Sales and Marketing Alignment: Creating a Culture Focused on Growth [Endless Customers Podcast S.1 Ep.27]

Note: this transcript was genrated by AI and has not been edited for accuracy.

Marcus
0:00:00
I wish that those that were listening to this right now could really understand what it's like to have a true culture of training and personal development within sales and marketing.

Alex
0:00:11
You're listening to the endless customers podcast where we help you earn trust and win customers in the age of AI. Welcome back to the show. My name is Alex Winter and today I'm joined by Marcus Sheridan, keynote speaker, author, partner here to IMPACT. Marcus, great to have you back on the show. Yeah, yeah, let's do this man. Let's do it. Today we're talking about sales and I have some really interesting stats here that John provided for us. He's talking about how marketing alignment with

Alex
0:00:36
sales has been off for the past few years. When we started thinking about the pandemic, how it shut down offices, when we started thinking about how AI has impacted certain aspects of it and also more stuff that can be brought without talking directly to a salesperson. So users being able to use the internet, use these tools to do self-discovery and self-research. So where do we start with this conversation when we talk

Alex
0:00:58
about bridging sales and marketing and finding a way to?

Marcus
0:01:02
Yeah, I think when we talk about the issue of alignment with sales and marketing, it has been a big problem within the business world for decades now. I mean, really, it has. But it's gotten worse, especially as the, you know, as we've all gone down this rabbit hole called the Internet. And, you know, if you go back to when the Internet was just getting started, let's say, 95, 96, 97, that time

Marcus
0:01:29
frame. Typical buyer at that point in time, they're probably, before they reach out to a company, they're probably 20, 30 percent through the buyer's journey before they reach out. Okay, so they're just really getting going. They learn so much About that product about that service once they started the conversation with the company, right? The reason of course is they didn't have the ability to do as much research as they might have wanted to do Right, like we've we take for granted today how much research how much vetting we can do of companies, services, products today. But back in the day, it just wasn't really there, right?

Marcus
0:02:08
They couldn't open up an encyclopedia. It's like maybe you get a magazine off of a shelf and say, I'm going to try to review this car, a car and driver or newspaper. You couldn't really do it.

Alex 0:02:17 Right.

Alex

0:02:17
And it wasn't even that long ago. We're talking 20, 25 years ago.

Marcus
0:02:20
Yeah, we're about 25 years, right? It wasn't long ago. Okay, so 20, 30% through the buyer's journey by the time they reach out to a salesperson then. Today we know we're around 80-ish percent in 2024. The question is, where is it going? We know this, it's not going to stop.

Marcus
0:02:38
So what's been fascinating is pressure has been building with marketing teams in terms of now winning the 80%. You got to win up front. I mean there's a lot of companies out there that have decent closing rates but they're going out of business. Why? Because they don't have enough leads. Why? Because the marketing isn't where it needs to be and that's what's driving so much of the quote sales process today.

Marcus
0:03:11
Now the other problem is a lot of sales teams, they're not cognizant of this shift. I mean, like inherently we all realize, yeah, I'm betting companies, I use the internet now, but they're, you know, if you've been in sales for a while, your role in terms of the buyer's journey has steadily been diminishing over the course of the last couple of decades.

Alex
0:03:32
Well, it sounds like it's been flipped on its head. It went from being, they knew 20% and they had to talk to you to 80% and now it's literally the polar opposite of that.

Marcus
0:03:40
It's totally flipped, right? Yeah. So what does this mean? Well, it means if a leadership team hasn't explained or taught this to a sales team, they're going to have an over-inflated value of the thing that they do. Now, listen, I'm all about sales teams, sales people, great sales cultures, anybody that

Marcus
0:04:01
knows me, knows that's my jam, sales. With that being said, we have to understand that sales now needs to say, okay, I need to be a part of marketing. They can't just, they can't start with a handshake, their job.

Marcus
0:04:16
If their job is starting with a handshake, and they're not doing marketing activities, it's problematic. Marketing needs to be responsible at the same time for revenue. They're not just creating fluffy arts and crafts, right?

Marcus
0:04:32
They're not just doing simple little campaigns.

Alex 0:04:35

Shiny object stuff, right?

Marcus
0:04:36
Yeah, I mean they're really driving the business in many ways. And so this means there needs to be alignment, i.e. like a revenue team, that we would call it here at Impact, where the two are working together and they're constantly just being made aware of what the other side is doing. And it's really not even sides, it's like departments, if you will, of the same,

Marcus
0:04:59
you know, it's like you get the, they're branches of the same tree, of course, right? And that's the approach that we've gotta have. And so, if, again, I gotta stress this, though, if sales teams are not participating in marketing activities, like for example,

Marcus
0:05:15
acting as a subject matter expert on video, is very, very problematic to your success because marketers, generally speaking, should not be counted on to be the subject matter expert of your company. The subject matter experts should be

Marcus
0:05:29
the subject matter experts of your company.

Alex
0:05:32
It sounds silly when you say it, but it happens all too often, right?

Marcus
0:05:35
All the time. Yeah.

Alex 0:05:37
All the time.

Marcus
0:05:38
You know how many times over the years I've heard marketing teams complain to me that they go to sales and sales says, that's not my job. This is why the most successful companies when they have this shift of thought and you truly see it like a revenue team, it's part of your job description. They put it in your job description if you're in sales. I've known a lot of really forward thinking CEOs that did that and it makes a really big difference.

Marcus
0:06:05
So that's the shift that's happened over the course of what is 25ish years now. It's totally flipped on its head. We've got to approach things very differently now if we're going to be successful in business. Starts with education. Both sides need to be very well educated. And I would argue too, it starts with the education of leadership teams because generally almost always 99.9% of the time if there is resistance between sales

Marcus
0:06:32
and marketing it's because we have a leadership problem within the organization. We don't really have a sales department problem, we don't really have a marketing, it's a leadership problem because leadership hasn't set the standard, they haven't set the tone for, hey, this is how we need to be as an organization. And by the way, there is no other options. You have to be a part if you're in sales of the marketing initiative. That's your job. And when I say that, it's not just subject matter

Marcus
0:07:06
expert, we're talking being engaged in social media, building the brand, you know, because salespeople are constantly having conversations and that they need to be online. They're part of that vetting process, part of that 80%, sending out videos, using marketing content in the sales process, giving marketing ideas for the type of content they should be producing, the questions, the worries, the fears that they're hearing every single

Marcus
0:07:29
day, right? This is why when marketing is having a meeting, that's a planning meeting, a salesperson should be involved, right? That is actively engaged with real-life customers and prospects.

Alex
0:07:42
Yeah, they're on the front lines.

Marcus
0:07:43
Yeah, they're on the front lines. They've got their ear to the ground. They know exactly what's going on. And then when sales teams are having meetings, marketing should be in there because they're going to hear things like, hey, you know, there's this new concern that we're dealing with. There's this competitor. There's this, you know, there's this doubt. There's this issue out there. Whatever that thing is, new technology, new offer, such and such companies doing this now.

Marcus
0:08:05
And so this way, they're constantly informed too. Fundamentally they've got to be on the same page. That's what it's all about. There's really no option 2024 and beyond. If you're not on that same page, you're probably going to be in really big trouble.

Alex
0:08:17
So one of the key things that I took away from what you said was a revenue squad. And I'd love to dig more into what that actually means and then also how that plays into the buy-in from top down with leadership and how leadership can set their teams up for success and basically implement what a revenue squad should be doing.

Marcus
0:08:32
Yeah, I mean you can call it whatever you want. We call it revenue teams, revenue squad, I mean it's just different names for it. What matters is that, and the makeup is going to vary from company to company of course, that there are representatives from the three main areas of the business in a meeting and that meeting is happening at worst at a minimum once a month. Okay, so the three

areas are a representative from sales, from marketing, and then from

Marcus
0:09:07
the leadership team, right? They have to you have to do this. And so there's different ways that you can approach these meetings, but ultimately it goes back to what I was saying a second ago, which is sales needs to make sure that marketing understands, this is the stuff we're dealing with on the front lines.

Marcus
0:09:29
Here's the issues that we're seeing. Here's the content that we're missing. Here's the tools that I need in my toolbox that I don't have, right? Because there's always those. Marketing needs to be very keenly aware of those things, but also they need to make sales aware,

Marcus
0:09:47
hey, okay, so we're gonna produce these videos, we're gonna produce these articles, who are the subject matter experts I should be talking to for this? Who can give me some, and keep in mind that sometimes it's not a subject matter expert

Marcus
0:10:00
doesn't need to be the one that is the thought leader on the video, on the article, whatever it is. A lot of times it's just a matter of drawing the customer stories out of that salesperson. So it's like who has had experience with, you know what I'm saying? Because the idea as marketing team is always looking to highlight customer case studies, customer stories, customer journeys

Marcus
0:10:30
that relate to your typical buyer, your typical avatar, whatever you want to call it, right?

Alex 0:10:34 Totally.

Marcus
0:10:35
And so, these are the things that you should be doing. What we don't want to have happen is we don't want a situation ever where someone on the sales team says, why did marketing produce that piece of content? I don't ever deal with that.

Marcus
0:10:48
Like, that's silly. What is that right there? We've seen that many times. I've heard of that many, many times when, like, literally the sales team has no idea why marketing produced the thing that they produced.

Alex
0:11:01
Right. And, reversely, marketing doesn't understand why sales isn't using the thing that they

Marcus

0:11:05 produced.

Alex 0:11:06 That's right.

Marcus
0:11:07
It's a disconnect. If you want sales to use the content in the sales process, guess what? Make them own it to a degree themselves. So if they helped produce it, if it was their idea, if they were the SME, they're way more likely to share it, to send it, to integrate it, to hold mine within their entire sales process.

Marcus
0:11:32
Now, the other thing too is, you know, just as we're talking about it, it's like you've got to, you can't just be passive about this. Like this is something that you, anytime you embrace a significant initiative in a company, it takes a little bit of time,

Marcus
0:11:49
it's gonna be clunky at first. Totally. When you have your revenue team meetings, they're not gonna be just like flowing water in a stream. Right, your first one isn't gonna just

Alex
0:11:59
revolutionize your whole company.

Alex 0:12:01 Oh, yeah.

Marcus
0:12:02
But what's going to happen is it's going to galvanize the two departments together. I think there's other activities too like a marketing person, in my opinion, every quarter should go on some type of sales call with a salesperson.

Alex 0:12:20 Okay.

Marcus
0:12:20
I mean, that just to me should be a standard. If they're not watching some sales calls or part of a sales call, because not everybody records their sales calls, which is a whole other can of worms. How in the world can they effectively understand the prospect? The success of a marketer is so contingent on their ability to empathize with and think like the buyer.

Marcus
0:12:49
That's got to happen, man.

Marcus 0:12:50 100%.

Alex 0:12:51 Right?

Marcus
0:12:51
And so, you know, these are things that we see work, and obviously the leader has to be there in this meeting, because it just has that voice of reason, but also bring it back to the leadership team. There should not be any situation where anybody is aloof in leadership as to what that alignment looks like and how it's going and how it's flowing.

Marcus
0:13:17
And just there's other things that you can do for this too. Like, for example, some of the more successful companies that we've worked with, they'll produce a newsletter that's internal, where once a month it goes out from the marketing team and talks about all the content that was produced that month. So, the specific content,

Marcus
0:13:35
here's the new tools in your toolbox, but it's going to highlight, here's who helped produce it, and it's going to highlight also previous results. Like hey, you know, Jim in sales helped make this one video last month, such and such video, and it's already, you know, ranking number one in YouTube search results, and it's gotten, you know, 2,000 views.

Marcus
0:13:56
When you see Jim, give him a high five. Like that's the type of thing that you can and should be doing to just improve the culture of the company and like that feeling like everybody matters is you know everyone is impacting everybody else's success and well-being right within the organization. I love that. So lots of little things that you can do but you've got to take it very very seriously. Can't be passive, can't be optional, it's you know it's like if you

Marcus
0:14:21
do a if you do a new initiative like EOS anybody that's ever done EOS, entrepreneur operating system, like you have these new meetings you have to do and it's like at first it feels like, oh, this is a pain, what a pita.

Alex
0:14:33
Yeah, everyone's dragging their feet a little bit at first, that's natural.

Marcus
0:14:35
You just have to get in the rhythm and then once people have done it long enough, then it's like, okay, this is smooth and a lot less falls through the cracks. If you look at the silos that are sales and marketing, you constantly have stuff falling through the cracks, you've got inefficiency all the time,

and it's just because they don't communicate very well. And the revenue team ideally eliminates those issues, those cracks.

Alex
0:14:59
That makes total sense. And I love what you said about, for leaders, how they can create a culture around this too, where you celebrate the wins, because we've talked about this in the past, where salespeople are competitive. It's like in their blood. So if you see Jim over there, and his video's crushing it, and his sales are going through the roof,

Alex
0:15:15
you're going to start to nudge the other sales people on the team, I would think, and get them going like, hey, I need to make a video like that, and hey, I want to start to play this game too, right?

Marcus
0:15:22
Yeah, I mean if Jim has an advantage, everybody is like, wait, hold up, hold up, I want that advantage too. And so this is how you create like that positive mob effect, like what, what, hey, hey, wait a second here, I'm not I wasn't invited to that. How come I and it's like, hey, you gotta get on board here. Look what everybody's doing, right?

Marcus
0:15:43
And it ends in that frenzy of like, we all gotta be engaged in this. We all gotta do this thing. You know, in a perfect world too, you have folks on your team that are like, hey, I wanna be a part of the revenue team.

Marcus
0:15:55
You got salespeople saying, what an honor it is. Now I am our representative on the revenue team over the next six months. That's pretty cool. But that can't absolutely be accomplished. I mean, we've seen it accomplished before.

Marcus
0:16:07
There's no doubt about it. But that's the mindset you've got to have.

Alex
0:16:10
Yeah, that's a great point. So for business leaders and for business owners, how could they, what advice would you give to them, I guess, is a better question, for like, they may not know what their sales team is doing. They may not know what their customers really need or want.

Alex
0:16:24
How can you get them motivated or give them some advice to start paying attention to some of these things and shifting their focus so that they can get a deeper understanding of how to better serve their clients?

Marcus
0:16:34
I don't know how a business leader can lead an organization without understanding the buyer. But

the longer people are in leadership, oftentimes the more distanced, the more aloof they are, ignorant of what that buyer is like. Curse of knowledge takes over, right? You're so involved in the business, you forget what it is to be an ignorant consumer or buyer

Marcus
0:17:07
that's just trying to make a decision. That's got those questions, worries, fears, issues, concerns. Sometimes you just lose touch with trends. You might have been in sales 20 years ago, but you've been on a leadership team for the last 20 years. Sales have evolved, and you're sitting there still talking to everybody.

Marcus
0:17:23
It's just like thinking it's 1980, and you're teaching sales techniques from the 1980.

Alex
0:17:32
Do you find a lot, like you work with a lot of companies, different industries, different sizes. Do you find a lot of CEOs or business leaders tend to not have their finger on the pulse of their clientele or what their best ideal customers are?

Marcus
0:17:45
Yeah, I would say there's at least half the time the CEO is pretty aloof of the buyer. And when this happens, you misjudge sales and you misjudge marketing. You get annoyed with your sales team, it's like, all right, you go sell and get to re-engage with the prospect and then maybe you'll see that you got flaws with your product, with

Marcus
0:18:14
your offering, whatever that thing is. And then on the marketing side, this is why the best leaders are the ones that attend the marketing conferences every single time. So true. Right? The best leaders are the ones that have their sales managers attend the marketing conferences

Marcus
0:18:31
too. You know what happens when you have a sales manager that attends an event like an inbound or comes to Impact Live or whatever the event is.

Alex 0:18:40 Sure.

Marcus
0:18:41
It's like now all of a sudden, it's like the whole world opens up. I remember one time I was at Content Marketing World and I had a salesperson come up to me and he said, you know Marcus, I've never been to an event before, like any event like this and I just feel like my whole world has already changed being here for one day. That's a salesperson.

Alex
0:19:05
That's so powerful.

Marcus 0:19:06 That's huge.

Alex
0:19:07
It's a big deal. But most salespeople don't go to marketing events or content creation events like that.

Marcus
0:19:12
No, in fact most don't get regular training, which is an indictment on leadership I mean you want to get me started and fired up. I mean you know I was with the company just I did a Training a month ago with a company one of the salespeople had been there for years or Freaking years had never had any type of role-play training training. Wow. None. Yeah, and none. Four years, no training. Four years and yet they wonder why are our numbers down? Why are we not closing more deals? We're so

Marcus
0:19:48
wrapped up in stinking technology and pipelines and CRMs and just analyzing like you know the opportunities that you're literally forgetting the most like the essentials. The fundamentals, right. Yeah, it's like what we have is, the analogy I would make is, you've got this refrigerator

Marcus
0:20:14
and cupboard full of food and ingredients and your employees, the only thing they know how to do is make toast.

Alex 0:20:23 Yeah.

Marcus
0:20:24
Do you see what I'm saying?

Marcus
0:20:25
But it's like, oh, look, I mean, we've got all these fresh ingredients. Yeah, but they haven't been taught how to do anything. And so they're making toast. And even if that toast is really good, what are you doing with all these other ingredients? Even if it's not a Libre toast, like it's not that good.

Marcus
0:20:44
And so, you know, we have a massive dearth of sales training. And that stems from just ignorance on the part of leadership teams not being engaged, not being as involved as they should be across the board. And this is one of the things that we have to call our clients out on all the time. It's like, you got to get with it. You are aloof.

Marcus 0:21:06

You are very aloof at this point. And if you're aloof, you're not going to be an exceptional CEO. I don't care what anybody says.

Alex
0:21:12
You're not going to be exceptional. Yeah, that makes total sense. So we talked about revenue teams.

Alex
0:21:15
We talked about what leaders can do.

Alex
0:21:15
Let's also talk about the shift with sales because I think that's probably the most fascinating piece to me is watching sales members and sales, OG sales people that have been doing it 20, 30, 40 years that are realizing that leveraging these tools and having these meetings

Alex
0:21:29
and doing role plays, it almost makes them like a hybrid of a marketer and a salesperson because they're really using this content to help drive their sales. So can we talk about that shift too and what that's like for most salespeople?

Marcus
0:21:41
Yeah, I mean, look, whenever there's change in sales, they always push back. I mean, salespeople tend to be a prideful bunch. I can say that because that's the world that I'm from, right? We don't necessarily want to learn new systems.

Marcus
0:21:55
I mean, you talk to anybody that's tried to get their sales team to integrate a CRM and do it effectively, it doesn't go well. It's always, I mean, I always laugh about that, right? Because, you know, it's that classic Simon Sinek, start with why. And, you know, and then if you try to explain

Marcus
0:22:13
to a sales team why they should use a CRM, you can explain why all day long, they still won't do it.

Alex 0:22:19 Right.

Marcus
0:22:20
And so you can start with why, but you're gonna end with, and if you don't do this, you won't get paid. That sounds really strong. It does, yeah. But it's truth.

Marcus
0:22:31
I mean, you know, sometimes CEOs will tell me like certain things shouldn't be compulsory. Like, okay, so tell me your adoption of the CRM on a scale of one to ten, how's it going? And it's usually

like, oh, it's probably like a five or a six, but you don't want to make it compulsory It's like the the general rule is unless the data is in the CRM It doesn't exist and you don't get paid you don't give commissions. That's how it should be with sales teams now I'm not saying that like you're you know just running a boot camp out there

Marcus
0:23:08
But the reality is you've got to have you know discipline with these things and sometimes sales people are slow to come around. You know, sometimes I've had companies reach out to me and say, Marcus, can you come out and can you, you know, do some training? Can you do this for our sales team or marketing team or they ask you answer work, whatever, whatever thing is. And I'll say sales team needs to needs to be there for at least, you know, first half of the day. And then they'll suddenly say, I just don't know if my guys are going to come for three hours.

5 0:23:39 What?

Marcus
0:23:40
Who's running this? The inmates running the asylum? I don't know if my team can be there for three hours. And you're thinking to yourself, you're going to lose in that three hours. You're like, I'm going to lose a few deals. You're not thinking long term at all.

Marcus
0:23:59
Once again, they're making toast and you've got this filet mignon that is sitting there ready to be grilled and nobody's using it because you're not teaching them how. Because you're saying, oh, they're so busy though making the toast, give me a freaking break. We can do better than that.

Marcus
0:24:19
So this is one of those things where sales training should be a standard part of the process. The greatest companies do sales trainings every single week. I can tell a sales culture in a second. How often do you do sales trainings and role play trainings within your sales team? Most of the time, the answer is once every few months, which means once every six months, if that, that's what that means.

Alex
0:24:54 Twice a year.

Marcus
0:24:55
Yeah, it's like the guy that got pulled over and the officer said, how many have you had tonight? You know, a couple. And they had two six-packs. That's what they meant by a couple.

Alex 0:25:02 Right.

Marcus 0:25:03

And so come on, we can do a lot better. The great ones, they have some type of sales training literally every single week. The decent ones are having a good training once a month. But yet we will sit there and we'll spend a mountain on technology when the problem again comes down to skills and a deficiency in skills. That's a big issue that we see over and over and over again.

Marcus
0:25:35
I've said it before, I'll say it again, sales training as a whole is a lost art in the world of business today.

Alex
0:25:39
It totally is. It's like anything in life. The more that you practice, the more that you train, the better you're going to be on game day. And that's just the bottom line. And I think, too, it plays into the marketing team as well.

Alex
0:25:49
Because you said something earlier, and we do this here at Impact, too, where we watch sales calls. We review what we call game tape. And the things that that unearths, it was so strange and foreign at first because traditional marketing teams, like I never watched sales calls ever in my previous engagements. Starting to watch them now, the things that you learn about clients, the questions they

Alex
0:26:08
ask, the things that happen on those calls, that's what drives the content that we create. It's completely shifted how we do what we do. Do you think that that happens in a lot of organizations?

Marcus
0:26:18
No, it doesn't happen in many at all. That's definitely less than 5% of marketing teams consistently review sales calls. I mean, that's actually very rare. It's something we do at Impact, and as you mentioned, and what's powerful about that too, it gives you a greater sense of empathy, not just for the customer, for the salesperson. Because now you see, wow, this is a, I don't know what I would have said right there.

Marcus
0:26:47
I don't know how I would have handled that. And that's what we need. The sales department needs to empathize with marketing and vice versa. That's going to be key to any type of alignment. And that's why this is so powerful. Yes.

Marcus
0:27:01
So we I'd absolutely ever like recommend that everyone does that. And then, of course, today, because we've got a I tools that can even tell you, you know, go so far as to tell you your good habits, your bad habits and analyze you real time in terms of things like your posture and your energy and your lack of a smile or whatever the thing is. It's unbelievable. It's really stunning what we have at our fingertips today. But I do want to stress I would always prefer training over tools.

Marcus 0:27:30

The tools don't fix the actual issue if there's no system of training or culture of training and of personal development in place. Once you have that culture, then tools, man, they can really make a big difference. But tools themselves, they don't fix the actual problem.

Alex
0:27:48
Yeah, and I think a lot of people think they do, so they invest a lot of money in tools. It even happens in our world. So I'm a video professional. I can't tell you how many people don't have the proper training, the fundamentals of framing and lighting and exposure, but they'll go buy a $100,000 camera, and then they're like hey, I have a really nice camera

Marcus
0:28:04
So I clearly know what I'm doing and that's not always. Yeah, I mean not always true. So it's the treadmill That's a clothes hanger in your bedroom, right? You know, we think Buying the treadmill will now motivate me to use said treadmill That doesn't last very long. It's got to be intrinsic and You know

Marcus
0:28:20
So, I just, I wish that those that were listening to this right now could really understand what it's like to have a true culture of training and personal development within sales and marketing. And I include marketing in that as well. Like it's great to have marketing do role play trainings. It's amazing to do that because then they're forced further to empathize with sales, right?

Marcus
0:28:44
It's just, that's why it's so, it's so stinking powerful and oftentimes the communications of an effective. Let's say role play They they they can teach you how to write better copy so so much of the psychology of selling of communication it bleeds into marketing Every bit as much as it bleeds into a sales conversation a lot of folks don't necessarily understand that and that's why you know I talk all the time about communication

Marcus
0:29:14
necessarily understand that. And that's why I talk all the time about communication, but I'm generally speaking about it as a principle, therefore it affects sales, it affects marketing, it affects leadership every

Alex
0:29:26
single time. Yeah, it affects the whole company and there's an empathy that it creates inside of the culture because marketing starts to relate and understand the struggles with sales and vice versa and it just really creates, I don't know, this symbiosis that everyone's on the same team, one team, one dream, everyone's like really trying to achieve the same thing.

Marcus
0:29:40
Yeah, and it goes beyond just having like, you know, words on a wall that say, you know, teamwork, right, because what is a word on a wall unless you're doing the thing, and that's why you've gotta put these systems in place that force, yes, I said the word,

Marcus

0:29:58
force integration between the departments. And if you have that, and you stick to it, then all of a sudden you're gonna see that you're gonna get dramatically better results.

Alex
0:30:10
Extremely well said. Marcus, thank you for all your insights when it comes to sales and marketing and bridging that gap so that they work together as a revenue squad. I can get leadership bought in.

Alex
0:30:18
It's just really great talking with you. So, any last thoughts, anything we wanna leave our listeners with before we wrap up here?

Marcus
0:30:24
Look, you might think you don't need this. This is going to be a rock in your shoe until you get it out. If anybody's ever had a little rock, it can be the smallest of rocks in your shoe. Yeah. And you think, I don't feel like taking my shoe off right now. This is such a pain.

Marcus
0:30:39
You take a few more steps and you're like, nope, I've got to take my shoe off and get this rock out. Yeah. This is one of those rocks that you've just got to get out because it's going to be an impediment on you reaching your potential until you address the problem. So go out there, form a revenue team, eliminate the silos, create that culture of training and personal development.

Marcus
0:31:04
You do those things, you're going to be off to the races.

Alex
0:31:07
I love it. Marcus, thanks again for your time. For people listening, if they have any follow-up questions, how can they get in touch with

Marcus
0:31:12
you? You can always email me at Marcus at Marcus Sheridan calm That's my website Marcus Sheridan calm if you want me to come speak at your event come speak to your team Happy to do that as well and make sure you connect with me on the LinkedIn because I'm pretty good on the LinkedIn So check it out over there. Make sure we're connected. All right, and that's our show So thank you for tuning in to the endless customers podcast

Marcus
0:31:33
We really appreciate you listening and we will see you on the next episode. And hey, don't forget that we have episodes every Monday and Wednesday releasing on all major platforms. So be sure to go subscribe.

Alex
0:31:44
That way you won't miss out on how you can earn trust and win customers in the age of That way

you won't miss out on how you can earn trust and win customers in the age of

Alex 0:31:48 AI.

Transcribed with Cockatoo