The Art of Aligning Sales and Marketing: Insights from Clark Barron

Overview:

In this episode of Tea Time with Tech Marketing Leaders, Kerry Guard talks with Clark Baron, an expert in account-based marketing (ABM). Clark shares his insights on crafting personalized marketing strategies, the importance of alignment between sales and marketing teams, and how to effectively measure ABM success. Discover practical tips and learn how to create impactful campaigns that resonate with key accounts

Transcript:

Kerry Guard 0:03

Hello, I'm Kerry Guard, and Welcome to Tea Time with tech market leaders. Welcome back to the show. So grateful to have you if you're here with us, you're live. Say hello, we want to know you're here and we look forward to your questions which I hope you have them in spades because it is a time-old question we've been trying to answer for years and the audience has changed and how we show for them has changed. And we're going to revisit this question of how we show up for those for our audience as both sales and marketing together as one. I know. I know. Are we done with this yet? We're not clear. I am here today with the one and only Clark Baron. I said Clark came out of the woodwork. I don't know how you all feel about this, this human but for me, for me, he came out of the woodwork like a shotgun like he was no he was he I didn't see him in that obviously solid myself everywhere. And I said who is this human and I must know, which is why he is here with us. Today. Let me give you a little background about Clarke so that we're all on the same page of why he is on my show, because he has a cybersecurity marketer and he has had an interesting journey which we are going to hear in a second a little background as the founder and CEO of demand gen therapy. Clark creates a sanctuary for marketing professionals to be real, be heard, and be understood is what we're all seeking in the world period. With over 15 years of experience in strategizing and executing multi-channel campaigns. He has a passion for uncovering and sharing the raw, unfiltered, and authentic stories that lie beneath the surface of marketing narratives. He also leverages his expertise in growing marketing, cybersecurity, and b2b strategy to help clients expose and exploit I have questions about the word gaps in their marketing strategies and tactics. It's transforming weakness into levers for unstoppable demand generation. He's insecure market position he attacks growth head on delivering value-driven content, targeted buyer journeys, and Ottomans-optimized media channels that boost ROI and conversion rates. Wow. What a charity. What attorney? Hi, Trevor. Good to see you, sir. And Clark, welcome. Welcome.

Clark Barron: 2:38

Thanks for having me here. I'm super happy. To be honest.

Kerry Guard 2:43

It's been a long time coming. We're excited to have you and to unpack all of the things. We all have the things before we peel back the multiple multiple opinions on multiple things. Sweet T-shirts. Yes, Trevor? We will. We'll make that happen. We'll look at that.

Clark Barron: 3:02

We'll get to my obsession with Costco.

Kerry Guard 3:04

I miss Costco I moved to the UK three years ago and I gotta say Target and Costco up there.

Clark Barron: 3:10

You've Tesco, don't you?

Kerry Guard 3:13

Same Tesco and Costco.

Clark Barron: 3:15

not same. Am I? Okay? No, I think I just heard that. At some point.

Kerry Guard 3:23

Whoever told you that worse? Well, I'm also not technically in the UK. I'm on a subset of the UK and we get like a subset of everything. We have a subset Waitrose we have a subset. Tesco we haven't. We have an alliance. We have a co-op. But we do not have a Costco. Gotcha or target when I would give her a target. Tangent get ready. We're gonna have lots of those. I love tangents.

Clark Barron: 3:53

Oh yeah, I've been known to really lean into my verbosity when it comes to waxing poetic about whatever I happen to be ranting about at any given moment. I think you know that about me

Kerry Guard 4:09

I do I've been paying attention to you Clark and your shot. Like I said, you came out of the woodwork out of nowhere, and you've been everywhere, and between your LinkedIn posts and your show? You have a lot to say, and we're gonna get to that. Why don't you tell us about your story, though, of you know, what do you do now and how you got there?

Clark Barron: 4:35

Yeah, so I was on the agency side for like the first half of my career and creative digital agencies, small ones, big ones. I was working with everybody from local bakeries and attorneys to on the other side of that coin, Exxon And Jimmy Buffett and everything in between that world, especially if you're early on in your career, and it'll chew you up and spit you out, you know, in house marketers, you have one client. agency side you have, you know, 47. Yeah. But yeah, so once I became just completely burned out and disillusioned before psi, on the agency side, every side yeah. I didn't know what I left that industry started taking some freelance gigs didn't really know what I wanted to do. So I ended up hiking the Appalachian Trail and almost didn't come back. Fair. Yeah, it's, they had to drag me kicking and screaming. But I had always romanticized cyber security, and InfoSec. And that that world, I was watching Jason E Street, talk at DEF CON, on YouTube, about physical engagements and pin testing years before I was ever in this industry, because it's, it's just one of the most awesome things ever. I don't know.

Kerry Guard 6:23

I'm sorry. I don't usually interrupt people on this. But I got to know how you found how you found that YouTube channel because it's not something that we just generally stumbled upon, which feels like you did. It's normally something we end up into our career by happenstance, but it feels like it. Yeah. You found it early on before you actually started marketing to it. So how did you find that YouTube channel?

Clark Barron: 6:47

No clue. I do not remember. I've actually tried to think about this before. And like how did like where did my brain get to that point? Like Mr. Robot was announced at that point? The other like whatever's in the pop culture Zeitgeist at the time, those magnets like they weren't around unless you count like the original Hackers movie or anything like that. Or were games? Oh, yeah. Yeah, so I've been watching a lot of pen testers, a lot of social engineers. It was just, that's the coolest stuff. Ever. It sounds cool. Like, you mean, you get paid to like, trick people into letting you into their server room. And then like you're trying to help them get better at security. And so you're like, you're running these physical engagements while people are like, trying to break web apps and stuff like that. Like what? To me that I guess that comes from my obsession with like-heist movies. If that's you know, there's no adjacent Does that make sense?

Kerry Guard 8:02

Yes. Yeah. So like, movies. Yeah. heist movie then.

Clark Barron: 8:13

The original Ocean's 11.

Kerry Guard 8:15

Yeah, right. The original with the little buggy. That was the first one that came to mind for me to

Clark Barron: 8:19

The Italian Job. Inside Man with Clive Owen. Extremely, extremely good. Yeah.

Kerry Guard 8:31

No, that one by No, Clive, I'm gonna go check it out. Oh, yeah.

Clark Barron: 8:37

But yeah, so I, I started to realize that a lot of what the, the social engineers and these pen testers, especially the ones that do physical engagements, I started noticing that a lot of the language that we're using, and a lot of the tactics and the psychology behind them, it sounds kind of familiar. Sounds like what I do, in a sense. And so it started to occur to me that a lot of the soft skills involved in red teaming, social engineering, are a lot. There are a lot of similarities between those and the ones of the skilled marketer. We're trying to access something, whether it be data, information, or account, get the attention at the end of the day, we're all just trying to get somebody to click on something right. And so to be clear, you're

Kerry Guard 9:40

it's an interesting dichotomy because you're talking about us as marketers trying to help people click on something to get to a to get to a solution on the flip side. Pen Testers are also trying to do that but from like a security will you click on this but I hope you don't It's sort of like, interesting to your point, psychological dichotomy of,

Clark Barron: 10:07

yeah,

Kerry Guard 10:08

it's not because we want you to click on it, but it's pentesters. We really help.

Clark Barron: 10:12

And that is one of the that one of the most difficult things for marketers in cybersecurity to realize is that, yes, pen testers do that like we build personas, malicious actors do recon. You know, they, they develop payloads to exploit vulnerabilities, we find pain points and develop tailored content that are ICP, like the similarities in the high-level architecture, like step-by-step of a cyber attack when compared to a marketing campaign.

Kerry Guard 10:54

Tell me the difference. Kinda similar, right? Also different outcomes, the hope of different outcomes.

Clark Barron: 11:02

Yeah, intent matters, intent. Intent matters, for sure. And so once my brain started moving in this completely unhinged direction. I got a little little Cavalier in my job hunting. And I applied to be a pen tester with zero technical experience whatsoever. Up in North Alabama, in Huntsville, there's a lot of security stuff InfoSec DoD contractors like Boeing, Raytheon, everybody's up here, NASA is up here. And so I sent an email. I knew there wasn't a job available. I just sent an email to this red teaming, firm, giant email where I just expired. Just lay it all out there. Because I was mid existential crisis, didn't know what I wanted to do. I was like, Ah, hell, we'll just see what happens. Yeah, exactly. So I sent this email, and it was made up of all these comparisons and laying out, you know, the side by sides of how those skills are similar and yada, yada, yada. But nothing just ghosted. Yeah, understandably, like what kind of maniac does that I get it. I was like, I just kind of wrote it off, whatever, you know. And so I continued to take freelancing gigs and whatnot. About a year, year and a half goes by, and I get a phone call. And it is the CEO of that red teaming firm. And he had founded his own security awareness training, startup. He said, I've been thinking about that email for over a year, I want you to come run my marketing department. So, I inadvertently, just kind of socially engineered my way into this industry.

Kerry Guard 13:08

And from then it was, because cybersecurity has like, this glorious, I think, by design, and also well-done moat sort of around it. Of, yep, you can't get into the industry, unless you sort of know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody, which happened for us, right? So like, we got brought in through a client, who left one company found their way into a cybersecurity company brought us in. And then once you're in cyber, you tend to leave and go to the next thing, leave and go to the next thing, and it's all in cyber. And so that's how we, as a company, were able to find our way into working with these amazing companies on our true mission to make the world a better place. Thank God somebody is. So it is interesting that you sort of set out your normal people sort of, I don't wanna say find their way, but like, they have an adjacent parallel to it of like, they apply for a job. And then there are parallels there, and then they make the leap for fear you're after it, you're like, Nope, this is what I want to do. I want to be in cyber, I'm gonna do this thing. And well, break that email down. For me. I think we're all sort of curious of like, what could you have said that would stick with somebody for a year for them to figure out where it made sense to bring you in? What was it in that email? I got to know? Well, the edge of my seat here, Clark.

Clark Barron: 14:38

So I remember distinctly saying, I know that you're probably laughing at all this. And I promise you that there is no way that I could write a single line of Python, but I guarantee you I can convince someone to let me into their server room. And it was that kind of, yeah. Make them remember you whether they think you're a psychopath or not make them remember you. But I think I've made a pretty, pretty decent case. For the, for perhaps shifting perspective and looking outside of super technical roles of like, there are other people that would be good at this. You're just not looking at him, you know? So maybe maybe that was it. While I was at that company, he actually wanted me to go to DEF CON and compete in the social engineering CTF, which it logistics and timing and whatnot. We didn't get to end up doing it. But he was like, I make that dream come true. For you like, Yeah, I like after he read the email after I was actually at the company. He was like, oh, oh, you meant it like this? You're not joking. I really think you could. And so he was wanting to like, put his marketing person up against all these like, pros, social engineers. And I was like, Yeah, I'll do it. Sure. Whatever, you know, just blind confidence. That's

Kerry Guard 16:30

it. A dream come true. Did you

Clark Barron: 16:35

know the logistics, like didn't actually end up getting to go that year? But yeah, I could do it. But oh, I was definitely willing to, as soon as you mentioned that. I was like, ah, Sign me up. Yeah, what am I gonna do? But yeah, there are, there are so many different personality types, and so many different brains that, that work like that, that just kind of get it, you know, and when you combine that with an industry that likes, it's so Michigan, mission-driven, it's something that I just really always identified with. And I mean, that's, that's one of the main drivers of pursuing something in security, because I, I'm well aware of my limited technical abilities. I actually started learning to write code like not markup, like actual code and whatnot. And there's this point where I realized I can't do this. This is not how my brain works. And, but I still wanted to contribute. I still wanted to be part of the solution. And so if I can't do it, then I promise you that I will do my best to help you do what you do. I'll I'll be the biggest cheerleader. You've got the collective view. The practitioners in the trenches, you know, staying up three days in a stretch just trying to protect

Kerry Guard 18:16

somebody. Yeah. So it's company you were at you were the you were the head of marketing. Did you build a team? Did you? What was the journey there?

Clark Barron: 18:25

Yeah,

Kerry Guard 18:26

small one from marketing perspective. Yeah,

Clark Barron: 18:28

yeah. Yeah. Small one. And, yeah, it was interesting. I really liked being in security awareness training, because that was a different, obviously a little bit more narrow of a lane. But it really enjoyed the psychology behind it. And you know, not only learning about the audience, which we'll get into that in a second but also about the folks at organizations that are not technically minded and trying to educate them in a way that actually sticks to where they care as well. Really interesting, but um, yeah, that my my first venture at that company into cybersecurity industry. As much as I loved it, and loved being in it. I had to admit at times that it was beating the crap out of me. It was trial by fire. I keep in mind I was just like two years earlier, worked on been in Key West working on a campaign with Jimmy Buffett and now I'm in cybersecurity dealing with that buying committee in that audience. Cool. polar opposites and underwater. Yeah, but it honestly, I loved how frustrating it was because it's a challenge. It's a puzzle. It's trying to figure out people and how they think. And a lot of my failures, they're shaped the rest of my entire career and how I approached marketing and in cybersecurity, because I started to realize that, oh, this is why they don't respond to marketing. Because it looks like a lot of the things that they are world-class experts at defending against, really, we're going to, we're going to send emails with links in them, and cold emails with links in them and expect them to like if we can even hit their inbox like, they're playing defense, regardless of whether they even know it or not. That's just how their brain works. And then I took note of all the things that like, fear tactics, and that's when I learned the term Fudd. And trying to try to scare people into buying something like really young. You'll think that's the sure about that. Just as well as

Kerry Guard 21:22

Yeah, I think it works for a hot second. That's how people latched on to it super hard, and then realized, oh, wait, I know, I should be doing it.

Clark Barron: 21:29

Yeah, you know, just as well as I knew that there. There are stories out there doing that hurts my heart. Yeah, that in the ambulance chasing and, you know, it's we have to be really super self-aware of what we're doing. And just be mindful of who we're dealing with and become a little bit more empathetic.

Kerry Guard 21:54

Yeah, I have a couple of questions. One it once a comment. And then we'll I want to I want to layer on to this. But what's interesting about the setup of this conversation that I don't, I don't think many people thought of at least I haven't thought of it. Vulnerability here is that parallel of doing the same thing. This idea of trickery of we're trying to trick our audience into I start thinking about this idea of, is it a play? Is it a marketing playforce and a marketing ploy? Are we trying to trick our audience?

Clark Barron: 22:37

Yeah, tell me about being

Kerry Guard 22:40

A ploy being like we're trying to, we were trying to see if we can sneak one pass to you, versus a play, like on a football field, have you do this thing. And if they take it great, if they don't find if they take it, then we're gonna, we're gonna pass the next player to the next player to the player down the field. And, you know, if there's a fumble, there's a fumble, but there are surfaces for you to play off this is how we think it's gonna go, versus a ploy of trying to see if I can trick you into doing the thing that I want you to do. And so it's the ploy and the cybersecurity audience that they can see they can, they can see down the field, and they can see that you're trying to trick them. And they're not playing. They're not here for it. And I, but what's but what caught me off guard and what you said that's making me sit here is this, this idea and this notion of, they can see through it better than any other audience because it's what their current they're tracking on their end of who's trying to trick them, who's trying to trick their employees who are trying to create these ploys to get into bank accounts and behind the scenes and into their files. Right. And that's why they are on the defense to what you said. And I just think that's such an interesting dichotomy that we really haven't sat with as marketers haven't called out loud. I think we've, I think for those who are doing marketing, well have already thought about this, but they haven't said it. Somebody's gonna say the thing. So we're saying the thing and I think that's important. Let's talk about you got into cybersecurity. Yay. It's a passion of yours. 100% you landed with this one company? Where did you go from there? How did you stay at that company for a while? Did you leave to another company, you're doing your own thing. Now let's, let's tie up this story for folks so we can get into the heart of the combination of where we need to go next stuff like what we do with this information.

Clark Barron: 24:41

Yeah, so I was there for a couple of years and moved on to some other in-house gigs. Went down the demand generation path. You know, generating demand, I worked in skirt awareness training, more like bespoke threat intelligence to SCA, adjacent bomb-type stuff, marketing into dev SEC ops, etc. Then I got where I am now. You know, I started the dementia therapy podcast. And I didn't realize that in doing that I inadvertently founded my own consultancy. Until the the DMS, I realized that I was getting DMS from folks saying, so could you really like be be a marriage counselor for our sales and marketing team? Yes. Yeah, absolutely. That's a great idea. He said, never have thought of that before. And yeah, it just kind of blossomed from there. And you know, that was kind of a yeah, my solo deal. And then the latest big jump has no, for my next big trick. It would be what I'm doing now, with Ronan, was burning

Kerry Guard 26:17

this lens perfectly in your conversation, because I think it's what we're all trying to figure out today is how we all have we all get along. But before we unpack that, let's talk about a challenge you're currently facing. So you're now the CEO congrats of Ronin, where you're working with a bunch of a bunch I don't mean that if I were you working with experts in the go-to-market motion, go to market motion. So thing in helping companies cybersecurity specifically reach their audience in a really intentional way. I'm summing that up very high level, there's a lot on the website, go check it out. But that's currently what you're doing. In terms of what you're currently doing. What's the challenge? What's hard? That's what's like thrown at you right now.

Clark Barron: 27:07

Imposter Syndrome mostly? Yeah, brother, our I honestly that is. That's what keeps me up at night. Not pipeline. It's it's imposter syndrome. It's trying to figure out whether I have anxiety about all this, or I'm just super excited. Because we're going to take over the world, there's a really fine line in that. And you really have to be mindful and just kind of sit with yourself and figure out which it is. So you know, the challenge has been not working 17 hours a day, you know,

Kerry Guard 27:52

you're excited about what you do. Yeah.

Clark Barron: 27:54

It's wild. Because I did actually have a day recently, where my wife walks into my office and goes, you know, you've been working for 17 straight hours. Like, you're like, you're a zombie like you're so in the zone. And she was like, I'm not worried about you. Like, what is this? Like, you're just operating on a different level? And I was I don't know. I don't know. I was like, I'm I once you figure out what you want, when what you want to do aligns with what you know, you were meant to do? Yeah, you don't ever want to stop. No.

Kerry Guard 28:43

I get it. I'm a business owner.

Clark Barron: 28:45

Do Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you know what I mean?

Kerry Guard 28:47

I do I do, I find myself working. I'm on the among British Times, it's having to do both the time right now. Because I'm in the thick of it. I'll do nine to five and then I'll take a break for dinner with my family while I'm like texting through while making dinner. And then I'll work eight to 10 it. It's not out of a It's not out of a place of I have to be working. It's out of a place of I love what I do. I love absolutely work with and I want to be there for them. And this is when they're aligned and I'm here and it's a delicate, it's a delicate balance, and when you're new to it, and you're throwing yourself into it for sure. Absolutely.

Clark Barron: 29:30

Yeah, it's I had to tell her that like it's not because she she made the call out of like, you don't seem stressed and I was like I'm not at all like you just lose track of time. Yeah, I get it easily.

Kerry Guard 29:43

Easily impostor syndrome is real. I thought I can do this thing. Can I can I do this? I think I can do this. I think it's thing so

Clark Barron: 29:54

Well. There's there's a really weird internal conversation that happens right before your Ready to Fly the in-house marketer nest. You know, is it time? Am I ready? You're never gonna be ready, just do it.

Kerry Guard 30:11

Ya know until you try. Exactly,

Clark Barron: 30:13

you know it's true, it is true. No jump out of the plane without a parachute, whatever.

Kerry Guard 30:23

I highly recommend the parachute, the parachute being a nest egg of subscription, and jump solely with family. And I love this podcast called Pivot. And Scott Galloway, who started many brand marketing companies talks a lot about having your cabinet have a sense have a couple of people on hand, who are going to tell you like it is whether you want to hear it or not. So have your cabinet and have a nest egg. And that's your parachute. But 100% If you have that, take the leap, you don't know until you try. I'm here for all these things. Clark, let's talk about I want to be cognizant of time. And I could talk to you all day, which we don't have. So being mindful of that you started to go out on your own from a consultancy standpoint in terms of being a therapist, to marketing and sales. Right? So why do you feel like marketing and sales needs a therapist to begin with?

Clark Barron: 31:35

Because they don't realize that the problems they have are not are the fault of neither one of them. Oftentimes, they're at a very fundamental level there systemically pitted against each other, because of misguided leadership. And the you know, you could attribute this to DC capital or the economy or whatever. But we entered the realm, you know, quite some time ago of hyper-growth, growth at all cost. Everybody, everybody, including the janitor and everybody's Uber driver are responsible for closed one revenue. And the the metrics and KPIs they they get. So the waters get so muddy. You know, of course, marketers, you know, if you're good marketer, you know why you're there. Everything you do is meant to drive qualified pipeline velocity, you know, build a brand. Yeah, business outcomes, you know why you're there. But then we start attaching dollars to that, to those success metrics, and then you start a fistfight at a conference with your salespeople because you're arguing over attribution. And by attribution, I don't mean where your leads came from. I mean, who gets credit for this? sales or marketing? What is marketing source that like, everything gets so blurry, that we're, we're fighting each other for no reason? And marketers think that sales just complains about the quality of the leads, or they don't, they won't hunt, they won't try to source their own pipeline, and won't contribute to the top but the entry point of the pipeline. And then, of course, all the issues that sales have, historically, with marketing, it's just, it's just one big vicious cycle. And so many fingers are being pointed. And they're all pointed in the wrong direction.

Kerry Guard 33:56

Direction should it be pointed in?

Clark Barron: 34:02

There are a couple places and I'm still exploring this, but for the most part, it would be in the direction of the, to the very beginning of the organization and how it was structured, from from day one. At what point did a marketer come on board? How much say Did they have in what success to them looks like? Did marketing hire number one, regardless of when they came in? Did they have a conversation with the founder, CEO, or whoever brought them on? Did they have some really difficult conversations? Did they know what they were going to be measured on? They know what the expectations were before they signed on?

Kerry Guard 34:50

Those are really big questions.

Clark Barron: 34:52

Did they sell themselves jobs? Yeah, right. And that's, that's going to the other side of this is you have marketers that know something's up. This is starting to look like something that I did not sign up for. Yet. Everybody's just dodging riffs left and right. So what do you do? What What can you do?

Kerry Guard 35:20

I think there are two sides to this. Yeah, I want to be really thoughtful here. I want to be really thoughtful here. Because there are two sides to this. There's the what happens, what already happened, and we can't do anything about it, which I think is important. Because if you're stepping into this role moving forward, here are some ideas on how to do better. So let's start there of your new marketer. You're the probably maybe the the first hire as the first marketing hire. How do you? Let's assume that a sales hire maybe already happened because that's generally what happened. Like you have a founder who's doing sales, and then they can't do it all themselves, and they bring in a sales guy, they're like, help me. And then they realize they need marketing. Right? So marketing is generally after sales, let's just make that assumption. So you're the first marketing hire, and there's already a salesperson. So how do you start asking some of those tough questions? How do you put yourself in a position of working with sales? How do you do that? Like, right out of the gate? I think that would be huge if people could do that. But it's not always the case. But let's just assume that's what's happening.

Clark Barron: 36:26

Where is your pipeline coming from without marketing? And what are the expectations of the marketing function once you bring it on? As far as their contribution to pipeline? And how is that? Where does the onus lie at different points in that process with both sales and marketing, you want to try to find out whether you want to try to find out the mindset of sales, because you might have a team of BDRs that are just knocking one over the fence every day and, you know, booking meetings, whatever. But then, alternatively, you might have none of that, and just a bunch of AES, that all they want to do is close they don't want. And so you have to ask, like, where does that come from? You know, and another one to ask is, are you prepared to wait? Are you prepared to wait for this to actually take off, because it's big differences in sales, lead motions, and bringing on marketing and marketers are so rarely afforded the luxury of getting their own function up to speed before they're shown the door, especially in the era of hyper growth, growth at all costs, all of that? And so you, you have to, you have to pick apart the brain of the founder or whatever, and see what they think about, like, how do they personally feel about marketing? And do? What are their expectations? Are they a super next

Kerry Guard 38:12

year? Yeah, no, I think that's really important. There are two things here and one Trevor is doubling down on in terms of the sales team, in that sales is ecstatic who in that first marketer, because up to that moment, they were watching their personal network get grounded to dust, and A's comp, perfectly fine, but up to a limit. So marketing comes in and is able to help them grow past our own network. So let's talk about that partnership between first that first marketing hire and sales. And what you're saying is, you need to understand like where those limits are, and let them understand how you're going to support them. Like

Clark Barron: 38:52

Their expectations. Manage expectations.

Kerry Guard 38:55

Good love that. Yes. Yes.

Clark Barron: 38:59

That's why I mentioned like, this is going to take time, you know, because there's that window, where just like Trevor, like, that's an amazing call out about their washing their personal network grounded into dust. Well, there's going to be a window, especially at early stage where sales is seeing that happen. And then the marketer comes on and there's that window between, oh, no, our networks going away. And when marketing actually starts to kick in, and it's that it's a subset of that bigger window, where marketing is hired to where it kicks in, where everybody's just sitting around tapping their toes, doing nothing but looking at you to perform.

Kerry Guard 39:51

It's true. Yep, marketing takes some minutes to stand up. I also feel like there are increments you can make, right? Like there's there's one or two I just did this. So I, and this is on a very small scale outside of cybersecurity. So take this with what you will. But I work with a coach, my coach, where I run his marketing, and we in two weeks set up a paid ads campaign with very small volume. So I was like I tempered expectations to the Instagrams, like, this is a very small subset, it's a very tight, we're getting like 16 clicks, maybe a day for lucky, like, let's be realistic, and we totally got a leak, because it's so that hyper-targeted, like there is possibility in doing that, on a very small scale, but it's like, we do one every few weeks, right. So I think what you're saying is really important of, we can move quickly, and there is low-hanging fruit here, but the volume is not going to be you're not going to be running around chasing leads. I want to get to this to the CEO side, because I think that's really important in terms of the psychology in terms of the psychology of how you temper this expectation, with setting yourself up for success with the executive team and the gate. Like sometimes you're just so excited, you got a job, like, Yes, I'm first marketing hire, I totally got this, the imposter syndrome sinks in and sort of like starts to play devil's advocate on that a little bit. But at the same time, you have to sort of like lean into the uncomfortable of here's how this is gonna work. And this is this is how it's gonna roll. Yeah, talk me through that.

Clark Barron: 41:41

Yeah, to be an effective marketer. I mean, we all know that you have to be able to speak different languages, you have to be able to speak products or sales, another one of those languages, probably the most important one, you have to be able to speak executive. You have to be able to tie what you do to business outcomes. You, you can't solely lean on the qualitative without having quantitative proof to be able to show proof of concept to be able to put forth motion motions to get qualitative, it's stuff like that. And a couple couple questions, couple of directions you need to go in are, what's their relationship, like with the board? Are they in a position to where even if they are totally on board with what you want to do, like you, you've, you've done your 90 days, you've audited everything, you've got the lay of the land, you've got a plan that you want to present, you present it, everybody's on board, ecstatic, you've got everybody hyped up? And then around 60 days past that, the end of the next quarter, their tone of voice starts to change. And you start hearing things like where are the leads? The leads, generic, nebulous terms like that. And like, No, we talked about this, right? Like, we talked about the expectations of the timing and how long this is going to take, tried to try to figure out where their pain points are. Internally, you know, we build ICPs you should be doing that internally, on a personal level, find out what they care about what their motivators are, why they're in this what stresses them out what influences them. What's, uh, always have a small w that you could cash in, you know, just to balance if things are everybody's having a bad week have, you know, the equivalent of just like, peace candy?

Kerry Guard 43:54

Yeah, I feel like CEOs tend to pick up on the lingo of marketing PLG Sales Lead leads, but in the day, though, they don't know what it takes to get those motions in motion. And have, to your point, unrealistic expectations in terms of timing. So what are the leading indicators? I feel like there are some leading indicators here. Right? Revenue isn't gonna show up tomorrow. Right, right. But what are some of those initial KPIs that make CEOs feel like things are happening is it ultimately leads is there something higher is there like, we got to meet them where they are and quell their anxiety of like, I just spent a bunch of money with you, I hired you as a marketer, you know, 150 Plus, in terms of your salary, like I need those like yesterday, because normally, the other fun thing about CEOs is they don't generally hire marketing until they have something to sell, and then they want to sell it like yesterday. Day. So we kind of shuffled the game a little late. So it's like, what are some of those leading indicators? What some of those metrics you help bring them along for the ride?

Clark Barron: 45:11

So it varies. However, it's completely predicated on how you're defining those indicators. To them, a lead is going to be something quite different than what you would call a lead. Let's just take the lifecycle stages, right? What's an MQL? Like, what, what is that? Ask five people, they'll all say different things. What are the criteria to meet that? What does a qualified lead look like to you?

Kerry Guard 45:44

That's marketing qualified and their sales qualified. Those are two totally different.

Clark Barron: 45:50

And depending on how you define them, all of it could be nonsense. You know, because you know, if we're going on, like, demographics versus psychographics, if you just want demographics, okay, let's go. Give me 50 grand, I'll just scrape everything. I'll zoom info, here's your leads. Yep. Here's my goal. Like there's no marketer in the history of mankind that's ever missed a lead gen goal. Right? And anybody? Yeah, exactly. So you have to have conversations about like, how we're going to define those, what the correct success indicators, those type of metrics, and you have to all be on the same page. And you also have to bring in your sales leader into that conversation as well. Because they need to know where there's going to be a clear handoff, and then just kind of support from there, right?

Kerry Guard 46:45

Let's talk about that for a second. Because the handoff is key. Right? was stuck with the football analogy, because I miss American football so hard, right, there's got to be a clear, there's got to be a clear pass. And if you're if you have a runner, right, and you got to you got to get that even if it's just like, straight up, you know, handoff versus throw, like, it still has to be clean and ready to go. So what is a the, in your opinion, in your experience, that marketing versus sales lead? When is the sale? What is a? What is a lead ready to rock and roll the sales? Have my own ideas when try? Try and call them. You tell me?

Clark Barron: 47:31

So I have a kind of polarizing take on this. And it could be why people think I'm crazy. It could also be why a lot of people want to work with me. Who knows? But my the way I look at that is it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter, as long as sales and marketing agrees on what it is. Okay. So, as long as you're aligned on that should

Kerry Guard 48:01

go? Sure, in your marketing opinion. Right? Like, we would love to hand it off right to sales and say, Here you go. Like it's the lead, they downloaded a white paper, they're yours. Are they? Yeah,

Clark Barron: 48:15

I would steer clear from that, you know, is it at the end of the day where we're having the lead gen versus demand gen debate, which is just conversation like that conversation is over, we shouldn't be having that anymore. Like, we need to do more of our due diligence in in qualifying these leads, we need to be able to book meetings, we need to really lean into assisting sales more than just here's a bunch of email addresses. Oh, yeah, we got these badge scans to good luck. You know, that's, it's not it's not cutting it. You know, but for the most part, is as long as you can agree on at what stage everybody's going to take over on the sales side. And they feel good about what you like all the work that you have put into making sure that that is the most qualified lead that you can put together.

Kerry Guard 49:24

Your good meetings booked. I heard you say yeah, so we can be pretty black-white about this folks. until they're ready to book a meeting.

Clark Barron: 49:37

Well, it's a one of the reasons that you know, BDR has started falling under demand gen for some reason, which never really made sense to me. By but you know, I love BDR that's a good middle ground like before a handoff and booking that meeting. It helps get us qualitative data. From feedback from those conversations, and also they ended up making the best marketers BDRs allowed to steal and BDRs from going into sales. Because they develop the brain to be curious and find actual pain points and have conversations and understand how people think, like, come to our team. But yeah, yeah, a lot of people get up in arms about that entire process, you know, and I have at times, and I'm a pretty staunch advocate of setting clear boundaries there. You know, what is reasonable? That's what we have to ask ourselves, like, what is reasonable, you know, we have to be able to contribute or affect an outcome in a meaningful way to justify buying gold on it. And if you can't, then there's there is gross misalignment, and everyone's sales and marketing is either it has either been set up to fight with each other, or your marketers have just been set up to fail, and they, for no fault of their own, they just didn't know to have those difficult conversations upfront about setting expectations and what is realistic and reasonable when it comes to outcomes?

Kerry Guard 51:29

Let's go back to timing because that's so hard.

Kerry Guard 51:33

And especially now, I feel like we're used maybe as marketers we're using as a crutch. Maybe we're not I don't I don't know. But the buying cycle is longer. It's taking longer for buyers to want to book a call. I feel like we've lost trust with buyers. Is that fair?

Clark Barron: 51:54

When did we have it?

Kerry Guard 51:58

Yeah, I think that's fair to I think we've we've really like created a chasm, though. Like we've never really had it. But we're just digging it ourselves day, a bigger hole, to your point of what you said earlier about the season buyers and in general, in particular, who never had trust with anybody to begin with, whether alone marketing. So how did we

Clark Barron: 52:24

would I wouldn't say that they don't necessarily trust. They're just world-class. Skeptics. Yeah. You know, that's, that's why they're awesome at what they do. Well, yeah, just how their brain works.

Kerry Guard 52:47

So how do we specifically with these tough audiences, like CISOs? Like developers, like even ourselves? We as marketers, don't trust marketing. How do we start building those bridges back to say, we want to work with you, we want to help you, we want to have your best interest? And we want to make sure you're in the driver's seat of making those decisions. What are some I want to get a little bit more tactical here, in closing, as people feel like they have something to walk away with? But like, how can people start to think about building that bridge with their audience to their audience in a way that is trustworthy, to say, we're with you?

Clark Barron: 53:29

Listen to them, talk to them. And ask them how you can do better. What are their actual pain points? What do you what what are we do that you hate? And then as soon as you ask them that, shut your mouth. And take notes.

Kerry Guard 53:51

Danny Wealth is world-class at this if you need. If you need a lesson to this, go check out Danny Wolf's work for sure.

Clark Barron: 53:59

So lately,

Kerry Guard 54:01

so let's say so what are some of the things as somebody who's studied Danny's work as somebody who's doing this work yourself? Give us a taste. We have to go through this work, we can? Well, I'm not trying to skip the queue here, jump the line. But help us understand of like, what does some of that work mean in terms of what the CISO in terms of what these this audience is saying of what they do like and what they don't like.

Clark Barron: 54:28

So step number zero in that process is deep introspection, and developing a level of self-awareness in your own efforts. Because you can't approach them with a certain set of questions if you don't know what you're actually doing first. And so you need to be so well versed in the ways that the language that you're using in your copy in your emails, like what are you actually saying, what's the voice of the brand you're trying to scare people? Are you trying to ram some features down someone's throat, like, get third-party validation, you know, get someone objective and unbiased to look at that someone that you trust? But and then look at your tactics. Okay, you've got what you're trying to, you know, you've got the payload you're trying to deliver. Now, what are the exploits you're trying to run? Okay. So are you? are we sending a bunch of cold emails? Why? Do we know that all that information is correct? Like they're, they're defenders of information, you really think you have their correct email address? Not sure about that? What are you just spamming them on LinkedIn sending them in mails? Are you calling them on the phone, these people don't have time to save time, much, much less answer. Any phone call. You have to audit everything that you do and have a great understanding of how it looks from an outside perspective. And a lot of times, marketers don't have that, because we do a lot of we're under so much pressure to just deliver something. And that's where you get into random acts of marketing, where there's not a holistic approach to how we're going to go to market with this thing, right? Once you think you have a grasp on your side of the fence, you've got to do some direct outreach. It starts with your customers start trying to get into conversations with them. Not only your customers, but if you can do it an extremely valuable resource is to go to your CRM sort by closed, last. Start at the top. Interesting,

Kerry Guard 56:59

not closed on

Kerry Guard 57:04

the last Yep.

Kerry Guard 57:07

Those folks because they turned you down. So it's like showing up after a date and be like, Hey, I know you don't want to go out on a second date. That's cool at all. But I kind of like to tell me why. Mark, that's hard.

Clark Barron: 57:21

Marketers are in a very, they're very uniquely qualified to do this kind of qualitative research. Because if you have a closed last account, and someone in sales goes after it, they're going to think that you're chasing them down the street, and they're going to run away from you as fast as humanly possible. But if a marketer talks to a closed, lost account, and goes, what was it, I don't know, and just produce the narrative of, I don't have any skin in the game, man, I'm just trying to get better at what my team is trying to put out there. We know that, you know, there are some missteps and our messaging or something, we've done a lot of auditing, and anything you could give us would be greatly appreciated. You know, you know, points point us in some direction, I don't have anything to sell. I'm just trying to do better by you.

Kerry Guard 58:21

Got that's so fascinating because so often we go after our existing customers and why they chose us and why me, versus looking at why not me

Clark Barron: 58:31

Self-serving, self-serving. And a lot of the times when you're going after your own customers and trying to get this, they will see that as Oh, they just want me to give a quote, they want me to just speak really well of them. It's yeah. If you're going after closed loss, you have to live in the face of that rejection, you have to confront it and admit that something you did didn't resonate. It's not going to get better unless you know what it is. And then you execute on it. And trust me, our buyers will tell you what you did. You just You just have to have that. Yeah, you have to have the conversation and you have to come from a place of pure genuine authenticity. And ask, yeah, do not ask anything from them.

Kerry Guard 59:32

Righty said no, that's cool. I just want to know why so that I can help our marketing team do better to serve your audience better. For sure. No, I think that's so important. Let's talk about real quick Clark was we are at time and I wouldn't be cognizant of everyone's energy including yours. But this is fascinating, in terms of when you're brought into a company that already has an existing A marketing and sales system working, I won't say working in the sense of like they're working, but in that, they're up and running. And now you're coming in to figure out why they aren't working, what's sort of your first go-to, to help them? That therapy session that you sort of talked about? Right? So like, how do you bring them together?

Clark Barron: 1:00:22

I'm going to ask them what they think the problem is, first. Because I need to know where my head's at. Is everybody pointing fingers? Does that does someone know and someone else not know? Is it? Is it an issue of the data not being clean? Are there interpersonal issues? Like what's really going on? Is there a buy burned out there by just hate this? No, that's that happens. Yeah, you can't. You can't help him unless you don't know, it's the same approach that I've taken in doing qualitative research, figure out what you're working with before you try to fix something, or run 1000 miles an hour in the wrong direction.

Kerry Guard 1:01:18

There's a clear, lovely pattern here. It's why I love this show. There's a clear lovely pattern here that we can all take away in terms of how we show up in curiosity, to figure out the bigger picture of whether it's the CEO's fear of what they're trying to get after and what their notion of marketing it is, versus what we know it to be, what sales thinks marketing is, versus what it can be, and how it can support them to what everyone thinks it is right now, based off of their current situation of how we show up and ask those really intentional questions even of our even our own buyers, or buyers, if we're going after closed last to say, how have we supported you in making this decision or not. And even though they didn't choose us, doesn't mean we didn't help them make that decision, but understanding them as people in sending in the questions versus the finger-pointing. And telling people what to do is a huge leg up and how we all can show up for each other. So, Clark, I'm so grateful. Any, did I capture that? Any last words, anything I missed? That you want to just tie a tie a pretty bow on this for us, Clark?

Clark Barron: 1:02:50

You know, if you're a marketer out there that is anxious about having a difficult internal conversation, just do it. Just do it, God forbid, rip off the band-aid. Think of it this way. The longer you don't know, the answers to the questions that you have, the worse it's going to get. If you start having a just an authentic, genuine dialogue with whoever doesn't matter, customer's internal, close last whatever. If you approach it from the perspective of someone that just genuinely wants to be better and wants to lift everybody else up together, then if anyone at that company has a problem with that, that's tough that resume because you don't want to let anyone get in the way of what you know, will make you more effective at your job. And anybody that stands in the way of that is very misguided. And it's up to you to make the very difficult decision of Do you want that paycheck? Or do you want to just ride this as long as you can? It's a hard choice really is. It really is? You know, and I totally understand that. Not everybody thinks like that. Yeah. John, cool. Respect. But in my experience, especially with the people that I've had on dimension therapy, with all the DMS that have gotten the support light from people just saying, Yeah, I feel heard. Like this is not I didn't, I didn't know this went on in other places. Like, if you're in one of those positions, like reach out to me, another marketer, somebody you trust, like, just get your head right. Just get your head on straight, and figure out What the real path looks for you.

Kerry Guard 1:05:05

And be curious and ask the right questions. So, yes to all of that I yes to all of that. I'm so grateful Clark, thank you so much for this conversation before we head out. I do you are more than a marketer even though right now it is all consuming because it's what we do and what we love outside of being a CEO of Ronan, as well as being a demand gen marketer and running demand gen therapy. What are you most looking forward to in 2024? Now that the COVID we figured out how to live with this thing, the dust has, I say settled lightly. It definitely doesn't still impact us to some degree, but it is what it is. And, and the there's a path forward. So what do you most looking forward to?

Clark Barron: 1:05:53

I mean, my gut reaction wants to say New Lego sets that are coming out in the spring.

Kerry Guard 1:06:01

Like what? Oh, there are all sorts of what's your favorite was wondering he was looking forward to

Clark Barron: 1:06:12

I don't know.

Kerry Guard 1:06:14

Well, now I do blinks because I have my own LEGO sets over here. I got Lorien I got some I got some arcade. I got Hedwig. Like, I know you got Harry Potter out there. Yeah. So that

Clark Barron: 1:06:28

happened over there. Yeah. Yes.

Kerry Guard 1:06:29

So yes, Lego. I love the set circuit. I have the whole front set. I am Yes, I can say that. I'm ashamed. But also grateful to my husband who bought it for weeks. I love it.

Clark Barron: 1:06:45

I'm just looking forward to touching grass. You know, and just taking full advantage of the realization that I've had that I can walk away from this desk anytime. And we all can, you know, start scheduling meetings for 45 minutes instead of an hour. Get up, walk around, you know, just take care of yourself. Yes.

Kerry Guard 1:07:14

Yes, yes, that is time. The time is nigh and overdue. Clark. I am so grateful for this conversation. Where can people find you? What's the best place in

Clark Barron: 1:07:25

LinkedIn? For sure. That's, that's where the vast majority of my musings are. Dimension therapy.com Deploy ronen.com. But yeah, feel free to hit me up in the DMS, anything that's going on? I've, if I can't help you, I'll find somebody that will.

Kerry Guard 1:07:45

It meant that Clark I was so I'm so grateful. And thank you to those who joined us. Trevor Richard, I see you. I love that you're here. Thank you for chiming on in with those sales expertise. If you liked this episode, please like subscribe, and share. This episode is brought to you by MKG. Marketing the digital marketing agency that helps cybersecurity and complex brands get found via SEO and digital ads. It's hosted by me Kerry Guard, CEO and co-founder of MKG marketing, and if you'd like to be guessed if you are a cybersecurity, or SAS, or data management platform marketer and you want to come tell your story. I am so here for it. DM me, I'd love to have you on the show. Thank you all so much, Clark. Thank you.

Clark Barron: 1:08:28

Thanks, everyone.