Speaker 1: 0:23

Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by MarketingOpscom, powered by all the MoPros out there. I am your host, michael Hartman, flying solo today. We will get Mike and Naomi back soon, I'm sure. Joining me today is Leanne Dow Weimer, and we're going to talk about why there needs to be humanity for data-driven marketing to work, so we'll get into that a little bit. Leanne is a fractional marketing leader and advisor who is also the host of the Markagee the Science of Marketing Strategy podcast. She has over eight years of experience in online and offline marketing involving brand demand, gen and product marketing, and over 15 more in direct customer service slash sales roles. So, leanne, thank you for joining today.

Speaker 2: 1:05

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:08

Yeah. So this is going to be. I think this is going to be a fun conversation because I've been saying for a while that, well, first off, I hate the term data-driven marketing because I think it's non-sequitur I don't know what the right word is. Like. Data-driven is like people don't really know what that means is what I'm saying, but we'll get into that probably later and I don't need to get on my soapbox just yet. Um, all right, so let's get started. So I did a very brief overview of your recent career, but something I didn't mention is that your undergraduate degree is in, if I got it right, exercise physiology, and that you started your career in a gym. So we've had all kinds of crazy starts to careers that end up in marketing, marketing ops, but this is a first, I think. So tell us about that experience and how it informs your marketing related work today.

Speaker 2: 1:56

Yeah, thank you. So my undergraduate degree is exercise physiology. It's basically the nerdiest of the kinesiology majors of the kinesiology majors and my peers went on to be doctors, physical therapists, occupational therapists all sorts of working with the human body in healthcare settings. I chose a more proactive approach and my focus was also aimed at women and children, and so I spent a lot of my early career teaching group exercise, personal training, sports coaching, things like that, where I was trying to help people do the best with their body before they broke and needed physical therapy.

Speaker 1: 2:44

That's great.

Speaker 2: 2:45

That was my goal Live longer, happier, healthier lives across the board. And while I was doing that is that there's kind of this learning moment I had. That was explicitly said to me, so I don't want to take all the credit for it, but personal training is a sales job. Training is a sales job, and it's true because you are trying to get someone to pay you thousands of dollars so that you can convince them to do something they have inherently been avoiding doing. And not only are you trying to convince them to do it, but you're trying to convince them to have so much fun showing up at 5 am to do a workout that they've been avoiding that. They're going to listen to you the rest of the week when they're not with you and then pay you again to continue your services and still like you.

Speaker 1: 3:39

That's an important part there, yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:41

And still like you and want to be there and make that choice, knowing that's what they're choosing. And so it requires a lot of really getting to know what makes people tick, what motivates them, what, how you can answer their needs and what they came to you to get done, even if they're saying you know, I just want to, I just want to fit into a dress. Okay, why do you want to fit into that dress?

Speaker 2: 4:05

It helps you to like, pull those threads of like how to motivate people on an individual level. Um and so, while there's that aspect of the work you have to it's I'm going to borrow a phrase from someone else but you eat what you kill and first of all, we don't. We don't actually kill anybody. We are not. I'm very like a gentle, like soul, I swear, but the only clients you get are the clients that you find for yourself. No one's out there like passing out personal training clients.

Speaker 2: 4:36

That's just how it works If they are like, oh, that's awesome, you're getting paid pennies if that's the case, but to where I'm trying to get to with this is that you have to create some sort of allure and attraction or way to get clients. And so what I found myself doing before I took a single business class ever was creating a content calendar. I was planning out my year and saying, okay, during March this is kind of March madness, it's spring training, these are the sports I'm going to try to help people enjoy and help give them that sport specific training, for it's a kickoff of marathon season. They're going to want to beat their time, they're going to want to do their first marathon, they're going to want to get ready for those summer weddings Like what is happening in the seasonality and how can I change my offering to be in the language that answers that what they're trying to accomplish of their goals. And so I also found myself getting backlinks online and being on Twitter and Instagram and all these things, before fitfluencers even existed.

Speaker 1: 5:46

Fitfluencers I hadn't heard that term yet, okay, yeah. Fitness influencers I hadn't heard that term yet, okay.

Speaker 2: 5:49

Yeah, fitness influencers are-.

Speaker 1: 5:51

I'm old, though, so I'm behind on the times.

Speaker 2: 5:54

You're not. There are some very knowledgeable people, but it's been a constant struggle in the wellness industry is that you're not just fighting to unravel and learn more about people, You're fighting that temptation of the get it quick schemes, and so that was also part of why I was like I need to get real good at marketing. I need to get real good at sales, because not only am I fighting people's status quo, their inertia, I'm fighting these snake oil people.

Speaker 1: 6:32

Right yeah.

Speaker 2: 6:34

And trying to really, you know, lead with evidence-based, long-term sustainable things for people.

Speaker 1: 6:40

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 6:42

So I found myself in marketing.

Speaker 1: 6:44

That's interesting, it's happened. I'm surprised. One of our first guests, brandy sanders, said something that still sticks with me about how, like, sometimes this kind of role requires. It's like you should know how to play chess, right? It's a complex kind of complicated thing in human psychology or something like that. Right, and I think what's what you're talking about is like understanding people and what motivates them probably goes both in terms of building a business, like you were, as well as navigating your own organization, right, right, figure out what. What motivates people? Why is that person a pain to deal with, while this person you know it's easy to deal with but doesn't get anything done, right, that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1: 7:26

So I can totally see that you touched on um, taking business classes. So I think you you then, at somewhere along the way, you also got, went and got an mba. You got exposure to other parts of business what were like, see, it sounds like you already had some exposure to what it's like to run a business, because you had your own business selling yourself. Basically what, uh? What did to run a business? Because you had your own business selling yourself, basically what, uh? What did you? What additional things did you pick up from going back and get an MBA.

Speaker 2: 7:56

Yeah, um I, it flips my world I. I went into it knowing that I just this was a blind spot for me. Um, you know, I don't really know a lot about this stuff. I know what's happening inside your body with the cells and the different physical responses. I could draw a Krebs cycle. I could do all this really nerdy stuff, but I didn't know how to make a business profitable and I recently posted about this on LinkedIn.

Speaker 2: 8:24

Is that, at the end of the day, you can't help anybody if you have no income. You just can't. You need to have revenue and how to do that in a way that matches this very altruistic, beauty pageant answer that I have, that I care about people. How to connect those dots between running a business that has revenue, that is sustainable that can you know, have these holistic thoughts and practices and mindsets. How to do that in a way that provides growth opportunities, so that you can positively impact the economy around you, so that you can employ others, so that you can continue to service the people that need your help. And so you know it.

Speaker 2: 9:10

Just, it taught me so much about not just like the hardcore business principles where I was like, oh, that makes sense, that's what I was doing, but I didn't know I was doing it. But also ones that like I really like had to sit down and like put on, like you know, all of the motivating music I could. All of a sudden there's dubstep, so I could do this financial projection worksheet, but it was these heavy business theories and practices and ABBA and accounting and here's what your interest does over time amortization, all these things that you do need to know that are very functionally-.

Speaker 1: 9:54

Tax implications of decisions. You make all those kinds of things right.

Speaker 2: 9:57

Yeah, roi, return on ad spend.

Speaker 2: 9:59

Just how are you going to balance all of these things and how are you going to get your margins?

Speaker 2: 10:04

How are you going to tell your customers when you have to increase prices, because you can't just be their best friend and never increase your prices and then go out of business. It's very tempting, but even a nonprofit needs to have grants and money coming in so that then they can disperse it or provide the service or provide the good. It's this liquidity idea that really was very important for me to understand, so that now, when I look at a business choice, I make it knowing this is going to impact our margin, but here's what we can expect out of it. Here's how that's going to let me get headcount. Here's how that's going to let me invest differently yeah. And then also listening to smarter people than I, like the venture capitalists that were at these angel expos, and hearing them talk about people's business ideas, that was huge, because sometimes we have we, sometimes I too too have these wonderful pie in the sky ideas and we can always have these great ideas.

Speaker 2: 11:13

But if your idea doesn't have substance or it doesn't have a method of like, operationalizing or it doesn't, you know, answer the need for big enough people, or it's just, you know, a lovely idea, but it's not, it can't functionally exist. Then you know, you've got to know that, you've got to be able to have that discernment.

Speaker 1: 11:37

Yeah Well, I think it's easy to get caught up in an idea that you believe is I'll call it the right thing to do or a good thing to do, and just sort of feel it in your bones and maybe even have a little bit in your head of like this is why I think it'll it'll be beneficial. But if you can't communicate that to the people that have the influence, the purse strings, the ability to enable you to do it, it's probably going to be a real challenge to get it done. It's probably going to be a real challenge to get it done. This is why I keep coming back to.

Speaker 1: 12:10

One of the soapboxes I get on is the importance of understanding the basics of finance. So I think it pays dividends in understanding if you're going to a public company. Certainly it helps you evaluate financial statements and things like that. Same thing with private, I guess, if you get access to those and things like that same thing with private, I guess, if you get access to those. But even just pitching an idea internally at an organization where finance has to sign off on it, like knowing how to evaluate something like that and build the case for it and structure it and get that buy-in is really, really valuable and it pays off.

Speaker 1: 12:45

It doesn't matter what industry you're in, right, it just really doesn't matter, and so that's like one of those things that I really, really believe in. It's interesting you talked about, like the um so that the some people get into some of these or these businesses, for I don't want to say altruistic motives, but, right, they, they. They see they want to do something good for whatever their client or customer is going to be, and I don't want to get too far into a rabbit hole that might be dangerous. But the first time I ever heard somebody talk about that realization was do you know who John Mackey is? He was the founder of Whole Foods.

Speaker 2: 13:24

Yes, yeah, yeah, whole. Foods was a case study I clung to.

Speaker 1: 13:27

Yeah, yeah, so I think I think I was. He was the first one I ever remember hearing talking about like he really wanted to do good and it and he, he was kind of struggling against himself on trying to reconcile this, like this idea of having this you know, whatever you want to call it right Nutritional, oriented. You, you know, retail store that was affordable to people in the neighborhood but they, at the same time, was sustainable, and that you know he could make a living off of, and and enable others to make a living off of, and you know it took him a while, I think to, to get to that point. So, um, it's, it's interesting to me, so that you bring that up cause it's. I think it's. It's a. I think it's a. It's one that probably many people who are starting out on their own struggle with.

Speaker 2: 15:48

Yeah, I agree completely. It is a very industry agnostic. It's just bare bones business. You need to understand how to make the revenue, you need to know what goes into the sausage and you need to know what flavor your sausage is. And that's like a really weird way to phrase this.

Speaker 1: 16:08

You're not talking about your fitness clients, right?

Speaker 2: 16:11

I mean, I do want them to know if they're eating like some. I'll save the nutritional judgment. The thing is, you know, this is where totally going off on a tangent here this is where it comes back to this kind of universal truth. Universal truth is that there is no such thing as a bad food. There is a bad food that you eat too much of, or, to you know, like it just takes over its disproportionate amount.

Speaker 2: 16:41

In business, there are bad ideas. They're ethically wrong, but they're like in marketing. There's not necessarily a bad campaign. It's just how much time, money and effort should it get. And because you need to have that space for experimentation so that you might strike gold or, if it fails completely, you didn't just blow your year's budget on it.

Speaker 2: 17:06

And so it's this universal truth of moderation and proportion and really being able to discern how much of what should get what and that's where the biggest levers and strategy occur is what gets what allotment. And I'm kind of relating this back to your internal buy-in with the finance department. Even if you aren't directly talking to the finance department, you're talking to someone who answers to the finance department and they need to be able to champion your idea. And so if your idea is this very innovative idea and you're so excited about it but no one's had any way to say that this is for sure going to work and you try to get your whole year's budget behind it, the people that answer to finance are going to have a really big struggle trying to plead your case and get that investment.

Speaker 2: 18:01

But when you look at it like this is an experiment and you frame it correctly and you request a appropriate allotment to do a sandbox to prove it's minimal, viable product and it's case use and it's all this stuff to get some some traction, then you can scale it right um, last thought, thank you for listening to this tangent um, but this is why repeatable, scalable processes and everything we do in a business is the keys to the kingdom, because you can take that experiment and then you can plug it in to some sort of process or flow and then you can grow it. Um, so you made a face. I want to hear. I did.

Speaker 1: 18:51

I did because I don't totally agree with this.

Speaker 2: 18:54

You have to do you have to do some things that are unscalable. You have to, but I think that when you're looking at okay, I've got this small thing and it works, how do I repeat this At some point, you can't be reinventing the wheel every single time.

Speaker 1: 19:10

No, I don't. So the nuance I would throw in is that I don't believe that. So in general, I agree for you to get the benefit of these things you need to scale. But I think if you're doing an experiment or you're building something new and you don't know all the things, that might be challenges along the way in what you're doing.

Speaker 1: 19:35

A couple of thoughts One I think you're right.

Speaker 1: 19:57

A couple of thoughts One I think you're right the more low risk and higher reward you can get out of it, the more likely you are going to get the okay to do it, especially when you're competing with other people and other ideas that you may not even know about, that are competing for the same dollar, what, what I where I sort of had this look on my face was, you know, I think in those cases, right, trying to put in place highly structured processes at that point is kind of counterproductive, right, it's kind of and I'm not saying you don't want to put in some structure, but I have my own belief about what the level of structure should be.

Speaker 1: 20:21

But what I do believe is you should go into it with mindset. We want to learn what we can so that, if it works, we want to be able to scale it, but we don't want to necessarily put ourselves in so much structure that we can't move and adjust quickly, because we know that we don't know everything. And I think that's really kind of why you saw that look on my face is because I think, yes, you want to try these experiments, you want to do them as quickly and learn as quickly as you can. But part of that learning is how do you enable yourself to scale? Or you learn that you can't right and that by itself would be a good lesson to learn. Yeah, so that's what I thought we agree.

Speaker 1: 21:00

Okay.

Speaker 2: 21:00

Fundamentally, we agree, right. No-transcript Agreed. So it's in budget, right, because a bootstrap business of five people is going to operate very differently than a heavily invested five people that has like 10 agencies. Right? So there is so many ways to do it. Five people that has like 10 agencies Right? So it's, there is so many ways to do it, and that's one of the beauties of it.

Speaker 1: 21:49

Right, I mean, I think this is the other like. One of my other things is like there's usually not one right answer to these things and lots of reasons why. But I believe that the world is made up of lots of trade-offs, right, and so everyone's. You know, the simple one, or a common one, is risk tolerance, right, so you know, if your risk tolerance is relatively high, right, you're, you're, the trade-offs you would consider that I, you know someone else's lower risk tolerance would consider, are very different.

Speaker 1: 22:15

And so I think there and you could add all kinds of other things to that list of what the tradeoffs are, you know, some of it is like even, I will say even finance people sometimes use their gut, right? I mean, it's like I just believe this idea is more likely to succeed, even though there's risks associated with it, than this other one. And if it does, it's going to pay off bigger than this other one, which also might pay off, but not as much for the amount we have to put into it. And so that's just the nature of experimentation and innovation is, you know, try things to see what's going to have an impact, and that sometimes depends on what it is you're trying to maximize for or optimize for? Yeah, so this is what happens when I've been spending. I spent the morning at the engineering school at SMU, where I graduated from, and so I've got my too much academic sort of thought process in my head right now.

Speaker 2: 23:19

Hey, no, it's good. I love the discourse right, Because one of the ultimate things that you have to do is challenge ideas.

Speaker 2: 23:29

And you have to challenge your own ideas first, because if, if you're going to somebody and you're presenting this thing and you haven't challenged your ideas and gone through the potential objections, then you might be missing something that you very quickly see as like a huge mistake. Right, like, and you don't, you don't. You need to start with like was this assumption right? Is this premise true? Is this you know it? What are they going to say? Reasons not to AI? And can I make the argument, like, earnestly, honestly, transparently, that this is still the right thing to do, despite the objections that I can?

Speaker 2: 24:06

come up with.

Speaker 1: 24:08

No, I think it's like I tell it's been a while since I've said, but I definitely have told my kids, I've told people I work with my goal is to be confident, but humble, but humble, right. So I believe that I know a lot and smart and can make good decisions, but I'm also open to the idea that there are other people who might have even better ideas, and I want to be open to the idea of listening to us, um, and I think that's you know that's not for everybody, but it's. I think it's worked for me and I, like you, know it's how I want to live. So let's switch gears a little bit, um, and I talked earlier and you had a point of view about what brand is and said and I would tend to agree with this part at least as you said, it's more than fonts and colors. Agreed, but you also said it's how we operate. But I'd like you to kind of drill down on that. What does that mean? What do you mean by that?

Speaker 2: 25:02

But I'd like you to kind of drill down on that. What does that mean? What do you mean by that? Yeah, so when I say that brand is more than fonts and colors, it's how we operate. I'm saying that it is the manifestation of every interaction with our customers, whether they see, directly or indirectly, contact the company, or they hear about it from their friend, or they're just left with some sort of feeling. And so all of the accumulation of those touches or indirect touches, and all of that is what actually makes a brand.

Speaker 2: 25:34

You can have any logo and people are going to have a notion of you and you can't control what people think, but you can communicate in a way that says this is what we want you to think we are. And then you can back up that brand promise with how you email, how you respond to inquiries, how you respond to complaints. What is the time lag between somebody saying, hey, I want a demo and actually get a demo? If you're saying that you're a customer-centric company, and then someone puts in an inbound request the biggest goldmine of requests, where they're just trying to shove their money at you and you don't like follow up for a month, like six months, well, you're dead, like, like, that's not.

Speaker 1: 26:29

you're not who you say you are so, even though bananas, yes, it's it's mind-boggling because it still exists no, it's like I I'm smiling because mike and I got on and recorded. Uh, it was probably within our first year or so of doing the podcast because I had had experience, just like you talked about, where I had submitted requests to multiple vendors multiple times to still know like I started shaming them online actually and eventually got somebody to talk to me and we kind of went on this rant about or had a discussion where, like how to sell to marketing ops folks which you could, and it was really interesting because we had a subsequent episode because a couple of sales people like kind of pushed back on us and we wanted to get their set and there's some. It's an interesting one and I would encourage people to go listen to that, but it stuns me still, like these companies that make it so hard to take your money.

Speaker 2: 27:22

It's like come on, I'm trying to help you. Like, take my money, like I want your service, this is what you exist to do, um, yeah, no, that grinds my gear so much, um. But on the on the opposite side, if you have kind of a blah font choice or color or logo, but like you're known for going above and beyond on a human to human level, that's your brand. That's not codified, necessarily, but it's operationalized, it's manifested, it's what that person says to their friend, to their friend, to their friend, you know. And so that's where I think that brand is a transcendent manifestation, and I know that's a very California way to describe things.

Speaker 2: 28:07

But it's not just omni-channel, it's omni-interaction, it's lack of direct interaction, it's reputation, it's so all-encompassing that it's very hard to call it marketing when it starts at marketing. But it has its own life. That's ingrained from every choice within the company, from the leadership to what they invest in and what they don't invest in, to how they respond to customers, to what platforms they choose so that they can operate. It's, it's everything, and it becomes a personality of organization.

Speaker 1: 28:50

Yeah, I think so because I am in Dallas, right.

Speaker 1: 28:53

What all that reminds me of is the story of Southwest airlines, right, which I don't know if it's still a hundred percent matches what, what they were originally, but, like I think they were very, very. I would argue this where it starts, before marketing, it starts with core values, right, and really making sure everybody who comes on board knows about. It goes into hiring, it goes into all those choices you talked about. In their case, it enabled, like, making sure that everybody knew that if you were interacting with a customer a year, you were empowered to do what you could to solve that customer's problem Right Within reason. Again, whether or not that's still true, right, that's a different story, but I think it pretty long into it, right. They were well known for that, right, and I've worked at a handful of places where the values they had on the walls in all the offices actually matched, they actually reinforced that with the things that they celebrated and the things they condemned in terms of behaviors, and I think that goes a long way towards it.

Speaker 2: 30:01

Culture is what is enforced.

Speaker 1: 30:04

Yes or not?

Speaker 2: 30:06

Or not. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's how. If you have a set of rules or values, it's how it happens. It's what is praised and what is ignored.

Speaker 1: 30:19

Yeah and what is ignored. Yeah Well, and I think the companies I know who really really take that to heart it is a pain to get hired by them, but it's because they are very deliberate about getting people into the organization that have those you know they know will have the same values. I mean, one of my kids just last summer worked at a local college leadership that's known for having really, really great customer service ethos across their multiple dealerships service ethos across their multiple dealerships. And the process he had to go through for a summer job was, I mean, I think he had four interviews, a couple of screening tests, right, all this stuff Like and um, it wasn't, like it wasn't just because him right, it was, that's what they did with everybody, and I think it's it's very telling when you see that Um, so all you people out there who are just trying to grab at any job, right, pay attention to how that process works.

Speaker 2: 31:26

Yeah, and at some point you know, 10 interviews is too many yeah.

Speaker 1: 31:36

Why too many? Yeah, well, or at least it gives you insight into, uh, some of the norms in the organization about decision making right?

Speaker 2: 31:46

yes, yeah, it definitely shows what it. If a hiring decision is one of the biggest impacts on their bottom line and they come at it in a certain way, it is heavily reflective of their internal personality.

Speaker 1: 32:01

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 32:03

And so I yeah, that's a whole different episode. We will, oh yeah.

Speaker 1: 32:10

I could, I'm sure we could get. We could get a panel of people who could come on and we would probably be on for four hours. It would be a long time. So we said at the top of this that we were going to talk a little bit about why it's important to have humanity and maybe I put that in air quotes to be a data-driven organization. So that was like a term that you, or a phrase that you shared with me when we first talked. So what do you mean by having humanity to be data driven?

Speaker 2: 32:42

Yeah, I mean and I think that our conversation that we've had so far builds into this, because we've talked about how it's how people operate with each other, it's how people make decisions, it's how people need to get the buy-in for brand or marketing or these other things is that, when we look at the data, data and even quantitative points on a bar graph is still reflective of a snapshot in time or a series of snapshots in time of choices made by humans, by people.

Speaker 2: 33:20

And while we all love, you know, gumball machines, if I put $5 in I get five gumballs out. Where that, there's always nuance, right, there's nuance in how people operate, how they make their buying decisions, how that's influenced. There's your actions. There's the NBA speak would be the SWAT and the pestle analysis. You know there's there's more to it. There's also did did that company have snacks that day? Was everybody in back to back to back meetings? They were hangry and they just couldn't be bothered.

Speaker 2: 33:59

You know, like you, gotta you people, people aren't always rational and you can't always expect the if this, then that outcome. Um, because in any given situation, there's a multiple variables and multiple outputs that a single person could have, and and that's the beauty of the human, human mind, human experience is that we're all unique and you know, if you put five people in the same situation, you're not, you're almost never, almost sometimes, though never going to get a hundred percent of the exact same behavior for the, for the same reason, every single time. Now, there's always things that there's always nuance, there's always exceptions, there's always outliers. So anything I say acknowledges those exist.

Speaker 2: 34:53

What I'm saying is that if you look at a data point and you are data driven, you still need to be data cynical, and what I mean by this is that, ok, we got, you know, 10 clicks on this email, so now they all want to do demos. That's a win, well, is it? Why did they click on that email? What happened on that sales call next? Did you promise them something on that email? What happened on that sales call next? Did you promise them something in that email? And then they got to the sales call and it was just off enough that it was no longer relevant and valuable to them.

Speaker 1: 35:27

Right.

Speaker 2: 35:27

Is that still a win? You just got 10 MQLs? No, it's not a win because they didn't convert, so it's a waste of money. And so we all feel this pain where we want to be able to be like, yeah, I won, my metrics say I won, but you have to look at the whole picture and you have to say was this actually a conversion? Was this actually answering their need? Was this framed in a way that made sense, that enticed them to a relevant offer? Was this building value for them? Are they going to stick around a year from now?

Speaker 2: 36:02

Or did they purchase once because they didn't know what they were doing and we misled them in some way, shape or form, whether intentionally or unintentionally, or we didn't plan for a circumstance change, and now they've churned, and now we've got to restart the wheel. And now they've churned, and now we've got to restart the wheel. And so this is where having experience matters, where you can look at yes, we got the lowest cost per lead. Those leads were junk. They were leads technically, but the more expensive leads are actually the ones that convert. So our customer acquisition costs, yeah, okay, maybe it went down because we thought we were getting all these leads, but we actually ended up getting fewer customers.

Speaker 1: 36:43

Yes.

Speaker 2: 36:44

And so you have to be cynical, you have to be like well, that's great, but what about the rest of it? What is actually happening? Where is the full story of this data point, and how does this interact with the rest of our data points, and are we making business sense in the long term and in the short term?

Speaker 1: 37:02

Yeah, I mean I said, I think at the beginning that I don't really like the term data driven, and I've tried to use the phrase data informed because I think it's, because I think if you are driven by the data I mean this is getting really picky about the word choice, but it makes it seem like the data is going to tell you exactly what to do, and I just don't think that's true. Right, I think there's a lot like you need to be able to interpret it and understand what it means. I had, until we had talked, I had not thought of a term like data cynical, you know, or data critical, I think, your point being, you can want to be led by data, but there's also some component of being smart about how to interpret it, and I think that's really what we're getting at. It's like it's not just that. I also think, when I think about humanity being into it is one of the downsides to me I've seen, with people who just go like just present data and charts and they think they're great, is they forget that humans are like we're pattern recognition animals. You know very much so and we are moved by stories, right? So if you're not, you you know telling a story about it. Just showing the data is not going to motivate a lot of people to change, especially if and this is why I don't like data driven to be like, I think, just by the nature of the kind of data that marketers and sales teams deal with.

Speaker 1: 38:38

You alluded to one like it slices at time, right at a point in time, but it also doesn't have the kind of controls that you would have with, say, accounting and financial data right, which is highly regulated and has very strict rules about it, whereas marketing sales data just doesn't right. So you should just assume it's not going to be right, yeah, or whatever. Right means right, like I don't even like using that term either, but it is what it is right. So just assume that you can trust it to some. Like there's some degree of trust you can have with it in terms of making decisions, but, like you need to be cognizant of how to use like know that that data is not probably telling the full story, and I know that we could all come up with examples of where we were looking at data and it uncovered some sort of weird way in which, say, the sales team was doing something or a broken technology step in the marketing technology stack or whatever Right, and that's the kind of stuff that drives like. I see that all the time.

Speaker 2: 39:43

Yeah, yeah, and, and it's the trust but verify component, but also um, there's so much of that that I just I resonate with Um. It's hard to mentally think about it at all. One thing is that if you are a very like literate person and I mean literal literate person, I don't mean like you can read.

Speaker 2: 40:07

I hope you can read, please, if you need help with literacy, like there's programs. But what I'm trying to say is that the worst thing that you can do and I fall into this trap all the time because I'll be deep in the thick of it, in the weeds and I'll be so proud of this spreadsheet I made Do not just share your spreadsheet. Don't do it. Don't do it, don't do it. It is a pitfall, unless you are even if you are also a spreadsheet person. You need to put it into a deck, you need to do a presentation and this is a meeting. That needs to be.

Speaker 2: 40:45

A meeting is the discussion and interpretation of the data points. That is a dialogue in conversation. Another component of what you said is this this this concept of what gets measured gets managed. I am still a big advocate for having data points and attribution everywhere you can get it so that you can investigate. So I see it as a constellation of stars, right right.

Speaker 2: 41:16

Yes, these data points are constellation of stars. Inside a star is a ball of fire that has chemical processes, that is impacting gravity and all this other stuff that you can't see. You need to get your telescope, you need to zoom in on the star, you need to look at it and its nebula and its star system in the universe and you need to have it as an eye point to to notice and to investigate. It is not the end, all be all. It is not the universe, it is a star.

Speaker 2: 41:46

Yes, still gigantic, still still in, like you know, credit, like remarkable, still still matters. Um, and that's when I say what measure gets managed is that without having all the data that is reasonable to get, you can't get quite the same feel for what is going on and there's a lot of blind spots and a lot of we don't know this, we don't know that, and there's there's a lot of opportunities when you have the data points, to then try to say, almost like the Charlie Day murder board on the wall where he's got the strings from different things, I don't like thought it all out and then look at it from 1,000 feet, 100 feet, 3 feet, and you got to look at it from the different POVs three feet and and you got to look at it from the different povs.

Speaker 1: 42:41

well, I think I think your point um, if I at least what I one of the things I took away is right there's not a single metric that really can tell the full story, right, and you need you need different ones, you need them from to look at it from different perspectives, understand how they're connected. So, if all you're measuring is we generated enough mqls or sal's, or or we can attribute X amount of pipeline revenue to our marketing activities, there's nothing wrong with any one of those. It's just that like is it the full story? And I think that's the. It's an easy trap to fall into. There's that. And there's also the trap of what's easy to measure is not always what's truly indicative of what's working, and what's working meaning what's actually moving the needle for the business overall. Are we delivering profitable revenue to the organization? Are we delivering revenue, profitable revenue to the organization?

Speaker 1: 43:38

And I think that's something I see a lot of people get caught up in. So a lot of this now comes like. Where I keep coming back to is that everything we talk to like to me all makes sense, sounds like it makes sense to you, but I think there's an assumption that we're making is that, like you, that people should have a certain level of data fluency, uh, to be able to do these things? And I do think that that's a missing element for a lot of marketing ops professionals, most of who we, you know, most of our listeners, fall in that category. Sorry, not saying most of our listeners fall in the category of not being data fluent, but that they are our audience. But I do think there's a gap, right, and understanding that. And so I mean, do you see the same thing where people get, get followed these traps because they just it's, they're reacting to requests for data, so they generate a spreadsheet and just send it off, right? What's your take on this situation?

Speaker 2: 44:37

Yeah, I think that data literacy is. One of the biggest plagues in our society is that we are told something and we take it at face value and that's. There's just more to it and not everything is. It's the critical component, right, that criticism, like that cynicality, that, okay, this says that I brought 10 MQLs and I keep coming back to this because in a mops setting, this is going to be one of the frequent ones and then your CMO may be even less data fluent than you and they've got this presentation you made, you explained it, but they understand things the way that they understand things which you have no control over, and they pluck out something that's going to look good to the executive board because that's how they interpreted what you said, and they cherry pick and I it can be very misleading because unintentionally right, unintentionally I'm never gonna say that somebody did this like with, uh, you know, malevolent, like malicious intent, uh, but there's certainly you, the I've never experienced anyone like that, but those people certainly do exist and you know they definitely do.

Speaker 1: 46:06

Yeah, people will spin the numbers, right yeah, the sandbag it like.

Speaker 2: 46:10

no, I don Like. But there you, there's this literacy to it where you have to come back to like this how does this actually interact with the world? How does this actually interact with the humans? Is this the right conclusion from the right number? Are these two things really attached in that way? Is it correlation, is it causation? Is it made up like fiction? Is it correlation, is it causation? Is it made up like fiction? You know, is this what is the significance of this metric in the context of the world?

Speaker 1: 46:39

Yeah, and that's where.

Speaker 2: 46:43

Context really matters. It matters so heavily, and I want there to be this knowledge of logical fallacies.

Speaker 1: 46:54

And these.

Speaker 2: 46:55

I put up a post I post way too much on LinkedIn, but I put up a post where I listed out 10 different logical fallacies that you must avoid to be day-deleterate. And there's things like correlation is not causation. This is the most common one, but it's also the slippery slope one where, if this means this, then this other thing, no, no, this just means this, it you.

Speaker 2: 47:20

It cannot mean more than it means right and we want to tell stories and we want to have that dialogue, but we can't then infer things that aren't there to infer and and it's that that like buckets of things, that like buckets of things I know, buckets of things, I think in buckets of things I can prove, and I'm that's another phrasing that I stole from my friend Teresa. But you really you've got to think about how can I prove this? What am I proving it on? Is it you know? Is it hearsay? Is it circumstantial? Is it what? What are the? What is the context? What is the story behind it? And how does that really look in the real world? Like can I say that I saw this thing and it means this thing, and then go talk to 10 customers that are representative of that metric and hear the thing that I'm saying. That happened.

Speaker 1: 48:12

Right, yeah, I totally. I think that's great. It's one of the things I have suggested now through white paper I did for the community, but also I've done myself is one of the things marketers could do a better job of is storytelling within their organizations, and part of that I'd say is this to B2B really but go find recently closed one deals and just do the forensic look at what happened during that customer's journey that led them to ultimately buy and build a story about. These are the kinds of things that worked to. This is when we win. If you get good at that, you can also look at what lost and what did we lose about. These are the kinds of things that that worked to. This is when we went.

Speaker 1: 48:53

If you really, if you get, if you get good at that, you can also look at what, what lost and right what when we lose, right what. And you want to find things that are like you don't want to just sandbag sandbag, it's not the right term but like you don't want to just pick everything that's like you know is perfect, right, you want to find things that had some challenges, but the idea is like you want stuff that's hopefully, hopefully specific, but generalizable to your overall go-to-market approach, and what can you learn? And it goes across sales and marketing, so you're not getting into this game of who gets credit. And, again, so it's not against attribution or other models for trying to put a financial metric to marketing's activities, models for trying to put a financial metric to marketing's activities. What it does, though, is brings back that humanity to it and the storytelling that people gravitate to, and I've seen success myself doing that, Especially getting over the hump with skeptical sales leadership right About things, so I encourage people to that.

Speaker 1: 49:54

Um, uh, I wish we could keep going, I know, I know, I know we have, uh, we had more that we wanted to talk about, but I think we're gonna have to wrap it up here. Um, so, leanne, first off, thank you for joining. This has been a fun conversation. Um, not very often we get like you, you know, like you are, like you're this, like balance of between. So this academic thought process and practical, it feels like. So I like that people.

Speaker 2: 50:18

So thank you.

Speaker 1: 50:20

Yeah, yeah, that was meant as a compliment. Hopefully you took it that way.

Speaker 2: 50:26

Was it one then? Oh well, that's who I am.

Speaker 1: 50:29

No, I, I I enjoy any outlet to think critically and deeply about what it is we're doing, why we're doing it and who it's serving, and at the end of the day, that is what I think helps us push ourselves forward as professionals and as people is to have those deep conversations and that investigation of our practices. Yeah Well, I will have to encourage people to go look at your list of fallacies logical fallacies because that's an important one. I'm a big fan of the Freakonomics books and podcasts, and they were some of the first books that I ever read that really broke down that idea. They were some of the first books that I ever read that really broke down that idea. In the whole field of behavioral economics, it all came about because humans didn't act like robots. Surprise, right, anyway, so you mentioned LinkedIn, but if people want to keep up with what you're talking about, or learn more about what you're doing, what's the best way for them to do that?

Speaker 2: 51:32

Right now it is LinkedIn. There's also my podcast. I have a newsletter I started. It is I call it the Markergy Morsel and it is a very small, digestible inspiration for your week. It has three parts. It has creativity. There's almost always a fun gift and some lesson from it. There's three things to think about as you think about what you're working on in your strategy. And then there's a science fact, and the science fact usually I keep hidden if you subscribe directly because you know we got to market, but usually that includes things about like how your brain works or your body works and how that manifests in in like the real world, um. And so I really want to encourage people to sign up for that. You can find the links for that also on my linkedin um or the podcast at markagycom, m-a-r-k-i-g-ycom, um. And then my name is leanne dalweimer, l? -ee-a-n-n-e, and then two last names D-O-W-W-E-I-M-E-R.

Speaker 1: 52:39

M-E-R Got it All right Well. Thank you, leanne again, and thanks to our audience for continuing to support us as always. We are always open to ideas for guests and topics, or if you want to be a guest or have a suggestion for a guest, feel free to reach out to Naomi, mike or me, and we would be glad to talk to you about it. Until next time, bye, everybody.