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“We ungated everything. That one decision changed everything for our pipeline.”
– Chuck Moxley
In this episode of The Chat, we’re joined by Chuck Moxley – CMO at Blue Triangle and author of An Audience of One. Chuck has led marketing for some of the world’s most recognized brands, from Pepsi and Chick-fil-A to fast-growing tech companies. And in this conversation, he breaks down the bold moves he’s made to drive real pipeline in a noisy B2B landscape.
We cover:
If you’re a sales or marketing leader tired of vanity metrics and hungry for scalable, trust-based growth, this episode will challenge how you think and give you a playbook to move forward.
00:00 – Intro + Meet Chuck Moxley
From brand-side at Chick-fil-A and Pepsi to CMO at Blue Triangle – Chuck’s unique path to modern B2B marketing.
03:12 – Why Chuck Ungated ALL Content
The bold move that flipped their demand gen model – and the surprising results.
06:45 – The Day Pipeline Exploded
Chuck shares what happened when leads stopped being the goal – and trust took over.
10:02 – Ditching the Funnel – What Replaces It?
Why the traditional funnel is outdated, and how Chuck’s team uses a “football field” model instead.
14:33 – Trust-Based Marketing: The Future of B2B
Why trust beats tactics – and how you actually measure it.
17:50 – Marketing and Sales – One Team, One Goal
Chuck on aligning KPIs, collaboration, and breaking silos between teams.
21:06 – The AI Question: Value vs Hype
Where AI supports B2B marketing – and where it goes too far.
24:10 – Spotlight Segment: AI and the Fine Line
Chuck shares a moment when AI overstepped-and what leaders need to watch out for.
28:42 – How to Scale Without Losing Authenticity
Advice on blending systems, strategy, and soul in a high-growth B2B team.
32:18 – The One Bold Move You Should Make Right Now
Chuck’s challenge to marketers: trust your audience and earn theirs in return.
What We Talk About:
Big Takeaways:
Resources & Mentions:
Episode Links:
Show Notes (Spotify Version):
Chuck Moxley (CMO at Blue Triangle) shares how ungating all content and ditching the traditional funnel helped 4X pipeline. We talk trust-based marketing, AI’s role, and how to align marketing and sales around revenue – not just leads.
00:00-
Welcome to the chat, come behind the inbound 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. Today on the chat, we’re joined by Chuck Moxley, a powerhouse fractional CMO, who’s developed marketing strategies for brands like Chick-fil-A, Pepsi, and now Blue Triangle amongst others. Chuck isn’t
01:00-
Just a seasoned marketer, he’s a bold thinker who’s challenged outdated B2B playbooks from ungating all content to re-imagining the marketing funnel entirely.
Terry:
He’s proving that trust, velocity, and radical transparency drive results. He’s also the author of an Audience of One, and today he’s dropping insights you won’t wanna miss. Chuck, welcome to the chat. Thanks, Terry. Great to be here. I wanted to jump straight in. You’ve had a pretty dynamic career working with some iconic brands like Chick-fil-A and Pepsi, and now, leading marketing at Blue Triangle and other, uh, a couple of others.
I know there’s, um, a couple of under the, the radar you can’t talk about, but what pivotal moments or lessons from your journey have most influenced your approach to marketing?
Chuck:
Well, I have worked with large brands earlier in my career when I was more on the consumer side. More recently, I’ve worked more in B2B, B more, uh, heavily in SaaS.
02:00-
And typically I’ve worked with companies that were not the behemoths, we’re not the Salesforce and not the, you know, the HubSpot and the, and the major brands.
And so what I’ve learned from that is no matter what size the company, whether I’m working for a company that’s got 5 million in a RR or it’s got 30 million, my whole thing is you always wanna look like, you always wanna punch above your weight. So if you’re 20 million, you need to look like you’re a $50 million company.
If you’re a $50 million company, you should be looking like you’re a hundred-million-dollar company. And there are a lot of things that we can do, a lot of tricks to get there. And one of the things that I love too, about working with the smaller brands, are we could do things. That are bigger clients can’t, that the bigger companies won’t.
Um, so, uh, you know, when I was leading marketing for a marketing platform and we were going up against Google and Facebook and companies like that, we could go out and say stuff that. They would just never say, they would never put, they would never make it through the 32 levels of approval. I could go out and say really crazy stuff.
03:00-
Like we did ads at that company for, and there was a logic behind it where the headline was literally in like a 200-point type, we’re lying. was, and it was, the key was, is because our focus groups told us people didn’t believe we could do what we said we did. So we just went out and hid it. And we, so we did, we did ads like on the cover of Adweek, where it said, you probably think in little letters we’re lying in giant letters about being able to do this, but we really can.
And then we explained how we do it. So that’s the kind of stuff, trust me, the big companies could never get that kind of creative approved. That’s the way I look for those opportunities. Right.
Terry:
The, it’s uh, it’s almost like a little bit of gorilla marketing. You can’t really do that with the, when you, the big boys are not, not fleet of foot enough.
Chuck:
Exactly. And again, they’ve got way too many approvals and boards and stockholders and stuff that I, you don’t have to worry about in smaller companies.
Terry:
True.
04:00-
One topic that we’ve spoken about before that’s actually very close to my heart is Ungating, content. You’ve made the decision to ungate all the blue triangles’ content, leading to significant increases in demo requests and pipeline growth.
Can you walk us through the rationale behind that strategy and the results that it yielded?
Chuck:
Sure. And to be clear, I have gated content for the majority of my career, right? That was a playbook that worked 10 years ago, five years ago. And we would gate content, and people would happily give us their information, and we put ’em on sequences and follow up and all that stuff.
What we observed a couple of years ago was that the model was changing, that we went out, and when we started, when I, it was shortly after I joined Blue Triangle, and we launched with the initial ebook and launched a typical gated campaign. And what we started seeing in the first six or eight weeks, we ran the campaign, were, was a we were getting.
05:00-
Probably half of the leads were all garbage. It was like nun of business@nunofbusiness.com. Mm-hmm. So we could put ’em on a sequence, and the emails would bounce; they’d be of no value. Right. But more importantly, what we observed were how many bounces. We’d have people come to the website or webpage, you go, ah, the report looks interesting, but I’m not gonna give you my contact information ’cause now I know you’re gonna come after me and market me.
So our bounce rate was huge. It was like 75% or more of the traffic was just taken off. So that’s when we said, well, let’s try on gating it. And we, we engaged it, we put it into a platform that allowed it to be like a flip book kind of format, where they could see it. And what we immediately saw was our cost per lead went from about, $200 to $11 cost per lead.
Because so many more people engaged with the piece. They got there, they got the content, and got it. And then what we did later, what we, we started playing around with was. We added on the page, Hey, want to get a copy of this? ’cause
06:00-
Especially at that point, we were starting to advertise on Facebook and Instagram, and things that people were getting at night.
So, you know, I don’t, and again, audience of One, which again happens to be the name of my book, but, uh, audience of one, when I get, uh, an ebook at eight o’clock at night. ’cause I’m on my phone on Facebook and I get the, I’m not gonna sit there and read an ebook at eight o’clock at night, but if you’ll email it to me, I’ll check it out the next day at work.
So we just added right on the same page. The form that said, You know, do you wanna get a copy of this? Give us your email address. And we’ve gotten hundreds of people give us their email addresses. And by the way, they’re a hundred percent good because they actually wanna receive the report. So now we can put ’em.
So, and I always, what I tell people is, the thing you don’t want to do is now just because they said yes, send me a copy of the ebook. You try to go for a meeting. What we’re gonna do in that sequence is follow up with related content. Hey, thanks for downloading this ebook. You might be interested in this other ebook, or this new guide, or this blog post, or some other piece of content.
And then we’re, we’re measuring. So that was another piece about ungating,
07:00-
We had to have a way to measure, because we lost all that measurement. And we, mm-hmm. How do you justify, we can’t? Can’t have really MQ ls. We had to put in place a measurement that allowed us to see who was coming to the website and see what companies were engaging that were in our ICP and that were part of our A BM program.
So if we ran ads, we drove people in, we could I identify that and start to measure that. So we had to, that’s where we turned the funnel upside down and kind of changed the whole way we report on leads. So it’s, it’s not a simple fix, but it’s revolutionary in what the output can be.
Terry:
And I’d imagine that one of the critical components is making sure that the lead magnet, the piece of content, is of high quality and is of high value to the reader as well.
Chuck:
Uh, that should always be the case, right? So much of content marketing has always been more marketing than content, right? And so I, I believe, I believe it should be high-quality content that is valuable to the audience. If it is,
08:00-
Then you’re gonna get them to go to the next piece, and it’s really, and there’s all kinds of data that backs this up, that in today’s world, buyers.
Don’t wanna engage with sellers until they’re about 80% of the way through the buying process, right? And so you have to get them to engage and come back and engage again. And the number of touch points is something like 56 touch points before they’re ready to book a demo. So you need high-quality content, and you need to be able to take them from one piece to another piece and start to bring them down that funnel from, you know, top of the funnel to a little more mid-funnel kind of topics.
So as they’re researching and learning about the product, you’ve got more information. But yeah, it should all be high quality. And a question I’ve gotten before is, will, do you ever. Something. And there may be times if you’ve got a piece of like original research, companies I’ve worked for before, we’ve had, we’ve sat on data for millions of consumers, for example.
Mm-hmm. We could mine that data and turn it into benchmarks. That’s really valuable content you
09:00-
Can’t get anywhere else, and it’s high quality. In that case, I might gate it. Same thing of I, where I’ve been a, we were talking about this earlier. I’ve been a Forester customer. Part of our license gave us Forester reports.
When we’re giving away a Forester report, people will, people will fill out the gate on that. People will give you the information because if they’re not a Forester client, they don’t have access to that research, and it’s high-quality research. True.
Terry:
It’s interesting that you talk about the 80% of the journeys completed before they reach out to the organization.
And with the experience that we see ourselves is we’ll have the same website visitors coming back time and time again as they’re going through their stages. And the and the questions change dramatically as well. In the early stages, there’ll be something simple in terms of, do you integrate with this?
you know, do you have that avail, that feature available? And then towards the end it’ll be how do you hand manage, you know, customer support inquiries and what happens if I have this problem or that problem? And, you know, what does an implementation look like? You can see their, their research changing with their, or their questions changing with the
10:00-
level of research and how far they’re down the track.
And there’s so much discussion about, you know, the dark funnel and how does a company actually interact with the buyer during those early stages of the, of the, um. of their research. And I think ungated content is the same approach that we take with chats. If you talk to any of the software providers for live chat, they’ll all tell you, have a chatbot on the front end and ask for the email address, you know, in case we get disconnected.
It’s, it has the opposite. It’s the same. So you, you mentioned, um, what was the drop off rate you mentioned with the gating on that form? It was, I,
Chuck:
I, I’d have to go back and look at data, but it was substantial. It was, it was north than 90%.
Terry:
90%. Yeah. And so we’ve seen exactly the same 96% of, uh, website visitors actually clicking that they wanted to speak with sales.
96% dropped away when asked for an email address. So it’s, uh, it’s.
11:00-
Something that we’ve seen change over the decade that we’ve been running. Now, there was a lot more propensity in the very early days to hand over an email address, but there was always be a higher conversion and higher level of discussion when you didn’t ask for it upfront.
So
Chuck:
You, well, and the whole buying, purchase, buying process has changed over time. The data is so available out there. Everything from pricing to all that stuff that we used to be able to control all that stuff. And that was why you could get away with that. You can’t really do that anymore. And so the more you try to hold back, the less they’re likely to really investigate your solutions.
They’ll just go on to the solution. It’s easier to investigate if, if you have no competitors and nobody has no competitors right then you’re at risk of losing that if you’re not cooperating with that self-discovery that they want
Terry:
to do. So true. No competitors. That would be utopia. yeah.
Either
Chuck:
That or you’re in a really lousy market. If you have no competitors
12:00-
Terry:
Information is so readily available today. Even if it’s not specifically from an organization that, you know, you think you’re gonna trick somebody into giving your email address. There’s probably enough about what you do and your business available, just open in the public forum for them to make a a, a get to whether or not you’re gonna be on the short list anyway.
Chuck:
Right? And chat, GPT deep research is probably the next level of that, right? So yeah, it’s, if you, you can’t hide, you just, you’re confronted and that’s why you do need. Data that tells you who’s coming to the website, and then you need to be able to track what they’re doing. So when you were talking about how the questions change and the content changes, that’s what we look at.
And the way we measure funnel is first-time visitor, repeat visitor, and then research. And that’s based on they are going deep into the platform pages? Are they looking at your pricing pages? Are they looking at the demo page? Are they going to different types of content on your website? Gives you insight as to where they are in that buying journey.
And that’s what you, if
13:00-
We can track that even at a company level, and that’s what I’ve been able to report on, is I can say, Hey, in our, in our, uh, targets, say we’ve got 500 target companies we’re going after, I can see what percentage of that we’ve gotten at each stage of that buyer journey through our advertising, through our marketing.
And that gives you enough proof of life to wait for the demo request. Because that’s the problem. If you’re, I’ve worked with companies with sales cycles is seven months, right? So if your sales cycle is seven months, and that’s be when, when they first identify themselves to close, how much longer were they looking before that and how do you prove the money you’re spending and the investment is driving it?
This gives you proof of life. It gives you as early signs. So then what naturally happens over time is the number of inbound demo requests go up and you can start to measure those. That’s your, that’s your proof point. And now you’re really looking at the pipeline. That’s what you’re being measured on, which is now lines.
14:00-
You with sales now, lines marketing with sales.
Terry:
Absolutely. And, and it’s one of the challenges I see for B2B marketers is that time from, e expenditure. To result. It’s so long, it’s a very different direct to customer in the, in the B2C world, you know, you’re watching checkouts, you do an ad tonight, then you’re seeing checkouts happen virtually as the ads being presented.
As the campaigns are running, the campaigns stop, the impact stops. It’s very, very measurable at the moment. But for B2B markers, if you pointed out, run a campaign today, you might not see, you know, a deal close or pipeline at the very least for potentially months afterwards. Very difficult to make those calls on what’s working and that’s where experience, and having data before I think pays a big part.
And also being open to, to make the changes and be innovative enough like yourself with regards to ungating. I mean, if it was just the same old, we’ll keep doing things the way we always have and not sure why it’s not working. There’d be a different level of outcome for, blue Triangle in particular.
It’s, um,
15:00-
It’s something that is a huge challenge for B2B marketers. And, and, you know, I would love to. Put together a, a playbook, that would help new B2B marketers consider, you know, some really radical alternatives to what they’re doing to try and get to a point where it increases their conversion rates.
And you said earlier about that being able to do things that the big companies can’t. we are lying. I love that. I love that because the number of people that I’ve spoken to that just say, live chat doesn’t work when, you know, we’ve $5 billion in pipeline that we’ve delivered over the last decade can’t be wrong.
there’s some places where it works better than others. That’s, that’s for sure. but in general terms, people don’t like it because of a bad experience they’ve had, rather than thinking about what it could do if it was working, if it was done the right way. but look, you’ve mentioned replacement.
Chuck:
I was gonna say, when I was in the agency world, I used to have clients who I’d say something about, like direct mail. Oh, we tried direct mail once and it didn’t work. And I always laugh at that line.
16:00-
That’s, yes, there’s so many variables in anything, including direct mail, the offer, the, the messaging, the, the delivery, the target list, all those things.
And if you try it one time and it doesn’t work, that doesn’t mean it’s not viable. Correct
Terry:
Method.
Chuck:
Correct.
Terry:
Yeah, and it’s funny you mentioned direct mail. I’m a, a strong believer even the today in, in this digital age that we’re in, I’m still a pretty strong believer in direct mail. I had a conversation, uh, with an organization about three weeks ago who have shifted their strategy away from Google ads and, Facebook they were using and have gone all in because they ran some tests initially that, that didn’t work with direct mail.
They made the changes and they’re finding that the direct mail funnel now is working, considerably better at a much lower, higher ROI than what, uh, the digital platforms are. So.
Chuck:
I’ve had amazing results with direct mail, especially three-dimensional direct mail because it’s so different. It stands out, and nobody’s doing it.
17:00-
It breaks through versus the 4,000 ads you see in your feeds and in your, on, you know, online. direct mail can really stand out if you do it well. I mean, I’ve had campaigns where we literally targeted 250 people and we booked over 70 meetings and closed $2 million in revenue off a very, very small targeted, highly targeted campaign.
So there’s a lot of data that suggests, and that’s, again, one of those punch above your weights, stand out, do something that other people aren’t. If you just copy everybody else, you’re gonna get lost.
Terry: Absolutely. Absolutely. One of the, the greatest campaigns I’ve heard was that, uh, there was a security aluminum security, briefcase delivered by FedEx.
To the, CEO and they researched the CEOs and found the ones, in their audience, that, I can’t remember exactly how they did it, but they realized that they had some type of interest in aviation or something along those lines. And they put in the,
18:00-
Briefcase, a remote control, what do you call it?
Airplane or, yeah, something like that. Drone. Drone. Helicopter. Or drone. Drone. Drone or something. Or something. A drone or a controlled drone. Yeah. and, it had a message on the outside of the briefcase that said, Call this number to get the combination. And so they had to call to get the combination.
And then, and it was just a recorded message that said, here’s the combination for your. and then when they opened it and the drone was there, there was another message that said, call this number if you want the, um, remote. So they sent the drones without the remotes. And then when they called the number, they’d say, you know, I hope you’ve enjoyed the experience so far.
We all, we asked to jump on a quick zoom call with us and we’ll send the remote out for you. And it had an enormous, uh, enormous success rate. And I think it was the extra barrier. It wasn’t, they didn’t have, it could have easily put the remote in there, but the fact that there had to be two actions taken to get to that next step, it really showed that the people that were that did respond were, were, uh, were very engaged.
So it was interesting.
Chuck:
Yeah. Brilliant. That sounds like a brilliant
19:00-
Campaign. I got targeted once by Google. Um, and we were not doing, at the time, we weren’t doing pay-per-click advertising, and they really wanted us to do it. And I was not a fan. I had not had a good experience with it. So they offered to send me a Chromebook free, and this is, this is 10 years ago, back when Chromebooks were new and, you know, and they were, I don’t know, 300, still 300 bucks, but still $300.
They would send it to me if I would take the call because we had to do it on. You know, Google meet on the Chromebook. So it was the Chromebook that I take the meeting on, and they wanted to talk about how they could help guide us because I hadn’t had success with it. Us doing it alone, they were gonna guide us in that process.
They had a new, like white glove service and we ended up spending like $50,000 with them, you know, as a result of it. And I got the free Chromebook, which my daughter used for a long time,
Speaker 3:
So it works. It works. It does work.
Terry:
It works, yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, and again, that’s another example that they’re not batting above their weight, obviously.
But uh, that’s those types of things that smaller businesses
20:00-
Can use.
You’ve mentioned replacing the traditional marketing funnel with a football field analogy. How does the new model better represent today’s buyer journey? and what impact has it had on your team’s approach?
Chuck:
Yeah. Well, and here’s why I like the football field, you know, the, and one, the knock on it and you know, there’s the Gartner chart that everybody sees out there where it says the funnel is no longer a funnel and it shows 4,000 arrows and the process and all this stuff.
It’s the same idea. What I was looking for was a simple visual that the traditional funnel just doesn’t make any sense because people aren’t as linear. And so, and I kept trying to come up with an alternative. I am not a sports fan, and if I start talking sports, I usually get in over my head and use the wrong terminology.
So I was trying to use anything of the football field and I couldn’t find a better example, so I just went with it. But a football field, if you think about the football, the ball as being the prospect, and the goal is to go from one end of the field to the other, get it across the goal
21:00-
Line being the sail.
and when I paint this, I put across the top from left to right where the football starts. I have no idea who you are to. I’m ready to do business with you. And in between that is what problem do you solve? Do I need to solve the problem now? You know, et cetera. Right? Can you solve it better than other options I’ve got?
What I love about it is so many organizations have this approach where they go, okay, seller, go sell. Go out, cold call, go find your own leads, go sell, go sell, go close, right? And it’s the one person going out there. And so what I picture on the football field is he’s going, he or she is going up against the team on the other side, which is competitors.
It’s, apathy or do nothing. It’s price. it’s things going on in the, um, economy and world that, that you have no control over, right? And it’s entrenched solutions. All these other things, you got this one player going up against. And then what I show are the other players are you’ve got an SDR or BDR.
You can use, you
22:00-
Can use your CS folks, you can use marketing. Marketing can help soften the beachhead and start to drive inbound leads and all that kinda stuff. So the idea is you, even the playing field, now, you’ve got a team going up against a team of competitors, right? You’re trying to get it down the field.
But the other reason I like the football field analogy is like many sales, you start going down the field. It stops and then sometimes it doesn’t continue and sometimes it goes backwards, right? Your contact, you, you’ve got a contact and the person leaves the company. Now you gotta go find a new, new person at that prospect, try to gin up interest again and keep it moving down the field.
So that’s how a football game runs, right? You go forward, you go back, you go forward, you go back. Eventually, your goal is to get down the field. And that, that addressed the fact that it’s not a true linear funnel. Um, so it just made a visual that when I started showing that everybody got it and then I was able to start reporting on that.
So that’s where I then line up my first touch, you know, when they come to the website the first time, or engagement for the first time, repeat engagement evaluation, demo
23:00-
Request POCA proof of concept. If you do a proof of concept to close one line, all that up. And then I could report on that. I could just throw in all the metrics.
I could talk about the average time between each cycle. Everything just lines up very nicely on a football field
Terry: talking about metrics.
With the shift away from traditional lead metrics, how do you now measure marketing effectiveness? What tools or KPIs have you have become most valuable, in this new framework for you?
Chuck:
Yeah. Well, again, a couple of things. Number one. The old idea of MQLs and SQLs and all that kinda stuff.
Here’s the truth. CEOs never understood the value in MQL. You could sit there and report MQLs all, and I think it was one of the things that misaligned marketing and sales, because we would talk in metrics. They’re talking in terms of pipeline. They’re talking in terms of qualified prospects. They’re talking in terms of close one deals, and we’re over here talking about MQLs and SQLs and you know, and leads and all the other stuff that didn’t translate.
And there was, and for a lot of
24:00-
CEOs who are finance people, they couldn’t see the connection between them. So what this force, what this. Reporting forced. And our whole thinking about this forced us to really focus on pipeline. And that’s a shared value, right? Pipeline is what sales cares about. And so we, you know, one of the things I hear a lot when I go to work with clients is we need top of funnel leads.
And I always say, not really. You need qualified prospects who know about you and are interested in you and engage with your salespeople. And that’s gonna lead to pipeline and pipeline’s gonna lead to close one revenue. That’s what you really need, right?
Terry:
How you get there that the, that was the topic of my email to my, subscribers last night actually.
You don’t need more, you know, more leads is usually never the answer.
Chuck:
Exactly. Exactly. So it’s a whole different way of thinking about it. But when we start to operate that way as a marketing team, we align with sales, we align with what the CEO looks at, right? The CEO can understand pipelines so much better than they can understand MQLs and they can
25:00-
understand a certain amount of pipeline’s gonna convert to close.
One pipeline is also, we can get things to pipeline, right? And part of that is an approved handoff. That’s the other beauty of it. Occasionally I’d have somebody go, oh, uh, that stuff you’re reporting pipeline that wasn’t qualified. I’m going, Hmm, hold on, hold on. We don’t create opportunities.
Salespeople create opportunities. Are you telling me a seller said? To, you know, we, we brought in a qualified prospect. We turned that over with the SDR turned that over to the seller or brought in the seller. The seller had sales conversations and started having meetings and created an opportunity and said, this is legitimate and I think it has a chance of closing, and it wasn’t qualified.
that’s not on marketing. That’s on sales. Go talk to sales if you have sales opening opportunities on non-qualified prospects. But the beauty of that is it’s not marketing, reporting it. We’re reporting Yes. On those metrics. And we can talk about, you know, oh, total pipeline and we start to share the pipeline metric, but in the end, it’s a shared
26:00-
Metric that neither side can create on their own.
So it, I, I just think it, it blends and works so nicely and, and today that’s the focus is how do we tie it back to pipeline? And then again, we look for those leading indicators. We can still report on leading indicators ’cause we’re gonna be spending money and it’s gonna take time to get the pro pipeline.
That’s the challenge. And you just have to be able to show proof of life. And you have to have, you know, a CEO who believes in marketing, who has a little bit of faith in marketing. and it is time, you know, it depends. We, we talk in generalities. I tend to come from a background where we’re doing mostly sales led, not as much product-led, and we’re doing very large, you know, a hundred thousand dollars plus ARRs.
If I was selling a $39 plan, that is a PLG motion. That’s a completely different story. So that’s, that’s more of my experience has been sales-led, where you have to get a seller involved, you have to do a demo, et cetera, and that sales cycle could be very long. So a lot of my examples
27:00-
When I’m talking about that, I should clarify, are for those kinds of products, which is a lot of selling today.
yeah.
Terry:
It’s interesting. have you personally come across manys where the CEO is more financial or product background and doesn’t have that much interest that you’ve had to go through and influence or educate, along the way?
Chuck:
Very often, actually. It’s all, it’s very interesting, and marketing is one of those things that everybody thinks they understand because they’ve seen an ad.
They watch TV and they see commercials. I must, they, I know what good marketing is. So on the one hand it’s like they know marketing, but if they really come from more of a finance background or business background and they haven’t been exposed to marketing and they aren’t used to spending a marketing, it’s a very hard slog to get them to buy into it and to stay the course.
So yes, it takes a ton of education. And so a big part of my job as CMO is educating the exec team, the entire exec team, right? Because it’s not just the CEO but the head of sales, head of customer success. You know, we work as kind
28:00-
Of a three-legged stool, typically. And even it’s helpful to the CTO to understand the value of the money, ’cause they see, ’cause we spend more money than anybody else in the company typically, right?
So it’s valuable for everybody to start to see how that is driving the pipeline, how that’s translating into sales. So you have to pitch it. You constantly have to sell the value.
Terry:
It’s uh, I was gonna say, it’s interesting, it’s smart, it’s logical, isn’t it?
Chuck:
It is. And you know, I wish I, and, and I have worked with CEOs, to be fair, I have worked with CEOs who loved marketing, who got marketing who were hands off, except when I wanted them to be great CEOs.
Much, much easier. And the, that’s where I had some of my greatest success and drove some of the greatest results because I had that freedom. So,
Terry:
Look, often it’s when you are allowed to execute fully a strategy and see it through to see the outcomes that you’ll see the actual results. I think
29:00-
It’s when people, lose faith, or can’t hold the course that the money can end up or the investment can end up being wasted because they’re not actually gonna see the results that, um, they should have been able to deliver on the way through.
Chuck:
Uh, I’ve even seen that in examples where we would spend money in one year and, you know, it took time to build that to, you know, so if we started spending in January, we might not see significant pipeline till Q3, Q4, and and then in the next year, even if we reduce spending, we kept up the pipeline because all that groundwork was late.
It took so long. And, you know, there’s all these stats that say three to 5% of your buyers are in market at any given time. The problem is they’re learning all the way along. So if you’ve got podcasts, if you’ve got content, you’ve got stuff they’re hearing about you long before they’re ready to buy. And so that investment, it’s so, it’s incredible how investment we make this year is going to return.
Stuff next year. And the flip side of that is when I, so sometimes come
30:00-
In and they go, okay, we need sales next quarter. I’m like, yeah,
there’s not a thing I can do. There’s literally not a thing I could do this quarter that I can convert to sales next quarter. Especially if my sales cycle’s 6.9 months.
There’s
not a thing. So if that’s, if you’re looking for that and that’s how you’re gonna evaluate it, then don’t spend the money. Yeah. It’s gonna waste the money.
Terry:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. a little, um, bit of a switch in, in topic now we are running, um, also a spotlight series as a subseries of, of our podcast.
it’s, uh, the fine line AI and the fine line and, you know, where it might’ve been taken a step too far or where it’s, uh, where it’s underperforming. And look, last week I watched an episode of, the CEO diaries, if you familiar with that, Stephen Bartlett.
Chuck:
I am familiar with it. I, I don’t watch it regularly, but I am familiar with it.
Terry:
I don’t either, but this one actually caught my attention last week. He interviewed Jeffrey Hinton, who is the grandfather of ai,
31:00-
And it was a very interesting conversation. Uh, look, I guess it depends how optimistic or pessimistic you are personally, whether it was a, a, you know, a good conversation or a bad conversation.
But he, in essence, he said he painted a pretty bleak picture actually, of the future for, predominantly anyone that’s non-labor workers. And, you know, his final statement or comment was, you know, What’s the recommendation for, you know, people looking to move in and choosing a career these days?
And he said, become a plumber and, yeah. and the interesting part, they kept the tape rolling. He said that right at the end, and they kept the tape rolling. And as he’s packing up his papers, he said, you know, people think that, I’m joking when I say that, but I’m not. And plumbers get paid. Okay. It’s like if those manual tasks, those trades and services will be the last thing that AI gets it hands into.
But I mentioned that, uh, it’s worth a look if you are, uh, if you’re interested in it, to see the perspective of someone who, from the fifties. Believed in these neural networks and how ai,
32:00-
Generative AI could actually be developed to the extent now where he left Google so that he could speak openly about the dangers of, of, uh, of AI and where it’s going.
So, I just mentioned that, because it was interesting. I thought you might, uh, might be interested to have a look at it, but as far as AI is concerned, in your experience, have you seen, AI truly enhance marketing efforts? And conversely, where maybe it’s been overhyped or underdelivered or it’s been just taken a step too far?
Chuck:
Yeah, no, definitely. And the thing is, two years ago, I struggle with ai. We were all struggling with trying to find the right application for it and getting high quality stuff out of it. I think it’s evolved so much in the last two years as our, as has our understanding of how best to leverage it to the point today and being in the fractional world where I’m often dealing, you know, number one, I’m, I’m not full-time with any company and then I’m dealing with
33:00-
other resources.
AI is tremendous in terms of filling in a lot of the gaps and being able to execute a lot more with fewer resources. And I think you’ll see that. And I think we’re, we’re already seeing data on that, that marketing teams are smaller because we can do a lot of, a lot of the manual stuff. It’s, uh, again, I don’t see AI necessarily.
Replacing a lot of the people, it just makes them far more productive and takes the manual workout. So any of the things that you can automate with ai, the ways we can improve, you know, writing and some of the things that we do and the sort of the backend processes just allows us to do more things with fewer people.
Mm-hmm. Um, I do think that’s legit. and so, you know, in the grand scheme of that, that probably means fewer marketers and certainly you see what’s, I mean, if you followed, I was, I didn’t go to can last week, but, the big award show and, uh, there’s all that was the talk was AI and agencies and replacing a lot of the agency functions.
And if you think about media buying so much of media buying with spreadsheets and calculating and all that stuff that
34:00-
AI can do. So I think you’re gonna see areas of marketing that are highly impacted. But I don’t, but again, I’m not worried about being displaced myself. I don’t think you’ll ever have a CMO.
An AI equivalent of a cmo because there’s a lot, a lot that comes with learning and doing in a way that I just, and strategy that, I don’t know, maybe I’m, maybe in 20 years I’ll be proven wrong. Um, hopefully by then I’m retired and I won’t let it to deal with it. But maybe I’ve seen a lot of marketing tools come along that supposedly would do marketing strategy and I kinda go, eh, interesting.
But yeah.
Terry:
Interesting. That’s right. Uh, so have you seen anywhere then where it’s been maybe overhyped or it’s underdelivered.
Chuck:
I think, uh, the way it’s been abused in prospecting, cold prospecting and things like that has actually ruined prospecting for a lot of companies and, and made all that harder. I think it just got completely
35:00-
abused and, and misused, in a way that did more harm than good in that case.
and I’m sure somebody will figure out the right way to employ that. But, but, so much of it is I, and again, I think part of it is early use. People get it and they go, oh, this is gonna solve all my problems. And they go use it, and they, they make a lot of mistakes with it and all that stuff we made two years ago.
We were making all kinds of mistakes and we were creating content that I’m like, eh, it’ll create this post, but nobody will read it. It’s the most boring post ever, you know, and stuff. It’s gotten a lot better and, but part of that is us learning when to use it, when not to use it, when to use it as an adjunct to what we do.
That’s a nuanced piece that has taken time.
Terry:
Absolutely. Absolutely. it’s, uh, it’s interesting you talk about the cold outbound. I agree with you 100%. I think it has actually made the SDRs job. Uh. A hundred times harder than it ever was before. And that’s probably one of the hardest jobs in the, in, in any
36:00-
Organization, is that grunt, hard, cold, outbound effort, trying to find prospects to talk to, reaching out, I think everyone has been bombarded, anyone in any organization that anyone else could supply to.
I’m sure everyone has received at some point in time, some gamy message from ai. and not just one. When it’s ai, there’ll be 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 going into the
inbox. You know, without responses, it almost becomes relentless. It’s like when the sales enablement platforms first came out, like the outreach and so forth, where you can build in a sequence and let it fire.
When they first fired, you know, the, the SDRs thought, this is great, we’ll just send out, you know, an email every day. it’s ruined it, I think. And I think it, it’s a shame because there’s so many great products. And so many companies that have got problems that could use those great products that, you know, they’re almost at the polar op, polar ends, and you’ve got this great big quagmire in the middle
37:00-
Of just spam outreach with everybody trying to, flog anything off to anybody, whether it’s any, any benefit to them or not.
So this morning, um, I had a slot in my, a spare slot in my calendar and there was a guy that’s been pestering me. He sent me six emails and making promises about being able to book, 60, um, sales calls in 90 days, guaranteed. Or, you know, you don’t pay anything. And I knew it was ai, the messages that were coming in and they were rubbish.
And so I actually got him on the call in terms of just coaching and saying, look, stop what you’re doing. Oh, it’s great. I’ve got these response. And he showed me the results that he’s got and replies he’s got from his. campaign. I said, okay, now show me your customers. He goes, oh, well I haven’t got any customers yet.
I said, mate, you know, it’s like you can have as many responses as you want’s problem, and as many meetings as you like, but nobody’s paying you any money. It’s like there’s a, you know, there’s a disconnect here. There’s gotta be a level of sincerity and,
38:00-
And, um, particularly in, any type of communication process or flow that you’re bringing people through, there’s gotta be a level of congruence.
And I think that when you’ve got AI spitting stuff out, even if people are interested in that, when they actually talk to the person behind it and realized that there’s a gap between what’s being said here and what’s being said here, that, you know, we won’t even necessarily pick up on it consciously.
It’ll just be our gut saying, no, this isn’t right. There’s something wrong here.
Chuck:
Right. And, uh, you know, well, and I, that’s the big.
I, I’ve got a perfect example of that where I had somebody reach out to me on LinkedIn and I said they, I can’t remember how this started. They asked a question, I responded back, they, whatever, and I said, well, I’m only doing this kind of thing.
And they’re, well, we can help with that, blah. It was a decent conversation. We had a decent conversation back and forth. The point of I said, okay, fine, I’ll book a call, but understand right now I’m just thinking about this for future clients. I have
39:00-
No clients right now, so if you’re willing to take call, oh yeah, no problem.
Happy to meet, blah, blah, blah. I mean, it was all very personable. Person gets on. Yeah. And he tells me, oh, all that was ai. All that was AI generated. I didn’t have, that was none of my conversation that I had with you coming from me. Which by the way, that’s the gut now tells me, So whatever. But the crazy part was he didn’t bother to read the exchange, so he didn’t know why we were getting on.
He didn’t know all the background that I had given him in this conversation back and forth, and I felt like he wasted my time. I’m like, that’s just dumb to not to, that’s lazy, right? If all you’re gonna do is just pop on and go, now I’m just gonna handle this as though I knew nothing about it. That all that discovery that was done in that whole process is completely lost, and I’m annoyed.
It’s the same thing of back in the day when you have an SDR, you’d build a relationship with the SDR. You’d have all this conversation, especially if it’s a tool you weren’t ready to do it. Finally, they bring in a salesperson, salesperson comes in and doesn’t know anything that went on for the last six months.
With that SDR, it’s a
40:00-
Complete a disconnect, and you start the whole process over again. It’s just like, why are you wasting my time?
Terry:
We’ve had a couple of clients, that, they were getting leads but they were struggling to convert the leads,to close the leads. And when we’ve started, one of the things that we always do is to make sure that we’ve got an integration, excuse me, make sure that we’ve got an integration or at the very least, email notifications with the full transcript of the chat that we had on the website goes through the CRM, so that before that rep can take, make jumps on for that meeting that we’ve booked.
They can go through and continue the conversation as though it was them that we’re chatting. We had a couple of clients early on that we’re struggling to, uh, convert. And when I dug in and actually, ’cause I like, if we deliver value, we deliver the qualified leads, I wanna make sure they don’t just go to waste because we’re not handing them over unless there’s a real need and a good fit.
So when you’re only closing, you know, these closing at sort of 15, 16%, that’s a big concern for me. So we got in, had a look at what they were doing and that was the problem.
41:00-
The reps were busy. And they were just jumping straight from call to call without looking at the transcript beforehand and what their offer was different.
And instead of just doing a cookie-cutter demo for everybody, if they’d have read the transcript, they could have done a more customized demo. And long story short, their close rate got up to over 50%. And so, even just with that short change like that, and the classic example for me, um, very similar to the one you had, I had a call last week, um, there was a conversation on LinkedIn, and I’ve been in the same boat.
Look, this isn’t something I’m interested in the topic. we’re not a potential customer, but I’m happy to jump on a call if you wanna have a chat about it. And then, um, the second comment out of his mouth was, well he asked me a question. that was along the sales. And I said, well, no, I’ve already explained I’m not interested.
And then the next question, next word out of his mouth was, well, why did you book the call? Why are you, why are we wasting time? And I’m like, oh, really? Okay, let me just write this company’s name down on my never,
42:00-
I don’t know which,
Chuck:
What salesperson thinks by being rude, you’re gonna get them to convert
to a sale.
Terry:
You know, it’s one of those things that emotions, when emotions run, high intelligence runs low. And I think that when the, we’re in a pressure bit of a boiler, pressurized boiler, a room at the moment, I feel, as far as the economy’s concerned. And so, you know, you’ve got sales reps that have got pressure on ’em to hit quotas.
The sales managers, they, you know, uh, are, um, got pressure on them to make sure that the pipeline’s there and that the deals are being closed. you know, so I can understand the pressure. And so I look. I can understand how some, a reaction like that can happen if they’re being feel their time’s being wasted.
But the problem is if they’d have done their homework properly beforehand, it would never have happened. And so, it’s a self caused, I believe that type of pressure and that issue and that, that, um,
43:00-
Waste of time. They’re wasting their own time. And I can guarantee you, I bet if I had a look at their sales pipeline and had a look at the close one, uh, ratio, it will be on the lower side.
There’s no doubt if that’s, if that’s the environment that they’re operating in at the moment. but it’s interesting.
Chuck:
Well, and it’s, it’s shortsighted that approach, right? Um, if everything is immediate gratification I, I worked with a woman. Fantastic woman, Mary Tangretti, who used to say all the time, life is long.
And that’s the approach I’ve taken to building my own fractional practice. I have so many conversations with other fractionals and other people whom I’m always going, how can I help this person? Maybe I can help this person in some way or whatever. I have no idea if it’s gonna pay off, but for every 10 calls I have, it might lead to an introduction to a potential client or somebody else.
So I take a very long view of that and go, I don’t know where I’m gonna be five years from now, but having these conversations now may get me there. I don’t need to have, you know, it doesn’t need to produce something immediately. Now if I can help
44:00-
Somebody else. Yeah. Because I think it’ll come back down the road and help me in some way.
Terry:
Who, I love that Chuck. I think that’s why you and I sort of hit it off right from the beginning. It was, uh, pretty aligned in, in, uh, I think in that, in that, in that value. For sure. For sure. I would like to ask you a question about ethics and AI. With, with AI becoming more integrated into marketing strategies, just like we’ve been talking about now, how do you approach ethical considerations, especially concerning things like data privacy and personalization?
Chuck:
Yeah, it’s become an issue. ’cause uh, one of the clients that I work with, um, they work with all enterprise brands and so a lot of their contracts are now getting written that nothing from their data can be used to train ai. And so we’ve looked at AI tools like CRMs or call recording solutions or things that would help us from say a marketing standpoint or selling standpoint.
And we realized we would have to wall off
45:00-
So many clients’ data because some of their data could be discussed on a phone conversation that, that now gets interpreted and updated in the CRM and technically we’re in violation of the contract. So I think it’s, I think it’s gotten really hard and you have to take a, again, life is long approach and sometimes that means you have to walk away from some opportunities if there’s too much risk involved in, uh, in the use of the ai in that you have to really honor.
the wishes of the people who own that data and, and respect that. so it’s always a fine line. And, and, you know, there’s been so many learning. I,we had a guy who was new at the company, and he took c client data and threw it into chat GPT to get it, to summarize so he could write a report for it.
Well, we found that out. He got fired on it. It’s like you cannot take client data and stick it in a public, you know? So there’s companies out there now that are specializing in walling off AI and preventing employees from going out. ’cause, you know, what’s to keep
46:00-
if you, if the, you don’t have the controls on it, what’s to keep an employee going from, how much does my boss make?
Well, if that’s, if somehow your AI is tapped into the HR system and you don’t have the proper guardrails, they could find that kind of thing out. Yeah, exactly. So, exactly. Yeah. There’s so many, it’s whole new world of possibilities of it being misused. Really have to
Terry:
Be, and it’s a whole new industry. I think it’s bringing up a whole new industry, a whole new, you know, world of problems that need to be solved.
And, you know, that’s a, that’s a, where there’s problems that need to be solved. There’s generally an opportunity for, uh, for businesses. Uh, good point to generate revenue. Yeah. Yeah. Um, do you, we’re still talking about ai, but we’ve been, talking about the way that AI is used being used in the messaging.
So for LinkedIn, we’ve both had those experiences. How do you ensure that the use of AI doesn’t compromise the human elements that are crucial in building trust and authenticity with your audience?
47:00- Chuck:
Yeah, I mean, I think that’s where the, I think that’s where judgment comes in. Maybe that’s the word I’m looking for.
And that’s what comes with experience. and I, I’ll, I’ll give a more personal example of this, but you know, you could see how this would apply in various company things. Y you know, you could use AI to an AI tool to write all your social posts, all your LinkedIn posts. Well, what I found is when you do that, they don’t perform very well.
And I’ve only done it on a couple occasions and what I found works much better is, and it was, plus when I do a social post, it’s usually something I’m sharing from my experience. Right? So just getting chat GPT to write it is not going to give it that, that kind of personal. So the way I’ve started doing it is I write my post, I just write it, but I don’t sit there and get as careful about the words like I used to.
Then I have. An AI tool, rewrite it, which is trained on my voice to just clean it up and put the right things in the right order that are gonna
48:00-
Help get, make it a better post and make it more interesting and work with the algorithms on LinkedIn. And then I go one more step where I go back and reread it because sometimes it misses a nuance of something that I really wanted to say.
I’ll go back and edit the final AI version of it. And change a sentence, add in a word, sometimes add an entire sentence. And I find it actually performs much better because it’s got my final touch on it. So it, it helps me with the algorithms, it helps me achieve all the goals. I’m trying to do it, but I still put a lot of energy into it and it’s still my thinking, being exposed.
And I think if we take that, extrapolate that out to companies and to businesses, same thing. It’s again, entire marketing strategies, entire content for your website. You can’t just turn all that over to AI ’cause you’ll look like everything else and it’s gonna be trained on public data and all that kinda stuff, right?
It, that’s the expertise that, that you need to bring to it and that unique voice and unique way of thinking about it
49:00-
and and fine tuning. And then, there may be pieces that you don’t use AI for. So it’s, that’s judgment is the only way I can think of it to say it.
Terry:
I think that’s a good way to describe it.
It’s, um, you’ve just outlined virtually exactly the same process that I use as well. It’s the, write the article itself to start with, push it through AI to help remodel it, shape it around, and then the final edit again. I do, I do exactly the same thing. it helps because I found in the past it used to take me a long time to do that work myself.
I would write an article and it, you know, or even just a, a post and generally my posts are longer and if I’m doing something today, it would be a week. You’d leave it a couple of days, go back and read it again, go back and do some edit, leave another couple of days and go back again. And, you know, I think in my mind is if it’s taken me less than a week, I haven’t spent enough time on it.
What that’s done now is compressed that down a lot in terms of, the editing process. That’s for sure.
Chuck:
It has. But I will tell you, I, I will not schedule things in advance on LinkedIn. Every time I
50:00-
Do, I sleep on it and I go, oh, I could have said that better. Oh, I forgot to mention that. And then I have to go unsend it and the whole bit.
So I just, I just now sleep on it. I, if I write it today and I’m gonna post it tomorrow, I sleep on it. I revisit it in the morning, make my final edits, and then post. ’cause yeah, maybe I’m too much of a perfectionist, but
Terry:
No, no, I’m the same. So I won’t schedule either for that same, I won’t leave it, leave it scheduled.
And I think that’s why I probably sit and go back to it a couple of times. Um, look, the good thing about LinkedIn is even if you do a post, and I found that, um, you know, there’s been a couple of times where I’ve done a post and thought, oh yeah, I’m not really, there was something that I’d forgotten or that I’d wanted to add in there.
Let you just do another one in a couple of weeks. it’s like, it’s not like it’s a book that we’re publishing and, you know, the, the, the, every, every poster has got a page number. It’s like I used to get hung up on that sort of stuff and I, I’m trying to do a lot more posts now, uh, myself on LinkedIn.
So, um, I bit behind this week actually, but, uh, I’ve sort of been getting a two or three
51:00-
aim for two or three. I was trying to do it every day for one at one stage there, but I think it’s just almost a little bit too much
Chuck:
Yeah. And I think the data suggests if you’re doing it two to three times a week versus five times a week, there isn’t a lot of difference in performance.
And, but there isn’t time and trying to produce interesting content five days a week Absolutely. And, and work a job and, you know, do that, that
Terry:
was the killer. It was, it was virtually every post for LinkedIn each day was just more hours on the end of my day as opposed to, um, putting anything else in and I wasn’t getting the results.
It’s funny, and it’s, it’s interesting also the types of posts you get in terms of, or the types of posts that get traction. You know, I did a post to last week, I think it was about, um, you know, taking the mickey out of the, if you’ve seen these lead magnet bros that, you know, I’ve, I’ve, um, you know, been booking 4,000 leads a day and, you know, here’s our framework comment, rock it below and I’ll send it over for you.
Right. And so I did a bit of a tongue and tongue in uh, cheek. post on that
52:00-
Last week, and it went cra for me. It went crazy. You know, I got, got, uh, over 5,000 views on it, which, you know, I’m usually sitting between that 500 to a thousand mark or thereabouts. So, uh, yeah, it went, it went crazy, but it was, uh, it was funny even with that, there was a few people that, commented that they wanted the, and, and look, the image, if you have a look on there, it’s, um, a doodle calendar gif that just has got millions of things going everywhere.
And so I’m like, okay. I sent them an, it was a joke message saying, you know, look, uh, sorry, I’d love to send it to you, but the AI stopped me from, you know, PDF locked by AI or something along those lines of a little bit more humor. yeah, a couple of people weren’t too, uh, most people had a good, there was one person in particular that didn’t have a good, uh, sense of humor about it, but the rest did and realized they’d looked at the top and looked at the bottom and said, yes, send it to me instead of reading the content.
So it’s, that’s, uh, interesting. Um, Yeah. What strategies have you found effective in cultivating teams that are
53:00-
Both innovative and aligned with overarching business goals? Because people, people are, people are a challenge.
Chuck:
Yeah. Number one is hiring the right people, right? Hiring people that can work independently, that, that are smart people that don’t need a lot of hold handholding and a lot of oversight.
and that’s, there’s an art to that. and training I got early in my career that has helped me in terms of doing hiring. It’s a concept called top grading. That’s a proven system out there for hiring that, that works really effectively. It’s not fast, it’s not easy, but it, it’s effective. So one is getting the,
Terry:
Briefly explain that.
Chuck:
Yeah. Yeah. With top grading, it’s a much more in depth process, and you do the multiple interviews and you do it with multiple interviewers, on there, including people taking notes. And what you’re looking for are patterns by asking the same question and repeating the question over, especially when you’re going back through somebody’s experience,
54:00-
It uncovers either positive or negative things.
And, and, and the positive side, if each person got promoted because they did something and went above and beyond and they, or they got stymied and they figured out a workaround and moved on to the next thing or whatever, you start to see this pattern of, oh, this is a person who’s, who’s able to think on their own and do all this stuff.
The flip side could be, you know, the person who every job they left because they had a really crappy boss and the boss didn’t understand them. At some point you go, okay, there’s a pattern here, and the commonality is you. Right? and I, and I’ve actually seen people like when you start the way, if the way the system works and the repetition of it.
It can push people. And I’ve had people like completely lose it and just blurt out, you know, they were fired and blah, blah, blah, and here’s why. And they were trying to hide the fact. And then it’s like, okay, well at least I learned that at this stage. So I have found using top grading the process, and I’ve trained a lot of people on it now in my own teams.
But using that process,
55:00-
The amount of. Misfires or mishires is very low, very small, like single digit versus before. Sometimes it’s a bit of a crapshoot. So, so that was, that’s the first thing is getting the right people and then letting them do the job. And that is very hard for me because I am a perfectionist by nature, and that took 20 years of learning and probably pissing off a few people that worked for me along the way.
I’m just, uh, uh, being able to accept, eh, it doesn’t have to be done exactly the same way I would’ve done it. And find, if you find the right people and they just take the initiative and do things and you can let them do it, you get some amazing work out of it. But I will say that has been a work in progress for me and learning.
And so if anybody’s listening to this that worked for me like 10 or 15 years ago, they might go, what the hell is he talking about? He was the worst boss. But I don’t know.
Terry:
So, uh, is it, uh, would it be more controlling or micromanagement with your old style?
Chuck:
Probably micromanaging. Yeah, okay.
You know?
56:00-
Okay.
Terry:
Yeah, I get it. It is, it’s hard to let go. Um, and so letting them do the job, is there anything else then in particular in getting that alignment with the business goals?
Chuck:
The other thing that we’ve done in more recent jobs that, that I’m a fan of is adopt, agile processes. So where we work in sprints and we have a whole methodology of, you know, when you do a sprint where you have the kickoff.
So you’ve got the kickoff and you’ve got the clear goals, and you got the, um, the big rocks and the small rocks and the prioritization on it. So you’ve got defined for, say it’s a six week sprint or four week sprint, certain deliverables that need to happen. It makes things. Get happen in a way that because marketing so many projects, like a website could be a six month pro project, and when it’s so long or a three month project or whatever, when it’s so long like that, you can sometimes get mired details and miss deadlines.
When you start to break it and chunk it into pieces that can fit into four week or six weeks prints, you get more pieces done. And so I found it’s
57:00-
Really helped in making people more productive. And then we have a whole meeting schedule of, you have your initial kickoff, you have your check-ins once a week on the progress on that.
You have your project management tools, you have your, at the end, you have your, where you present all the work. You take a moment to celebrate and the accomplishments and also look back on the sprint. How did we do on this? Is that what we set out to accomplish in the four weeks? Did we achieve that, et cetera.
Uh, I’ve employed that now. Gosh, we started doing that. Uh, somebody I might. Team actually taught me that probably about five years ago, we started doing it, and I’ve used it ever since, and it’s worked really, really well.
Terry:
And those comp, constant feedback loops and check-ins are really what helps keep people aligned to the end goal, or even though it’s a, a stage goal, but a stage post, but to keep them aligned to the end goal.
Chuck:
Yeah, those weekly check-ins are really important. Mm-hmm.
Terry:
So when you are implementing a significant change, like ungating content or adopting new technologies, it can always be
58:00-
challenging. How do you lead your team through such transitions to ensure buy-in and a successful adoption because it’s that adoption or, or not thereof, that can actually determine the real success or return on investment for a change.
Chuck:
Yeah, I have found that what works best versus what works doesn’t work well is involving them in the process and getting their buy-in in it. So getting them so, so when we went that on gating, I had a head of demand gen, and so we started looking at the data and quickly when we were in, we were seeding, seeing the garbage come in.
We were not seeing exactly the results. We were hoping for the, at the volume. We were hoping. Now we sit down and start, well, why do you think that is? Well, what could we do? And start brainstorming with them. So he became part of solving it and then I said, well, let’s test it. So we created the ungated asset and we started driving a certain amount of traffic to it while we were still doing the gated, which gave us time to evaluate before we went and.
turned the gates off everything, and we did it with a single piece, and then we started going and doing other pieces.
59:00-
But by then he was bought in and he saw the value of it. I think if I just went to him and said, we’re gonna ungate content, and here’s why. He probably would’ve resisted because that’s not what he’d done in his career up to that point, and it didn’t make sense.
And so it, him being part of the process had the buy-in and he’s now reporting back the data and we’re meeting with the CEO and we’re both presenting the data and he’s a part of that whole process. That’s how, how you get the buy-in. And where I have seen things not work well is sometimes I’ll get it spun up on something.
I, I think this is the best solution. I’ll take a sales demo, oh, this is awesome. Let’s go implement it. And I go give it to somebody. Go, let’s go implement it without getting that buy-in. And what I find is it never quite gets implemented or it gets implemented halfway or whatever because they weren’t bought in on it.
they, they’re like, I’ve got 40. Things to do, and now you give me number 41, it’s gonna get that kind of level. so that’s something that’s been a, a learning process on my part of getting buy-in and getting them to be a part of the
01:00:00-
Solution and understanding the problem, and uncovering the problem and doing it.
And if you can’t get that buy-in, I mean, there’s been things that, I just had to go, well then let’s, this isn’t the right time if I can’t get the buy-in and ’cause I, because I can’t implement it on my own. I need the team to buy in. And if they’re not buying into it, then we keep reevaluating.
So, yeah.
Terry:
Yeah. I mean, look, that is the level of self-awareness itself and being able to take that step back. And then maybe now’s not the right time. Maybe the team, you know, group, group two, two heads are always better than one they say. So maybe there’s a, there’s a specific, uh, reason why it’s not the right time and ownership.
So in my mind, I’m hearing you talk about ownership. It’s giving them ownership of finding the problem to the solution that you’re looking to drive a change.
Chuck:
Yeah. Yeah. Because I don’t propose to know all the answers. Right. They may see something I don’t see. They’ll have insights. I, I don’t have. They’re gonna dig into the data a level I’m probably not, and uncover things.
So the more they discover and
01:01:00-
Figure out the better for both of us, right? So, yeah, I, I, I never think I have all the answers. And I, by the way, I completely steal everybody’s ideas because there’s no new ideas, right? So if I see somebody doing something really clever out there, I’m gonna go, Hmm.
How can we do that? What do we benefit from that?
Terry:
Guilty as charged. There’s no sense in trying to reinvent the wheel. I always say,
Chuck:
Right. There’s great ideas out there. Why not take ’em?
Terry:
Yeah. Look, talking about great ideas and, and technology changes. It’s, um, everything’s just moving so fast at the moment.
Sometimes I feel like. We are almost are already in the future when, uh, you see what’s going on. But with the technological, technological changes or advancements that’s happening at the moment, particularly changing buyer behaviors, what trends do you foresee shaping the future of B2B marketing?
Chuck:
Yeah, I, I, you know, there’s some interesting, companies out there that are developing new ways to learn about, ’cause you, and you touched on this, that the problem is there’s lots of
01:02:00-
Great solutions out there that if they can’t figure out how to get in front of the right people, they may just, those companies never hear about it, and they may not make it because they haven’t sold enough, you know, to stay in business.
And I’m seeing some really interesting marketplaces and solutions and communities. Out there as ways of sharing. So I think, and I think we’re very early stage and we don’t even know yet exactly how AI is gonna impact that in AI bots. I could see a time when an a when you have an AI agent who goes out and evaluates 30 solutions and comes back and narrows it down to the five that you need to go view, and maybe it’s AI agents to AI agents talking.
I mean, we, uh, on a, I co-host a podcast where we talk about retail and we talked about, we did a whole episode on are bots gonna change the whole way buying happens on like Walmart’s website? And does that mean the website becomes a lot less important because the bot goes and does all you’re buying for you and what does that mean?
So I think that’s the kind of stuff that we have no idea what it’s gonna look
01:03:00-
like two years from now. And I think that’s really exciting and interesting. And who knows, there’s probably, you know, revenue opportunities there for all of us.
Terry:
Yeah, I think so. I think so. I have the very similar view, I think with the.
Early stage, but growing quickly, rapidly, of the use of communities, groups, marketplaces in particular. Marketplaces I think are really coming to the fore that will be known for particular range of solutions or a particular segment that they’re servicing, that the audience can go to that particular marketplace knowing that it’s covering, it’s spec, it’s specializing in their niche, so to speak.
So, you know, it’ll be a marketplace for B2B technology companies where everything that a B2B technology company might need is available on this marketplace. And I think
Chuck:
A perfect example of that is one called Demo, D-I-M-M-O, where they, they aggregate all these great solutions in categories. So it’s, you know, sales automation,
01:04:00-
It’s, uh, you know, CRM, it’s all this other stuff.
I’d like to kind of start there. If I need a solution, I needed a CRM when I. When I became a fractional, I needed my own CRM. I went and looked, ’cause they had eight solutions, all with reviews and videos and all the stuff right there. I narrowed it down, try to try one or two, and that’s how I bought. So that saved me a ton of time because there’s literally a hundred CRM solutions out there.
So if somebody’s gone out and kind of vetted that and brought it down to the six or eight best ones, that saved me time.
Terry:
Last stat that I heard on CRMs, there’s actually 3000. 3000. Yeah.
Chuck:
So what I say? Hundreds?
Terry:
Yeah. there’s a, I’m finding that there’s a new marketplace called Cloud Task that’s very much in that B2B space.
It’s business-to-business. And it’s pretty new. It’s growing pretty quickly. I only became aware of it in November, and it’s sort of, we’ve got a bit of a both, two-way relationship there. They’re one of our clients and we’ve listed on that, cla uh, on that marketplace as well. And it’s
01:05:00-
been quite fruitful.
it’s been interesting to watch. I’ve been involved in only one other marketplace before and found it to be very stagnant. But this one’s very active. The team’s very active. They’re very proactive about promoting your product and, and, and, um, you know, proactive in terms of helping the, person that’s using the marketplace to find a solution.
They’re very proactive in helping find the right solution. So, you know, there’s several alternatives they’ll go through and fully understand. It’s almost like this, it’s like having an external, you know, quasi sales team because they’ll go through and do, you know, that proper qualification and discovery and understand who they should be talking to.
They don’t, they won’t, um, recommend our services for anyone. that’s not ideally suited, to have our service as a solution. So it’s, uh, it, they operate with a high level of integrity. I can say They’re very proactive and they operate with a high level of integrity, which is a little bit different to what I’ve experienced in the past.
In the past it’s been a little bit more hands off and as you mentioned,
01:06:00-
They’re all there, but you have to go and do the searching yourself. Whereas here it’s almost a, there’s a pretty, pretty strong, uh, concierge service, with cloud task I’m finding at the moment. It’s a bit of a point of differentiation for them, I think anyway, from what I’ve seen.
So
Chuck:
I’ll have to check it out. And I’m sure there’s way a yeah, I’m sure there’s ways AI can improve that whole process as well, can sift through and help you, you know, ask you some questions, and it will narrow down out of 30 solutions, what are the best three to look at. and then again, as a supplier, how do you get the, to talk to the AI chat bot and to pick it, pick you or your solution, you know, that will be a whole new.
area of expertise that we have to develop.
Terry:
Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s, um, Chuck, for marketing leaders aiming to drive significant growth and innovation. What key pieces of advice would you offer based on your experience?
Chuck:
Um, so looking to drive
01:07:00-
Innovation, I mean, I, there is, marketing is changing so much and technology is changing so much that I feel like I have to be a constant student. and, and, and it’s something I always credit my father with this of instilling in me a natural sense of curiosity. He always had it, and I, and it’s been instilled in me.
But for that reason, you know, on weekends I listen to 6, 8, 10 podcasts and I’m constantly studying what’s working out there and learning and trying to, and I’m constantly trying to learn and improve my skills and find out what’s working for other people because it’s changing so fast that if you just keep doing everything the way you’ve always done it and you kinda get your head down and you’re not evaluating and learning and reading and, on LinkedIn and, and hearing all this stuff.
And checking out all these different methodologies. I think that’s where you can quickly become antiquated. So I’d say if you’re looking to innovate you, and again, it’s
01:08:00-
Stealing, it’s is the most negative word I can put on it, but it’s what everybody else is doing out there? Because I wanna learn from that.
I actually listen to podcasts. I use a, I use a tool that I discovered, somehow called snipped, S-S-N-I-P-D. And when I’m listening, like with my headphones, I can double-click the thing. If they say something really interesting and it marks it, and then it becomes an AI snippet, so I can go back and pull out the highlights of it, and it even now auto does it for me.
I, so I listened to podcasts with that because I can go back and now I can go find a little snippet and go share it with my team, or go share it with somebody else. Hey, let’s try this. You know, there’s one I listened to, I love this podcast where they’re constantly sharing what’s working in email marketing and different things and new headline ideas and stuff.
I go, oh, that’s really cool, and I’ll go send that. You know, I listen to it on a Saturday. I go send it. My guy who’s doing the newsletter going, Hey, let’s try this. In our, in our, you know, headlines that it’s that natural curiosity and that never stopping, never assuming it’s what you did last week is gonna work next week.
01:09:00-
I think that’s the key to, to staying innovative.
Terry:
I agree. Learning, learning, and being curious. Let’s repurposing, come on. It’s not stealing, it’s repurposing. Just, boy, that sounds so much better, Terry.
It’s, uh, and particular for someone like yourself that’s come from a different environment and marketing you, you, so strong in B2B now, but I think having been exposed to that, you know, direct to consumer and, and, retail FMCG type environment in the earlier stages of your career gives you a broader perspective to draw from.
And that, and, you know, when I say repurposing, often there’ll be something that. Even for us, we look at what’s happening with the, e-commerce stores and live chat because, uh, if I compare what e-commerce do to B2B, e-commerce and Miles ahead, they get it right. The Bat chat bot says they’re gonna put you through to somebody, they’ll put you through to somebody.
If they say, no one’s available, no one’s available. very rarely do they ask for an email
01:10:00-
Address up front. They’ll either know it already because they’ve got that technology in place. it’s just a very, very different experience for the good operators for sure. it’s a different beast in, uh, in B2B.
Again, you just don’t see the results for such a long time. Chuck, is there anything that I haven’t asked, but Yeah, you definitely
Chuck:
Learn, definitely learn from the consumer side of things and, you know, spending 10 years on consumer side and I, I, I think that was invaluable. I think that there’s definite value in that
Terry:
And look personally, I think, um, everyone I’ve spoken to, every marketer I’ve spoken to in B2B that has some experience in the consumer side, has.
A level of innovation and success in their career, in their B2B careers. that is a bit head and shoulders above those that don’t, from what I’ve ex, from what I’ve seen so far. And that’s not the downplay anyone who’s strictly B2B, um, they’ve got their areas of expertise and I’ve seen some amazing marketers there.
but I just think that broader level of experience is, um, is, is highly valuable.
01:11:00- Chuck:
Yeah, I agree a hundred percent.
Terry:
Chuck, is there anything that I should have asked you that I haven’t asked you yet?
Chuck:
Gosh, I don’t know. Well, you’ve asked me a lot. We have, we have. It’s been a good
Terry:
Conversation. I’ve enjoyed it actually.
Chuck:
Yeah, it’s been a lot of fun. No, I don’t, nothing, nothing that, I’m sure I’ll think of something later when we hang out.
Terry:
That’s all right. You can always, um, send me through A loom or something and we can, uh, we can add it in later. So obviously we’ll put, um, all of your, details below in terms, uh, of how to get in touch with you.
Can you tell me a little bit, just as a final, um, piece, can you tell me a little bit about the book? And I have must say, I’m almost embarrassed to say that I haven’t read your book, but I’ll have that fixed by the end of next week for sure. but tell us about I appreciate
Chuck:
That. Yeah, so it’s called an Audience of One and it’s, uh, and, and the book was written a few years ago based on a lot of my experience with consumer marketing.
Even when I was on the B2B side, I was working with a lot of, with Ford and GM and a lot of
01:12:00-
Packaged goods companies and Proctor and Gamble and finance companies. And so I was doing a lot of that and we were very early in a digital identity and understanding how you could tie people to devices and to, to data and use that for targeting stuff.
So that’s, that’s how the, the book. Came about, it’s called an audience of one. It’s how brands have gone from mass marketing to one-to-one marketing and why that’s now possible because of technology in a way that wasn’t a possible. And in fact, there was a book, in, uh, I’ll Get the Year Wrong Now, and back in the eighties that was written by, uh, Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, and it was called The One-to-One Future.
I don’t know if it’s a very old book, so you may or may not remember it, but I remember when that book came out and uh, and, uh, it might have been the nineties, I think may be in the eighties. Anyway, I, I, I, I should know that. Anyway, that book foretold where we would be today. It just, it was the future because it wasn’t possible.
01:13:00-
So when we wrote our book, we started out and talked about that book, and we actually got them to write the forward to our book, Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, which is really kind of a full psych circle. Entry, but that’s what the book about. There’s one chapter on B2B where we talk about how you apply the same principles of one-on-one marketing, but it’s, you know, heavy consumer marketing and published by McGraw-Hill.
and it’s actually used at a lot of colleges to teach MBA students and, you know, marketing students. ’cause there was no book out there, no textbook that explained those digital principles and how you were, how you were able to track individuals and, and how you adapt to, you know, their preferences and personalization and all the things that, that we espouse in the book.
So,
Terry:
And, and it’s all still so relevant today, even though you’ve got technology, technological changes and AI coming through. That one-to-one is still totally relevant.
Chuck:
Absolutely, everything that we talked about in the book and, and we talked. It. The, what’s interesting is where
01:14:00-
We did talk, we laid out in detail how to do it.
We had to talk in generalities because even as we were going to print, you know, things were happening with Apple and Google and changes in the way of digital identity. So we intentionally built it so it wasn’t built around any one technology or one thing that would make it outdated. So the principles still apply today, and the truth is what you can do today in ai.
I, I had somebody ask me. Gosh, two, three years ago. and this was a big, um, financial services company dealing with millions of consumers. And they were saying, well, the thing is, I wanna be able to do true one-to-one marketing. I want the message that goes to Mary to be different than one. I’m like, you could do that.
But right now with the technology, the cost and the effort, the ju the, I use an expression from having lived in south, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. You could do it. Nobody will do it. It’s not possible. And they were frustrated with me at the time. They were like, what? That’s so frustrating today with ai.
It’s actually now possible. So what we can do today that we couldn’t do
01:15:00-
Two years ago is crazy. Mm-hmm. and the, and I remember five years ago talking about being able to do. 10 different versions of an ad and the agency would go, well, that’s just way too long. ’cause we now have to go create two 10 different versions of the ad and 10 different now all that can be done with AI and built digitally and, and built on the fly in a way that just wasn’t even possible 10 years ago or five years ago.
Terry:
So if anything it really, just the final comment, I guess on, on ai, as much as we talk about it potentially, you know, lessening jobs. If, if anything it should make marketers more successful, particularly around the ability to be able to ab test and really find those things that are working quickly.
At a much
Chuck:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What you can do with AI now that would’ve taken weeks or months. It’s kinda like I was having a conversation with somebody the other day about focus groups and even the way you do focus groups anymore has changed and virtual and, and I’m working with a tour right now as an advisor that where they can actually pull together a panel of 10 consumers
01:16:00-
Based on the criteria using ai.
And you can ask it questions. And it’s a remarkably interesting and remarkably insightful. And that’s, that’s using AI in a way that I could go build a panel and give you answers tomorrow with, which is pretty interesting. Fascinating.
Terry:
Fascinating. Chuck, is there any, books or podcasts that you’d recommend that you’re reading lately or, or, uh, that any marketing re uh, leaders should, uh, should read,or watch or listen to, to keep themselves learning?
Chuck:
I listened to so many podcasts. The, um, I’m trying to think of books that I’ve read lately. You know, it’s funny building now of my fractional practice. Like I read a book called The Big Leap. Highly recommend. It’s just about how our own self-limiting beliefs and things. So it’s not a marketing book I’m reading right now, the Go-Giver in the same kind of vein about, about that.
So I’m, I, at this stage of life, I’m finding myself on a book, reading, being more, philosophical if you will, um, on a
01:17:00-
Podcast. I’m very, very practical. So like the one that I, that I listen to every week is called Do This, not that. And it’s all about marketing tips. And what’s great about it is he actually does like three or four different episodes a week that take on different.
One is where he answers questions, et cetera. And he’s very entertaining. The guy’s named Jay Schleman, I’m probably saying Jay Schwa some, I think. Gentleman, I’m probably butchering his name, but anyway, do this, not that is the name of the podcast, but they’re short and really practical and he runs a marketing agency where they’re working and doing like millions of emails.
So he gives really practical tips and stuff. But I find it highly entertaining. I just find it very interesting. So that’s one I listen to regularly. I’m trying to think. I mean, I, I listen so many, I, I should put a list on or something of just great podcasts that I really enjoy.
Terry:
Well, that’d be great if you start to put that together.
Let us know. Um, and we’ll put it a link to it on the bottom of the podcast here when we, when we launch it, it’ll be a little bit of a gap between the, the production.
01:18:00-
Chuck, I’ve gotta say thank you very much for your time today. I know it’s been, uh, a, a little bit longer than, than usual. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the conversation and I’m, I’m a hundred percent sure that our audience will get some nice pieces out of it as well.
Thanks for joining us today on the chat.
Chuck:
This is a lot of fun. Terry. Thank you for having me.
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