The Marketing Automation Discussion – Details, episodes & analysis

Sankar is the CEO and Founder of SkyGeni, a Growth Insights platform for B2B revenue leaders. SkyGeni’s Explainable AI-powered actionable insights enable CROs to drive more efficient and predictable growth and boost sales productivity.

In this episode, Sankar shares experience and guidance on building your first sales team at a new venture, without existing sales processes.

Key takeaways:

* Hiring junior vs senior when building the team

* The role of the founder in preparing sales processes

* The key 2 traits to look for in new sales hires for the best return

* How to set targets for a new vs developed team

* What roles to fill in as the team grows, and how to fill them

* How to troubleshoot poor sales team performance

Key links:

* SkyGeni

* Sankar Sundaresan on LinkedIn

Will van der Sanden is the founder of Dux-Soup, one of the largest LinkedIn automation tools that helps users start, scale and engage with their network. In this episode, we discuss Will's suggestions on your networking strategy for B2B business development, and how to go about using tools to leverage your efforts. You can learn more about Dux Soup here.

In this episode, we discuss Account-Based Marketing (ABM) and how to build the ideal tech stack for implementing ABM strategies. Our guest, Shahin Hoda, Founder of xGrowth, a B2B growth agency, shares insights on creating an ABM tech stack for both startups and large companies. Shahin discusses the four key steps for building an effective ABM tech stack and addresses important aspects such as tool selection, automating outreach, lead enrichment, IP insights, advertising platforms, personalization tools, and more. Join us as we uncover valuable advice on planning and implementing ABM into your organization's tech stack.

In this episode, we discuss community building with Matt Barnett, the founder of Bonjoro. Communities have the potential to drive positive word-of-mouth and decrease customer service demands, but many struggle to gain momentum. Matt shares his expertise on starting and nurturing successful communities using MarTech. He discusses why most communities fail, outlines three essential steps for running a community, provides insights on increasing engagement, and offers advice on scaling a community effectively. Tune in to discover valuable strategies for building and sustaining thriving communities.

In this podcast episode, we explore the power of podcasting and automation in content creation to save time and resources. Our guest, Michael Greenberg, founder of Gentlemen of Technology and CEO of Call For Content, shares insights on the main components of podcast content automation, implementation steps for marketing managers, selecting the podcast's face, ideal industries for podcasting, common implementation challenges, and the future of content automation. Join us to discover Michael's techniques for enhancing your team's content creation.

To get a client to sign the contract first requires a statement of work. I.e. a proposal of work. And the process by which your agency produces, sends and tracks these proposal can potentially kill the deal. You can shoot yourself in the foot with your proposal process by:

1. Making you look unprofessional or inadequate,

2. Under qualifying and poor needs assessment leading up to your proposal,

3. Allowing too much time for your prospect to shop your proposal,

4. Having poor SOPs and under tracked grey areas in your sales pipeline filled with unknowns…  My guest today has tested and experienced almost every rational proposal composition and presentation method you can think of.

That guest is Adam Hempenstall - Adam is the founder and CEO at BetterProposals.io – a proposal management software that helps you close more sales, faster.

Adam and I discuss:

The best structure for an agencies sales process

The do’s and dont’s of automating your proposals

How long and detailed your proposal should be

The process for creating, sending and tracking proposals

What “live” proposals are

And how to best incorporate chat and other conversion tech onto the proposal pages

I hope you enjoy this incredible episode around an aspect of your business that could make or lose your business thousands in revenue.

Dan is a CEO, Founder, Author, Martech and Marketing Analytics Leader! Dan is the CEO and Founder of Effin Amazing

I have been a huge fan of Dan’s for some time now, but we finally got a chance to meet while Dan was giving the presentation that we are about to showcase on this episode.

I will let Dan introduce himself in a moment, but today he is going to lay out the groundwork for all of you listening interested in build the marketing technology stack of your dreams:

Integrated, Powerful, Seamless.

We discuss analytics, data enrichment, sales automation, tagging, lead scoring… and much more.

Dan and I discuss;

The 21st-century stack and the components within it (hint, it’s much larger than you think).

Dan’s interpretation of automated lead scoring and his favorite intent scoring sequence.

What is “Radar” for mobile and how is it used for personalized marketing…

The Real Thread stack case study.

What does taxonomy means to your stack?

And much more...

Today we go deeper into partnerships - if you haven’t listened to the first few segments on partnerships with Jay from Forrester.com, Bryn from Partnerstack.com and Sunir from the Cloud software association, check those out after you hear this episode… My guest today is Tyrone Lingley, the Director of Partnerships at Unbounce.com. Ty is also a board member of the Cloud Software Association where he connects and educates partnership professionals in the B2B SaaS space.Ty is going to answer the Hard questions founders and teams should ask themselves before you go-to-market with a Partner Program, and how Unbounce.com answered these questions while outlining one of the most well-executed partner program rollouts I’ve ever witnessed.

The risks of a partner program - like Channel conflict, Last click attribution with affiliates, Compliance Issues, Nexus taxation, Product alignment.

The stack - do you need a PRM (partner relations management software) on top of your CRM, and what that build looks like if you go that route.

Standard operating procedures for sales discussions with a partners’ referral

The 7 steps to a go-to-market journey for Unbounces partner program. 

Today we continue with our series of episodes on partner programs and how marketing automation is handling the scale of channel programs for thousands of software companies globally. 

Forrester predicts the through-channel software market to grow to $1.18 billion by 2023. This market includes 10s of thousands of digital agencies realizing $2B in service revenue by that year. 

So I invited Mr. Jay McBain from Forrester.com to join me in unpacking the topic of “Through-Channel Marketing Automation.”

If you haven’t run across Jay, I’d wonder how - he is one of the most visible thought leaders in the global technology channel. 

Named to the Top 40 Under Forty by the Business Review, he is often sought out for industry guidance and future trends. 

He has spent his 24-year career in various executive channel sales, marketing, and strategy roles within IBM, Lenovo, Autotask, and ChannelEyes. Jay is the principal analyst for global channels at Forrester - one of the most influential global research and advisory firms in the world.

In this discussion, Jay and I review: 

The third stage of growth for software companies.

One vs two-tier channel partner programs. 

The partner relations and marketing automation management software stack. 

How to determine your IPP (ideal partner persona).

The 6 phases to partner program development,

Then we wrap up by giving some actionable advice to those about to launch or scale their partnership programs. 

Whether you are a SaaS company needing to register new users effectively, or anyone with a registration page on your website, effective communication with those who are just being introduced to your product/brand for the first time is key.

1. How much automation is too much? 


2. Onboarding differences for freemium vs paid plans?


3. Whether or not to require email verification? 


4. Why use trigger-based emails vs time-based emails? 


5. How to use third party data enrichment tools effectively in the onboarding process?
   
   

Full show notes: https://automated.af/automated-sales-and-marketing-processes/onboarding-autom…orks-what-doesnt/

(with promo code to free year of Zendesk!) 

My guest today is Wes Bush. Wes is best-known for challenging the traditional way of growing a SaaS business. He has been featured in Forbes, the Huffington Post, and has lectured at Canada’s top Polytechnic college. He is currently the founder and president of Product-Led Institute.

• Product-Led Growth Book


• Chat (free one-year) - Zendesk 


• Email - Customer.io, Userlist (~$50/mo per user to start)


• Videos - Govideo by Vidyard (free), Loom.io 


• Product onboarding - pendo.io, appcues (free to start)


• Product analytics - Amplitude, Heap, Mixpanel

To subscribe for show notes, exclusive access to guests and more, join us at https://marketingautomation.fm/