Welcome And Episode Setup

Michael Hartmann 0:24

Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of OpsCast, brought to you by MarketingOps.com, powered by all the mob pros out there. I'm your host, Michael Hartman. Today I'm going to be talking about what happens when marketing ops professionals hit a ceiling or the ceiling and what it takes to move beyond execution into broader go-to-market strategy strategy. So joining me is my guest is Jackson Fisher, who recently completed 10 years at the American Hospital Association. Most recently acting as manager of product development. Jackson was an early member of the marketingops.com community, one of founding 100. That's a big deal. And began a scared marketing operations before pivoting into a more strategic role inside product development. So in the episode, we're going to be talking about translating marketing ops skills into business impact, speaking the language of revenue, and preparing for a broader go-to-market future. Jackson, welcome to the show.

Jackson Fisher 1:16

Thank you. Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

Michael Hartmann 1:18

Yeah. That's it's sort of like when did we last talk? It was a few months ago, right?

Jackson Fisher 1:23

So Yeah, probably about like two months ago, I believe. It was right around the uh right around the new year.

Jackson’s Path From MOPS To Product

Michael Hartmann 1:28

Yeah, okay. Um, well, good. I'm glad we can make this work. Uh we're now into 2026. Let's um like let's I'd like to start this way anyway, but let's walk through your career path. So yeah, you were one of the early members of the community, which actually does make you stand out um in a lot of ways. But um, but you went from marketing options to product development. So what led you to that pivot? Was there some sort of decision point? Yeah, what was the catalyst for that, maybe?

Early MOPS Lessons And Tool Mastery

Jackson Fisher 1:58

Yeah, sure. Um, as you already kind of alluded to there, I've always felt like a really deep connection to marketing operations. So there wasn't an easy choice to um, you know, decide to pivot away from the field um to pursue other opportunities. But kind of coming back to the you know, the journey itself, um, about 10 years ago, I joined the American Hospital Association as a part-time hire, actually. My manager was going out on maternity leave, and I was a contract guy who was there for a few months to help out and do some coverage. Was able to parlay that into a full-time opportunity. And then the full-time opportunity eventually grew into a promotion within the marketing operations team. And, you know, I have nothing but great things to say about the team that I worked with there, my manager, I love, I still keep in contact with her. Um, you know, it was an excellent place to really get that exposure to marketing operations. So we used Marketo um at the AHA. And yeah, I mean, really just kind of dived into it um, you know, with as much enthusiasm as I could. I was able to attend the Marketo Summit back before it got absorbed by Adobe, turned into Adobe Summit. Um, so I was able to attend that a few times um and really just expand as much as I could uh you know the usage of our Marketo instance too, and just you know, try and find a lot of the utilization opportunities that we were maybe not actualizing. And a lot of that eventually kind of uh grew into not just like utilizing the platform, but also um reporting, man. I created way too many reports. I had to have like thousands of reports, I just you know, anything I was curious about, I I pulled a lot of reporting on to generate some analysis. But doing all that, um, it caught the eyes of you know my manager at the time. Um, but then also we after five years or so at the AHA, we brought in a new director of product development and caught their eye as well, too. So um that led to some conversations with the product development team and um eventually led to me being the first person to join that product development team um, you know, through the ability to kind of stay close to marketing operations, but kind of pursue some different things. And really what was like the trigger for the decision was just trying to pursue growth opportunities. Um I guess I'm an ambitious guy. Uh I wanted to, I wanted to do more than, you know, just the scope of work that I was doing. Um, and that's through no way um dismissive of of the team that I was on. It's simply that there wasn't enough growth opportunities really kind of being made available at that current time and place. And I wanted to try and do something different and I wanted to take more ownership. Um, that was one real challenge that we had was that, you know, um it was hard to be granted additional ownership at that place unless you were a manager or a product owner of some sort. Um, so that was really a kind of a big driving influence as well, too, is like, you know, trying to get out of that comfort zone of stuff I could do really well and move into a place where I had the opportunity to do something different, but really take more ownership of it. And product development in particular, I thought was like a good place to take that risk because there's a lot of overlap with an approach to you know marketing automation. Um, because at the end of the day, it's a lot of building. Um, you think about and conceptualize and execute the building differently, but at the end of the day, you know, it's a transferable skill. Um, so I thought, you know, if I'm gonna take a bet on something, I'm gonna take a bet on myself here, trying it all along this avenue where I know I can stay close to certain things that are gonna serve me well.

Michael Hartmann 5:32

Yeah. If Mike was here, he'd be smiling because he likes to talk about marketing ops should be treated like a product, right? Absolutely function as a market. So um it makes sense that there's a lot of overlap. I find it interesting how so many people sort of if I mean it sounds like yours was a little more intentional, but you sort of fell into marketing ops, right? And led to Wendell. A little bit. Yeah.

Jackson Fisher 5:56

Um that's interesting. Well, and I guess then you know, just to kind of expand on that really quickly, um, I was eager to jump into it as well, too, because in my previous role, I was at a little startup uh, you know, marketing company that worked with like a lot of CVS radio stations to get their email lists, and then it was just spam emails, more or less. And it was not using an automation platform. So, I mean, we had to design all the emails in-house, we had to, you know, kind of build our own servers and push everything out through there, control the bandwidth internally. Um, there was like a Google, like, you know, document that we still had access to years later after leaving the company. They were using for project management. It really was like low fidelity. So then when you get that opportunity to use like a best in class tool, it's something I was like salivating to do. So, like, you know, there was definitely some intention there where it's like, oh, I can move into you know doing something like this. Um, absolutely, like, you know, that would uh be something I'm eager to do. And before getting started on Marketo, I actually was um looking for a way to gain that market automation knowledge and went through the HubSpot Academy to get you know a HubSpot certification, which was free before I ended up getting that Marketo experience.

Michael Hartmann 7:05

Oh, that's crazy. Yeah. Um yeah, back in the the early days of early-ish days of HubSpot, I bet it's changed a lot since we first started that.

Jackson Fisher 7:15

Oh my god, big time.

Michael Hartmann 7:16

Yeah, so so one of the I think you used when we talked before that um the way you described it to me is that you when you we you're in that marketing ops path and you hinted at this a little bit, you felt like you hit a ceiling, right? Yep. Um can you maybe expand a little bit about like what that felt like looked like for you? And was there any particular thing you said like like it was it a general feeling that said, hey, it's time to go beyond marketing ops and execution, or was there some other sort of evaluation you did to think through that?

Hitting The Ceiling And Owning More

Jackson Fisher 7:51

Yeah, absolutely. Um, it was both of those things. So starting with the ladder and kind of like the evaluating of the situation, um, there was a couple of key things there. One of them was that I, you know, as I mentioned a couple minutes ago, have a ton of respect for my former boss. Uh, so she was manager at the time. She's now the director of marketing operations. She's great at her job. She does really good work. Um, she's, you know, nurtured a great team, and she's not going anywhere. Um, so that always was a little bit of a limitation that was in place and that I knew that I wasn't going to in any way make an effort to try and undercut her first and foremost. Um, but then additionally, just you know, that that limits the the ceiling that's there. That you know, kind of brings down the ceiling, even through no fault of anyone. I mean, she's great at her job, but that inherently presents a challenge where there's not an opportunity for growth because the the next point is that we had a flat head count forever. Um, it was the entire time I was on the team. We had a contractor for I think six months to help with a migration, and that was it. After I left the team, they didn't replace me. So it's always a really flat headcount on that team. So that was something that I was kind of studying and trying to separate myself from, where I knew that I had a really strong internal advocate who was like pushing for me to try and get a promotion and trying to get these other opportunities. But also we knew that our team was not getting that investment to grow. So, like that in turn would mean like, okay, I can't really manage anyone on a team this small when, like, you know, my boss was only managing three people total, um, you know, despite the fact that we were a really successful team, um, really consistent results, but you know, we never got that investment to grow. So it was sort of like a twofold thing there, where it was looking at the fact that, all right, our team is performing at a really high level. Um, and to justify that, we were hitting all for sales goals and everything. I'm not just saying that. Um, yeah, but it's like, you know, so we were doing that, but we were never getting that investment to grow. So that in addition to seeing that, you know, the vertical path was a little bit stunted. Um, and then the other thing I was talking about before, where was that limitation on ownership and the ability to kind of, you know, take more control of certain things or influence certain things, all that kind of came together where it was like, all right, this just feels like the time where it's like, I really love the team I'm on, I really like the work that I'm doing, but it's not giving me those additional opportunities. And I don't think the institution is gonna give me those opportunities either. So it's kind of like, you know, when you're measuring an opportunity cost, and that was a big thing where it's like, all right, I'm gonna take advantage of this opportunity that I do see now because you know it's worth the potential risk that comes alongside it.

Michael Hartmann 10:31

Yeah.

Jackson Fisher 10:31

And the payoff was absolutely there, where it's like, you know, moving to that new team allowed me to continue to do a lot of really good marketing operations work, but expand the scope of all the other work I was able to do, people I was working with, so on and so forth.

Michael Hartmann 10:45

Okay. Yeah. That's interesting. I think I I I suspect there's gonna be a lot of people who resonate with the idea that they feel like there's a ceiling to what they can do, whether it's because you know, someone above them is is content and not looking to move, or because there's not growth in general for the organization. Um and it's really hard when it's a place that you like, right? And it's what you like, and it's then the only way to get that if you if that's an important goal for yours is to to look outside. And it's bad for the organization too, right? Because they lose a lot of institutional knowledge and sure. So um okay, so then you you moved into product development. Um maybe talk a little bit about how that happened, it would be probably good. But from what I remember when we talked before, you said that that role was a broader one. There's a little bit of operations, a little bit of a consultant, like internal consultant, chief of staff, like you those are some of the words that I remember you using. So how do you how do you describe that role? Um, and how do you think that your ops marketing ops background helped you kind of ramp up and become uh productive in that new role?

Jackson Fisher 11:54

Yeah, and the really, really short version of of how that transition kind of took place was that uh the project that led to it was I had a lot of research done that was looking at our Salesforce numbers alongside our Marketo numbers. And in particular, it was looking at all the consultants in our database. And I saw an addressable market there that recently hired product development director also saw consultants as an addressable market. So we just happened to have the same idea from very different perspectives. That was our first conversation that we had, more conversations along that matter, bringing in more reporting and more of these different things that I had squirreled away in my sandbox, but now found, you know, a willing ear in. Um, so bringing all these out. And then that's really what kind of like informed the transition. I was very upfront with my manager um, too, about you know, my ambition to grow and do more. So she kind of saw this coming as well, too. Yeah. So we found a way to really kind of massage the situation where I don't want to leave my team high and dry. So I stayed, you know, involved with them for a little while to help ease that transition. But yeah, I mean, being really upfront and transparent about expectations and about just what I'm trying to do and you know, where where can we make this happen that still benefits everyone within our commercial team?

Michael Hartmann 13:00

Yeah.

Becoming A Conduit Across Teams

Jackson Fisher 13:00

And then coming, yeah. So then um, that eventually led to, you know, the creation of the role, which then, like I said before, allowed me to be that first person to join that product development team. So coming back to your question, though, about like, you know, how would I describe that work and that transition and doing everything, you know, consultant, chief of staff, all that fun stuff. I actually think the most like accurate one-word description would be a conduit. And I think that very much resonates with a lot of people who are in marketing operations because you know, you're just serving as that intermediary and you're connecting so many different teams and your platforms, your processes. You know, there's a lot of things that go through you. And more often than not, uh marketing operations team is gonna be pretty small. If you're fortunate to work at like, you know, a Fortune 50 company and you got, you know, a much larger team, different story. But most of the war stories you hear from people in mops is you know, it's a mighty team of one, team of two or three. And that means that you have to do quite a bit and you have to serve as that intermediary and, you know, again, that conduit uh to make things happen. Um, not only do people come to you with requests, they also expect you to, you know, to find the throughput and make it happen. So um I think you know, with a lot of the work that goes into marketing operations, and in our case, you know, we had handled two instance migrations, a couple of rebrands. Um, we had a really, really old legacy Salesforce instance that had tons of custom fields. Uh so just you know, doing some field cleanups between CRNs, all that stuff. You know, you get familiar with a lot of different touch points. You learn a lot about why why the heck does this exist? What is this? When was this creating? You know, so you start to really see a lot of like business cases come up in a lot of different places. Um, again, you get familiar with working with a lot of different teams. Mops is the touch point in a well in a well-instituted place, you're familiar with a lot of different stakeholders. Um, so being really mindful of that again, I think prepares you in a in a really um beneficial way. So I think a lot of that played a big part in it. Um, and then, you know, I think it also is a chance to interpret a lot of information and then use it to tell a story as well. Um, I think mops, you know, you do a lot of that. You have to absorb a lot of information, you have to decipher God knows what. Um, but then you have to take that and you know translate all that technical speak into something that is memorable. And, you know, creating memorable and effective stories is a huge part of that product development work. And I think, you know, again, there's like a lot of you know, taking that technical hands-on knowledge and then broadening the scope of how you think and apply all that um that parlays really well into doing product development work.

Michael Hartmann 15:33

Yeah. So um this is maybe uh just I want to make sure I'm on the same page. When you say product development, uh in my head, I think, you know, to find the strategy, well, uh, I guess it depends on what kind of product. Like, so I'll put it in the terms of like a software product, right? You have um yeah um use cases or functional capabilities of it, and you've got a roadmap for how you're gonna do it, when it's gonna set it to release schedules, priorization, yeah. But um, but generally not a huge amount of involvement, uh, maybe in smaller ones, um, with go-to-market execution, maybe some input on strategy, but really you leave it up to marketing and sales to do a lot of the heavy lifting and campaigns. Like how involved were you in your product development role in like the go-to-market activities?

Product Development Meets Go To Market

Jackson Fisher 17:39

Yeah, sure. Um, so we had a unique setup because I mean our team was was small. Um, so in in doing that, and you know, in the fact that I was kind of brought onto that product team because of my marketing operations knowledge, I served as like the in-house um product marketing manager and you know the go-to-market guy as well, too. So as we were given, you know, our product development was on the commercial side of the American Hospital Association. So it's a non-for-profit. People don't really think about us as a business. Right. Um, but we worked in the for-profit portion of the business that did a lot of B2B sales um in terms of what was originally an endorsement model business. And we, you know, would do like RFPs for all that stuff, and then, you know, long-term relationships with different clients, endorsing their services and solutions, pivoted to a broader B2B product. But our product development work was in creating marketplace solutions for them, sponsorship products for them. So a lot of things that were either experiential or in terms of creating, you know, kind of like rearranging our digital products. We to find a unique niche, you know, around like webinars or lead gen that didn't cannibalize the existing products. We didn't want to threaten our existing sales, but trying to find opportunities to create new custom programming where marketing operations was a big part of making sure that, you know, the audience outreach and all the stuff on the back end that made the products experience happen was done in the most effective way possible. And one particular example of that is we had a uh that B2B product I mentioned. So that was called the Associate Program. We were very intentional about building a lot of that product within Salesforce. So our sales team was giving us all the information we needed in real time rather than doing all the retroactive correction of like, okay, we sold this, but we're missing a ton of information here. And now we have to try and backfill all this. Let's build this, you know, you know, this contract and the product itself and a lot of the operational stuff. Let's build all this in the front end, so to speak, for the sales team so that we're getting this as they're writing the contracts and as they're working through these opportunities, rather than trying to like retroactively bring in these elements. So, you know, our product development was a little bit unique in that um, you know, we created some webinar series products. We had one really successful product that was a live event as part of our conferences. So we put on, you know, an informational showcase um that we developed from you know, a to-do and request uh from leadership saying, Hey, we need ways to solve our sponsorship problems. We're losing sponsorships. We need a new sponsorship product, and we need something that is you know gonna give these guys more tangible value. So that is not a marketing operations challenge initially, but then what made it work really well was how we brought marketing ops into the product development work.

Michael Hartmann 20:23

So the reason I asked that question because it sounded like that was the case. So because in my head I was thinking product management instead of product development. I don't know that they're definitely the same. Um that is distinct from product marketing, but it sounds like each part hats kind of both hat hats in your role, and maybe even a more significant role because of the size and everything else in the actual like how you're gonna go to market. So it makes me think that you know, one of the other sort of benefits of having the background you did in marketing ops and understanding the data is that you knew kind of probably you know uh what what data we had that we could trust in to make decisions and then how we can move quickly, right? Because you absolutely right and so because I think a lot of people listening or watching will go probably will resonate with the idea that you know sometimes you get requests that people like it's clear they don't really know what's possible or what's actually gonna take a lot of time versus what can be done quickly, and and then get into a defensive posture, right?

Building Products Into Salesforce

Jackson Fisher 21:25

Yeah, and I think exactly to that point, you know, that's something I was kind of jutting down some thoughts before our conversation. Um, you know, there's kind of two schools of thought that I, you know, really got out of those 10 years of experience. And the first was like, you know, doing kind of like maps thinking, quote unquote. Um, and it's a little bit binary, it's very technical. And you know, if we can do X through an accommodation of Y, we can make this happen. If that particular criteria isn't met, then it's going to require a lot of subsequent stuff. And is that in scope and is that worth it? And there's a lot of ways to kind of get boded down and shoot down an idea before it's really given time to find its like actual value or find the appropriate footing. That other school of thought is kind of that more product development thinking, and you know, it allows you to sort of like change that scope and that rationale and like let's boil it down to just like, you know, the essential jobs to be done and what's like this optimal path that we're pursuing. Can we do the ideal best case scenario that has, you know, no issues whatsoever? No, probably not. Um, but you can find the portion of it that actually is doable, and then you know what can we do really well there? You can scale that down to what do we need for a minimum viable product to you know take something to market and just start collecting insights. And then again, you can look for those key jobs to be done. And then that's where again, I think you can kind of revisit that conversation with a marketing operations team and be like, look, we know that there's an issue with you know the API sync between platform one and two. But here's what we're actually trying to do. Can you help me solve this problem that is platform agnostic? Like if you had to face this issue, how would you solve it? Yeah. And I think that really kind of you know allows you to bridge that gap. And it does require a change in thinking. It took me a little while to have that change in thinking, but it, you know, to the point you mentioned before about Mike and you know, kind of treating marketing ops like product development, I think that was a huge beneficial change of perspective that I took away from that experience.

Michael Hartmann 23:14

Yeah, I mean that it all makes sense. So kind of a couple of things that you also talked about. I don't remember you know, whether it's you learned it along the way or it's something you kind of inherently did, but um, you talked about putting in in I guess two things, right? One putting in some structure and discipline around pipeline and structure and predictability. of that. And then you mentioned storytelling about like revenue and like speaking the language of finance and executives. They seem to go hand in hand to me. That's why I'm kind of tying this together. But um absolutely so how did you how did you go like how did that evolution for you happen? Was it sort of it just happened, you didn't realize it, it was like down the road or were you sort of consciously making decisions, like thinking about how do I how do I better um you know provide predictability for the executives plus speak their language?

Jackson Fisher 24:14

Yeah. So I think a lot of this came again um from my little kind of mad uh scientist laboratory uh where I was just running all sorts of different reports and trying to see what we could measure. And a recurring thing I kind of came back to was taking some insights to product owners and finding where there were a lot of common pain points, regardless of our webinar products or lead gen products, which I were closest to at the time. And then eventually in the product development role with the products I had more direct ownership over, um forming a not like coalition, but coalition for lack of a better term, um, of people that are facing very similar issues and bringing then that, you know, talking about that with others where it's like, oh, I I discussed this with so and so and they're facing that problem. You know, let's let's talk about this a little bit more. Like you know it sounds like there's something here. Taking so doing a lot of those like measurements and then using that to kind of find that unifying story. In addition to that, um you know that then informed a lot of like the sales operation suggestions that we made. So you know kind of talking about you know just measuring pipeline we had to measure opportunities first. Our opportunities were dude they I'm not kidding they were crazy. Everything closed it was like a 95% win rate and um everything closed everything closed within like 48 hours. Yeah. So like you you can't build just yeah so it's like I mean you can't build you can't build a pipeline with that. It's impossible. You can't get foresight there you you don't get any transparency into your losses. It's survivorship bias um you know putting it uh politely um so you know that was something that we really had to tackle was kind of changing these these practices that I mean in defense of our sales team they were stretched extremely thin and they may not have always been given a clear justification of why we need these broader insights. So it was like kind of like you know you just do a lot of listening you do a listening tour um and you you just kind of absorb a lot of what these challenges are and you try to find some of those unifying things and you bring it back to pipeline. So another big thing we were trying to do so obviously you know the opportunities you can't create a pipeline with that. The other thing you can't create a pipeline with is just uh the fact that you know renewals weren't being appropriately tracked either. So it was like we had a product that was on a 12 month contract. So it's kind of hard to you know kit membership contract exactly exactly exactly and you know without an auto renewal it's hard to keep track of every single one of those when you know that's not the sole product our sales team was supporting or supporting the entire product suite.

Michael Hartmann 26:39

The renewal period for each each contract was unique.

Two Mindsets: MOPS vs Product Thinking

Jackson Fisher 26:42

Exactly exactly and so that led to challenges on the fact that we did an audit of the renewals and we saw that you know only like 40 to 60% of the accounts had an opportunity created at the time of the audit. So that's something that we did where we were like okay you know what this is something we can solve. This is something where we can really own it because our test case here was our product that we own. So we're not going to step on anyone else's toes but this is a big issue that if we find a solve for this and this goes to that product development ethos where it's like we're putting our time and effort into solving this because this isn't a one-off solution. We see a lot of value here where if we get this figured out appropriately, this scales to other products and then that across the entire business unit allows us to improve that pipeline visibility get some actual pipeline in place because then the other thing we did in addition to eventually implementing that auto renewal on the opportunity was that audit that we did going through all the different accounts we saw the 40 per 60 all that fun stuff there was no probabilities either. So again trying to create a trying to yeah exactly that's exactly those are exactly exactly yeah so you know you can't create a pipeline there either where it's like we could maybe be forecasting for you know like six figures over the next two months or it could maybe be you know like 15 grand but we really don't know because probabilities are kind of useless.

Michael Hartmann 28:00

So that was an idea I have a I've I I I struggle with the probability piece unless you have a really disciplined way of doing it because at the end of the day right the you either it's either a zero percent or a hundred percent at the end right um so anything in between you've got to have some trust in the fact that there's discipline about knowing like when do you go from zero to twenty five or twenty five fifty and so on whatever your your levels are.

Jackson Fisher 28:29

So yeah and that's something we really tried to do by you know this wasn't just you know a one and done conversation we checked in with the sales team for a couple months to figure out the best way to kind of put that in place and did it just like you were saying like we're gonna keep it extremely simple like 2550 7590 you know keep it extremely simple. We're gonna limit the choices we're gonna try and really understand what makes this happen. But yeah I mean again to the point about trying to create something we can forecast you know we we need better inputs if we're trying to get better outputs. And this helps you guys as well too when you're trying to focus on various accounts that you know maybe have more long-term value um than others like you know are you prioritizing them appropriately or you know do we want them kind of leave money on the table?

Michael Hartmann 29:08

Yeah it's it's interesting because as soon as you said that like I feel like I've been through that same scenario where you see like oh you know time to close on opportunities is a time period that doesn't make sense for the type of product or service or whatever you're selling like it's I mean I don't know that I've seen 48 hours but like I saw one where they were six figure and up kind of deals and they were closing in 20 days. Right? That's doesn't make sense. And then what I found is that sort of gets just no one pays attention to that as long as things are going well. It's true. It's when it when when okay uh we didn't meet a number last quarter and now that the eyes are now on that that pipeline and then people are asking questions for to be predictable like what do we expect to close in the next quarter or the quarter after that and when you can't answer that then if you haven't been proactive about setting that discipline up ahead of time you're in reaction mode uh at a point where people are feeling pressure already. And so it's not a recipe for like better insight into how your how your revenue engine's working.

Jackson Fisher 30:19

Yeah or the only other condition it happens is when leadership changes and the priorities change. And then that's again exactly to your point. You know not always the most favorable conditions to make those changes happen within.

Michael Hartmann 30:32

Yeah. So the right time to make start looking at that is when things are going well. Let's go well like um because that's it's so hard. And it's what's interesting so one of the things I think it I found for me is having worked in sales for a very brief period of my career I kind of have an idea what the mentality is. But also being in organizations where like following leads all the way through to close like understanding how that happens and then recognizing patterns that seem out of place. I don't know that a ton of people in marketing ops either get that opportunity or pursue the like trying to understand that. And I think it's anytime you um you can better understand how the stuff you're working on fits into the grand scheme of the way the business operates and in particular how the the organization makes money if it's a money like a profitable one or breaks even if it's a nonprofit right whatever that is.

Jackson Fisher 31:35

And nonprofits still gotta make money too.

Pipeline Reality Check And Fixes

Michael Hartmann 31:37

Yeah yeah I mean so I know this because I I I'm married to someone who works for nonprofits and they definitely have to generate revenue right um not nonduce revenue. Yeah and it's uh it's not always through uh fundraising I mean although that's a very common one but there are you know other kinds of revenue they can make so but but my point is like how that works and how do you track it how do you predict it like that's all stuff that is really valuable. So what I don't think we touched on this yet though like how like did you feel like when you moved into that into these roles that you you were maybe like level of expertise or competence in the ability to speak the language of finance and C levels like did you feel like you were good? Did you feel like you had to improve how did you improve if you what was that like yeah sure I think that's a great question.

Forecasting Discipline And Sales Alignment

Jackson Fisher 32:33

Um so that's something that actually going back to talking about the like the Marcado Summit back in the day there and there you had a blog for a while where it was like the CMO blog or something like that. I did like a lot of research and like and tried to attend the courses where it was like you know beyond practitioner stuff but really taking that strategic approach and speaking the you know the language of leadership, which very often is that finance and revenue. So that's something I was kind of like intentional about researching when I was still like a specialist and didn't really have any ownership yet. But that kind of fueled my ambition to try and you know make that eventual move into something that did provide me that ownership. And when the opportunity did come, it was about really trying to tie your work to outcomes and results. I think that you know in addition to dollars and cents is a really universal language but one that's very applicable to leadership and finance is um really talking about all right, what was the impact or the outcome that happened through this execution? Why is that relevant to the business? And you talked about it a second ago really kind of studying opportunities and what happens there. That was a big thing I did as well too was like diving into the Marketto has a report called the opportunity influence analyzer and then also like the revenue cycle explorer and just reverse engineering stuff and looking at what's happening and trying to you know kind of find what's going on there or where we're completely missing the mark and it's like hey this guy created an opportunity and then no one talked to him for like two months. Like that's that's an oversight on our part. We got we got to fix that. Yeah. Yeah but again you know that's marketing stuff. But at the end of the day where it's like if you do build that correctionary program and then you actually do start to influence pipeline through the the actions that you took place there, then that transcends marking you're like, hey well we built this execution and who cares about the open rate or the click rate what it did do is it influenced like 600 grand in closed one opportunities because we started nurturing people. What it did do is that accelerated the pipeline where these people that were in purgatory for 90 days are now closing in 30 days. Like you know those are real results that matter to leadership that they remember too. They don't remember if like oh man our newsletter we got like a 50% open rate this week isn't that awesome they're gonna forget that in two days. But if you're able to talk about how you're accelerating the pipeline and if you're talking about how you're able to influence revenue those are stories that really matter and those are stories that help you know if you're just talking about those internally like so that's something I'll say that I did that I thought was really effective is that I talked to my bosses a lot. You know I presented these ideas and I was like hey here's what I'm seeing how legit are these numbers help me validate this and then once we kind of got to an agreeing on like you know these numbers are actually pretty legitimate then you know that stuff they take to their bosses too. You know and you have people kind of advocating on your behalf in addition to continuously doing the work you're creating you know other people that oh uh Jackson showed me some things you know oh he showed me a different thing too and it's like you know that builds you credibility yeah and if you're providing that credibility with the right story with the stuff that rel that's relevant to leadership and to finance um then I think that's a way that you can really kind of speak their language without like I'm not a finance guy like you know if you put me you know it's like a CPA exam I would get laughed out of the room like you know I'm not a finance guy but I know how to talk about the measurements within there that were really relevant to the goals of our business unit and to the goals of the association at large.

Michael Hartmann 37:05

Yeah. So it's interesting so um one of the things like people in marketing ops probably tend to feel is like they're not seen as strategic partners and they want to be do you think that some of the things that you did in trying to adjust your language, bringing up ideas, right? Digging into data a little more, being proactive about that do you think those are things that help set it up so that you would be seen as strategic where you could be seen as a like an internal consultant as opposed to an order taker?

Jackson Fisher 37:40

Do you think how much of an influence do you think that had yeah absolutely I think you have to be willing to put yourself out there. And there was actually a previous episode you guys did not too long ago where someone's talking about their experience going through art school and going through art school means you're putting a lot of ideas out there and they're very open to being criticized and you take that criticism then you apply it to your next execution that really resonated with me. I also uh I went to an art school for a little while to study advertising um got a degree from there. So you know when I heard that I was like man I love that dude I thought of my photography classes my design classes you know HTML all the stuff that I did where I wasn't the best but you know you're putting it out there and you're letting people give you that feedback. So I think that really you know is applicable in the sense where it is a way to um just grow your mindset and kind of find these different opportunities and things to pursue.

Michael Hartmann 38:28

Let's see and then you know ah shoot I lost my train of thought there I'm sorry can you ask the uh the other part of the question there I lost my train of thought no it's it's I think I think I yeah you you answered it um which is really about like what I want people to walk away from is like there's an opportunity to make time to do things that are going to give you opportunity to to um change the perception of you and the team well yes then it eventually then that changes how you are treated.

Jackson Fisher 39:02

Yeah and I totally agree with that too because I think that's again where you know if you're doing research on the the kind of you know you want to fake it until you make it I guess. But really like you know in a very altruistic way where it's like you know what I genuinely believe in a lot of this stuff and I want to push our team in this direction I want to push our organization in that direction you just got to pick and choose your battles. And I think that's kind of what I was getting at a little bit for too is that you have to be prepared for certain ideas to just be dismissed and not you know be the ones the teams want to pursue. But you just have to continuously be putting your ideas out there. And when you're doing that you have to make sure that you're really helping to do it in a way that is going to move things in the right direction. So know the people that you're working with, know what their problems are, know what they're trying to solve, what the goals they're trying to hit. And then when you bring these new ideas out there, you know really position it in that way. You know, think about the needs of the people that you're talking with you know their goals know your audience on so much that just about knowing your audience and empathizing with that and then framing it the right way through there so that when you are trying to build your own perception about the fact that hey I do mops right now but I can do a lot more you're doing a lot more but in ways that people are going to remember that and then take that to their team as well too oh Jackson helped my team do this. Oh Michael help my team do this like you know they remember when you go out of your way to help um them when they didn't ask you to do that. So you know being able to put yourself out there being proactive um and yeah I mean just being persistent as well too I mean you really have to be persistent and willing to work with people. I heard you know you want to be uh something a little idiom that I love is that you know you want to be a shopkeeper. You don't want to be a gatekeeper. So like when things go well you want to share that knowledge and you want to share those successes with everybody. But you know you really want to be able to you know move things along together um rather than you know kind of may have these isolated victories that don't scale and can't be applicable and can't be you know talked about elsewhere. It's entirely proprietary to you and it's like okay that's great. But then when you're gone none of that stuff you did you know is left behind.

Speaking Finance And Revenue Language

Michael Hartmann 40:57

Yeah I think I think it's really interesting the the point you made about how artists have to put themselves out there and know that they're they they're setting themselves up for criticism or feedback. Um and then to just keep trying I think the other part that I would add to that is when you get that feedback is to I I've I've been accused of asking lots of questions not just on the podcast and it's because I genuinely um I think it offends some people to some degree because I keep asking because if I don't understand I want to understand. I want to make sure I'm not misinterpreting what they're saying. Because very often there's um there's nuggets of truth that are useful right and you want that that feedback and sometimes I think it's easy to slip into um misunderstanding um you know sort of swimming intent that's not there right so I think it's all kinds of things and like I think the more I like the idea of like putting yourself out there because if you do that and you do it well and you listen you take the feedback and then you approve right um you're gonna get better feedback and you're gonna improve like it's it's it's not unlike exercising a muscle in some way it's a different kind of thing you have to exercise or continue to get better. And it will I think eventually it will change the your the perception of others of you and may also change your own self-perception.

Jackson Fisher 42:26

Yeah I mean and I think it helps you build credibility too when you know again when you're persistent about it and you're genuine it helps build that credibility and then people you know there's a great little turn of phrase I learned the other day too was um you know who are you and what do you do? Like you know when people are answering that question you know work towards your answer of that um you know who are you and what do you do? And if people can really speak to that in the way that you've built up your perception to be and you have the actions to fulfill that you've done the work to fulfill that it's you know again people seek you out beyond to seek you out for that. An example of that is like you know at the American Hospital Association recently the entire association migrated to Marcato and Salesforce. So went from I think you know what two business units using it to I think we had to build 12 workspaces inside of there maybe 13 add a couple unique sending IPs all that fun stuff but as that was happening our team that with the legacy users um and people began seeking us out seeking me out in particular because they knew that we had a lot to offer there a lot of experience but also because myself and others on our team had put ourselves out there as the experts and people knew that it's like hey we're trying to get ahead of these things what are your thoughts on this how can I do that but help me plan for the future um all that comes from you know building that credibility putting yourself out there and like you know being that storyteller as well too and you know making sure that that story you're putting out there means something to people where they remember it and they come back to it for the right reasons for the reasons that you told that story to begin with.

Michael Hartmann 43:51

Yeah I I I think it's totally true.

Jackson Fisher 43:53

So um and actually real quickly before you ask that you mentioned you ask a lot of questions when I was a kid I was given the what if award at summer camp because I love hypothetical scenarios and building for that so I I feel you on that one.

Michael Hartmann 44:08

Yeah well yeah what if is a unique like a a specific uh one says my my most common one is probably starts with something like when you said X, did you mean why? Yeah or I mean kind of paraphrase it um because I like at this especially in this space I think people throw around words and assume everyone it has the same understanding of what it means. And what I found is that is a bad assumption.

Jackson Fisher 44:35

Oh yeah yeah every platform has its own specific lingo yeah you can't make any assumptions there. So absolutely you know finding that that clearest most distilled message where you're keeping out as much platform lingo as possible because yeah you need to have those mutual understandings otherwise stuff goes haywire when we start making assumptions.

Michael Hartmann 44:51

Well and it and it you talk about it just in terms of platforms it sounds like so if you had a conversation with five people who are in different parts of say marketing and sales and sales ops and marketing ops um and you start talking about leads or you start by talking about a campaign everyone's frame is good like if you're a sales admin are you like okay a campaign is an object and if you're in Marketo that's that's not the same right a campaign is something not quite the same that's a program like it's like in just but but if you're a marketer you're just talking about it in a general sense right some go-to-market activities we're doing which may be made up of one or more than one kind of tactic and so it's like that like and what I find is a lot of things downstream where there's problems are can be addressed by getting clarity and spending a little extra time up front just make sure everyone's on the same page about it. It doesn't totally prevent it right there's still times when that doesn't solve it but I think it improves the odds quite a bit.

Jackson Fisher 45:57

Yeah and that's where you know that experience kind of coming out of mops into that product development role um I was the Swiss Army guy. You know I had to learn how to use C Vent I had to learn how to use AMS NetForum which is a membership database you know had to learn how to relearn how to use Drupal you know Marcado, Salesforce, every new short-term platform that we did an integration with you know UAT on all that stuff. So yeah you absolutely have to learn how to speak that language and then you have to learn how to code switch and it is challenging but when you've mastered it I mean you're a Rosetta stone that you know in the terms of go to market work like the ability to accelerate things and communicate really effectively with a lot of different teams is like imperative. So you know it's a skill that is hard to develop and it's challenging and when things go wrong it is a big headache. But I mean once you've mastered that skill I mean it gives I think Mops people are really well positioned to do that type of work because you have to learn how to integrate and build across a lot of different touch points. It's not you know it's not simply just like you know turnkey Pro and in some cases it is, but I think, you know, a lot of you know this the the opportunities to progress are when you're able to touch on a lot of different things.

Michael Hartmann 47:08

Yeah. Well, why don't we do this? Because we're kind of short on time here, but let's maybe wrap up with this. So like we talked about a lot of different things here today. If we were to summarize, you know, for the people out there who are in marketing apps who either want a broader role, move into leadership, whether it's go to market or revenue operations, or just want to mut like want to go to sort of tangential things like business operations or whatever, like what are what are your recommendations on the kinds of things that they could be doing now to set themselves up for that beyond like doing the day-to-day execution?

From Order Taker To Internal Consultant

Jackson Fisher 47:44

Yeah, uh get really close with your product owners where you can. Um, find out their goals and really help try and like, you know, work with the product owners. If it's a product team, you know, if it's a service line, work with them. But you know, whatever the core competencies are that, you know, really impact things that you're close to, get really close with them. You know, you're close with your existing business unit already. Get close with other teams and help them, you know, move things along and help try and find ways to be an ambassador with them. In addition to that, you know, try and find a story that you can take to those different leadership teams as you're helping them. Um, you know, in my case, you know, I was working with the lead gen team, with the webinar team, the conferences team, you know, whatever. But you got to continuously be communicating with them because if you're not putting that story out there, no one else is gonna put that story out there for you. And if your story's not out there, then you know you aren't able to, you know, conceptualize anything else because everything's happening in a vacuum that only you're you know privy to. Yeah. So I think, you know, being an advocate for yourself and finding the you know, the appropriate and respectful way to do that, but you got to be an advocate for yourself and putting yourself out there, you know, with uh trying to seek out opportunities. People will eventually come to you with them, but to get started, that likely won't happen. So, you know, again, you know, finding ways to put yourself out there when those opportunities do come, find ways to put measurements in place. What gets measured gets managed. And if you're able to really continuously bring those measurements in place and implement useful ones elsewhere, that's something that is sticky. People come back to it, and something you can use to create a narrative as well.

Credibility, Storytelling, And Being Sought Out

Michael Hartmann 49:10

So yeah, okay. Love it. All that I don't have anything else to add right now. Um, and Lord knows I could talk. So um, Jackson, been a pleasure. Enjoy the conversation. If folks want to continue that with you or see what you're up to, what's the best way for them to do that?

Jackson Fisher 49:28

Yeah, sure. Um, LinkedIn is probably the easiest place to find me. So Jackson T is in Turtle Fisher, uh, F-I-S-H-E-R, no C. No C. Uh so Jackson T Fisher on LinkedIn.

Michael Hartmann 49:40

Uh depending on laughing because what our audience doesn't know is how we talked about our names get misspelled and around uh before we start recording.

Jackson Fisher 49:48

So absolutely. Hey man, it's that's the name of the game. Or when you're writing a URL or all that fun stuff. Um yeah, and then speaking of URLs, I'm working on a website. So depending on when you listen to this episode, jackson tfisher.com may or may not be live. It should be. Um, but yeah, so feel free to seek me out on there as well, too. That's my current work in progress.

Closing Notes And How To Reach Jackson

Michael Hartmann 50:09

Sounds good. Jackson, appreciate it again. Thank you. Thanks to all of our longtime and new uh listeners and viewers. Uh now that we're on video too, we're on YouTube. So uh we appreciate all that. If you have ideas for topics or guests, or you want to be a guest, as always, reach out to Naomi, Mike, or me, and we'd be happy to get the ball rolling. Till next time. Bye, everybody.

Jackson Fisher 50:30

Thank you very much. I appreciate the time.

Michael Hartmann 50:33

Right. Don't hang up yet. I forgot to tell you that.