[00:00:00] Darryl Praill: My name is Darryl Praill. I'm your host and you, my friend, well, you and I we're gonna go on a journey every single week, talking to the industry's most accomplished sales legends, as they share with us, their tips, their tricks, their techniques, and their tactics to becomes sales rockstars. You simply need to do what they're doing and you will achieve similar nirvana. If you like to laugh, you like to be entertained, if you'd like to go off on tangents and tell stories, you're going to love what you're going to hear next. Sit back, relax, it's going to get real.

How is everybody doing today? Oh, It is so good to be back. I have missed you. How are you enjoying the new format? You like the new opening or not? I would love to get your feedback. I'm already getting lots of feedback. I had something to do the day message me and don't Daryl, your podcast started and you were talking to the beginning and it was so cool and a full credit.

That goes to my good friend, Stefan who made this custom opening video and his partner in crime, Victoria was involved in that too. And a custom music, custom, everything. So. They are talented, talented people, but let me know what you're thinking. I would love to hear that. Today's an interesting one. So I'll tell you why it's interesting kids.

As you all know, I was most recently the Chief Revenue Officer at VanillaSoft for the last three years or so. I was there five years joined a CMO, I love VanillaSoft - need sales engagement platform. Please check them out. Love them.

Are you in sales, but you're not using a sales engagement tool? Then you're probably losing out on revenue because you are not engaging with prospects at the right time, with the right cadence, and with enough persistency. You need VanillaSoft. Go to vanillasoft.com.

But it was time for me to have another challenge in my life because after five years I'd got, I done what I needed to do. And I had the, the, I had the, the, the, the systems working and humming and I was bored. I was bored. And so now I'm a, I've had a role at this company called AgoraPulse. It's a social media marketing platform. You got to check it out. Cause you know, as I like to say, whether it's Russia invading Ukraine or it's, whatever's going on in January six or it's, whatever Kanye is saying to Kim and Pete about their sex lives, it's all in social media, that's the world and that's kind of where I'm at and that's why social selling is getting more and more important.

There's a sales reference rate because Hey, it is a sales podcast. But I've set the stage a little. For a reason because I've got people coming to me now saying Daryl, you've gone back to being a CMO. And and in the full disclosure, I, while I am a CMO, I do own all of the STRs. I am that other, depending on your survey, that one quarter or one third of all CMOs.

So. The inside sales team. What is the biggest thing you find, you know, between the, the difference in the roles? And I laugh and I say the biggest difference I find is that I don't get stressed out now at the end of the month and end the quarter when we do or do not hit our sales number. I love not having that over me.

I'll be honest with you, but I love. And so my good friend, Jenny, and if you, if you miss the episode, it wasn't that long ago, maybe within, within 10 episodes, I interviewed Jenny Brennan and Jenny is the head of sales at Agorapulse fantastic conversation. I got more feedback on that episode than I have in many others.

So check that one out. I am. In like Flynn with her working on her sales team, because I do have the CRO experience. I do have the sales experience and I'm a different point of view and I'm free and I'm a fellow colleague. So why not steal whatever knowledge I have and pick and choose what she wants to do in her.

God bless her. It's great. So we get along really, really well. But when we were having this conversation about the differences between being a CMO and being a CRO, and the same time I was on this marketing community event for emerging CMOs, and they were asking all these veterans CMOs, I was one of the panelists and I was asking us, what's the difference between being a CMO and being, you know, Which is really no different than what's the difference between being a CRO and a sales rep.

See how I brought this all full circle here. Marketing and sales were all revenue, boys and girls. So the difference I was saying is many, for example, one of the things that I learned, and you will never know this until you experiencing yourself. So if you're an SDR or a BDR today, or you're an account executive, and you have aspirations of having long-term success in this sales game, You will never, ever.

Ever get trained on the skills. You need to be a sales leader until you're in the sales leadership role, because there's nothing to do with sales about managing people, managing conflict, managing processes, managing technology, all of that is incredible, but everybody thinks that if I'm a good sales person, I'll be a great sales manager or a great sales leader.

And because of that, I'll be able to interact with all the other organizations brilliantly. I'm telling you that. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. That's not how it works. It is a completely different world outside of sales leadership. Why do you care about this? You need to care about this for two reasons that I think one is, it affects your ability to be successful in your current.

For you to be successful right now, you need to know how that world is different. Number one, number two, if you aspire for greatness in your sales career, you want to be a VP of sales. You want to be a chief sales officer. You want to be chief revenue officer, whatever it might be that you want to be CEO, who knows you need to understand how sales contribution.

Interacts with the rest of the organization, because I hate to tell you that. Every salesperson. I seem every new-ish sales person, I talked to always says, Hey, this company needs us. We're the ones who bring all the money in, without us. You guys are nothing. You're jump change. And that's the furthest thing from the truth.

You actually need every single contributor, every person on that bus. But if you come with that attitude, you're going to both fail and your aspirations. I'll tell you right that right now, but you're also going to fail in your current. Okay. So I'm no longer a CRO. I'm not the guy who can give you that credible answer anymore.

Who might be, who might be you say, well funny. Have you heard of, you know, you ever see the show, how he met your, I met your, was it how I met your mother where the classic line Bernie would always say, have you met Warren? Have you met one than white Barney, even a block away and poor Warren. In this case, we'll be left to talk to the complete stranger and introduce themselves and try to strike up a conversation and maybe have a relationship.

Warren Zenna. He is the founder and CEO of this C R O Collective. See, he's got the CRO game going on, plus he's also the founder and CEO of the Zena consulting group.

Warren, my friend. How are you today?

[00:07:20] Warren Zenna: Great Daryl. Great, great intro. Thank you so much. I couldn't agree more with what you just said. So thanks for having me

[00:07:26] Darryl Praill: Folks. I've been, I haven't, I've been, I've been withholding some information. Warren is also an incredible podcast hosts himself. It's the CRO Spotlight. So I want you to. And I want you to tell your bosses to go and sign up right now for the CRO Spotlight. And what's cool about this is it's a B2B podcast for both current and aspiring CRO CEOs and other leaders, aspiring.

So, this is my way of saying that you aspire. That's how we opened it up. Go sign up for this hero. Spotlight. He's killer. He's dynamite. He's a CRO Warren, what did I say that resonated with you? What did you agree with? What did you disagree with and what did I not say to our audience that they need to know? Let's start with that.

[00:08:16] Warren Zenna: Yeah. Great. Thanks. So I certainly agree with you that in my view, the best salespeople have what I call spatial awareness, meaning. They are, they're not only I guess like tactically or functionally good at their specific role as sales professionals, but they also possess a very good understanding of the way that their role fits into the entire revenue operation.

Because as you said, the way marketing and customer success organizations impact the entire business is critical. And I think all too often, The sales organizations in particular can become very myopic because what you just said is true, right? Salespeople, you know, there's a certain type of person that's in sales, there a certain type of a category of personality type.

And it's not uncommon for salespeople to sort of think that they kind of have a certain swagger in the organization because of the, they, they drive revenue and that perspective can blind them to the reality that the critical role that marketing and customer success plays in their. And I think great salespeople know that.

So that's one thing I grew with the thing I think maybe I would part with you on is, well, you're correct. Without doubt, almost all. Not, not every, but almost all CRS come from sales. So most CRS are kind of aspiring sales leaders who want to become chief driven revenue. But a CRO is not a sales leader. A CRO is a revenue operations leader.

It's someone who oversees the entire revenue function, the sales marketing customer success organizations together and brings that cohesiveness, that alignment between all three and because they come from sales. And this is part of why it is the CRO collective was created. There's a tendency for CRS to focus almost too much or lean too much towards sales or favor sales.

And that. And is an issue related to that misalignment that I'm hoping that my programs are intended to fix so good CRS. And you know, this better than me, cause you were a great one, understand all this stuff, they get how all these functions work together and they're overseeing the entire revenue operation.

And, and I believe that an aspiring chief revenue officer should be thinking about this now, not later, so that as you grow and develop your role. You've established a relationship with the other functions. So you understand not just how they relate to what you're doing, but also how they work. Like how does marketing work?

What does it do? What is the relationship that my prospects have to, the marketing they get, et cetera, et cetera, what's going to happen post sale. When I dumped my customer into the customer success organization and how do I impact those things and how do they affect me? I think those are really critical questions for salespeople to be asking themselves.

[00:11:02] Darryl Praill: I agree. Kids. We're going to talk about that today. We're going to give you a little education on how the process works. Feel free to send us any questions, comments, opinions, feedbacks. Of course, on social media. Don't forget to tag Warren and I, so we can respond. And the spark a conversation. Go to LinkedIn say Praill and Xena.

We're out there saying this bogus stuff I disagree with, or I do agree with them. What do you think? Of course, you got to have a poll folks. If we have a poll, then we have some dwell time here and get reached and life is grand. Okay. So let's start with, I'm going to start with the, the I'll get I'll get feisty first and then we'll get right into it.

So when a rep says to you. Sales the center of the universe without us there or nothing. This company would die. We are the, we are the being the fuel, the rocket fuel in this, in this organization. What, what, how do you respond to them? Do you, you just say nothing. Do you nod your head in agreement? Do you voice a different point of view, what?

[00:12:02] Warren Zenna: Yeah, I don't agree. I don't think it's correct. I mean, culturally, I would say that's not a good attitude for anybody in a company to say that their department's most important. It's not good. You know, I understand that there's some pride you have in your function and that's great. And I think you want to create somewhat individual cultures for each function, because I don't think that's a bad thing, but it can't come at the expense of alignment and you know, a team.

I think that I would say that it's, that's probably. At statement, if it were said to me in the way you just said it would be an indication that that person lacks an understanding of how those functions really work and they're making a generalization. And if they were to sit in marketing shoes for maybe a week or two, maybe a month, they'd have a much different perspective on it.

So I think it's one thing. And I think that if I was leading an organization and I saw people felt that way, and I tell my CRO clients to do. Have your salespeople sit with marketing and do what they do for a couple of weeks, you know, do a little swap so that they do understand the importance of it because, you know, once they see it and they see how difficult it is and how smart marketing people are, and actually how, in my view, again, this is another controversial perspective I have is how really good marketing could in many cases do the job of really good SDRs.

I think that that's not a small thing to say because driving qualified leads is what marketing does when it's done. Right. And so, you know, the, I would say first, you know, whipper snapper, I'd say whippersnapper, you know, make sure that you understand exactly what you, what you're speaking about, because it sounds to me like your, your arrogance, maybe proceeding some ignorance.

And I think it's important for you to not, you know, issue the value of something, particularly people that sit right next to you in the office who are working really hard on something that does matter. That's one thing and sit in their shoes for a little while. So that's the first thing I would say. And more, more importantly is I would also say you would be a better sales.

If you understood how marketing works and they say, what do you mean? How could that be possible? Marketing has nothing to do with sales. They, well, that's, that's not tracked, you know, it's part of a value chain. It's part of a customer experience. It's part of a prospect journey. And you know, if, if marketing does their job, when you speak to people in the marketplace to try and get them interested, they should be primed in a specific way.

That makes it easier for you to have that conversation and marketing when they do their job makes that easier for you. And it should be important that, that stuff. So I would just want to educate them and it would be assigned to me that there's some misalignment going on in the organization that needs to be addressed.

[00:14:33] Darryl Praill: Okay. So many things I want to say to this, a folks, how many times have you heard me say that? And no warning. And I did not prep this. This is completely live and dynamic and unscripted.

[00:14:45] Warren Zenna: We never spoke about it before.

[00:14:48] Darryl Praill: So it's not just Darryl being an old man. Although I do like the reference to Whippersnapper. Second, did you hear him use the word as eschew? Rich language rocks?

Oh, we sound smart because your customers pick up on that and they project that onto you and then they trust you more. Love it. Third. Third is this the sh this whole show folks, the inside inside sales. It's designed to make you a better sales rep. Well, there's outward facing skills, and then there's inward facing scale.

Today's more of an inward facing skill. You will rely upon the rest of the people in your organization to make sure you are successful. You have access to the right resources, the right people with the right expertise, the right processes. So you get paid and you have what you need. So it's all about relationships and that's why it's important to understand what the hell is going on.

Okay. Let's start with the boss. So I'm a sales. And it could be my boss. It could be my boss's boss, but I ultimately report to a C R O help me warn, understand that person. Are they just an older sales person? And are they representing all my wines in my laments anomic complaints? And my concerns are they lobbying on my, on my behalf to get me everything I need in one.

Is that the role, like help me understand what they're doing when they're in those meetings that I don't see them part of, how are they comped? How are they evaluated for their success? Is it just a number? And I know folks listening to this many of, you know, some of these answers, I guarantee you, Warren's going to tell you something you didn't know.

That's the purpose of the conversation today. So talk to me.

[00:16:26] Warren Zenna: Yeah, sure. So this chief revenue officer role is a, it's a really weird kind of a situation to answer this question, because there's almost in a way there's two worlds in this answer. Cause there's the world that needs fixing, which is the CRO who's running sales.

And that CRO is someone who probably would benefit from having a bit of a deep recalibration of the way their role is appointed. And that's sort of what the CRO collective is intended to fix. And we can get into that. But in the, in the optimal world, the chief revenue officer really should be overseeing the entire revenue function.

What does that mean? Okay. That means that all revenue related functions of the business, which I say are the customer facing parts of the business and the customer facing parts of the business. Aren't just sales, they're marketing and customer success. Those two functions touch the customers too. Okay.

And if I'm in sales and I'm nurturing relationships with. And I know that there are two other functions in the organization that are also going to interact with those same people. Those people should be my friend and they should people that I should understand. And I should understand what proceeded me in my relationship and what comes after me in my relationship, because that seamless understanding of the way those three relationships work together is going to make a better customer outcome.

Right? Because there's two reasons salespeople are, are measured. Closing deals and getting people to say yes and signing a contract, but the company makes more money on customers than it does on new business. Right? So I want to put people into the customer bucket because customers are really where opportunities are for an organization, their renewals or upgrades, their, you know, lifetime value, which is what we want.

Right. So, A good salesperson. As I said before, has that sort of spatial awareness of where they sit in the value chain and they understand that as critically important as their role is it's part of a series of relationships that that customer is going to have with the organization. So as a CRO, to answer your question, my job is to understand all three of those.

And I want to make sure that when I speak to you as a sales person, that you know, well, first of all, just in the right world, you'd have a sales leader who reported to that CRO. So you may not have a day-to-day. Interaction with the CRO as much as your boss will, but to your question, if you're in a meeting and you see the CRO in the room, the CRO is, will be looking at things a bit differently.

The CRO is gonna be looking at the sales function from the standpoint of how well is this function right now, operating collectively as part of a whole entire way that I bring customers into the company and grow them. And is the sales process set up in such a way that the customer experience is reflective of customer centricity?

Or is it just, I'm just trying to like run a sales organization, which has a lot of pipeline growth and deal closing, which again, there's nothing wrong with those. But they have to be part of a system, not an independent organization. So if I'm speaking to a chief revenue officer, he's probably going to be listening to me and listening for clues as to what my relationship is in my role to the rest of the organization.

Am I incentivized in ways that is in alignment with other organizations, right? And Darryl knows this very well. Sales and marketing in particular many times are at war with each other because the ways in which they're measured, aren't in sync and B they're not in sync because you know, things like MQL and whatnot are assigned to each one of these organizations and people are chasing those outcomes as opposed to chasing bigger picture system, systemic, you know, outcomes for customers.

And a good CRO is thinking about how can. How can I make sure that when marketing makes a decision that sales is involved, how can I make a decision that when sales makes his decision marketing is involved, how can I speak to customer success organizations and get the insights from existing customers or customers that aren't happy?

And how do those insights inform the way marketing goes to market and how to sales goes to market? Because customers have really invaluable insights about the product that we're using, and those that should be an informative way that product goes to market. So if I'm in sales, Personally, and I've been in sales my whole life.

I go speak to customer service people, and I say, tell me what it is that you're finding the customers you work with are happy with. Tell me the value that they're getting out of the product. Where are they seeing? The actual business outcome is from the use of our product? Because when I know that I'm going to roll that into my sales strategy, because those are the things I know that a customer can achieve.

And if I can get more data and more data, more data from a customer organization, then I'm going to be a better salesperson. And I don't think that happens enough. I don't think there's enough dialogue going on between these organizations. So a CRO is looking for those connection points and making sure that there's a flow of information and it congruency between the way these organizations work together, all about customer outcomes.

That's the way I think you should be looking at your chief revenue officer.

[00:21:15] Darryl Praill: Okay. So let me build them up. Just said with a different tactic on why you should care about the role of this zero, because it affects your success. He uses the term value chain. I could insert a buyer's journey, customer journey, right?

Same thing, same thing. But I like it. I like his value chain because there's different values at every step of the way. In other words, marketing delivers one value. You know, the customer finds you often because of marketing and they have a pain. And because of what a good marketing has done, they found you, you deliver another value in sales.

And then once you close the deal, customer success, who onboard to them, make sure that they are literally successful, adds another value. So it is truly a value chain. Why does this matter? Warren just touched on this and I want to make sure you understood what he was saying. If you're a boy, if you have a CRO for a boss, and that CRO has a typical mandate of owning sales, marketing, and customer success, that's your, that's your textbook definition, many majors, own sales and marketing, for example, but textbooks.

A great unit. That means your part of that umbrella organization and what, and he talked about going to success and ask them what value is given. Let me go one step further. You can go to marketing and say, help me understand what the industry analysts are saying. Help me understand, you know, what's out there in the press, help me understand the key words that are really driving our inbound activity in because you want the.

So you want those terms. So what you want, help me understand the content. That's really getting a lot of traction because that says that's probably a common issue in your ideal customer profile. And then you could turn around and go exactly what Warren just said and go to success. And that's the same question.

What's the value we're delivering. What's the impact we're having. What's a typical case study of a person or two or three or four or five and the ROI they've generated and how has that affected their business. Right. And now what are you having? You have both sides of the talking points that your prospects care about.

You can talk to the marketing stuff, give them the content that they, that is so popular. You can, you can leverage cause you probably, when you get the lead, you more than likely you say, yeah, this is an organic hit. They got to us on these search terms or as a pay-per-click on these search terms. So you now, you know how to talk to them immediately coming in because that's the experience they went through.

And then you can actually talk about the sound track. Of what they will achieve if they become a customer based on what success has told you, that's your story telling vehicle to physically, you know, convince them that you're the right solution. Of course, assuming you do a proper discovery. So that's why they're your best friends.

You are not a lone Wolf. You are not a single hunter. You are not an island. You are part of an entire value chain. As Warren said that you better get to know your value chain partners in crime. Okay. You talked a little bit warn about the role of marketing, the role of success. I want to ask you a couple questions as it relates to that.

Number one is, is a, Ciero simply a more senior, more tenured VP of sales?

[00:24:33] Warren Zenna: I would say no. And here's why it say so is because I think. They're definitely more senior and they're more tenured, but they're not a VP of sales because by that definition you provided that would indicate that they're overseeing one of the revenue functions, which is, would be, is a mistake.

And here's why I think so. W what we're seeing now, more than we've seen ever in the last, let's say four or five years. Isn't even larger fragmentation between these functions. And it has mainly to do with the type of businesses that Darrell you and I serve as emotionally software-based businesses where there's high scale and high turnover and subscription based models where the SDR model and the assembly line model is being utilized.

It's putting a lot of put, putting a lot of stuff into the marketplace and also the financial community, you know, as they invest in companies like. These funding rounds come with a lot of expectations that drive a lot of behavior from organizations that in many cases don't really think about customers very much.

I think more about growth, right? And the CEO is sandwiched in the middle between managing the desire of the board to achieve quarterly results. And also trying to make sure that customers get the right experience, which customers don't experience things on a quarterly basis. You know, they experience things on a basis of their own needs, you know, and it could take longer.

And marketing in particular marketing efforts in particular take time to work. You know, it's very difficult to nurture a marketing campaign effective one quarterly, you know, unless you do things that are designed to just annoy people and stuff. So a good CRO is helping the, I, I actually, I would say if I even kind of inject this, I think the chief revenue officer is the CEO of the revenue operations.

We're gonna use that

one and that's not my quote. It came from somebody else, but I'll, I'll, I'll use it because it's great. So if you think about this at a mature organization, and when I say mature, I don't mean enterprise, like, you know, like a billion dollar company, even like a 50 million or ARR, a hundred million error company, that's still in that kind of growth stage.

A CEO puts a CRO in place and extensively. I want you to be the chief executive officer of our revenue operation. Yep. Now that's a whole different context than being a VP of sales. That's not at all the same thing. And I think if you're thinking about being a chief revenue officer, you should think about, okay.

If I were to call myself or it just inwardly a CEO of a revenue operator. That's a different job that, that I'm looking over the business of the whole company. I'm actually analyzing all the business outcomes. I'm looking at profitability, looking at CAC, I'm looking at, you know, MRR, I'm looking at, you know lifetime value.

I'm looking at the cost of sales against you know, time to market. I'm looking at, you know, how long it takes the value to be achieved through a customer, looking to see how long it takes for them to renew. I'm looking at the product team and I'm seeing. Parts of the product are resonating. Most of my customers, which parts of the product can I sunset which parts of the products I enhance.

Right. And that's not a sales role. That's very much running a business. Right. So I think a CRO should think of themselves as the CEO of revenue operation and they have. Rain over how those three functions work together. It's almost like the army, the Navy and the air force, right? Those three organizations are deployed in a war to accomplish things in each one of those functions has a very specific tactical capability that utilize for different ways in which you have to go to, to fulfill your strategy.

And the general utilize all three of those functions to achieve their goals. And there's a, someone who oversees each one of those functions. Who's an expert in those. But they take the direction from the general who understands how those three things work together and coordinate together to achieve an outcome.

And I think you've got to think that way. And I think a really great CRM understand this and, you know, they have great sales leaders in place who are at their, you know, You know, they're there, they're under them to do the job and fulfill on that particular function really well.

[00:28:38] Darryl Praill: One of the things that I want to circle back on what Warren just said, it was, I found a really good reminder was the timelines, right?

So marketing will work on and say six to 18 month horizons. So they'll work on. Typically sales works on monthly to quarterly horizon. Success can work on yearly career horizons cause Saba lifetime value. So you have to stop. If you're in sales, you have to stop projecting how you think and your world and your timelines and your expectations onto them. That's not how they work.

[00:29:08] Warren Zenna: Exactly and you, you know, Darryl is so thank you for saying that because what ends up happening is because sales drives so much of the way that accompany opera. Companies operate on the same timelines as sales do. And it bumps up against the way other functions operate and how much time it takes for their efforts to see the marketplace.

And I think if you measure an entire business, based on the sales function, everything is going to try and play catch up with sales and that's where misalignment occurs. And I think that a good CRO understands the. There may be vitamins. I take every day, they give me day to day results, but the type of diet that I have, it might take six months for me to lose the weight that I want.

So I can't let those two things kind of inform each other the wrong way after they they're part of a strategy. One takes long. But it's supported by one that has quicker outcomes. And I think that's, that's an art and a science is knowing how each one of these things works and deploying them appropriately. And I don't think it happens enough. I think that's where a lot of this miss alignment comes in play.

[00:30:14] Darryl Praill: Well, I'll say in my opinion, this is where I get controversial folks. Cause you know, I hate doing that. That happens when you have a CEO who doesn't understand. The revenue process exactly. As Warren described it from marketing to sales to success, they view it only typically through the sales lens.

That also comes when you've got a CRO who only has sales experience and only chooses to view it through a sales lens. So I will be the controversial one here and say, You will be best equipped to be a CRO. If you intentionally allow yourself to get some experience in those other disciplines, even if it's only for a period of time, a brief, a great time so that you understand. Yeah.

[00:31:01] Warren Zenna: Because what's going to happen, right. If you come out of a sales, leadership role, which most CRS do, and you're really good at it, you know, you can't avoid this. You're going to favor the sales organization.

[00:31:11] Darryl Praill: You're gonna bias it.

[00:31:12] Warren Zenna: It's biased. That's an that's going against the the remit of the role.

It's it's, you know, if you're the CEO of a company, you can't favor one department, right? You, you, you, so you have to think of yourself. If I'm the CEO of the revenue department and I'm favoring sales, I'm, I'm not doing my job properly. I can't, I have to give all the revenue functions equal respect. Matter of fact, I should probably be conscientious enough to know that because I come from sales that I'm probably.

You know, biased against it, without it unconsciously biased against it. So I have to make a harder bias against the other ones toward the other ones to compensate for what is probably a natural way that I'm going to be thinking. And that discipline would make you a better CRO.

[00:31:57] Darryl Praill: I remember what Warren said early on. Warren said, if you're in sales today, you would do well. To put yourself in the marketer's seat, even if it's was a month. Right. Just to understand a little bit about the world they live in final question of the day, warn them. We'll let you go. We are way overdue, but I'm loving the conversation. I now I'm just picking a fight with you.

Should SDRs reside in marketing or in sales.

Well, if it's an SDR in its current iteration, it's a sales function because that's the way that they're trained and that's the way they're put them on. But if I'm looking at your question, I think the way you're asking it, I do believe that what's happened with the SDR model is SDR model has increased the footprint of the sales organization and it's overtaken areas where marketing could be more effective.

And in a way, what it's done is it's it's minimized or hampered marketing's ability to do its job. And I think that marketing hasn't been given a fair shake shake. If you were to take a portion of those SDRs and you were to assign them marketing roles, right. And have them do that. I think you'd probably find an interesting outcome because I do think that the SDR role, when you think about what they're designed to do, they're designed to qualify.

I get it. And that's fine. It's an important step.

And typically qualify, typically qualify inbound, but not exclusively.

[00:33:23] Warren Zenna: Yes, exactly. So, but, but marketing and, and the reason why I think a lot of sales organizations have a negative view of marketing isn't because marketing doesn't do a good job it's because they're not allowed to do the job as fully as they're capable.

They're sort of been hampered by the shrinking size of the marketing organizations when they're up against these big, huge SDR organizations. So I think that the coverage. Should be increased marketing. So marketing is allowed to actually fulfill on its capabilities and you give the marketing organization the freedom to do its job.

And you'll find that marketing can deliver a really highly qualified lead pool to the sales organization that the SDRs do right now. And honestly, while the SDR role is really interesting and it it's a good training ground for people and people come out of it with like really great skills. It's a really difficult job.

It's hard to hit quota. And I think a lot of people get chewed up in it and they get spit out. And I think that, you know, it, it's, it's a bit of a grind and it's also hard to get out of the SDR role into something else. You know, it's one of those things where if you're really good at it, it's almost like they just want you to keep doing it.

You know? So I think that there is a battle going on right now in that I'll call it the the SDR assembly line model, where marketing, when given the chance to do really good. Demand gen based marketing, which I think really works, frankly, in the way they can. And, and PR for earlier point, Darryl it's allowed the time to seed the way it should.

It's incredibly effective. And I think that I'd like personally to see a shift in the way those organizations work together. So whether they should be pulled into a different org, I think it's a matter of understanding the difference between qualifying as a salesperson or qualifying as a market. Are you still doing the same thing?

Just doing a bit of.

[00:35:07] Darryl Praill: All right. So for every single sales rep online here, I want you to do one quick little thing. Hey, two things online. I want you to make sure your boss listens to this episode and then just get their take on it. Do they agree with us? Do they disagree? Ask them what their life is like?

You know what did we miss? And what is important that you understand if they, if you have aspirations of rising in the classic, you know, revenue hierarchy second, I want you to go your favorite marketer on your organization and make them listen to this episode and then say, Hey. You know, if we have a CRO we're part of the same team and you heard Warren say that I should be spending some time in marketing, same goes to you, Mr.

Marketer, you need to spend some time in

[00:35:51] Warren Zenna: a hundred percent marketing people into the sales side of the businesses. Really valuable. The S it's a, it's a great practice. I think a CRO should do some swaps like this on a regular basis, so that there's more Organic development of awareness between the people by those experiences.

It's not going to happen just by people sitting next to each other. You have to really be in it. So anyway, I think it a great, a great request. And I. Wholeheartedly agree that you should have your, your leaders listen to this and see what their thoughts are and take some how do you say B? I'm gonna use a big word, Daryl, be perspicacious and go forth and, you know, sit down with the marketing folks, even if you're not asked to, and just say, you know what, let's learn a little bit more about your world, you know?

Because here's why aside from you being a better salesperson, you going to be a better. Member of the team, you know, you're going to be smarter, you're going to increase your awareness and why wouldn't you want to learn, right. It's, it's a great exercise to increase the scope of your knowledge about a business.

And I think if you're hungry to learn that sitting in other departments that are close to you is a great way to develop your own personal career and develop your own skills.

[00:37:01] Darryl Praill: Perspicacious. And I say that right. Having a, a ready answer. And understanding in iReady insight into and understanding of things.

There we go. So perspicacious. Eschew, this is a rich language class.

[00:37:17] Warren Zenna: They've posted these, rocking it.

[00:37:20] Darryl Praill: And trust me, you think he's pretty smart? Don't you? It's formulating how you view Warren. Well, guess what? You can learn all you want to about Warren at thecrocollective.com. Share it with your boss again.

That's for CROs and aspiring as CROs if you like what Warren's talking about. Zenna consulting group. Of course, Zenna consulting.com. Warren, I'm going to guess, but you correct me, please. If I'm wrong, is LinkedIn the best way to get ahold of you?

[00:37:47] Warren Zenna: Absolutely. Just DME. I I'm pretty responsive if as long as it's. DM spam. I'm very responsive to people writing me on LinkedIn. I like it. That's a good place to start.

[00:37:58] Darryl Praill: So in other words, I've personalized the invite. Hey, heard you on exactly.

I heard you. I heard you on the show was great. I talked to you. I love having these conversations with people. Feel free to do so.

And that's Warren Zenna and if you're using the URL, it's linkedin.com/in/warrenZ or for the rest of the world, including Canada, Warren Zed, because Hey, Zed is that we all know that. Just admit it folks. All right. That's it. We're at a time folks. I enjoy today's conversation instead of it being one about outward skills and how you can drive revenues about inward skills, understanding your career, understanding how you fit within the organization and what you need to know to better equip yourself for success.

Go make a friend today with somebody in success. Go make a friend with somebody in marketing for the goodness for goodness sake, do not ever, ever, ever say sales is the engine that makes this rocket fly. It is not. It is however, an integral integral component without the whole rock. This puppy never gets off the ground.

[00:39:06] Warren Zenna: Yep.

[00:39:07] Darryl Praill: My name's Daryl that's worn and you, my friend are listening to another episode of the inside inside sales show. We shall see you next week. Bye-bye.

This episode was digitally transcribed.

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