Mandy Hornaday: Hey Kelli, welcome to Growth Activated. We're so excited to have you here today.
Kelli Schutrop: Thanks for having me. I'm excited for our conversation.
Mandy Hornaday: Yeah, me too. I think it's so rare, we'll get into your background here in a second, but I feel like it's so rare these days to know, to market leaders who have experience in both sales and marketing and sort of understand the entire view and have empathy for both sides. And I know given your experience, this is really your sweet spot. And so I think it's going to be a really fun conversation. I can't wait to learn from you.
Kelli Schutrop: Yeah, empathy is the right word too. It is, right? You see it from both sides of the trenches and then you just have better context for where each side is coming from.
Mandy Hornaday: Absolutely. So Kelli, share a little bit about your background. Love to hear about your evolution in your career and what you're doing now.
Kelli Schutrop: Sure. So going back to undergrad, I majored in marketing and public relations. I really fell in love with the world of promoting whatever it was to people that I could share with, right? Like just that concept. And I also was business savvy from an earlier age, even in high school, I was involved in just different business organizations and had some cool experiences in undergrad around marketing, communications, public relations, and found a sweet spot for that. Then I fell into the staffing industry, but before I was actually a part of the advertising space in Minneapolis and did some account management as an internship and then found myself on the team supporting the brand itself. So the marketing communication side and realized, wow, I like this. Like, this is so much fun to build visibility and credibility for this space, tell the stories from an external perspective. And then I met an individual who had her own executive search firm and she needed someone to help her build marketing from the ground up. And she said, I don't know what that means exactly, but I do need that. And I was looking to just kind of explore what else was out there. And so I joined her and I know our industry is really varied, right? You've got the really boutique firms and then you've got the global mega house brands and she was on the boutique side. So the cool thing is I got to learn the ropes of recruiting, like formally get trained in Boolean search, like all of the things on the recruiting side in addition to what I was doing for marketing. And from there, she merged with an RPO. So if you're familiar, recruitment process outsourcing organizations, and all my marketing responsibilities went away because they didn't need that. And they said, OK, but if you can do the recruiting side, go ahead and dive in. And what I found is that I had more of a passion for the marketing side of it than the recruiting side, but I had a big appreciation for the industry. And so the individual that I was with that brought me into that company actually went to a different organization and pulled me with her. And so I led their marketing for a number of years, was able to build it from the ground up and really just had a lot of fun reporting directly to the CEO who was a visionary of creating this ideal state of where he wanted the company to go. It had recently gone through a split, different partners wanted different directions from a business standpoint. And so I was able to really shape quite a bit from a marketing standpoint there. And that involved just all the things, like marketing, communications, PR, event planning, really everything except for SEO and paid, which we had somebody very highly specialized in-house doing those items. And I hit a point in my career where I was ready to continue growing, but the company wasn't growing quite fast enough for me to level up to the next level and to level the person up that was under me. And so I raised my hand and said, I love what we're doing as a company, but I'm ready for the next challenge. Is there anything I'm not thinking about? I'm not looking externally yet, but is there anything I should be thinking about? And that CEO said, well, we've been thinking about creating a staffing focused digital marketing agency. Would it be fun for you to do for other companies what you're doing for us? And I said, yeah, let's try that. That sounds like a lot of fun. And so I rolled up my sleeves after a slight panic of like, wait, can I do sales? Like I've always done marketing. Like, you know, I'll be wearing a lot of different hats. And so I wore the hat of account management, project management, doing marketing, and then any inbound leads that came in, I was running those sales calls. And we had a delivery team that was really buttoned up doing the delivery. And it taught me a couple of things about myself and about our industry. About myself, it made me realize I didn't want to be viewed as a commodity or someone who did outbound cold calling only to just get hung up on. And I know that's not always the case, but I just didn't want that feeling. I wanted to approach it through the lens of thought leadership. Like I had known as my marketing background for years, right? Like how do I show up and share stories where my audience spends time so that when they have a need, they seek me out? The other revelation it was is that our industry is really not advanced when it comes to marketing in a lot of capacity. You know, some companies do a phenomenal job, but a lot of our industry is just kind of playing catch up of what strong marketing can be and how impactful it can be for them. And so it allowed me to help to share that narrative with the industry. Right. Like here are things that we're seeing go well here. Questions that we're getting here are ways that you can address it in-house. And what that did is it developed a really strong pipeline for inbound opportunities. From there, I got recruited to create a few different LinkedIn Learning courses. And from there joined a digital learning consultancy selling into tech companies that were more of a global scale size. And I had this realization of every company approaches sales a bit differently. And my personal passion and lens is that how do you become an expert? How do you become visible and create narratives that your ideal audience wants to come and talk to you? And so then I launched Thoughtful Resound a year and a half ago, which is a fractional sales and marketing leadership consultancy. And now I work with a select number of retainer clients at a time and then do projects around marketing strategies and sales and marketing advisory services. So a lot of words there, but essentially pivoted from marketing into sales and now combining both to support our staffing industry and beyond, primarily in the B2B professional service space.
Mandy Hornaday: Yeah. And I know the staffing industry is how we came together because we had a colleague. I spent 10 years in the staffing industry and then certainly went out into B2B SaaS and now come back here and there, but really love helping people, B2B organizations of all different industries. But I know we were connected through someone from the staffing industry that thought we'd hit it off. I love your perspective on sales because I think today more than ever, it's so critical to approach sales differently because cold calling is really hard. The amount of noise and sort of saturation out there, AI is of course making it even harder to break through the noise. So walk us through the companies that are interested in this type of approach. How are they thinking about it? I love that you're thinking about it like that. Who are the companies that are wanting to instill sort of a thought leadership led sales approach into their organization?
Kelli Schutrop: Yeah, you know, it tends to fall into a few different camps. One of the primary ones is organizations that are really good at what they do already. They're credible. They have an excellent reputation. When they get in front of a prospect, they're always one of the top selections, if not the selection, right? Like they're good at what they do. They just need more people to know about them. And these types of organizations have historically done a great job investing in company level marketing, which will always be important, but they have not taken it that next step to invest in leadership, especially key leader level and sales level marketing investment, where they're building brands around those individual key leaders. So that is one camp. So solid organization already have business coming in, but know that they can double down. The other type tends to be they're going through a unique time of a merger or an acquisition or a separation from business ownership, and they need to really stand up on their own two legs as a new entity. And they know that a lot of people who knew them before knew the individuals in the company already. It may not be like, here's the name, because now we're going to have a new name, or now we're going to adopt a different organization and have a new name altogether in that capacity. Their buyers know their face. And so they're realizing, okay, I've got to get out there. I've got to get more active on LinkedIn, get more active in the associations that my audience spends time in to really add that value and be seen as the leader. Because if their name is familiar to a client, but not familiar to their clients' competitors, like how much can they grow? Right? So just those are the other types of organizations that I'm seeing really lean into this.
Mandy Hornaday: Yeah, no, it's fascinating. And so when you are brought into an organization, are you typically working with both the sales and marketing teams and bringing everyone together to come up with a unified go-to-market motion? Or are you typically advising the sales teams, but leveraging that bent towards that leadership and the marketing expertise that you have?
Kelli Schutrop: Yeah, you know, it's interesting. My hypothesis was that I would be brought in by the sales teams and then have people say, wow, it's really cool, marketing too. It depends on the company size. So for larger organizations, it tends to be the marketing team that brings me in and says, we are looking for ways to dive into this world of expert visibility, thought leadership around the key leaders, because we've got our arms really strongly around the company, but not at that next level or even just like the division level. Like how do we brand each of these divisions as being like the go to. If it's a smaller organization, more boutique, then it's the CEO or founder who's bringing me in. And then the breakdown from that is they may have marketers that are already implementing the work, doing a phenomenal job, but they don't have time on the trail to be able to translate the CEO's vision to the day to day work as easily, right, there checking all the boxes and they're doing a fantastic job at it, but there's not that strategic level. So then I come in at that level. Whereas other organizations, I've partnered with a few now that don't have internal marketing at all yet, right? Or they had in the past and then it kind of got sunset and everybody kind of absorbed it internally. And those are fun and challenging all at the same time because they don't have that internal advocate for why it's important, but they want to see the results that strong marketing and that tie in from marketing to sales can drive. So it's really all across the board, but I would say more the marketing bent and then people get really pleasantly surprised. I'm like, you get sales too. Like you're asking me questions that a marketer might not always think to. And I know you do because I've heard your podcast, right? You had a podcast with a CFO recently and even just through our conversation, I can tell that you think so much deeper about this. But a good example would be if someone asks a marketer, hey, where are all the leads? I need more leads. We need more leads. Taking the time to pause and say, well, let's look at the pipeline. What are your deal stages? Where is stuff getting stuck? Because sometimes it isn't about just getting more leads that's going to fix the problem. Sometimes it's further down the pipeline where you're hitting a proposal stage equivalent, or they're getting the contracts, but things are not moving. And then maybe it's more of a sales enablement issue. Or maybe it's more just purely like, super simple, like we need to schedule time with that prospect before you get off the phone for the next call. So I enjoy being able to help troubleshoot and analyze what's happening on both a marketing and sales standpoint that can ultimately bring in more revenue.
Mandy Hornaday: Yep. Absolutely. And I guess when there are marketing functions within the companies you're going in, what is your perspective of where they are typically tightly aligned with sales and where are they missing that alignment more often than not?
Kelli Schutrop: Yeah. So if we were to break it down into a marketing funnel, right, let's get nerdy for a second and talk about tofu, mofu and bofu, right? So through the lens of, all right, if you're thinking about top of the funnel marketing, let's just think about LinkedIn ads for a second. You've got awareness content, right? Like it's problem oriented. People are not converting from it. They might be digesting a blog. The intent is not to get them to buy your services now. It's to be that credible resource for information. Middle of the funnel or mofu is more like downloadable ebooks or a webinar on demand or something where they're exchanging their contact info. And I know you know this, I'm just sharing with the audience. If someone here doesn't, they're exchanging their contact info for valuable information. So that by some companies would be dubbed as a marketing qualified lead, right? They're not raising their hand for a sales conversation, but they are interested in this topic. Some companies don't describe that as a marketing qualified lead because they're literally just saying, they don't care about us yet. They just want the salary guide or whatever it is. And then bottom of the funnel tends to be, do you have this problem? We are the solution. Click here to schedule a call. Right? So you asked the question about where do I typically see sales and marketing alignment. There tends to be no confusion at the bottom of the funnel. Right? Like if a lead comes in the door and they are raising their hand saying, I have a need for talent or we'll fill in the blank, right, if we're talking about anything within the professional service space. I have a need for this. Marketing can say this is a lead, pure and simple. Sales can say this is a lead, pure and simple. Whether or not it's the right lead, that's a whole other conversation, right? But it's as you get further up that funnel, it gets a little bit more muddy because marketing may say, we sent you 500 leads in air quotes, if you're not seeing my video here, 500 leads of downloadable eBooks people, and sales is like, that's not a lead. Like they're not telling us they want talent. They're just interested. And then you kind of start to see the tiff of like marketing saying, yes, but we can nurture those people to the point of a lead or you can still follow up or you can still be engaging with them. And then kind of that pushback of sales saying, yes, but I still have quotas to meet and they're not ready right now, or I don't know if they're ready or what can we do to automate this process so that I'm only talking to them if they're ready. And then highest up the funnel is where it gets even more disconnected where depending on the organization, the tighter synced they are, the more respect they have for each other and the more understanding of the value each party brings. The more that gets disconnected, you'll hear things from sales like, why are we even spending money on that? Like that's not bringing in leads. Why would we do that? Shut that off. Or you'll hear marketing talk about how there's not appreciation for the content that they're creating. And it's all ad hoc requests so they don't have time to be strategic because everything coming over the fence is like, I've got to work on this deck. I've got a meeting in one hour. I need you to update these slides, right? So I think having someone, whether it's in a larger organization, like a chief revenue officer that comes from either a sales or marketing background and has a very, very strong right-hand person in the other vertical, or even in a smaller organization, just someone that has that appreciation to say, I've grown up born and bred in marketing. I'm going to get to be really close with our head of sales because I need to know what matters to them. Like, what are their quotas? Not necessarily what do they make, but like what are they trying to hit? And I think it's very easy in our industry, especially for the more mid to small size organizations for marketing to only know the top line number and that's it. Right? Like we want to be an X million dollar company this year, but there's no analysis downstream that's handed over for knowledge to be like, okay, but this is how we got there last year. This is why that goal was established. This is how much percentage of that came from marketing. So like just kind of those more thoughtful level conversations require typically someone that has that more time on the trail strategic thinking because they got stuck saying, I didn't have what I needed to make a strong conclusion here. Or like Mandy, you mentioned on the podcast with the CFO that if you're just handed a quota from a CFO and told, this is your number, make it or break it, and there's not that dialogue of like, yes, that's great, but we do need to consider market conditions and other variables may pivot what's plausible. Like I just, I think it's important to have just true dialogue and connection. And oftentimes those things haven't been thought about, especially in the smaller firms. And it's not for lack of trying, it's just the question's never been raised. So then you have to do the muddy work of how did we get here last time? Why did we create this number? What could happen that could get in our way? So there's a lot, I digress, there's a lot we could talk about there.
Mandy Hornaday: Yeah, so much, so much. I think one of the things that stood out to me, and I just was actually coaching a VP of marketing the other day and having this conversation with him because the sales team was pushing for more bottom of the funnel content and talk about us and why we're great and what's better about us than our competitors. And he was really focused on top of the funnel content and awareness driven content and didn't know how to blend the two together, walking him through your point about awareness and consideration and decision in different phases. There's appropriate content to address the customer at each of those phases. And some of it's going to be more sales related if you're at the bottom of the funnel. And some of it's going to be more education if you're at the top of the funnel. But I think we can't just do one or the other. We've got to understand what the goals are of the content we're putting out there and the campaigns we're leading. And I think that'll just help us speak better to sales and educate them on why we're doing what we're doing. And then the other thing I was just going to share that stuck out to me too, I love your point, because I've been in organizations where you hand them leads or things that we think, whether it's an event attendee or salary guide download or whatever it is, an ebook download. And we think that it's worth following up as a marketing team. And to your point, oftentimes sales may think, you know what, they're not interested in talking to me yet. One of the things when I was at the B2B SaaS startup that I saw work really well, and I'd be curious to hear your perspective on, is because I oversaw the AE team, the BD team and the marketing team at the time. And what I noticed removed a lot of friction was when we had targeted demand gen, like targeted account demand gen, if you will. And so we're all going after the same accounts. And so if you're then telling a BDR who it's one of their 500 accounts that they're going after and you're saying, hey, someone from that account, your persona at that account downloaded this content or attended an event, they care a lot more about that than some random lead or persona that you send them.
Kelli Schutrop: Yeah, that makes so much sense, right? Because it's helping them build the case for how to get closer into that client. I think that's super smart.
Mandy Hornaday: Exactly. Have you seen that? What tips have you seen that help? Because I do think there's value in sales and marketing, obviously, being heavily connected and integrated. And we're hitting accounts and people at different times, but in a unified journey, if you will, that's not just black and white of like, marketing did their job and I'm going to throw the lead over the fence. So what have you seen? I think targeted accounts is one of the things I've seen that has helped ease that. But what have you seen that strategically helps the two teams work together?
Kelli Schutrop: When I've helped put together a buyer journey map or the emotion map of what a buyer is experiencing along their different stages, that really helps to unify everyone in the room of the why behind the marketing suggestions and the different need for education versus information about us. So just to walk through that, you think about the different stages any buyer goes through. If you're buying a new iPhone or a prospective client buying your services, even if it's a $200,000 one-time engagement, right, whatever that looks like, you go through the process of awareness, consideration, decision, and then hopefully advocacy, right? Like we are working together. I'm aware of my problem. I'm considering what solutions might exist. I'm then considering you versus someone else and I'm deciding, and then hopefully this is a great experience and now I'm talking about you and I'm referring other people to you. We often think about that journey. What often doesn't get layered in is what they are thinking, and they being the buyer, the prospect, what they are thinking, feeling and doing at each of those stages. So when you think about that as a visual matrix, right, they're flowing through these stages. What are they thinking, feeling and doing? And I'll give an example in a second. It allows you to assign content that helps you move them along that process. So let's use the iPhone example, right? Let's say, and heaven forbid, let's say I drop my iPhone in five minutes and it breaks and I can't use it. What am I thinking? Like, shoot. What am I feeling? This is not good. I need access to that. What am I doing? I'm jumping on my laptop to try to look up how do I get an iPhone replacement right now, right? Like that progresses very quickly from awareness to consideration to decision stage, right? But if I do a Google search for, and let's just say it's the back of my phone, I can still use it but I gotta get it fixed. If I do a Google search for something like how do I get my phone fixed near me and something pops up and it is the awareness stage of how I fix my phone versus a store where I can physically go right now, might be different. Or if I go into a process where there's a quiz, right? You think about all these different buying habits that we have, like even makeup, right? Like, do you want to try this on on the Target app? Like there are different things that brands do to show up no matter where you're entering that stage, right? No matter what stage you're at. And so I have seen a lot more unity come from executive leadership, sales and marketing if we map that out collectively and then say, okay, now we know every single one of our prospects goes through this flow. And this generally tends to be what they're thinking, feeling and doing. And it cannot happen within a bubble. Marketing can't be the only one saying, well, when a buyer is considering this is what they're thinking. It has to integrate the sales conversation or sales team conversations. Ideally, do focus groups with a few of your clients that would be willing to say, yeah, this is exactly what I'm feeling at that stage before I partnered with you. And then you can start assigning what do we need to do or to offer to move them to the next stage? And then it creates a lot more substantive reason behind recommendations, especially that marketing makes. Like, let's do a salary guide. And sales might be like, why are you asking me for this information? I don't want to do a salary guide. I'm not going to use it. Okay, well, let's go back to this, because what we know is that the buyer thinks this, and then we need to get them to the next stage. And this particular asset, just as an example, will help them get to that next stage and think about us as the trusted resource, right? That to me has driven some nice unity between the two departments, if you will.
Mandy Hornaday: I can imagine so. And is that one of the first things that you do when you enter an organization?
Kelli Schutrop: Good question. So most of the organizations that I partner with, we start with an overall annual marketing strategy. And we certainly talk about what is the sales process from start to finish? What are we doing within marketing? And then really depending on the engagement level, that's the ideal, right? Because it's hard to make truly strategic recommendations without having that. I will say there's a lot of good table stakes that most companies, I shouldn't say most, that plenty of companies in our industry are not checking all the boxes. So sometimes it's as easy as just like, okay, we got to get these things fired up right away. But the companies that are ready for that next step and really want to think strategically about it, that's a no brainer to make sure they have that information in front of them as they're making decisions.
Mandy Hornaday: Okay, yeah, super helpful. And I imagine too, one of the things I love about buyer journey mapping is that, and I don't know if you see this as well, but sometimes I feel like from being in the marketing seat, there's this pressure to serve sales and be sort of subordinated under them in a lot of ways. And I think what the buyer journey map does is it takes sales from being the center of the attention or the strategy and it puts the customer at the center. And it really challenges us to think about what does the customer need through this journey, not what does sales need. And so I really have seen success too of it just sort of flipping the script a little bit, because in sales and marketing, we're partners and come together to best serve the customer, right?
Kelli Schutrop: Right, right. Well, and to have that unity from the top of what is our revenue goal? Why is it our revenue goal? Why do we think this is attainable? How did we get to where we were at last year creates better alignment. And the more trust, and I've heard you talk about this in your podcast before, the more trust you have among the executive leadership team, just the better you're going to have experiences from team to team in general, because you are giving each other the benefit of the doubt. I think that's the biggest thing. I know you didn't ask this, but when a marketer or anyone is looking to work for an organization, that's either a deal maker or a breaker of like, is there benefit of the doubt to work together or is it this blame game of they didn't give me this, I didn't get that? And I will say one of the challenges that I had when I moved into consultative selling from marketing management was just this pressure upfront of what if I don't hit my quota? What happens? You know, like in marketing, I had always felt that success was a bit more tangible in terms of like, if I am driving forward things that create impact in the business and I'm doing a good job, I'm in good standing, right? It was more about like, am I in good standing? Am I pushing the limits? Am I doing great things? Whereas in sales, and this gave me a lot of empathy as a marketer stepping into sales myself, like there is a lot of pressure of like, you can be put on a PIP, whereas I don't know that I've ever heard of a marketer put on a PIP, right? I mean, I know that it can happen across any group, but it's like, there are different pressures put on different roles within the company. And so sometimes I think that can create the intensity for a salesperson. And I've been there in past sales roles, not on a PIP, but in that spot of like a lull where you're like, what I was doing before isn't working right now. And it's a little bit antsy making, you know, like for lack of a better word, like you're sitting there going, what can I do to change this narrative? Because everything takes time to implement, right? Or to close. But I will say there's a different kind of pressure on the marketing side, especially at the C-suite where, I've seen you post content about this on LinkedIn. The chief marketing officer role is the fastest tenure out of any company, especially if you're an organization that's moving fast, especially if it has to do with private equity in the tech space, right? It's like you basically have a year to show up and prove yourself, and prove is typically what are we doing to drive revenue? What are we doing to increase profitability? Whatever that metric is, that's the number one driver. But what is not always visible, and this is kind of maybe a different topic for a different day, but you have to pause certain things, sunset certain things, put in new initiatives, give them time to see that they're working, right? Like there's a lot that goes in under the radar in order to create success. So I think having that mutual empathy and appreciation for the unique challenges that come to sales for having quotas and having to hit those numbers or they don't have a job, and to marketing with just a lot of time pressure at a senior level. And now at the mid to junior level, what they're going to wrestle with related to AI and what's going to enhance their job and make them run faster and harder, or what might, in a C-suite perspective, replace them and how they can combat that. Or acknowledge that they need to double down on a different skill set within marketing to become more valuable. So I think just having that empathy going into it creates a lot more appreciation when you do, as sales and marketing, get into a conversation about we're not hitting our numbers. How do we do this together? Pressure to do it all around. It's not just, well, you guys are just having fun over here and we're doing all the work. I think there's that perspective from both sides if you haven't had a good relationship with the other side, even in a previous organization, so it's good to develop that.
Mandy Hornaday: Yeah. And you're absolutely right. AI throws a whole other wrench into the conversation on both ends. And I think marketing specifically, there's absolutely a sentiment that AI can replace a lot of what marketing does. And so it's interesting, I think, as we work through that.
Kelli Schutrop: Yeah. Well, and it's funny because AI replacing sales and marketing as it stands today really comes down to volume, right? Like what content can be created faster. But at least as far as it stands today, you can usually see when something is AI created. Like it feels a bit more canned. And I would say the same for sales, right? We all get hit with automated outbound messages where you're like, that is not written from a person to me. That is written one time to 2000 or 200,000 people and it doesn't have the same appeal to reply. And so I think it's going to be very important to connect back to the soul of humanity while we create good content in marketing and while we create good content in sales, and then utilize AI as a time saver, like a way to become more efficient, but not to get rid of the soul of who we are because people see through that and then it becomes a lot easier to ghost emails, to not look through content, all of the above.
Mandy Hornaday: Yeah, absolutely. Well, Kelli, I'd love to go back to earlier in the conversation when we were talking about, I asked you if buyer journey mapping was one of the first things you did. And you said that there were some table stake items that you more often than not are working on. What are those table stakes? What are the things that every B2B marketing leader listening right now should be thinking about or doing within the next month or two, if they're not doing it at the moment?
Kelli Schutrop: Yeah, so one of the very first things I do is an online presence audit. So I hear from the organization, the C-suite, the key sales folks, marketing, who they want to be, who they're showing up as. So that comes to life through the form of a discovery, like a guided discovery worksheet that they're filling out, their pipeline they're digesting through. And then I'm going and looking online to say, does this match up to who they want to be? So that's LinkedIn profiles, LinkedIn pages, website. What happens when we Google your name, your key leader's names? Like what happens in that space? And then we're stepping into multiple full day workshops where we're diving into the pieces where there are discrepancies and saying, I hear that you are a thought leader. I hear that when you're in conversations with people, you're able to close business. I don't see that when I look at your LinkedIn. So sometimes those table stakes are literally like re-evaluating the website, re-evaluating what they are showing up as on social, re-evaluating the cadence that content goes out into the world, right? If you're producing 10 blog posts a month, but they all don't say anything because they're written with AI, is that really generating benefit, right? Like kind of out there example, but so that's the first step typically of like what exists today. But to the point you made earlier, I do aim to layer that through that lens of like the emotion mapping, the buyer journey mapping of even if we look professional through LinkedIn, through our website, through our different channels, doesn't matter at all to the client or to the candidate, right? Like we have to go back to that. So that's actually a really big part of those initial sessions of like, what does success look like? When do we win those opportunities and how do we replicate that? So from there, it's more like, okay, what are the channels we're utilizing? What is the frequency? What is the cadence? Who's managing this, right? Like who's actually physically creating it? What other people do we need to get involved? And then the thought leadership side is very big, right? Like how do we get our key leaders out there? Maybe on guest podcasts or speaking or just whatever that might look like. How are we hosting our own events where we're creating our own presence? And I look at it through three different facets of marketing, which I'm sure most marketers who hear this will know, paid, owned and earned. What are we paying to do? What can we own that we can fully control the narrative? And then what can we do from an earned perspective? And then just kind of evaluate that. Of course, there's the metrics also. Is there a budget in place? How has that been decided? How does that work? Where does that go? What kind of KPIs are we tracking? So a lot of those first few months, and it doesn't always take months, right? But like those first number of sessions and getting into that is really kind of evaluating who do we want to be, who do we want to show up as, why has it worked in the past? What might we need to pivot? And is our current marketing effort reflective of that? And then how do we double down on things that we aren't doing that could work well?
Mandy Hornaday: Okay, yeah, super helpful and always helpful to get an outside perspective when you're in house. And I'd be curious, what would sort of be a quick win that you would offer to B2B marketing leaders to do some of this themselves? I guess, what should someone do like tomorrow to just get incrementally better in this case?
Kelli Schutrop: As a marketing leader, can I ask a clarifying question? So what are we looking to help them get incrementally better at? Like being visible to themselves or getting better alignment with sales, or what did you have in mind?
Mandy Hornaday: Great question. Well, I guess just in terms of everything you were talking about, your approach when you walk into an organization, you're doing a lot of this, which is great. I'm sure there's a lot of gaps that marketing leaders have today. So it was more so in terms of the outcome you're trying to achieve when you walk into an organization. Where would you encourage someone to start?
Kelli Schutrop: Sure, good question. So I would encourage marketing leaders to put themselves in their sales team's shoes and write down first what you know of the sales process. Like what does it take when a lead comes in the door? What does it take for them to get it to close and start thinking about what you can influence from the time the lead is in to the lead is closed, right? Like how do we accelerate the companies we're already talking to to close? So I would start there, and that might be a big old question mark. It might be like, gosh, I don't know what happens when the lead goes over. I just know that they come and ask me if I have more leads, right? So like start there. Like what does success look like from a revenue standpoint? What makes us close? Are there different sales enablement resources that they could utilize? But then I would also go upstream and think about, are we kind of closing the gap on what our ideal prospects need to do to move to the point of becoming a lead? Like, do we have everything in place? Honestly, that comes down to ideally some focus groups with current clients, which is not always the easiest thing to ask or to do because there might be complexity to those relationships and marketing doesn't own those. But going to the sales team or the account management team and saying, can we have some conversations? You know, like, what can you tell me went well as this client was onboard? And so those are some of the items that I would think would really help them elevate from a strategic standpoint and not just say, here's a shiny new marketing thing that we should try and we want budget for. It's more, let's evaluate the needs of the organization and the needs of the prospects. And then you can make a far better use case, or excuse me, a far better case for getting budget to implement new things.
Mandy Hornaday: Yeah, no, I love the encouragement to map out the sales process because I think there were a few years there in my career early on where I would not have even known to think about that. And now I encourage marketing leaders to do the same thing. I would even take it a step further and encourage marketing leaders to understand the conversion rates between each of those steps in the sales process to help guide.
Kelli Schutrop: Yeah, you wouldn't even think about it. Yeah, right. And if different sources are different conversion rates, right? Like what has more impact? One of the questions I recently asked a client was, okay, so you have a really thorough map of your revenue goal and the different divisions that you have revenue targets for and what you're anticipating will make up that revenue number. And we know what sources all of the past closed business has come from. Have we looked at the question of profitability? One of the goals for this particular client is profitability, not just revenue increase, which I would say most companies care about that as well. And so that was a question that we have started to dig into is what divisions, what segments are driving the most profitability and what sources allow us to sell deals that have more margin built into them? And it's not that we're going to cut everything else off, but if we're going to pick a few select areas to do a deeper dive into from a marketing budget and strategy and execution standpoint, let's dig into the things that create the most profit, the most revenue for the organization. So those are the types of things that I would not have thought to think about earlier on in my career, right? Like I was wearing a lot of hats. I was within a boutique firm and I just had enough time in the day to stay above water. To say, we have that event in six months. Let's think about it. Like that was the most proactive that you could be depending on the size of the organization, how many hats you wear. But even in a large organization, when you've got a team of 15 or 20 marketers, you still have your specific space and you are hustling. So to be able to take a step back and ask some of those questions about, to your point, like what is the conversion rate? What is the profitability? It's not existential of like why is what I do matter. It's more, if I only have so much time in the day, where can I make the most impact? And I find myself asking that question a lot in my fractional sales and marketing role is what am I doing to add value to this client? Am I adding value right now? Because when I was managing marketing, my question was, am I building brand awareness and credibility? Am I enabling sales and am I driving leads? Right. And if I'm doing those things, I'm in good standing. And if I'm pioneering and learning and pushing the limit, awesome, right? Like my achievement oriented nature is like check the box on that. That's exciting. In sales, it was, am I pacing to hit my goals and how am I continually getting more people into this pipeline? Right? Essentially, that's like the goal. Whereas now I have a different type of role and it's given me a good vantage point of what am I doing to add value? And I think if I had thought about that earlier in my career, I might have made decisions differently of where I spent time or things that I said no to. That's not always as easy as an in-house marketer, but maybe pushed back on why the request is coming in. Like, hey, I know that you are asking me, CEO or manager of my marketing team, to do XYZ, but would it maybe be more impactful if we did this, if that is our end outcome? Like it just allows you to take a step back and think about it through that lens.
Mandy Hornaday: Absolutely. And I am just dying to hear, because certainly you've got that perspective, you have that view, and yet you very much believe in sort of thought leadership led sales and marketing. And so I'm so curious, what have you been able to sort of point to, direct results? Or how do you think about showcasing the ROI on why thought leadership is so important? And how would you encourage other B2B marketing leaders to think about that as they're maybe creating their own thought leadership program and starting to lift up others in their organization?
Kelli Schutrop: Yeah, absolutely. So one of the biggest things is tying back to sales and asking them what is the source of that lead and not just looking in the CRM, because the CRM oftentimes has one drop down and that does not tell the full picture. So getting close with people that are in sales to say, hey, have you heard anything anecdotally? You start to hear stories of people being like, yeah, people come up to me at events and say, I've been seeing what you're posting on LinkedIn. Or even things, I mean, a lot of it depends on the sales cycles, but I'm working with an organization right now where they have multi-year sales cycles, and these are multimillion dollar deals that they are bringing in. And so it's a very different process from a sales standpoint. So some of the proof in success of expert visibility for them isn't what it would be for a SaaS brand of like, did we book a demo from this, right? Like it cannot be that directly linear. For them, it can be, this post that went out, the pursuits that we have, the very strategic pursuits that we have, are they engaging with this post? Are we getting in front of them? And so you can develop KPIs around visibility that may not be the end all be all of like, is this the reason why we got this multimillion dollar deal? I don't know that that's the only reason. It's usually not just one reason. However, it is fantastic that that individual and that organization is seeing us create content about this, tells them that we are good at this thing that they're going to need help with down the road that they're putting our RFPs together for. On a more immediate front, it's always valuable for the salesperson just to say, how did you hear about us? And that's where you kind of have to have that closed loop again of like, if somebody says, I keep seeing you pop up on LinkedIn. And I can't tell you how many times I've had that happen. I mean, when I was at the digital agency, I closed millions of dollars of clients. And I partnered with over 150 companies in the staffing industry in my time there. And the majority of leads that came in and the majority of people that closed, and we're talking like 90% majority, not 60% majority, would say, I've been seeing you all over LinkedIn or I saw you speak and I wanted to have a conversation because you know the space. And it wasn't necessarily you've already won the business, right? Like it was never that cut and dry, but it was, we have a shortlist and you were naturally going to be on it. Like, why would you not be? We know we'll come out of this conversation in a better place than if we didn't have you a part of this consideration. And so part of the ROI is having those conversations with sales, but also thinking about other KPIs that you can do, right? Like if you're pitching for guest podcast appearances, what kind of visibility does that podcast get? What kind of audience does it get in front of? Right. So it does tend to hit more of the camp of a PR style of ROI as opposed to a paid ad style of ROI. That said, you can also combine both, right? Like you can be doing thought leadership endeavors and boost them on LinkedIn and see the people that are engaging through that effort or host. I mean, there's so many ideas that I just get excited about, like hosting your own round table. To me, that is expert visibility and thought leadership, hosting your own event series. Like those are things that even if you are not the only voice that they are looking at, you are the hub bringing them together and that is so valuable. So part of it is just creating opportunity to create space, but then asking when those leads come in, like, how did you hear about us? And just kind of giving the tally mark in the applicable places, because I guarantee they're not going to say, well, you know, I had 23 touch points since the last five years. Like they don't know that. I don't know that when I buy something, but they will say, yeah, I saw you at a round table, right? You know, I've been coming to your events for years, like things like that add up.
Mandy Hornaday: Yeah, absolutely. Just even recently I've been trying to get more active on LinkedIn and the amount of people. Thank you. It can be, it's tough though getting started because it can feel, I mean, I'm sure at every stage it feels like you're talking into a void, but especially when you're getting started. I mean, even podcasting, right? It takes time, it takes consistency.
Kelli Schutrop: You're doing a very good job. If people aren't following Mandy, they should be. Yeah, I like your content.
Mandy Hornaday: But it is really validating when I hear, when I'm on the phone with customers, just even last week I brought up a post with a customer and she's like, oh yeah, I saw that this morning. I loved that. And I was like, holy crap. People are seeing it. It was a post that had just been out for a few hours. Not many people had engaged with it and it just warmed my heart. So I'm like, okay, at least people are seeing it, even if they're not engaging.
Kelli Schutrop: And that person might not have even clicked like on it. You know what I mean? Yep, you wouldn't even know.
Mandy Hornaday: And I so wish, maybe it's possible, I don't think it is, but I know from a paid perspective, you could certainly see the companies that are getting shown your ads and engaging with your ads and stuff. And I wish we could see that organically. Maybe at some point they'll let us.
Kelli Schutrop: Yes. Yeah, that would be great. Well, and I always recommend that people create their own natural hype squad to help your content circulate more in the right audiences. And it doesn't need to be this informal handshake. Anytime you post, I'll like it. Anytime I post, you like it. I'm not a fan of that because it's not authentic. What I am a fan of is thinking about, and forever be listening, think about the audience that you want to have see you on LinkedIn. And if you're a marketer, right, in the B2B space, your audience may be whoever's going to recruit you next, right? Like you want to look impressive so that whatever next role that you are the right fit for, somebody's already reaching out to you about. And just start thinking about like who else appeals to that same audience. Or if you are in a sales space, thinking about who else sells into this space but is non-competitive to me. So think like referral partners. And if they're posting content that's also relevant to your audience, get involved, comment on it, like it, share it. And by default, if there's that reciprocal mindset of like, well, their content also speaks to my audience, they're going to start doing the same. And naturally that helps within the LinkedIn algorithm because LinkedIn knows your buddies and it's going to start showing more content to each other. But what it also does is it starts showing your name on more of their networks' space, right? So it's them kind of walking around with you digitally going, I advocate for Mandy. Like I'm commenting on Mandy's posts and I'm saying, this is awesome. Anybody who follows me has the potential to now see her name. So I think part of that momentum can be celebrating other people that are in a like space because naturally they'll start to celebrate you as well and then it can build over time.
Mandy Hornaday: Yeah, no, that's great advice. I can always tell when I'm, because I also have a bent towards rev ops. And I love, I spent two years in rev ops and sort of growth ops and strategy. And so I can always tell like, okay, I'm engaging too much on rev ops content. I need to go back.
Kelli Schutrop: Yes, it's funny. Just as a mini story, when I was head of sales for a digital learning consultancy, I started following a lot of sales coaches that sell and then teach essentially people in the SaaS space because they were talking to the audiences that I wanted to get in front of. And I was learning a ton from them, but it was like this meta moment where I would read somebody's content like a Jen Allen Knuth. If you don't follow her, you should follow her. So Jen, A-L-L-E-N-K-N-U-T-H. She has been in sales her whole career. She used to lead the podcast for the Challenger Sales Methodology. She now has her own company where she does sales kickoffs, primarily, I believe, for SaaS organizations that are very large. And I would see content that she'd post about being authentic with yourself, like as you're selling. And I would love them. But I would know that if I clicked like on it, it's going to ripple out to my audience. And what they're going to see is, Kelli's learning how to sell to me better with this email template or, you know, that example. But so sometimes people are following your content and not engaging just because it's something they want to digest, right? Like you think about a B2B marketer. Actually, this is a great example for you, Mandy. You think about a B2B marketer. We all are in this camp throughout our whole careers of like we want everyone to think that we've got everything figured out, but everything's evolving. So of course we don't have everything figured out. We're developing our thoughts around things as they come onto the scene. But if they like it, maybe their CEO won't know they like it or won't know they know it. However, I would encourage marketers listening to this of like, just be human, right? Like nobody knows everything. If your CEO sees you commenting on something, they're going to probably appreciate that you're doing your own research and training through content that you're digesting on LinkedIn.
Mandy Hornaday: Totally. Years ago, I learned not to be ashamed to just ask questions, raise your hand, because I think it actually shows a level of confidence that you have. We're so sure of ourselves that we don't care if it's a stupid question. We're going to ask it.
Kelli Schutrop: Yes, I agree. Right? Yeah, I think that once you start seeing leaders ahead of you do that, and you're like, that's like a characteristic of a leader. That's okay. It's not admitting defeat because nobody knows everything. It's like, yeah, it's a curiosity that shows you're smart. And you want to learn from those who know something you don't.
Mandy Hornaday: Kelli, well, I could talk to you all day. I so enjoyed this conversation. I would ask you one final question. You've shared so much great advice for B2B marketing leaders, but I'm going to ask you what would be your number one thing you would encourage, one last piece of advice, I guess, or pearl of wisdom that you would leave us with.
Kelli Schutrop: Yeah. Okay. So this is going to look different depending on the company size you're in. So this might be one layer above you if you're in a small company, and it might be many layers above you if you're in a larger company. But think about the person you report to and what makes them successful and what makes them tick and what makes them drive and what gets them excited and what basically makes them win, and figure out how to support that mission. Because if you can support the mission of what they need to get done and what the business needs, just about anything you ask for, if it's in alignment with that, you will get a yes for. If you are asking for a promotion or more responsibility or more exposure or more whatever, and it's not in alignment with the initiatives they need to accomplish or the initiatives the business needs, it's a very quick no. But if you can line up to what the business needs, it's impressive how many yeses you can get and new opportunities, even if it's like, I need another person on my team because I'm overloaded. That's not the positioning. The positioning is, I am excited to take it to the next level and this is what I don't have time to get to right now, ABC. And if I could, this is the impact I think it could have on the company. So if I hired someone under me, this is what it would cost and this is what they would take on. So if we spend X over X amount of time and it allows us to accomplish this upstream, is that worth it to you? That is the way to get the yeses that you want.
Mandy Hornaday: Yeah, I love it. I love it. Awesome. Well, Kelli, thank you so much for taking the time to be a part of Growth Activated today. Obviously people can find you on LinkedIn. Is there anywhere else you would send them to learn how to work with you, learn from you, anything else you'd share?
Kelli Schutrop: Sure, there's two places. I have a website called thoughtfulresound.com and the other place is LinkedIn Learning specifically. I've got four courses that are live on there right now. Three about digital marketing, one about personal branding, but LinkedIn is definitely the go-to place for me. So if you ever want to connect down there, that's a great space. And thank you for having me. This has been a great conversation.
Mandy Hornaday: Amazing. Awesome. Well, thanks, Kelli. We'll see you soon.
Kelli Schutrop: Sounds great.
