****Please forgive any and all transcription errors as this was transcribed by Otter.ai.****

(Music - shark theme)

Kenneth Kinney 0:16

Hello and welcome back to A Shark’s Perspective.

Kenneth Kinney 0:18

So we're at an interesting point in time when businesses have been severely affected by the Coronavirus pandemic. Is the pendulum swinging, though, in a direction that a lot of marketers and businesses may be a little uncomfortable with, but have to pivot to more heavily because so many businesses need more customers in order to thrive, let alone survive. But what does that mean? Do you have the right mindset? And are you focused on growth while still being focused on your customer?

Kenneth Kinney 0:44

Brett Trainor is a business consultant and growth strategist focused on helping entrepreneurs scale their businesses to 1 million and he's also the host of the podcast hardwired for growth.

Kenneth Kinney 0:55

And on this episode, we'll discuss growth mindsets and strategies focus on the customer hacks versus fundamentals, CRO CTOs and CMOS sales enablement attribution fluffy marketing, goal alignment, Shark Week, JAWS, roundhouse kicks, Bavarians and a lot, lot more.

Kenneth Kinney 1:10

So let's tune into a growth strategist with a shark who strategies and charisma will just grow on your heart, the more you listen on this episode of A Shark’s Perspective.

[intro music]

Kenneth Kinney 1:25

Brett, thank you so much for joining us today on A Shark’s Perspective. If you could tell the audience a little bit about your background and your career today. Sure, it's

Brett Trainor 1:33

Absolutely my pleasure to be here. And it was hate to admit it's now 25 plus years, probably closing in on 30 in the b2b space. And it's been kind of a me bouncing between both enterprise and startup. But I think one of the unique perspectives from my career is the fact that I had the opportunity to lead a number of different customer facing functions such as sales, customer success, demand gen. Can't forget customer service. In my last corporate role, I was actually responsible for sales enablement, and operations. So what I do today is predominantly work with, you know, mostly first time founders and early stage companies with their their growth strategies and their execution.

Kenneth Kinney 2:19

So we met through a mutual friend of ours who's in the lead gen space, but you you do a podcast as well. And I was a guest on your show, I understand at least based off what I've imagined in my own mind, and told other people that it was your most fascinating episode ever, though. hardwired for growth?

Brett Trainor 2:39

Yes. And Absolutely. That was our top performing episode.

Kenneth Kinney 2:43

Check it out here.

Brett Trainor 2:44

You were one of my favorite guests, because I love the guests that bring the the authenticity to the program, right, obviously, with your expertise in background is really strong, but it's the engaging guests that drive the My biggest audiences. So I do appreciate you taking the time to spend some with our show.

Kenneth Kinney 3:03

Absolutely. No, I've listened to several episodes myself. And it's one of the reasons that sort of pulled this back together. So today, you're really functioning more as a business coach and advisor focused on growth. Correct. And that's, that's what you're doing primarily day to day. That is true, yes. And you mostly focus on just providing hacks to businesses, right? Just kidding,

Brett Trainor 3:22

anti hack, I'm more of a foundational, I'm a no hacks approach to growth. I've always been a big advocate of their time and place that you can hack some growth if you need really short term. But if you're looking to get to scalable, long term growth, it has to be foundational and not hacks. So my podcast takes a slightly different tact. Some other other folks that are looking for the, you know, get quick, rich, or get rich, quick type of schemes.

Kenneth Kinney 3:52

Yeah, I don't know when we ever took the focus why it was a good thing to stop focusing on the blocking and tackling, but it drives me nuts. And I remember talking to a group that ran a conference that had hack in the name and I reminded them that shortcuts were not a long term solution, anything but it's just become sort of the word of the day. So, you know, I know you mentioned this, and you mentioned this on your website as well. But a lot of us that have been in the growth mode for most of our careers have run into highs and lows, but what are some of the growth challenges that you've overcome? Whether it was small businesses, large businesses, and then really, how are you taking what you've learned? Hopefully there have been some good failures like the rest of us that are open to admit to them and you know, use those to help your clients and people grow.

Brett Trainor 4:40

Yeah, as as usual your timings impeccable, actually, depending on when this this episode goes live, you know, posted something this morning about one of my greatest failures, you know, turned it into one of my greatest lessons, which is when I was approaching growth early on, and even with, you know, a couple of my startups I was approaching it as a one dimensional problem, right? I need to have the right salesperson in place that's really going to grow the business or in some cases, if I had the right Facebook ad that was going to, you know, help me grow the business. And, you know, we're what it really came around to realize is it's it's gotta be an integrated approach between, you know, it seems intuitive, but, you know, with your branding strategy and content strategy and your direct direct response, but a lot of people don't pay attention to the process in place to once you get those people that are interested in your product or service, you know, how do you get them all the way through their, you know, their their journey, and especially with companies that are younger, growing or just starting to scale? You know, they may do a good job of generating some of those leads, but then the ability to process and get those folks, not only through your funnel, but into the organization is a scramble, and it's not repeatable, and it just causes friction in that process.

Kenneth Kinney 6:02

Do you think that you did more of a focus on that? Because you were running sales, as opposed to focusing on marketing? I'm with you, but I'm, but I always think of the mindset I had when I was in a sales mode versus when I was had a marketing hat on?

Brett Trainor 6:18

Yeah, it's a great question. And, you know, sometimes they make the traditionalists in the sales world mad. Yeah, because they did kind of grow up in the sales side. But then, you know, working in lead gen and demand gen before marketing automation, right, our team was the marketing automation process. It really came to understand that my view, and I'd love to get your perspective is that sales today is really an execution arm of your demand generation strategy. And the days of cold calling, and just banging, you know, growth out one call at a time or one email at a time or one appointment at a time is really hard and almost impossible. And you know, with the way the buyers, you know, behaviors and expectations have changed. If your strategy is still leading with sales, and then supporting with demand gen and marketing. I think you're just you're creating an uphill battle that you don't need to create.

Kenneth Kinney 7:16

Oh, I agree. No, it does completely. And I think the same thing has happened to a pretty significant degree with with LinkedIn and how we connect on most of social channels today, because you find people both marketing and sales that lead with trying to sell you something from the get go. And I, you know, I use sort of a goofy analogy on occasion when describing dating, it seems like, you know, people if they were dating, you know, we're hoping to date someone that they start off, metaphorically kind of talking about, you know, going to third base, before you've even met them or know who their name is. And it's, it's just jumping so far ahead. And they haven't taken the time to get to know you. They haven't bought you dinner taken me to a movie, anything. It's just, it's just very interesting how it's gotten worse and worse and worse. But I think, at least for me, whenever I had the sales hat on, I probably was more more arrogant and more myopically focused on, I can fix this just with my sales strategy. And then marketers thought they could fix it with a lot of other things. But really, it's come down to reading the tea leaves of the consumers and what their behavior is whether you're a marketer or a salesperson, but I agree with you that that sales and marketing needs to function better together. It's it's more the execution arm. People are not wanting to pick up the phone by any stretch like they used to. So yeah,

Brett Trainor 8:45

I agree with you. And I think I love that analogy, too. Because I think of my time spent between sales and marketing and you know, Legion that sits in there. And if you look at the traditional way that marketing was hit marketing, qualified leads, right? Hey, qualified, they downloaded downloaded five white papers and, you know, signed up for my email, let's pass this sales. And sales is like, hey, let's get married, does your dating analogy and you know, the, the buyer doesn't want to get married yet. And so sales said, Hey, this was not a good lead. And so I think, to your point, there's an entire middle ground between the marketing qualified lead and the buyer ready to take that commitment step. That's the biggest gap between in small, large, you know, medium size businesses that it I think, is a newer, maybe it's not a newer challenge. I just think buyer expectations are changing the way that they're going to proceed with that process. Right. In the old days, there was no other choice. You follow the sales process of a company because there were no alternatives and, you know, it's just what you did, but now I think, you know, that's changing and organizations, some are doing a better job and others kind of migrating and aligning with The buyer around their process versus forcing him into a sales process,

Kenneth Kinney 10:05

it would really behoove a lot of marketers to work for five minutes in some sales capacity. Because ultimately, if you're working for business, whatever your title is, you're trying to help grow that business. That's, that's why they got you employed, you may sit in some function that is not directly sales, but everybody needs to understand how to draw that customer in, in again, sell them your product or service, and then know what it's like to keep selling them to keep them. I don't mean upsell, necessarily, I mean, keep romancing them throughout the history of your marriage, because you got to continue to sell to them over and over and earn their love and appreciation over a lifetime of marriage, not just as a one, one time sale, that's where marketing can really soften that approach long term. But I do think that both sides need to learn a lot more about each other think sales enablement, as a whole is something that's so horribly missed. And not everybody wants to buy everything. On an E commerce channel. If you're buying, for example, a massive ERP system, you're typically not going to go to, you know, Amazon and click and buy. And there's a lot more, there's a lot more understanding how the sales process works, than just under just believing that they've consumed to your point 20 Different PDFs and having worked on the brand side, both in tech and then both in in a lot of consumer products. Marketers should help drive a lot more traffic to a sales place for the for the consumer, but sales teams need to also understand how to get them there a lot better. And that's been so much of a shift for people because they took the focus off of the customer. And that's what hurts. So out of curiosity, as you looked and went over your career and decided to go into the business advisor role. Why did you decide to go into that role as opposed to being head of sales head of marketing or head of growth?

Brett Trainor 11:57

Yeah, it's a great question. Because majority of my career like said on the corporate side was at enterprise level companies and, you know, learning the ropes through practitioner roles, and you could see the silos, right? You see him, even if you're just in one of them, you know, they're there. But learning the inner workings of each of those departments just realized what a big disconnect that there was, you know, and I think it comes back to operating budgets, right, their goals aren't aligned. So your operating budgets are tied to those independent goals. And, you know, I spent a number of years in management consulting, before working with startups, and it was heavily focused on you know, the upper tier, the mid market, and enterprise. And a lot of the time, it just felt like I was screaming from the mountaintops, right? Hey, it's coming digital buyers digital transformation, it's not just a buzzword, the way people buy are going to change. And it was really hard to get those organizations to see the bigger picture. Now you can make incremental improvements by you know, optimizing a CRM within the sales organization, or improve, you know, the definition and quantity of leads between sales and marketing. But unless you're working with the CEO, who really saw the pain of you know, slowed growth, because of this, it was hard to, it was hard to make a difference. So I'm like, Well, if I can still make an impact, maybe I can help companies build, right do the right strategies and processes to take advantage of the new market dynamics versus trying to get somebody to tear down and protect, right, what they, you know, they've been doing for 20 or 30 years. So that was one of the biggest reasons that I made this switch is, I think I can make more of an impact. Sure.

Kenneth Kinney 13:49

So one of the things I know we've talked about this before, but I'm curious now that you're talking to a lot of entrepreneurs and small businesses, how much of their growth strategy is focused on marketing versus sales?

Brett Trainor 14:03

Not enough, I think is kind of the the blanket universal statement and, you know, part of my podcast and some of the interviews that I do I ask, you know, what is the one thing you know, that you would have done differently as part of your growth journey and to a person it was I would have started marketing earlier? Yeah. It starts with a crawl where it's usually the founder that's doing sales, maybe a little bit of marketing, but it's a lot of that hand to hand combat to really understand what the customers want. And I think that's where the the Delta comes right now. We know how to sell right this product, we know what buyers want, we know what problems are having, let's bring on a salesperson to help you know close more deals and drive more business but yet they neglected to kind of fuel the engine which goes back to the marketing side of it. And you and I have had conversation about you know, content versus branding versus directory. response. And you know what that right mix, but I would say the vast majority of these founders aren't investing early enough in in that core function to help them, you know, build that scalable growth, they're still trying to add bodies to do hand to hand combat versus, you know, building a growth engine, for lack of a better word.

Kenneth Kinney 15:19

Yeah. And I want to get your thoughts on that as well. Because one of the things that I think prior to COVID-19, we've seen so much of a bull market, that we were free to discuss a lot of different things that were important, all important content, marketing, social media, all the different things that are not necessarily sales, growth related, they all have a wonderful place, being more human with your content, digital transformation, all these things, incredibly important. But now that we're looking at a world, you know, that'll be post COVID, I think there's going to be a shift in where a lot of the pressure is going to be just for survival. And it's going to shift back to sales, just like a big company today, you know, their numbers that they've got to hit, they'll have some adjustment on forecasts in these different quarters coming ahead, but the year after COVID-19, when the world is hopefully back in, in a much better place. Depending on when somebody's listening to this, we could see the same kind of reprioritization of less of a call it fluffy marketing. And there's a place for fluffy marketing and for everything, you know, with hearts and cares and shares around it. There's a place I don't want to get out of that. But I'm just really curious what your thoughts are on is this going to drive a pretty significant amount of shift towards growth related tactics and strategies as opposed to stuff that's

Brett Trainor 16:52

more fluffy? Well, now I think how

Kenneth Kinney 16:54

much of it is going to be how much of it's going to hit the wallet as opposed to hit the heart now, again, agreed, if you want to hit somebody's heart, and keep them for the next 10 years, as opposed to making a sale? With a quick offer? It just It depends on the timing, but but I think a lot of the focus is going to rapidly shift.

Brett Trainor 17:14

Yeah, I think I think you're right. And it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. Because I think what's going to happen is it's going to expose very quickly, to frauds, right, the people that were still taking what I would call more of the hardcore tactics and bullying tactics, and, you know, the hard sell, which just we've seen, I think over the last five years, the effectiveness is really starting to dwindle. And I think this is just going to expose it and where companies that have doing the right things and focused on the relationships with their customers, yes. And building the relationships will prosper in this because it's not new for them, right, this is what they have been doing. I do think you will see more of an awareness of where each of those dollars are going. I do think there's, you know, you know, the buzzword, and maybe it's not even a buzzword. But I do think there's a ton of value in the content marketing. And I do think that's foundational. But it has to have a purpose, right? It's got to be intentional, what you're doing just don't create content for the sake of content. And I think the companies that will will come out of this better than others are the ones that understand the value of those dollars in each of those areas. But yet, I still think the core will be whether we call it sales or relationship is that that the human contact they have as part of the buyers journey will become even more valuable as they go through it.

Kenneth Kinney 18:46

Well, to jump in, I don't even think that I don't even think that. Well, I think it'll put a renewed focus on attribution really understanding where your dollars convert, but there's so many marketers, who I think with good intentions, believe wholeheartedly that their sales is driving growth, because they can track it. And I get that. But maybe that's an example of where people can put a little, maybe a little more pressure to driving growth sooner, as opposed to, to your point, not just an abundance of content. Now, I don't know if that's necessarily the best example. But 100% agree with your point that if somebody is if brands are more focused on their customers, the ones that are either too fluffy or too direct response ish are going to be exposed even more than the ones that have been valuing that relationship with a customer to keep them going. It should make a significant difference trying to figure out what your customer actually wants and needs as opposed to stuff that doesn't matter or stuff that only sells

Brett Trainor 19:52

Yeah, no, I think you're you're 100% Right. And you know as you're going through it made me think that you know we talked about it The content or the attribution, right, which is been an age old question between sales and marketing. And, you know, you would think we're at the point where you'd want 100% attribution for for anything, right? Customers come to the website, they said, Do you want to talk to one of your specialists that, you know, through the journey there, you know, online offline moving through. And one of the areas that I was looking at, I was curious, you know, because I was been in this space long enough to remember when we actually had a true chief revenue officer that had responsibility for both sales and marketing. And, you know, over the years, we got away from that two silos grew, this specialization grew. And so I actually went out on a search to see can I find a true chief revenue officer to understand how they're managing the, you know, the the investment dollars in it. And you know, how many I found, now, this is going back about eight months, I found two true Chief Revenue officers that own both sales marketing, in both cases, customer success. So it was the true customer relationship. And the way they were prioritizing was, look, I have a revenue number to hit, I've got a target that I need to hit. And I can pull the levers between sales and marketing, and where I need the resources to make the investments and not fighting a political battle or finger pointing of doing that. So I would love to see, you know, that come back, or at least with a shared revenue goal, because then you can kind of get away from it. And I know, we're talking about larger organizations. But when you take that, that back down to growing organizations, it's the same thing that you really want to understand where you're getting the return off of those dollars. And even if it's origination, or the different touch points, when you're not battling about who gets credit for it, it's going to make that a much, much easier process.

Kenneth Kinney 21:56

Oh, great. Well, and you know, even smaller organizations, a lot of times they hire people who get tired of the big organizations, and then whoever's running that company wants them to basically put their own twist on it, but replicate what they've done it somewhere else, and grow it into that kind of organization. That's, that's the goal for a lot of companies. And then they set up some of the same bad practices and the siloing begins. But if we could align all the goals on the front end, you know, and again, keep those focused on customers, as opposed to the individual silos and who gets credit, it would sure make a lot of difference. But there's been such a focus over the last few years with changes in the titles from cmo to Cgo, with a chief growth officer, and a lot of the chief growth officers have been just salespeople who didn't understand marketing, or the customers well, so I mean, it's it's an understandable that it's in a lot of flux, because there's value to both sides. And it would make a lot better marketer and salesperson if they understood what's really important and what's really not. But let's back up then, and talk about something you mentioned earlier, but the value of the sales enablement process, what was your part? What did you sort of learn as a salesperson working with marketing teams as to the value of that, because I still don't think a lot of people understand the value of that process and communication, they understand the drive to drive higher quality leads, and more of them will always make the sales team happier, but kind of unpack and expand upon that what you saw throughout your career was sales enablement.

Brett Trainor 23:34

Yeah. And sales enablement was a relatively newer function. You know, this is going back to what 2014 2015 where it was just started, you know, and I like to separate or distinguish between sales enablement, sales ops, right sales ops, I, like, you know, keep the trains running on time and you know, going where they're supposed to go and sales enablement is how do we carry more people and get the trains going quicker, right? So it's almost revenue enablement to go through the process. And where I found the biggest opportunity was between those two groups sales and marketing, speaking the same language as the customer, you know, we ended up spending a lot of time with toolkits that marketing could use on the front end that was speaking the language of the customer in their verticals, with their lack of better term jargon and the way they talk about their problems all the way through when you know that lawyer or plumber or you know, whatever it is going to be, you know is now interconnecting with your sales rep. Or in some cases, you could go from, you know, marketing online to an SDR lead gen, which then transitions to a sales then you get onboarding customer service. We found one of the biggest benefits was to get everybody speaking the same language. So it didn't feel like they were working with, you know, potentially four or five companies. As they were going through the through the buying process,

Kenneth Kinney 25:04

how did you go about getting there,

Brett Trainor 25:06

it was a lot of manual work to build those toolkits into it taking the time to actually basically verticalized, our demand gen team and our sales team. So they could focus in, like, speak the language of those customers and understand in a much greater depth, what the problems were that they were having. So they could be, you know, more empathetic with the customer and understand what they were going through versus, you know, where we traditionally see, you know, features and benefits, this is what we do. So really trying to change that conversation to the problems that we're solving, versus like said that traditional features and benefits. And it wasn't easy, but it definitely helped in maybe not net new leads that were coming through, but it helped in the conversion of, you know, prospects to, you know, customers over that duration. I think that's even more critical today than it was, you know, even five years ago.

Kenneth Kinney 26:10

So with all the brands, you work with small to medium sized businesses today, what is the number one thing that you see that's a problem in a sales and marketing role to get them more hardwired for growth, to borrow the name of your podcast, but what do you think is the number one thing to help them grow from a sales and marketing function that they need?

Brett Trainor 26:31

Yeah, I think it's alignment around the customer. And sharing what that alignment looks like we went through an exercise with a fairly large, I guess, is a billion dollar company. And looking at it, the impetus of this was really a new technology stack that they were looking for. But before implementing a new CRM, and an E commerce and a marketing automation platform, they really wanted to understand and make sure that the business and the processes were where they needed to be. So the exercise we actually led them through was, hey, let's not worry about who does what, but let's look at the tasks, the activities and basically create the workflows from, you know, the first time somebody interacts with your content all the way to, you know, submitting a contract and getting them on boarded and set up into the system, and work on those key activities. And not just what you do today. But, you know, align it with the way the buyer wants to buy, right, if you're making them pick up a phone and calling your orders, and they're more than happy to just, you know, login online and select what they want. So I think that exercise was really powerful in getting them to see differently, how, you know, aligning with that customer through the buying process changes the way they were thinking about doing business. Now, the challenge was, you still had three different silos that then had to figure out who was gonna go do what, through that process. But it created a much better alignment between the sales and the selling organization, what the buyer was going through, and easy. So and I feel for these older, more established companies that were basically built in eras, maybe too strong a word, but they were not built for the way people buy today, right with the digital and online. And even if you don't multimillion dollar purchases, 90 percents probably done online now where it wasn't before and just the way they're structured and tried to realign that is not an easy process. And, you know, I think part of what we're starting to see is some startups in, you know, what were traditionally legacy b2b businesses coming in, because they're more nimble, they're more agile, they can align better with, you know, what the customer wants, and it's putting a lot more pressure on some of these larger, more established orgs.

Kenneth Kinney 29:00

So what do you think for a person who wants to change a lot of their focus to become again, more hardwired for growth, which is a fantastic name still mad that you got it and I couldn't get it. But you know, for somebody to really change that mindset to be more focused on growth, what are you attributed the most to, it's not just having been in sales, a pretty good chunk of your career, either. At least what we talked about a little bit today is a lot of this growth is going to have to be driven including from marketing because it's where a lot of the shift is has gone from, from sales to marketing, and but there's still a correlation but for anybody in any role, especially on the leadership side, to understand how their team becomes more growth oriented or within their own roles. What's your advice?

Brett Trainor 29:50

I think it start with the customer. You know, we talk about the customer journey and some companies do a good job they'll do you know surveys and talk about satisfied action. But where I've seen the most value come out of that process is if you're actually surveying or third party surveying, you know, some prospects that became customers that went through your entire process, and provide feedback. I think one of the things, and I think it'll be intuitive to some folks is if you look at your overall customer lifecycle, and it really specifically from prospect to onboarding, look at that customer experience, right? How much friction is in that process. And if it's just a little bit of friction, you make it a little bit difficult for the buyer to purchase from you, you may be able to get around that with, you know, solid people, and you know, the right skill sets. But if you really take a hard look at the customer experience through that journey, and identify all the friction points, that's where I would start, right, start with the customer, you can't go wrong with that. And that just ask them, but look at the data, right, it's also going to tell you, where where the opportunities lie. And I think if if you take that type of focus, it's going to be hard to argue, you know, against some of the recommendations or improvements, you know, that would need to be made. Because if you look at, you know, the companies that are winning, are doing things really well their processes are seamless, or at least minimize, you know, friction with the customers and if you think about hardwired for growth, and you know, if you want to use the analogy of a car and an engine, right, if you've got gunk or the tires are old, and you know that entire process isn't streamlined, you know, you're not going to go as fast as maybe you could have and I think that's that's where I would start start with customers start with the customer experience, and then work backwards from there and fix you know, the bigger gaps first and then look to optimize across their journey. Well, that makes sense.

Kenneth Kinney 31:58

It does indeed, well Brett you listen to the show before so you know the drill. This is where we're gonna get to know you a little bit better. You're on a sharks perspective. So I have to ask like I do all my my guests. What is your favorite kind of shark and why?

Brett Trainor 32:12

Yeah, I can honestly say that I've never seen a shark in person other than you know, the Shedd Aquarium

Kenneth Kinney 32:18

doesn't count because they don't have they have a very small amount of sharks.

Brett Trainor 32:23

Right and but you know, I actually thought about Texas I do listen to your show and like man, like he gets super clever and pick some obscure you know, ancient shark but you know, I'm still going back to with the great white right, I'm just intrigued by that. That shark you know, the strength, the speed, the power, you know, I think it gets a bad name too. And I know you're a diver and can speak to it that man if you're not out causing trouble for it, you may just be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But they're really not out to bother you. So I think Shark Week gives them a bad name and I think I wrote a book when I was in third or fourth grade about shark attacks which is not good reading for somebody at that age, but you know, if you had to put me down to it that's the that's the the one shark I would have to lean towards being my favorite.

Kenneth Kinney 33:12

Well, you know, part of the problem is that Shark Week and jaws Jaws especially me gave gave shark such a bad name. It's a wonderful movie though. As far as movies go, you know, you're locked in there's nothing more suspenseful. But you know, when you watch most of the Shark Week stuff, they show a shark attacking a seal not most of them most of the shows are not how to you know protect yourself and because you're gonna die and other anything but that the most of the most of the shows are about saving great whites or tagging them and things like that. Not all of them are about him being a deadly killer, but then the graphics that they put behind them all a horrible and there's blood and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, it's half a dozen one versus the other. I think most people once they spend any time in the water with them, whether they're diving or snorkeling, or you'll notice that they're not pit bulls on the attack. And so anyway, well Brett said special time this show. Are you ready for the five most interesting, important or rather most ridiculous questions that you're going to be asked today?

Brett Trainor 34:15

I was born ready.

Kenneth Kinney 34:17

All right, here we go. Number one, marketing or sales?

Brett Trainor 34:25

If I had to pick one, this day and age I would lead with marketing.

Kenneth Kinney 34:31

Number two deep dish pizza from Lupo noddy's or a cheeseburger at Billy Goat Tavern? Notice that it's specifically as cheeseburger cheeseburger.

Brett Trainor 34:41

You did it and very well done. I am more of a pizza it's my kryptonite. It's my weakness, and getting me a good deep dish or stuffed piece especially for Malnati I'd love a cheeseburger but I could not pass up the pizza.

Kenneth Kinney 34:56

Yeah, I would say the same. You know what my biggest problem with Billy Goat Tavern is historically, they haven't even taken credit cards. So if you want to not pay for your lunch, if you're going with anybody, at least up until a couple of years ago, it was, you know, don't walk in or just walk in with cash and then looks looks stupid, but you can order it through GrubHub, which is weird. So number three, the this is a modern day transformation that we're seeing chief marketing officer or chief growth officer?

Brett Trainor 35:27

who I think it comes back to our our discussion on what their responsibilities are, but I would lean towards the growth officer, and hopefully that will incorporate the marketing and the customer and potentially sale. So just based on definition and name, I would go with growth. That's not really the clean answer you are looking for?

Kenneth Kinney 35:52

Well, no, I don't know that there. I don't know if there's a I think every, I think it makes sense to have a Cgo completely. But so far, I haven't seen enough CTOs, at least what I've seen have enough focus on customers. It's some sort of pendulum swing, some of the CMOS have been treated unfairly, if you look at their shelf life, they've been judged on sales. Now you've got people that are focused on sales historically. And that means that there's there's going to be some alienation of the customer, your customer count shouldn't just be a tally. It should also be the number of relationships, for example, you have, if that makes sense. And that's what worries me, I'm still gonna, they're not just another notch on the belt with your quarterly numbers. So

Brett Trainor 36:39

No, I think they're in just to add on to that, if I may just hurt quickly, because it's, you know, one of my pet peeves, too, is, you know, this day and age, everything isn't about that instant gratification with the customers, it's, Hey, if I can't close this guy now, you know, discard them where, you know, they may just need another six months or 12 months, and you've got to kind of build, you know, the bed of roses, right with seeds and flowers that you know, in six months from now, 12 months from now, you can reap the rewards by taking the time to nurture, you know, some of those folks that aren't quite ready to buy yet. So, you know, I think that's such a good point on your part that sometimes we get so short sighted that if they can't close, right, then they're of no value, and it's just a numbers count with customers. But it doesn't, you know, it's hard to predict, you know, three 612 months out. But if you're not putting the effort in now to do that, you're always going to be in that that short term battle.

Kenneth Kinney 37:35

Yeah, that makes sense. No, it does. It does completely I use this a lot in shows, sort of a my back takes, but I talk about it with martial arts, it's not necessarily the best analogy when talking about the customer. But when you're in the roles that we're in to help companies grow, sort of, you sort of have to approach it like you're a mixed martial artist. And if you think about martial arts over the years, you know, you had your karate guys, your taekwondo guys, I've been in martial arts, my whole life. I've studied all of these different a lot of the different forms rather. And in no one of them do I necessarily. I mean, I have black belts in several but I don't want to call myself a karate practitioner or a jujitsu practitioner. I mean, your best martial artists, mixed martial artists out there today, are ones that are well versed in a lot of the different skills. And I think that's part of the problem is, it's a hate that with CMO or Cgo, is even a question of one versus the other. I wish it was more of a focus of all the things all the skills you learn, still need to work together and then you keep that focus on the customer. Or in this bad example, your opponent, so yeah, don't roundhouse kick your your customer. That's the advice I'd give.

Brett Trainor 38:51

Now, I love that analogy. Because the other one I use off that a little bit is the MMA, right, the history of the mixed martial arts. And, you know, there was stage five years ago that it was the collegiate wrestlers that were dominated because it was a new skill, but then it emerged in the balance and it's the men you get the striker she got the jujitsu, you've got the the wrestlers, and it's the ones that can morph into you know, optimal right to beat their opponents seems to be the folks that are dominating now. So no, I love that analogy. Yeah.

Kenneth Kinney 39:23

All right. Number four. Really important donut question. Since you're exercising a lot now. Vanilla cream filled or Bavarian cream?

Brett Trainor 39:33

Oh, man, I thought you were gonna go jelly. But yeah, I wouldn't have I would go vanilla. I'm just more of a plain versus and nothing wrong with the Bavarian Cream. But you know,

Kenneth Kinney 39:47

or the bear variant people. They're wonderful.

Brett Trainor 39:50

Absolutely. Absolutely. Never lead from a doughnut.

Kenneth Kinney 39:54

Exactly. Exactly. And the most important your question that you're going to be asked today is biscuits or cornbread?

Brett Trainor 40:01

Whew. You know what I think I've my taste buds have changed over the years and I would go with cornbread. Now I would have started with biscuits, but there's just something about a good....

Kenneth Kinney 40:14

Well you live. And you went to school in Iowa also, I mean, it was kind of I kind of expected cornbread, your corn people Fair enough. You knocked down a cornfield to build a baseball stadium with Kevin Costner. So

Brett Trainor 40:29

that's not me, per se. But you know, but because I grew up on the biscuits and gravy. Yeah, my mom's so it was maybe actually just over abundance of that in the early days. Yeah, well, it does something a little slightly different.

Kenneth Kinney 40:43

Well, Brett, where can people find out more about you? Listen to the podcast, keep up with what you're doing. And more?

Brett Trainor 40:49

Yeah, I think you know, all the information you can find on my website, which is Brett trainer.com. And that's with three t so BRETTTR A EIN or, or looking me up and hit me up on LinkedIn. Same name, happy to connect and have conversations with both folks, you know of organizations of any sizes. As you can probably tell from our conversation, you know, it's a passion for me, and I love to I love to to have these conversations.

Kenneth Kinney 41:16

Well, Brett, I know you and I'll be talking a lot in the future. But just once a big thank you. And thank you again for being with us today on a shark's perspective.

Brett Trainor 41:24

That was my pleasure. I had a lot of fun, appreciate it.

[music]

Kenneth Kinney 41:32

So that was my conversation with Brett Trainor, a business consultant and growth strategist, focused on helping entrepreneurs scale their business. And he's also the host of the podcast Hardwired for Growth. Let's take a look at three key takeaways from my conversation with him.

Kenneth Kinney 41:45

First, I joke with Brett about his own show and how he doesn't do hacks. And I'm not a massive fan of them either. We've gotten in a very hack oriented world. But he makes a great point that I'll quote when he said, if you're looking to scalable long term growth, it has to be foundational and not hacks. I couldn't agree more with that hacks are fine for little fixes. Just never lose sight of the long term way to grow business and stay focused on the customer.

Kenneth Kinney 42:06

Second, marketing and sales have unique functions. But there needs to be better sales enablement between the two. That includes not just if you hand off a lead, but also think about your CRM and how many mindless emails are sent because of a consumer downloading a white paper. Both sides need to understand each other's roles better with goals that are aligned, and then work on fixing so many of those processes. I could go on about this subject for the next day and a half. But quite simply, there are a lot of blown opportunities because of this. And it's not one sides fault. I really wish that more marketing people could work a day, if you will, in sales to understand that function. And I wish that more salespeople would do the same in marketing. Brett says though, that the entrepreneurs he's talking to today all say that they wish they could have started marketing early, because marketing is more focused on customers. And I say that as well.

Kenneth Kinney 42:50

Third, so we're at an interesting tipping point in the mindset shift to actual growth, they're not some other growth metric, or trackable metric that doesn't matter will even be more critical for survival for marketers and businesses today. And this isn't intended to promote hard selling. A lot of those bad actors will have to get away from that the marketing will see a lot more pressure to drive that growth. So be ready align your goals align around the customer and share what that looks like.

Kenneth Kinney 43:14

Got a question? Send me an email to Kenneth at a shark's perspective.com.

Kenneth Kinney 43:18

Thank you again for the privilege of your time, as he adds changes inevitable. The growth is optional. In listening the show is undeniable or at least add to that last part. So join us on the next episode of A Shark’s Perspective.

(Music - shark theme)