it’s kingdom building, uh, you know, and, and people get into that. I think people have trouble changing paradigms sometimes. Um, and it, and not necessarily understanding how this buyer journey is today. I mean, even different from five or six years ago.

I mean, the buyer

Terry:

Hmm.

05:00- Rusty:

changing so much constantly that if a CEO and or the leadership of the company doesn’t understand how their potential customers think. Research them, find them, get to know their product or service, and then end up consuming it, and then they run the risk of this historical, siloed environment. Um, and then it does, it makes it hard to make an impact on revenue generation.

Terry:

How much of an impact does it have? I mean, when you get involved with businesses and able to break down these silos and bring it together, what, in your experience, how much of an impact does that actually have, that siloed environment?

Rusty:

Oh, uh, well, it, it can be huge. I mean, and let’s take the worst-case scenarios.

Terry:

Hmm.

6:00- Rusty:

Marketing’s literally over here doing their positioning, doing their outbound reach. In the, and, and again, a historical level, they’re looking at mar marketing qualified leads, and that’s, that’s all they’re judging themselves on.

That’s may, maybe that’s all they’re reporting up to. Maybe they actually get compensated on that. And, and so in that not worried about revenue, they’re not worried about real, what becomes a sales qualified lead? What becomes a true customer? So it’s very much a throw it over the wall, Hey, I did my thing and then I throw it over the wall. Um, so that doesn’t help. Sales. Vice versa is sales is not working with marketing, giving them good feedback. going on in the market? What did, what did I see my competitor do inside my prospect? What am I hearing about needs from my customer? What messages are resonating? What messages aren’t resonating? If you don’t have those two together. Then it, it, you, you can’t make that impact. And you know, it, it’s left hand on the right hand not knowing what’s going on. And, I’ve seen very disjointed organizations in that sense. They’re not working towards a common goal. At,

Terry: 

Hmm.

07:00- Rusty:

The end of the day, you would think, all right, everybody’s about generating revenue, but if marketing’s only, you know, judged by how many marketing qualified leads and, you know, how many clickthroughs did we get in our email campaign?

Or how many unique web visitors did we get? Uh, you know, we now call those vanity metrics.

Terry: 

Mm-hmm.

Rusty: 

how they are.

Terry:

Mm-hmm.

Rusty:

know, the, you know, I can have, oh, my open rate on my email was X. Whoa, okay, how many real leads did I get? How many demos did I do? How much revenue did I end up generating for that? At the end of the day, how much did all of that go to the end and really drive a bottom-line impact to the company? Um, which is why, you know, if you’re disjointed in not working together, arm in arm, um then it’s really hard to drive that business.

Terry:

Mm-hmm.

Rusty:

know, the, you know, I can have, oh, my open rate on my email was X. Whoa, okay, how many real leads did I get? How many demos did I do? How much revenue did I end up generating for that? At the end of the day, how much did all of that go to the end and really drive a bottom-line impact to the company? Um, which is why, you know, if you’re disjointed in not working together, arm in arm um, then, it’s really hard to drive that business.

08:00- Terry: 

True, true in, in terms of say, percentage increases that you’ve seen of going from before with the silos to after, where an organization’s actually in step and, and those critical customer facing departments are all in, in arm, in arm, what sort of percentage, um, improvements have you seen? Say, let’s talk about revenue overall because that’s, that’s the ultimate

Rusty:

Yeah. I mean it, in going from a really bad case to improvement, I’ve seen a 50% increase. Now

Terry: 

Wow.

09:00- Rusty: 

promise that overall, I mean the, you, you hope you’re never dealing with one. That, that there is that disjointed. But I’ve literally seen where people get together. And the third piece of this puzzle that I think I alluded uh, once before to you is also the product team being involved in this, uh, for these complex sales cycles that have a length of time having the product team aligned with marketing and sales.

’cause, ’cause you’re shooting at a point in time out in the future to close a deal. Could be six months, could be a year, it could be two years. I, I mean I, I’ve been in engagements where literally the start to the end is a three year cycle

Terry: 

Hmm.

Rusty: 

revenue. Um, and having the product team together with your sales and marketing will definitely impact that too, because they’re hitting that point in time. When you are going to be delivering on your commitment to your customer. Um, and that, and that helps if they truly understand that,

Terry:

Yeah.

10:00- Rusty

Appreciate it, then it helps drive the product delivery process. It also gives them direct feedback in terms of as they’re making product enhancements. Um, I, the best, I think, the best product impacts I’ve ever had is where I started pulling product leaders directly into customers, then they can appreciate what’s going on.

It’s not just some salesperson yelling at ’em, going, Hey, I need this, I need this. And, you know, it’s, it’s a noisy environment. If they sit in front of a customer truly see that, appreciate why that need is there. It really makes for a positive feedback loop inside product development.

Terry:

It’s really interesting from our perspective, because we get to deal with so many customers across different verticals, you start to get a sense pretty quickly as to how disjointed their, or how siloed their businesses are.

Rusty:

Mm-hmm.

Terry:

are able to see, because we come in predominantly through marketing, because marketing owns the website, but in fact, we operate as online salespeople, and so we need to have close involvement with the sales team as well.

The sales leaders. And so we know, you can almost tell the ones that sort of hold us in the marketing or hold us in the demand gen side without involvement from sales.

Rusty:

Right.

11:00- Terry:

a sense and say, okay, there’s some silos here. There’s some motivations. In fact, with, with one of our clients, that was quite, um, a difficult situation and a difficult conversation I had to have.

They were doing things that were, um, well, they had a chatbot on the front of our service

Rusty:

Mm-hmm.

Terry:

was asking for an email address before they would let a person come through to chat with a human being.

Rusty:

Hmm. All right.

Terry:

And, we know from experience that that can have anywhere up to a 96% drop off of people who want to actually talk to sales.

Rusty: 

Wow.

Terry:

Nearly a hundred percent will drop out. And, uh, it was virtually an argument, and I had to give her an ironclad guarantee that I would pay. I would actually pay if um, she got less emails. Her, KPI was emails.

Rusty: 

Right,

12:00- Terry:

She wanted emails upfront. Her KPI was emails and she was so siloed in that view that she had to get emails and that was our job, was to deliver emails when in fact our job was to qualify and deliver booked meetings.

I promised her that we’ll get you more emails than having this prequalification question. And, and we did. It was a quadruple increase in the number of, of, but that’s a classic example where you’ve got a person in a business that’s so focused on their individual KPIs that it’s having a negative impact on the overall revenue of the organization.

Rusty: 

Yep.

Terry:

And this person was in a demand gen, a junior demand generation role

Rusty: 

Mm-hmm.

Terry:

That’s.

Rusty: 

Yep. Well, and, and you’re right. Again, getting all that alignment, I, and I’ll give you another example. I was working for a major chemical company, and the R and D team was incentivized on patents that they filed. You know, they, they got bonuses at the end of the year. They got awards and stuff. Didn’t matter whether the invention was sellable or not, that was not part of the criteria. The, it was about whether the patent was granted there. And, none of these R and D people had ever met a customer before.

Terry: 

Hmm.

13:00- Rusty:

Of these people have been in the business for 25 years, and never met a customer. I started dragging a PhD head of R and D out with me to go see major customers. R and D roadmap changed in six months. Suddenly, it was no longer just about patents. Suddenly, they could tie these things to customers, and they actually got enjoyment out of it. They were like, I’m not just inventing things to invent things.

Terry:

Mm-hmm.

Rusty:

I’m in, I’m inventing things that a customer’s gonna use. Um, and, and it made a huge change, uh, in my revenue, just a result of being able to tie them together. So, yeah, I mean, when the KPIs are silo driven and, and not helping the overall organization, it makes it challenging to really run a, an efficient ship.

14:00- Terry:

Hmm. Uh, okay. So the big question that comes out of all of this, then, is how do we fix it? What are the first steps? And, and you know, there’s, there’s obviously the baby steps and first steps that leaders need to take to resolve it. What are the first steps that leaders need to take to resolve this issue?

Rusty:

Well, so I like, I think you, you and I both alluded to, are there KPIs that are only serving one organization, one group?

Terry:

Mm-hmm.

Rusty:

Do they really need to be there? Can we deliver K, build a set of KPIs that are more inclusive of everyone? You know, yes, you need to have some department KPIs, no doubt about it. But how do you build a set of KPIs that brings everyone together, and everyone wants to deliver on those? Uh, I also think it can be an organizational structure, on the sales and marketing side, you know, on the big proponent, uh, of, you know, A CRO or someone like that, who organizationally owns sales and marketing

Terry:

Mm-hmm.

15:00- Rusty: 

Now you have senior leaders on both of those sides. But in that sense, then there is one executive sitting there owning that go-to-market.

And it’s not about marketing protecting itself or sales protecting themselves. It’s about a complete delivery, uh, from start to finish.

Terry:

Hmm.

Rusty:

So I think KPIs and organizational structure are the two key items that you, you start a big impact here.

Terry:

And what what have been the biggest obstacles that you found when you’re involved in an organization and helping ’em go through this process? What are, what are the biggest, um, obstacles that stop them from being able to get to that, um, alignment between sales, marketing, and product? I,

Rusty:

Uh, yeah. Part of it is, again, what they’ve lived in in past organizations. I mean,

Terry:

Hmm.

16:00- Rusty:

They, sales, did this, marketing did this. And so thinking about it in a new way, it, it’s hard for people to make that leap, even when you can produce reports by Gartner and McKenzie showing how the buying journey is changing there in the market. Um, some people have a hard time accepting change. Um, I, I even use the analogies of how you purchased things today, the consumer, your consumer, purchases, compared to the way you did. 10 years ago

Terry:

Hmm.

Rusty:

Those things impact our B2B journeys. Just like you go to Amazon and buy something, now you go and Google and look at some reviews and you look at a couple of websites and then you go buy it online. Did you talk to anyone? You know, you probably didn’t. That same buying methodology, you know, permeates right into, uh, a B2B environment and, and that’s what we see now on B2B engagements.

17:00- Terry:

Uh, it, it’s really interesting. Um. It’s the human piece, isn’t it? It’s the cha. It’s, you talk about change management, but it’s actually the human piece. The psychology of this is the way we’ve always done it. The, natural resistance to change. The difficulty in thinking in new way is really just that natural resistance to change because it puts us in, often in uncomfortable situations, unfamiliar its surroundings.

Rusty:

Right.

Terry:

The, the change management piece, how much of, um, how much of that from a, when you are involved and, and effectively running through a project of bringing these, um, silos together, how much of the, uh, of a formal change management piece is there in your planning preparation?

18:00- Rusty:

Well it, so it depends on what that change is. Uh, I do try to, you know, walk before we run. Rarely will you find an organization that’s ready to just go do wholesale, you know, unless there’s been a CEO change and the CEOs come

Terry:

Hmm.

Rusty:

Mandated something. So I’m usually looking for those small changes that get people comfortable with change.

Terry:

Hmm.

Rusty:

Before you start doing something big, try to introduce the justification for it. It’s how we do outbound. Maybe it’s just how, I mean, it can be as simple as implementing a CRM.

I still run into enterprise clients who are living in a spreadsheet and tracking their opportunities there so hard to believe in this day and age that it happens. So, you know, I try to start looking for those smaller changes that are impactful, that then breed bigger wholesale changes. Um, again, short, short of a major executive changeover, think that’s the way people become more comfortable.

19:00- Terry: 

So one of the examples you gave earlier of that, is what you’re talking about, for instance, where you take the, uh, leader of the R and D team out into the market to actually meet customers? Oh I, I like the way you, in my mind it was almost like gorilla change management. It’s like, okay, let’s go and just do some bits and pieces here.

And you might find that, you know, the really big changes in terms of organizational change and structure change is not necessary. If you get the right people into the right mindsets and then this,

Rusty: 

Yep.

Terry: 

Get an outcome in terms of everybody working together naturally as opposed to being, you know, ground up rather than being forced from the top down.

Rusty:

Right. Yeah. Well, and, and I took over sales and marketing for a mid-tier SaaS company, of which the product management people had never sat in front of a customer before.

Terry: 

Hmm,

Rusty: 

And I was amazed. I’m like, it’s product management. You, you people, should be living in front of customers.

Terry:

Hmm, hmm,

20:00- Rusty: 

And, so you’re right.

I think it just, it doesn’t have to necessarily be a major formal change. It’s just giving people’s buy-in

Terry: 

hmm.

Rusty: 

able to, willing to do things differently.

Terry: 

Do you think that in your experience is heavily weighted towards big business, government and, and enterprise, uh, size organizations? Um, do you think that there is a fundamental difference in the types of people and what their expectations are in terms of the whole process from identifying a problem, researching who the potential providers are looking for an outcome?

I mean, is there, is there, I guess what I’m, what I’m asking is do you think there’s a difference between a person that’s doing that in an enterprise versus a person that’s doing that in a smaller organization?

Rusty:

No, I don’t. I think it has more to do with the type of product or service they’re acquiring. think it has less to do with the size of the organization that they work for.

Terry: 

Mm-hmm.

21:00- Rusty:

Anything that is going to be you, and let’s say. a financial management piece of software for the company. Uh, you know, whether you are $5 million USD company or a $500 million USD company, the purchasing process is pretty similar, you know,

Terry: 

Hmm

Rusty:

In terms of research knowledge.

I mean, you’ll, I, there’s a framework that I like to, I like to use with my customers around nurturing a potential customer. And it’s called the 7 11 4. So it’s seven hours of content across 11 pieces and four mediums to really help them understand what you do, why you do it, and why it’s important to them. That’s irrespective of whether they’re a $5 million entity or a 500 million entity.

Terry: 

Hmm. The 7 11 4. I like that. I like that. It’s good.

22:00- Rusty:

It, it comes, uh, it came from Google. I would love to take credit for that. Uh, but I, and, and I don’t live in the absolutes, but I think the general p the, the general framework of it is you need a lot of touch points in different ways people to, to trust you, to know you, to be comfortable working with you, to want to engage you in a human to human connection. Um, and, and so I encourage anyone I’m working with or just talk to, to do things like that, I, and, and again, that’s different. You know, when I started my career 30 years ago in sales, you know, I joke, I asked marketing for a couple of things. I asked them for the one-page slick. I asked them to make sure the trade show booth looked good and make me some giveaways to go giveaway to the customer. That’s all I asked of them. You know, and now that’s different. You know, now there is all of this nurturing needed to be done to get that customer to a point where you where you can truly work them through the sales cycle.

Terry:

Mm-hmm. And, particularly with very long sales cycles, you know, this account-based nurturing, uh, is, is critical. Uh, back onto the piece with regards to the, the, you know, fundamentally the human beings don’t change between, you know, large and small, uh, or, and their own process that they follow. Obviously, there’ll be, um, processes within their organization, procedures that they’ve gotta follow from a procurement perspective.

I found recently that. Um, we’ve done some research on some e-commerce, uh, websites, particularly around, in the area of what we do, but it almost seems as though the whole, um, idea of marketing in an e-commerce environment is so much more focused and refined on getting revenue outcomes than what the whole B2B world is.

And, and look, there’s some islands of excellence, but they are that they’re, they’re small remote islands. Um, generally across B2B, it’s almost like that initial experience is quite shocking. And for me it’s crystallized in the last 24 months as we’ve been doing this research. And I see, I think it’s because in an e-commerce environment, the marketing team sees almost immediate consequences of their actions.

They see immediate revenue for them, the outcome is a basket checkout. Whereas the marketing team in B2B, it’s this longer term un future consequence. You know, they’re, they’re delivering a potential prospect into a pipeline or a sales process that will take some amount of time before they actually see the results, the endpoint, the revenue of, of their actions.

And sure,

Rusty: 

Right,

25:00- Terry:

know, there are step points and indicators along the way that can tell whether or not that deal’s gonna close and whether or not they’re a good fit for the organization. So it brings it back closer, but it’s not the immediacy that the e-commerce, um, industry has

Rusty: 

Yep.

Terry:

But yet the people are no different.

You go and buy,

Rusty: 

It

Terry: 

You go and shop online. It’s the same person shopping online, getting an eCommerce experience as it is. Someone’s doing research, you know, on your business to whether or not you can solve their problem. I. It’s, um, I just think there’s this huge gap between the e-commerce and B2B businesses at the moment from a marketing perspective.

And I’ve seen recently a couple of e-commerce marketers, very senior e-commerce marketers, moving into B2B businesses and start to shake things up a bit. And, and the impact’s been quite extraordinary as far as the, uh, pipeline build on revenue perspective has, has been.

Rusty: 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, depending on the study you look at, it says that in, in a B2B environment, there’s only 3% of our prospects that are really in a buying mode at that.

Terry: 

Mm-hmm.

26:00- Rusty:

So, you know, it is, it’s, it’s like you’ve alluded to, it’s about playing the long game

Terry: 

Mm-hmm.

Rusty:

Nurturing is the key right now. It’s about continuing to nurture all of those prospects and targets over time so that you know, at when they are in a purchasing mode, you’re at the front of the back.

Terry: 

Hey, can you give us, um, or, or talk us through a time where you’ve got been involved with an organization that’s had to do the more extreme in terms of a restructure and what that process was like, what the outcomes were. And I mean, the outcomes not just for revenue, but for the entire organization because something like that can have a big impact on the culture of an organization.

27:00- Rusty:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and, and I, and I have been through them where we’ve had to restructure our channel strategy change, you know, how we’re going to market, how we’re supporting customers in that way. Uh, I would say, you know, and again, I’ll come back to the specialty chemical stuff that I was doing.

We, we were very innovation product oriented, not solution, customer oriented.

Terry:

Mm-hmm.

Rusty: 

Uh, and so we made some changes both in product development, as I talked about here, and, and really got the R and D team bought in. We put a lot more of a support structure in for customers and helping them to develop solutions. So it wasn’t just about us out innovating our competition, uh, which I, which I think can be a, a hard road. Um, I, I if I, you know, I, I always think of, you know, there’s kind of three different models of how you want to be best in class. You can now innovate all of your competition. great.

That’s a hard road. You know, we see Nvidia doing that right now. I think they’re a great example, you know, in the semiconductor space. Uh,

Terry:

Yep.

28:00- Rusty: 

To be that. Person, you can be very customer intimate and customer centric, and really be thinking about the customer and how you do that. Or you, you can, um, you can be a cost of ownership leader like that, and it’s not gonna say about acquisition cost, but the total cost of

Terry: 

Yep. Yep.

29:00- Rusty:

out there. Uh, I’ve always thought that the customer intimate model was the one that’s, that’s more sustainable and is more company and process oriented there. Your, your, your cost structures, depending on the type of business you’re on, can be whipsawed. By suppliers or other things going on innovation, it’s about out innovating and it’s an expensive and hard one. Uh, so when I’ve gone into organizations and really needed to reduce stuff, it’s about building that customer intimate model. And that’s what I did with this, uh, chemical company. And we’re able to turn an unprofitable business around to making over $6 million in an 18 month period. Um, and it was

Terry: 

Wow.

Rusty:

Putting more solution-oriented people right there at the customer. It was about getting the R and D team aligned with customer problems. Uh, and I actually massively reduced our channel strategy because we were too far away from the customer. We had a channel in front of us

Terry:

Okay.

Rusty:

We were not as close to the customers we needed to be. as we got close to the customer, we learned more.

We came better at delivery. We were solving their problems better. Uh, and so that’s probably the biggest one where I, the largest organizational change that I’ve ever made. And then the, the resulting impact that happened.

30:00- Terry: 

As I imagine changing, uh, channels like that, moving and, and moving closer to the customer, there’s a, there’s a fair amount of cost that can actually come with that, with the additional resources required to, to achieve it.

Rusty:

Yep. Absolutely. It, it, it does, it does bear you more cost. Uh, but in this case, this was an early stage technology development, there was a lot of needing, needing to be close to the market, helping to help them understand how to maximize the value for it. I think when you’re in a more established market and in a more established brand, being farther away from the customer is okay.

You know, if I’m Salesforce and want to sell CRM, I have a lot of integrators out there.

Terry: 

Mm-hmm.

Rusty:

Uh, but if I’m doing a brand new AI solution in a segment that traditionally hasn’t had AI type of automation, you gotta be closer to your customer trying, farther away and helping them understand value and solving their problems.

I, I think it’s harder to drive revenue that way.

31:00- Terry:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I agree. I agree. As far as the, the, um, that particular example that you gave with the additional cost, that must have been a pretty big uplift in revenues then. What do you think, I mean, getting closer to customers and understanding, I get that, but was it a combination? Where was the biggest impact?

Was that the fact that your sales team were able to directly engage with the customers and or, I guess to a certain extent be somewhat more motivated than a channel partner, so to speak? Or, or the fact that the product we’re involved now and actually innovating to solve customer’s actual problems and almost that land and expand where you are in, you’ve got a, some relationship there with a customer.

Then you’re starting to broaden the amount of products that you’ve, you’ve got with that customer.

32:00- Rusty:

Right. So we sh we ended up shortening the sales cycle over time because we were closer to the customer. We were solving a problem quicker for them as opposed to being away from them. right. By R and D, improving our product line. I had more things to sell to the customer.

Terry:

Mm-hmm.

Rusty:

The problem I had before was R and D was very. You know, our innovation focus, not customer focused. So some of the things I couldn’t sell to the customer, I mean literally was not going there. I had them do some very me too products had high revenue impact for me, and I could pull those things along by taking the innovative products and the bread and butter products and sell ’em as a package. and it ended up making, you know, a very good top end growth as a result of that.

33:00- Terry:

Hmm Hmm. And so in, in that situation, I guess, and, and overall, how do you balance the competing priorities of sales needing immediate wins or always looking for immediate wins? ’cause that tends to be the, the driving force behind sales and then marketing, which are focused on a more, you know, longer term brand growth, and then product concentrating on feature development, which is, can often be a future state as well.

How, how do you get that balance?

Rusty: 

Well, and, and it depends on the business

Terry:

Hmm.

34:00- Rusty:

You know, and that market and what that cycle is. What’s my dev cycle? You know, and you’re, and you’re right, you can’t take your eye off the near term ’cause you gotta be continuing to create revenue. So there’s always a significant portion of your cycles and effort making sure you’re working that funnel and meeting the revenue goals out there. But, you know, I think it’s just like anything else, you’ve gotta make sure and carve out time for the rest. So you can’t let, I gotta close the numbers for this quarter. Not allow next quarter’s growth, next year’s growth, months’ growth. not happen. And, all we, I think you’ve always got to be having some of those efforts going on for the medium and long term.

And that should be pretty, your KPIs,

Terry: 

Hmm.

Rusty: 

Well, am I developing my message? Am I working with a product to pull things through commercialization? Um, I’ve helped implement commercialization processes in companies and in that sales and marketing are part of commercialization. It’s not just a product team.

Terry: 

Hmm.

Rusty:

And in that, yeah, how’s our commercialization schedule going? Are we moving things through our commercialization gates? ‘Cause if so, that’s your long-term investment there.

Terry: 

Yeah.

Rusty:

Uh, and so is, you know, you wanna make sure those things are happening along with the other components that are driving, uh, short in your, in, uh, medium term revenue.

Terry: 

Hmm. Yeah. It’s the, it’s the, I guess it’s the overall strategy, isn’t it, in terms and,

Rusty:

No.

35:00- Terry: 

On the organization and the market. What, what, what role does leadership play in fostering collaboration across sales, marketing, and product?

36:00- Rusty: 

So I think leadership, again, should be making sure that the KPIs match, that everybody’s going together. I mean, again, I think the siloed KPIs are what drive people apart and have them only thinking about what makes them successful. Um, there was, been in the news, what, who was the company?

I’m sorry, I’m, I’m forgetting it. There was a. Deal in the news this week about one company having a hundred and something million shipping costs, uh, on their balance sheet. And that’s because someone in the shipping department was not recognizing the shipping cost. And one of the thoughts was, the reason they didn’t do that is their KPI was to lower shipping cost. And so literally they were not reporting it into the financials there so that the profits of the business unit looked better that. And, and I think that’s a, assuming that is what was going on with this organization, that’s a classic example. You’ve got a KPI that is silo oriented, that makes them think about them, not the organization.

Terry: 

Hmm.

Rusty: 

Uh,

Terry: 

And, and in fact, actually probably potentially driving the opposite behavior to what you really want.

Rusty: 

Negative behavior.

Terry: 

Correct? Yeah. Yeah.

37:00- Rusty: 

Think the KPIs are important, and you know, I’m always a, I, I’ve always said this, when I’ve been part of an organization as I’m part of, I’m leading. It’s like, you know, be very clear about what the goals are and then how do you enable the groups to go meet those goals, and how do you en, you know, how do you enable them to do that and then get outta their way. you know, you should have people in organizations who can go meet their goals, and what are you doing to enable that? Um, and, and I’ve been lucky enough to have leadership that, that has done a really good job at that before.

Terry: 

You mentioned before, framework 7 11 4,

Rusty: 

Mm-hmm.

Terry: 

tool, what other tools or frameworks do you recommend for improving communication and collaboration between the departments? Is there any.

Rusty: 

Yeah. Well, I mean, tools like a CRM. Uh, I, I’ve been living in CRMs before, you know, Mr. Benioff had salesforce.com and everything like that. I mean,

uh, for an organization not to have A-C-R-M-I, I think you’re still back in the stone age. So you’ve got to have a tool and live by it. not just for, I mean, it, it should be a decision tool.

It’s not just a recording tool, it’s a decision tool. I’m a big believer in having a very tight ICP and I ideal customer profile.

Terry:

Mm-hmm.

38:00- Rusty:

The thing that I’ll put on top of an ICP is I actually do a scoring ICP inside of all organizations. ICP is you’ve got your five criteria. Let’s say it’s five for your ideal customer. you’re not just gonna name what that is, but literally as a prospect comes in, you’re gonna score against that ICP. So Terry, in criteria one, well, maybe you’re a two, you don’t really value that key component of what we do and, and and criteria. second criteria is your budget approved, you know, well it is, but it’s only up to a certain level. You know, what’s your ICP look like? And then I score against those literally so that you then some got some type of quantifiable measure to look at

Terry: 

Hmm.

39:00- Rusty:

Out there. And then where do you go put your resources? Because at the end of the day, the things that most align with your ICP is what your organization should be chasing. Not logos, not, Hey, this is a $10 million deal and I’ve got five, $2 million deals here. if the five, $2 million deals, you got a 90% chance of winning and the $10 million deal, you got a 2% chance of winning, what do you, where do you go put your chips? You, you go

Terry: 

Yeah.

Rusty: 

Deals and, and, and go improve your probability here.

Terry:

Yeah. And, and that ICP scoring allows you to give you that, um, ability to target and put the resources where, where you’re likely to get the best outcomes return on investment.

Rusty: 

Yeah. Yeah. And it’s not perfect. And it gets better over time because you still have a human bias as part of it, and the scoring system.

Terry: 

Mm-hmm.

40:00- Rusty:

But over time, you’ll find with an organization it’ll get better and better. and then you, then it really becomes a decision tool out there, uh, for you to understand where to put resources. Where are your best opportunities? It helps finance understand how to forecast, because at the end of the day, you know, sales and finance should be closely tied so that they can do their job. You know it, it’s a structure that can really help you, uh, up and down the line, uh, in terms of driving revenue.

Terry: 

When you get this alignment in place, what is the impact or what, what is the actual enhancement that happens from a customer experience perspective?

Rusty: 

Yeah. Yeah. It, it, it’s fun because you can see that the customer truly gets, they, they feel like you understand their problems.

Terry:

Hmm.

41:00: Rusty:

Truly a partner helping them to solve their problems. You’re not a ven, just a vendor. You’re not just selling a product or service. You’re there truly solving their problems. And you, you do become a partner with them. Um, and, and I’ve been lucky enough, I’ve been part of some organizations where we have been able to get this alignment, to get that level of execution between the departments. Um I, I was part of one company and, and inside of four years, we took up the company from a $27 million company to a hundred million company.

Terry: 

Hmm.

Rusty:

And, and we were, we’re an electronics company in the US competing against then the Japanese, which were the king of electronics. Yet we, we were taking market share consistently. Um, and so it, for someone like me in a go-to-market role. That’s the fun side, the

Terry: 

Yeah.

42:00- Rusty: 

That’s when it really gets fun when you get that alignment. It’s that state of flow that you hear about with organizations and people and stuff, everybody’s marching together, everybody’s executing, and it is, it’s a one plus one equals three at that point.

Terry:

And, you do see it from a customer’s perspective, you know, their experiencing coming through. If you, if you put yourself in their shoes, all of a sudden they’re looking at an organization that everyone’s looking to solve their problem and everyone’s looking to help them. You know, there’s no, um, internal conflict.

There’s no, you know, you can see one department not necessarily wanting to make a change or get on board, et cetera, et cetera. Do you just feel like you’ve got this powerhouse on your team that’s helping you be more successful, from a customer’s perspective? So it’s, um.

Rusty:

There’s no finger pointing, and unfortunately, I’ve been in organizations where support’s pointing the finger back at implementation. It’s not our fault, it’s their fault. And the customer feels that. You know, um, and so yeah, if you’re not aligned and working together, then the cu the customer understands that they’re not stupid.

Terry: 

Absolutely. Absolutely. And that in itself, the customer experience. I think in this particular times that we’re talking about now, I know it’s been more at the front of mind for go to market teams for executives, both sales and marketing executives, marketing teams. It’s the. Customer experience is almost becoming the point or a very much a point of differentiation or that, that, well, it’s actually, it’s beyond that now.

I think it’s almost a ticket to the game. If your customer’s not gonna have a good experience in dealing with you, um, then you’re gonna be on the back foot from, from the start. You mentioned earlier that you are a great proponent of, you know, a CRO role or chief revenue Officer where marketing and, and, and sales sit under the one.

What’s your concept, what’s your take on the concept of, say, a revenue team that integrates sales, marketing and customer success under, under one umbrella?

44:00- Rusty: 

Yeah. So I think it depends on the type of customer you’re servicing, and your product and service. I, I, I think that’s great and I would be a proponent of it in, in most cases. Uh, again, it just really depends on the type of customer you’re servicing, but I think anyone, I think an organization that’s looking at the customer and how to service them you know, stage, you know, all the way through the life cycle should sit under a single leadership because again, then there’s no, there’s no none of silos. It’s about marching together and being able to do that, um, and, and deliver that customer and support them wholeheartedly.

45:00- Terry: 

Hmm. Uh, look, I, I tend to agree. I think that it’s too much of a risk and too easy that if the head of one of those departments changes. that then can, upset the apple cart because of, personality types or ego ambition as you, as you said before, it’s the individual, empire building for instance,

Rusty: 

Right.

Terry:

That could too easily dismantle all of that good work that’s been done to remove those silos.

Rusty: 

Yeah.

Terry: 

Um, you know, unfortunately, I’ve seen that happen.

Rusty:

Yeah. Well, and to me, again, it comes back to the KPIs being misaligned. I’ve seen these silos there and, and it becomes like, well, that’s not coming outta my budget. That should come outta your budget. You know, well, no, it’s not coming outta my budget. That was someone else’s problem, you know, and then everybody’s worried about their budgets and and things like that, as opposed to what’s best for the customer at the end of the day.

Terry: 

Hmm.

Rusty:

And they’ve been involved in organizations like that, and the customer feels it. They know that things are not smooth on, um, on the supply end. And I just, you, you’ve got to find ways to get rid of those things,

46:00- Terry: 

Yeah. Yeah. And look, and I think that that’s where the structure plays such an important part and both in setting KPIs and then, um, you know, managing and, and controlling that way the organization interacts between itself and then, and then the customer base from there.

Rusty:

Right.

Terry: 

Um, how should companies approach messaging to ensure consistency across sales, marketing, and product touchpoints?

Rusty:

Yeah. I mean, again, I think messaging these days, I’ve alluded to it a little while ago, this is so much a nurturing. I think messaging these days is very much about how do you, this is less the hard sell and much more these days. How do you help solve problems? How do you inform, um, I think that type of messaging is much more beneficial these days than the hard sell.

You know, I,

Terry: 

Yeah.

47:00- Rusty:

I think thinking about the whole call to actions, we always had to have so many of them on a website and blah. I would argue that less of that needs to happen. Now

Terry: 

Hmm.

Rusty:

You know, there are some studies from McKinsey. That will show, uh, a potential customer will go 80% through the buying cycle before they wanna talk to anyone. So the whole call to action and things like that I, I think, needs to be lessened. And I think nurturing the, the prospect out there, you know, solving problems, how are you gonna solve the problem? How do you build the trust? Those components are what’s important these days in driving customers to your solution.

Terry:

I mean, look, you, you said it earlier, it’s becoming that trusted advisor,

Rusty: 

Mm-hmm.

48:00- Terry:

Really, and if you can set the organization up to give the customer that experience of, uh, that you’re operating in that environment of being a trusted envi, uh, advisor as opposed to trying to close the deal or a, b, c always be closing, uh, you know, through call to actions and capturing email addresses and so forth.

Um, you know, we’ve seen some pretty big results come through. Had a client that joined us a year ago, their website was very much focused on. Um, call to actions driving people into a funnel. Everything was gated in terms of information, and they weren’t getting it, it was an extraordinarily low conversion rate.

My concern was that the quality of the traffic was in fact quite low, and that’s why the conversion rate was low. We went live and using our normal process where we don’t ask for any emails or any contact details upfront. All of a sudden, all of this information started to come through from the conversations and the number of chats and the number of conversions we were delivering turned what was a very low converting website to an one of our highest converting websites.

The traffic was extraordinary quality, that they were just being so focused on having everything gated to try and thinking that they’ve, thinking that the value of what they were giving in terms of the information while people are doing their research, was so high that people would be putting their contact details out.

It was just, it was, it was a non, uh, non-reality. So. In having, seeing those conversations, they went through and ungated about 98%. I think there’s still 2% of the, the, um information they had on there, and it’s just changed the, it’s changed their in complete revenue flow. Um, it’s, it’s, it’s literally tripled revenue for that organization in the course of 18 months.

Rusty: 

That’s

Terry: 

Um, simply because they’ve allowed, and, and it’s not all coming through the chat now that they’ve got all of this information open, then there’s inquiries coming through the website, through their normal processes with,

Rusty: 

Mm-hmm.

50:00- Terry: 

know, contact us, and book a demo and all that sort of stuff. But. It was discovered because we opened up the gates with the live chat and, and, uh, you know, the, the insights with live chat and all, you know, it’s, it’s the, the old, um, uh, you know ow, I, I’m not selling here, but the reality is when you let somebody come to a website and have a conversation where you have no expectation in return and you’re simply answering their questions, um, it, it creates a very detailed conversation that you can gain enormous insights from.

Rusty:  

Well, and I think what you just alluded to is there, you have to think about how to do things different. You know, it’s not the same world we lived in before, so

Terry: 

Mm-hmm.

Rusty: 

Behind a wall, capturing, you know, contact information and all that stuff, it’s a different buying environment right now.

Terry: 

Hmm,

Rusty:

You know,

Terry:

Hmm.

Rusty: 

is what we hope both you and I, that clients will take a look at and, and be willing to try something different because this is what we’re seeing in the market.

Terry: 

It. Exactly, exactly. And again, you know, it still comes back to that component that underlines and it seems it doesn’t matter who I speak to, it’s all got the same, um, underlying component. And, and that is that we’re dealing with human beings. It’s, this is a person to person,

Rusty: 

Yep.

Terry:

Um, transaction. You know, I can see the day where there’ll be a, a lot more AI involved than there is at the moment.

And that’s probably coming sooner rather than later. But the reality is, um, it’s still human beings that are, that are doing, having those, you know, two-way conversations at, at, at this point in time.

Rusty: 

Yep. Well, and the human, yeah. And the human has just decided they want, they want a different level of interaction. and so that’s what we have to adapt to.

Terry:

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

so how do you help teams avoid or move away from territorial thinking? And I get it, there’s kpi, you can change KPIs, but there’s gotta be underlying conversations to take place and shift to a mindset of shared goals. There’s, there’s a step between setting KPIs and people actually being bought into that process.

Rusty: 

Yep. Yep. I, and my and experience has been usually breaking down that silo means. You need to have cross organizations involved in the other one’s life. so I gave you examples of R and D people I’ve taken out to customers,

Terry: 

Hm.

Rusty: 

Sitting in front of customers. I think, you know, having, you know, product and marketing people literally involved in the sales call gives an appreciation for what’s going on.

I also think having regular dialogue of a group of salespeople back to marketing what’s going on in position, what’s going on in messaging, and having the dialogue there so that, you know, marketing can say, well, we’re doing this, this, and this, and sales can go, well, here’s why I think that works, or Here’s why I don’t think it works.

Terry: 

Hmm.

Rusty:

Think having, trying to create some type of circular feedback loop helps break that down as opposed to people just sitting in their box. Doing that. So, like when I’ve ever done account reviews, there is a marketing setting there, there’s product management, there’s product people, there’s finance setting there,

Terry: 

Hmm.

Rusty: 

because I want the other teams to appreciate on in a day-to-day sales environment, the good, the bad, the ugly, um, and that they get to ask questions, they get to offer input, um, and that it’s not just such a black box for them out there that they can see what’s going on because they, I think that then helps them appreciate goes on in that revenue cycle out there.

54:00- Terry: 

Yeah. Yeah. Do, do you, um, I mean, look, AI seems to be permeating all of our lives, al almost everywhere these days. Do you think that the rise of AI and automation, um, impacts the need for a closer alignment between the teams?

Rusty: 

Absolutely. There are a lot of people using AI very poorly right now. Um, I’m not a big fan of the personalization tools going on out

Terry: 

Hmm.

Rusty: because

Terry: Hmm.

Rusty:

See them being used well. I think they could be used well, but I see more bad examples of them. And I’ve written about this a couple of times on LinkedIn, and I,

Terry:

Hmm.

Rusty:

I use examples of emails that have been sent to me that are just, they’re, they’re masking as personalized and authentic when they’re obviously using an AI tool that’s scraping my LinkedIn profile, scraping my website, and it’s completely outta context.

Terry: 

Mm-hmm.

55:00- Rusty: 

I think an over-reliance on these tools up hurting your brand than helping your brand. I, I, I, I think that, that they are, they’re definitely helpful. I mean, I use ’em every day. You know, I use chat, GPTI uses perplexity, but they are a tool to get there. They’re not a replacement for things.

Terry:

Yeah. Yeah. I, I agree. I think it’s about leveraging them rather than relying on them. Uh, I, I, it’s interesting in my persp, from my perspective, I think a, a message is much more important to be relevant than personalized,

Rusty: 

Mm-hmm.

Terry:

Everybody has different personalities, too.

Rusty: 

I agree. I agree. Yeah. And, and I’m a proponent right now of cold outreach can be generic, but it needs to be relevant.

Terry: 

Hmm.

56:00- Rusty:

to the problem you’re solving, to the person you’re solving it for. to personalize down to Terry went to university at and so and, you know, try to make a connection like that. The likelihood you’re gonna get it right is, you know, you got a 10% chance, I think, at best, and the you got a 90% chance of it being completely off, which then kills the rest of your message.

Terry:

Yeah. Yeah.

Rusty: 

I, I mean, and right now in the campaigns that I’m running that are cold, they are very direct on a pain point for a potential buyer

Terry:

Okay.

Rusty:

There. And those are the ones where I, where we’re getting good feedback, we’re getting good engagement and things like that. I wouldn’t even attempt to try to go do one of these automated AI personalized what Mary, you know, job was three years ago. And I just, uh, I think it’s too fraught with problems right now.

Terry: 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree. I agree. And particularly now with all of the, uh, the technical side of emailing and deliverability and spam filters and, you know, the big, uh, the big service providers are really trying to cut down on spam and, and, uh, it’s almost like the world of sales is trying to increase spam.

So it’s a

Rusty: 

Right.

57:00- Terry: 

Never-ending fight. But look, I think the one good thing about email is that, um, I mean, unless you are doing the wrong thing, as long as you’ve got your technical side set up properly and, and you’re doing the right thing, then you’ll always get through. Because email is like the new old, uh, letters, letters being sent between people.

It’s, it’s a way of, it’s a basic form of communication now. So the ISPs have to be a little bit careful. The, the, um, ISPs, the, the, um, email providers need to be a little bit careful to make sure that, you know, they’re not blocking valid and relevant communications between individuals as well. So.

Rusty: 

Yeah. Well, and, and I just ran an email campaign for a client and it was very narrowly focused. We had a very narrow subset of clients in terms of size of company, a very narrow set of job descriptions that we did, and we in a three, three email sequence there, and we went from a 12% open rate to a 65% open rate

Terry: 

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

58:00- Rusty: 

Um, and again, this was about solving a very relevant problem for this discipline inside the company. And, and so I, I think you can do things like that, that are still strong campaigns Inc. And can be good for your brand and your market.

Terry:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I agree entirely. If you could give one piece of advice to A CEO that’s looking to align sales, marketing, and product, what would it be? I.

59:00- Rusty:

Um, wow. So I, I’m big on process. Uh, so I would say, please have processes. Please have, what, what’s your nurturing process? What’s your sales process? And, and really live by them, know, and it’s always good to challenge ’em. They will need to change over time to your market, to your product and things like that. But have a process. Don’t just chase things to chase things.

Terry: 

Hmm.

Rusty: 

Discipline and process will win out in the long term. Always over whack-a-mole. Um. And so those are the things that I, that I always want CEO to think about, especially if they don’t come from a go to market side. You know, if they come from a finance side or a product development side, you know, especially a product development side, I say, Hey, would you go develop a product without an agile method or something like that?

No. Well, sales is no different. You know, generating revenue is no different. It needs a process. It needs to be defined. You need to have steps, you need to have criteria for how you have go, no-go. And, it will yield itself in the end,

Terry: 

Yield itself in, in what way?

01:00:00- Rusty:

Uh, not just top line, but a bottom line. Uh, this will yield you profits at the end. There’s no doubt about it. And, and I always joke, anybody can grow top line. You can give stuff away and not give stuff away, but you can heavily discount things and you can grow

Terry: 

Sure. Yep.

Rusty: 

line, but you can lose money with a process that’s well-defined and iterates on what is successful. You’ll grow your profits no doubt about it because you’ll be focused on the right things. You’ll be developing the right products, you’ll be delivering them to the right customers, you’ll be efficient about how you do those things. Uh, and there’s no doubt that you will be a more profitable company in the end.

Terry: 

You have been a fractional sales leader for a while. What was it that inspired you to specialize in fractional sales leadership?

01:01:00- Rusty:

Yeah. Well, I would love to tell you that there was a great plan for doing it. It was just kind of thrust upon me. At one point, I had a division; I was with a company that got acquired. Uh, the division unfortunately got shut down kind of very quickly after the acquisition. Uh, and I had a couple of companies approach me that, Hey, we’d like your help, but we don’t really need full-time, nor can we afford it.

Then, hence was born my fractional business.

Terry: 

Mm-hmm.

01:02:00- Rusty:

And I enjoy it because I get to help more than one company out at a time. enjoy the fact that I get to bring my level of experience and leadership to companies that typically can’t afford it. You know, uh, the, the beauty of the fractional model is for a company that. isn’t either ready or can’t budget-wise, afford a senior level go to market person. You get that level of experience and knowledge at a price point that that meets what you do. Um, and so I, I, I get to do it and, and, you know, I, I have a little bit of A-D-H-D-I like to see more things at once and, and do a lot of things.

So, uh, this scratch is one of my itches that I, I I’m involved in more than one company and, you know, it, it keeps my inquisitive engineering nature going out there.

Terry: 

Very good, very good. So being across a number of um, businesses, and from a fractional perspective, I guess it’s very important from an organization’s perspective to start to see some results pretty quickly. How do you bring immediate impact to the organizations that you work with?

01:03:00- Rusty: 

Yeah. Uh, so it’s always about what’s the near term revenue that needs to happen? So it’s not taking your eye off the ball. You, you definitely want to be making sustainable foundational work in, in the organization, but it’s how, how are we going to close out the business that’s there? What’s in the funnel?

What’s in the near term revenue goals? So I always make sure we do that. Then I start looking for what part of the foundation hasn’t been developed. Uh, and there, and there’s typically something, there’s usually a lack in sales process ’cause they haven’t had a senior level person there. So how do we start developing the process?

What are the other components that need to start being developed over time so that we get the sustainable, um, path out there for revenue?

Terry:

Hmm.

Rusty:

Um, I, I, I always joke, you know, I run sales marathons with companies. So how do we make sure at mile 26 that we are winning in doing what we want? We, we gotta hit the near term stuff. We gotta hit the one K, we gotta hit the 2K, but then how do we go out there and really do well in mile 26? Um,

Terry:

At the one and 2K mile point, doesn’t it? Yeah.

01:04:00- Rusty: 

It does. And, and, and so, um, it, it’s about working the combination of the two and really getting, getting a good ground, you know, laying the groundwork so that we build a foundation for them to go, uh, succeed.

I mean, and, and I tell all my clients my goal is to work myself out of the job. know, I, I want to make them so successful that the fractional role now needs to be a full-time role. And then I help them go do that, help, help them find the person, get the handoff done, and we watch them grow. And for me, that’s an all success story.

Terry: 

Uh, what do you think is the most important thing a sales leader should do in their first 90 days in a role? And I, you know, we’re digging down a little bit into the details here, but it’s just, I think that there’s some insights based on your experience across a broader, a range of industries that, you know, might really, uh, help, help the audience here.

What, what do you think those,

01:05:00-Rusty: 

Yeah. I mean, you know, it, it, it’s closing that near term revenue, then it’s doing analysis. Why are you winning and why are you losing? And, and, and the latter’s equally as important as the former, people will get very caught up in, oh, we just had company A buy this, and we had company B, so we need more of company A and B. well that could be true, but why did you lose the other three deals that you thought were gonna happen?

Terry: 

mm-hmm.

Rusty: 

Because there’s as much learning that happens from the losses and a postmortem around those. they’re on the wins because you know, the, the joke is the wins can have you believe in your own BS. The losses, if you can truly understand why that happened, may be a better learning for what builds your business. so I, I always try to quickly do an analysis on both sides of the house. Um, because again, that’s part of building that foundation there,

01:06:00- Terry: 

Hmm. Uh, it, it’s, it’s always interesting for me, you know, how people find their path. Your example with regards to the organization changing in your, uh, department being, uh, closed. Um, you, you mentioned about A DHD and obviously, uh, the desire to cut your finger a across a number of, uh, of things coming through.

Um, personal question, uh, incoming. Um, can you share your personal experience with cancer and how that shaped your leadership style and priorities?

01:07:00- Rusty: 

Yeah. Well, it, it, it does help you put a, a, a perspective on things. So, uh, 13 years ago I was diagnosed with stage four inoperable prostate cancer. literally outta nowhere, you know, I, I, I, I was a young guy. It wasn’t supposed to happen to me. and through, you know, wonderful support, great set of doctors and a and a fair bit of luck, you know, I’ve beat it gone.

On the other side of it, what it does for me personally today is there’s a lot of resilience out there. You know, you, you, you, you get that, that death notice, uh, and you find a way to fight through it. You, you kind of go, well, I can fight through anything now. You know, I beat cancer, so I, I, you know, uh, the business is not doing good.

All right. We’re gonna go figure this out. Uh, that customer didn’t close like we thought it was gonna close. All right. It’s not that big a deal. We’re gonna go find the next one. It, it also tends to put things in perspective, uh, for you. You realize, uh, that the, the work losses or the work, uh, challenges that they’re just work, you know, the, the personal side and, and the fact that it all can go away for you at a point in time. It is a much bigger, is a much more important thing in life.

01:08:00- Terry: 

Hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Appreciate it. It’s, uh, it, it’s one of those things that there’s personal, uh, life challenges can have a huge impact on, on uh, w So would you say that, um, before then you were less resilient, that you were less.

Rusty:

I, I, no, I, I was definitely thinking I was very resilient, which is what helped me go fight through that, out there. I, I think it just further cemented that resiliency in me and how it, how it then bears itself in everything that I do.

Terry:

Hmm, hmm. Brings it up to the surface. Yeah. That’s good.

Rusty:

Absolutely.

Terry: 

Thanks for sharing that. Thanks for sharing that. So what would be the one piece of advice that Rusty would give 18-year-old Rusty today? Uh, back then.

01:10:00- Rusty:

Uh, know, go try a lot of things. You know, I think it’s a great way to figure out what you’re good at. You know, I, I hear people say, Hey, go do what you’re passionate about. Well, you know I, I would love to be a professional cyclist winning the Tour de France, but you know what? Um, that’s not what I’m good at.

You know, I, I, I think go out and find ways to fail when you’re young because the downside’s not that big a deal. You don’t have a mortgage, you’re not supporting a family. If that career or that move to another city, trying another job doesn’t work. You know what the downsides are not really the the down you, you think the downsides are a lot worse than they really are. Um, and, and I didn’t go do a lot of that when I was younger. Uh, and, but I think about the learnings that I got when I did get to a better point in my life. And just the doors that opens for you, the things that you learn, the experiences you get out of it. spine, you know what the, the downside of failure is overrated.

It not that big a deal. You, you will bounce back, uh, and you will learn from it. So I, I would, and I, and I told my kids it’s like, go try that stuff. You know what you, you’re, my kids are in their twenties and I’m like, uh, try that job. Move to that town. If it doesn’t work out, what’s the worst thing that’s really gonna happen here?

You’ll get another job. That’s okay.

Terry: 

Hmm. Hmm. Uh, what vocations have your kids followed out of interest? Have any of them followed in your shoes?

Rusty: 

Oldest daughter’s in the medical profession, she, uh, works at a major hospital in San Francisco, uh, in re cancer research.

Terry: 

Wow.

Rusty:

That. Uh, and my

Terry: 

I,

Rusty: 

Daughter’s in quality control and food nutrition, and things like that. And works for food companies.

Terry:

Ah, very good. Very good.

Rusty: 

Yeah.

Terry: 

Congratulations.

Rusty: 

young women.

Yeah.

Terry: 

Congratulations.

01:11:00- Rusty:

Thank you. Thank you. They’re wonderful. They’re wonderful people out there having a great life.

Terry:

Uh, Rusty, is there anything that I should have asked you that I haven’t asked you yet? I.

Rusty: 

Uh, I think the only other thing, and you asked me this a little while ago about CEOs and what to tell ’em, and I think part B to the answer I’ll give that, that I didn’t give earlier is don’t be afraid to reach out to people. I mean, the beauty of this world is we’re a lot more connected and a lot more closer to people And, and if you don’t understand something, you don’t know something, you gotta question something. Reach out there. There’s an expert, there’s a knowledgeable person out there. you, Mr. CEO You don’t have to live in a silo. You know, find people, create a network, ask questions there. There’s lots of very smart people out there that can help you on your journey.

01:12:00- Terry: 

Uh, and I think that’s, um, a critical part to that message too, is develop a network, uh, to ask the questions. Because one of the challenges in reaching out, and I must admit I’ve actually experienced it myself, is to find the right people to reach out to.

Rusty: 

Mm-hmm.

Terry: 

plenty of gurus and and experts around that will tell you all sorts of things.

Um, but the ones with the find someone that can deliver results, and, and, you know, has the, has the track record that if you get some advice, you know, that it’s solid and sound advice. Um, you know, there, there, there’s much less of them around than the, than the so-called, uh, gurus. So I think that network and, uh, you know, and conversations like this rusty, where we can, you know, get to actually see the, um, uh, you know, behind the scenes and behind the LinkedIn posts of, uh, of individuals.

So, thank you.

Rusty: 

Yeah, I,

Terry: 

Um,

Rusty:

very valuable. Yeah.

Terry:

Is there anything, um, that you’re reading at the moment that you’d, that you’d recommend or, or any books that you have read that you’d, you’d put down as, uh, some career, career changing?

01:13:00- Rusty:

Yeah. The funny thing is I tend to read a lot of fiction in the off hours because it’s just kind of that, you know, relax away from the work piece. Uh,

Terry: 

Nothing wrong with that.

Rusty:

You, yeah, I, I would love to tell you I’m doing, you know, I, I bounce in, in and out of Adam Grant folks ’cause I, I, I love his organizational work.

I think he’s got great thoughts around that. I’m a big Malcolm Gladwell fan. I tend to consume more podcasts now around I, I’m gonna call it the development of organizations, the development of person and things like that. Uh, my book reading is really just relaxation. It’s like watching, uh, cheap Netflix anymore.

I just, it, it’s, it’s a relaxation mode for me. I.

Terry: 

Mm. Yeah. Excellent. Uh, is there anything that, um, you’ve got coming up on the horizon that you’d like to share at all? Anything that you, you are working on currently or?

01:14:00- Rusty: 

I am in with a couple of early stage clients, and unfortunately, I cannot talk about what they’re working about. Right. And I have one company that’s in stealth mode, uh, like that. So no, I, I don’t really have anything, um, anything big to talk about in that realm.

Terry: 

That’s all right. Um, and then as far as, um, look, I just gotta say it’s been a fantastic conversation, quite frankly.

Rusty:

Good. I’m glad it was, I’m glad it was helpful.

Terry: 

Hmm. How did you find things on your end?

01:15:00- Rusty: 

No, it’s great. I, I love having these conversations out there and being able to share stuff with people. You know, I, and I volunteer inside of a couple of startup incubators just to help people out. so I like this medium to do the same thing I. Out there. Uh, I did startup work in Silicon Valley for 15 years, and so being able to give back, is part of what I enjoy doing.

And, I have conversations every week with people who are not clients. I’m not charging them you know, I may take a pitch review that someone’s, you know, raising money and I’ll give ’em feedback on it. So, you know, I, I love doing this and I appreciate the opportunity to do it with you.

Terry: 

And, and how do you find the work with the, uh, with the startup incubators? What’s the biggest challenges they’re facing at the moment? I guess, has the environment changed much in the last 12 months for them?

Rusty: 

uh, I think that past 12 months, it’s really hard to raise money right now,

Terry: 

Yeah.

Rusty:

in the us you know, compared to two years ago or pre covid, raising money right now is really hard. Um, and so you’re finding people having to be more lean or efficient? I. Their path. Uh, they’re not just getting money thrown with them, thrown at them, which is a good

Terry: 

Yeah, I was gonna say, not such a bad thing.

Rusty: 

That’s not a bad thing, but it, it is

Terry: 

Yeah, I was gonna say, not such a bad thing.

Rusty:

Some really strong companies on the sideline

Terry: 

Hmm.

01:16:00- Rusty: 

being able to really go hit their potential. And that’s hard too. Um, and then there’s just, you know, things fall in and out of favor. So if you’re out doing AI something right now, a lot easier to raise money as opposed to what was yesterday’s cool thing to invest in. Um, but there, there’s lots of great people doing lots of great work out there. And it’s part of, again, why I, why I enjoy being involved in these organizations. Get you, you get to see great ideas, uh, and if there’s something I can offer back to them as they get their journeys along, then I’m happy to help on that.

Terry: 

All right, great. Excellent, excellent. Well, Rusty, I’ve gotta say thank you very much for coming on the chat today. It’s been a great conversation and um, yeah, thanks very much.

Rusty: 

Well, I appreciate the time today, Terry. Hope you have a good day.

Terry: 

Thank you. You too.