Driving Growth With Marketing, Customer Success, and Employee Engagement

Driving Growth With Marketing, Customer Success, and Employee Engagement

Tim Fitzpatrick
Welcome to the Rialto Marketing podcast. Today's episode is a revenue acceleration series interview where we talk to seven-figure B2B business owners and their growth-focused executives who are actively trying to grow their businesses and get to the next level. We talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly so that you can learn from their experience. Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we believe marketing shouldn't be difficult. Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in. I am super excited to have Alicia Picard from Connext with me today. Alicia, welcome, and thanks for being here.

Alicia Picard
Tim, thank you so much. It's great to be with you today. Thanks for having me.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I'm excited to dig into this with you today. Before we do that, I want to ask you a few rapid fire questions. Are you ready to jump in with both feet?

Alicia Picard
I'm ready to roll.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay. So very quickly, what do you do and how long have you been doing it?

Alicia Picard
Connext is I'm a technology services company, and I've been with them a year. Prior to that, I worked with another technology company, and we were acquired. I've been with them for three years, so in total, four years. So I'm Vice President, customer success and engagement, but what does that really mean? As I think about what do I do, my job is influencing the perception of different stakeholder groups. From a marketing perspective, It's who are our suspects, our prospects working on our brand, and what's the messaging we're putting out that resonates with our ICP. From a standpoint of influencing our employees and how engaged they are in our business, our engagement team reports up to me, and we measure satisfaction with our employees, but also wanting to gain... We want to influence their... We want to be an employer of choice and really lean into our values and being a culture that cares with people, and so making sure that we're leaning into that and what we think we're doing is being perceived that way. And then lastly, with our customers, from a customer success standpoint, how are we delivering based on what their perceptions are to what they thought they would be getting to what we're actually delivering and using surveying and closed-loop feedback to gage those things.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Gosh, that's all you have to do?

Alicia Picard
That's the only part of it.

Tim Fitzpatrick
That's it. That's a lot. What's the most important thing, lesson you've learned in doing this, or even if it's just from your professional career?

Alicia Picard
Yeah. So a few weeks ago, we do a Lunch with the Leader program, and I had taken some of our team, some of the team, to to lunch, and I got to ask the question, a similar question to this. And that answer is, when you're making decisions based on fear, that's really learning that, whether you're afraid to make a decision and do something or do something that you know is good for the business. When you're letting that... I don't know if you've ever heard about the monkey in your brain and the elephant, one's the rational and one's the emotion. Decision making by emotion is really a difficult thing. And that's where that fear comes from and limiting yourself because of fear.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Fear is not a good place to make decisions from. And we've all been there.

Alicia Picard
Yeah. And some of that gets into... One of the best books that I've ever read was Chris Voss's... What is the name? Never Split the Difference. I don't know if you've read this or not, but he's a former hostage negotiator, and he talks about the power of negotiating in all aspects of your life and not being afraid to either ask those questions or negotiate is really a powerful thing to learn.

Tim Fitzpatrick
What's the name of the book again?

Alicia Picard
Never Split the Difference. And the author Chris Voss, V, as in victory, O-S-S.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay, cool. I love it.

Alicia Picard
I have two nieces, and I actually just sent it to them.

Tim Fitzpatrick
It sounds like a good one.

Alicia Picard
Negotiating was not anything I ever learned in school or was taught. That's not a polite thing to do, negotiating salaries or price of things. That was something I recently sent to both of my nieces.

Tim Fitzpatrick
I mean, if we think about it at a basic fundamental level, we negotiate every day. I mean, I negotiate with my kids every day.

Alicia Picard
The master negotiators.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, exactly. So definitely have to check that out. We know that there's ups and downs with work. Any mantra or something motivation you say to yourself or share with the people on your team to push through those times of challenge?

Alicia Picard
Yeah. A few months ago, I started on a regular basis every Monday morning early. I send a motivational quote, whether it's about business or personal, but just something to kick off and start that week. But for me, really, I think it's important that we operate in a positive environment. One of the best leaders I ever learn from was actually learning how not to be a leader in that they operated from a very oppressive standpoint. You always wanted to fly under the radar. And that's so stifling for innovation and growth and culture. And so really, I come from it from a standpoint of encourage one another and lift each other up. And not to say that it's Pollyanna. There are going to be negative times, and we say, Okay, this is maybe a little difficult right now or it's not the way we wanted things to go. And what do we need to do next? And things will get better.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. I like that. It's that yes and approach.

Alicia Picard
Yeah.

Shaping a Marketing Strategy through Experience

Tim Fitzpatrick
I love it. I know in your career, you've worn a lot of different hats. You've been in finance, operations, marketing, customer success. It's a pretty broad experience. How has that broad experience shaped how you're approaching marketing strategy at Connext?

Alicia Picard
I think it makes you a bit more eyes wide open to have an understanding. So in my role today, when I think about whether it's influencing prospects or its employees, knowing the levers and the pain points or maybe the job to be done for what we're trying to convey, what do those people want that job to be done? And I think everyone in business needs to understand how their business makes money and what their cost drivers are. And then you can figure out for yourself then what's my role within that? And how do I be a good steward of our business? And just really gives that broader perspective of messaging and relating. There's a lot of cross-collaboration. I have a lot of hats, but I work with a lot of different parts of the business, and having that understanding of how their world operates, I think, creates a little bit more empathy and connection.

Tim Fitzpatrick
It's interesting you bring up having that deeper understanding about what's driving the business, where are the profit centers, because it's not uncommon for even higher level marketing executives to not be included in those types of discussions.

Alicia Picard
Oh, wow. Yeah.

Tim Fitzpatrick
I just think that. And the marketing folks that are in that position that I've talked to are like, I just don't I just don't get it. That's really important stuff for all of us to know.

Alicia Picard
Well, I mean, the finances, you set your budget, but just because you set the budget doesn't mean you're necessarily you're going to have those dollars. And so you need to be aware. We have a weekly meeting, our ELT, I'm part of the leadership team. We meet every week and go through. We look at our finances, each of our groups, we talk about our areas of responsibility. What are the rocks keeping us from acclipping our priorities? We follow... I'm not sure, are you familiar with Rockefeller Habits for scaling up?

Tim Fitzpatrick
Just a little bit.

Alicia Picard
Yeah, that's a model we're following. And so we use that process to say what's happening. One of the things that we talk, we hear from operations, we're aware of sales, we're aware of marketing. It's really a very overarching approach to go to market, actually, when we're bringing in all of those players.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. The other interesting thing that you touched on that I think is really important, you talked about... Because within your role, you're serving multiple audiences as you've touched on. It's current clients, it's prospects, it's team members. To be successful, we've got to understand the audience, who they are, their pain points, what their goals are, what their desires are, and then that helps us create that message. Really, even when you're talking about team members, it's internal marketing. A lot of people don't think about it that way, but it is.

Alicia Picard
It is. Absolutely.

Tim Fitzpatrick
We need to understand them. And once we understand them, then we can create messaging that's going to resonate with those people. So whether it's internal or external, it's all the same. The base is, who's the group that we intend to target? Do we understand them? And then how can we craft a message that's going to resonate and attract those people? So thank you for bringing that up.

AI and Automation as Efficiency Drivers

Tim Fitzpatrick

I want So to shift a little bit into just talking about the Connext marketing team, which is lean. It's just you, which is not uncommon. What strategies, tools have helped you maximize your impact, your effectiveness with a small team and limited resources? Because a lot of the people I talk to are in this place.

Alicia Picard
Yeah. One of the things that I did when I joined the company initially was gain a Did like an audit. What's our tech stack? What are all the technologies that we have? What are the capabilities? To have an understanding of what do we have existing today? So we're a small team. We run a lean budget. What do we have in house today that we can do more with rather than going outside and bringing in additional layers of technology. And I think, like many people, AI is really an efficiency driver . AI and automation are two ways. And you can have enterprise versions or not have enterprise versions of different AI tools. You need to really be aware of what are the risks of using AI, because whatever you feed into it, it's learning from. So being aware of what are the nuances of the tool that you're using, what's included, and then using them to your best benefit to drive efficiencies. I work with our sales team, and I work with them to create automations to help make their jobs easier, automating reporting or creating sequencing of contacts out Also with reporting out to our executives, I do some analysis in our sales data, looking at partners and win-loss analysis. It's really AI and automation just to make things more efficient. And I think you also have to be pretty organized. And don't wait for perfect. Sometimes good enough is good enough.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Done is better than perfect. Always resonated with me.

Alicia Picard
I tell my son, he's asked me, he was younger, he would ask me, Do you like perfect? And I, no, I I don't. I said, Perfect is the enemy of progress.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. Well, I think it's the way with a lot of things, but with marketing, there is no perfect plan. We have to put a plan together, and as we take action, we learn from that. And then it's test, measure, learn, and it's this constant process. But without taking action, we're never going to get the information we need to learn from and get better. Yeah. So thank you for sharing that. And I know with AI, there's so much going on with AI everywhere. Marketing, it's the same. I think there's a lot of people that AI and automation, or go hand in hand, and maybe those lines cross. And I feel like it's really important to not get lost in the fact that AI Even if AI is not automated, there are significant efficiencies. And one of the big benefits I'm seeing is just as a thought partner, bouncing ideas off of it, getting feedback, You mentioned your sales team, like and discovery call transcripts in there and get feedback and get data from it that helps provide drive. One, it helps me fill blind spots that I might have had. It confirms some of the things that I was thinking after getting off the call. And then it helps drive my interactions down the line because I just keep going back into that same chat, moving things down the road. There's so many ways we can use it.

Alicia Picard
One of the prompts that I built to help of our sales team is when we have leads that come in or they're targeting a particular customer that they want to work with is I built a prompt for strategic account research that asked tasks items 1 through 12 on a defined customer. And the amount of time that the engine can produce this is staggering. Now, I will say you do need to validate. You can't just take everything as a grain of salt because you can get some... I can't think of the term that they use, but you just want to validate that what it's providing is accurate. But it takes what could be an hour's long process to you search a particular company. It creates this within a few seconds.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. And that's a perfect example of this efficiency.

Alicia Picard
Yeah, exactly.

Tim Fitzpatrick
You've You save the prompt, you're using it over and over again. All you're doing is popping it in, putting in the appropriate data that you wanted to use, and then it goes out and does it. That's a perfect example.

Alicia Picard
A personal prompt that I built for creating a weekly menu within a grocery budget at a particular grocer and having that using the agent to send. I mean, just think about what are the things that I'm going on a routine basis at work that I need research that I'm going for. It's incredible, the power.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. Well, I don't know about you, but I have chosen to focus on one tool. So I use ChatGPT. Whether it's the best or not, I'm not going to debate that. I just made the decision early on that if you're going to hit your wagons to anybody, it was probably a pretty strong one, too, and go deep into that tool because there's too many tools and there's too many nuances. And I would rather learn one tool, and then, hey, if I decide that I need to use another tool, well, then I can expand, but I'd rather go deep in one. Because like you said, when you initially went into with Connext, you're like, hey, let's audit our current text deck. Why add tools that we don't need? And so many people do that. It's like, man, we need to simplify, use as few tools as possible. Otherwise, you're just making things complicated.

Alicia Picard
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

What's Measured Matters

Tim Fitzpatrick
I know you touched on sales a little bit. You're working very closely with them, and specifically on a lot of account-based marketing tactics, approaches. But I know the adoption on that has been a little bit challenging, especially getting the sales team to engage on LinkedIn and that stuff. What have you tried so far and what do you think it's going to take to get more participation in that?

Alicia Picard
Well, as they say, what's measured matters. So rolled this out this week where I showed my dashboard of information and the reporting of activities by individuals. So having that level of visibility and accountability is going to drive the behavior. You've got to communicate the expectation, validate that it's being done, but measure it. And that's when I think. Adoption is always a challenge. Some of that is just learned behavior, and you've got to get people doing things and used to doing it. But by measuring it and reporting out on it, that will help drive the behavior, I think. Yeah.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Well, one of the other things you already mentioned, too, is tools, right? So you've given them a prompt so that they can do account through AI, confirm, right? So the tools, I think, easy easier for them to do the action you actually want them to take is supporting that as well, right?

Alicia Picard
Absolutely. Another thing I've done is I've built a series of emails. I've got all of these templates they can use, so they didn't even have to write an email. Just pick which one you want. Created sequences where if it's a little bit more cold and they don't necessarily have a relationship there, building that email sequence. We're not big into blasting emails, so it tends to be a bit more account-based in relationship nurturing. Sometimes it's a little more knocking on the door. We're trying to not be an email blaster. I don't know that that's particularly effective, and it's not aligned with how we operate.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. So for people that aren't familiar with the account-based marketing, you guys are identifying potential... You're identifying ideal clients that you would like to work with, and your salespeople are starting to connect with those people and build relationships.

Alicia Picard
Yes.

Tim Fitzpatrick
It's not, these people are in our ICP, and we're going to just start freaking sending them cold emails.

Alicia Picard
Exactly.

Tim Fitzpatrick
It's connecting on LinkedIn. Maybe you suggest some type of initial call, or you start to interact with their posts, or reshare their posts. It's that stuff to slowly build the relationship, where especially in the IT space, people aren't really worried about IT until they have a problem. And then when they've got a problem, then they're like, oh, crap, my IT provider dropped the ball and I need help. And so it's a matter of staying in front of people long enough so that when they do get into that small percentage of the market that's looking to buy, they're thinking of Connext.

Alicia Picard
Exactly. So on the direct front. Actually, we work with our strategic partners as well and using some of that with our strategic partners as well, because they have vast numbers of employees. They aren't all familiar with us as well. And again, even there, we're not blasting them. We're doing that referral based into them, getting a reference and so and so. It suggested that we get in touch and work together and doing those more relationship fostering and that type of approach.

Tim Fitzpatrick
How big is the sales team?

Alicia Picard
If you count, so we have, I think we've got three internal sales who are account execs. We've got a head of partnership, one, two heads of partnership who are out more at a higher level, and then our CRO.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So the account execs, for example, they're involved in this account-based marketing approach. Is that right?

Alicia Picard
Yes. They're key players.

Tim Fitzpatrick
How many potential prospects are on each of their lists that they're trying to build relationships with? Are you still early in the process?

Alicia Picard
Well, we're still early on with it. We've hired... Our business model has been... Our go-to-market motion has been through partnerships. And so we've just this year started going into a direct approach. And so we've got an individual who was hired this year who is aligned with that direct. So he has a list, and then we're adding to based on engagements that we get inbound to us. I don't know his total number, actually. Yeah. That's a good question.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Over time, that's just going to continue to build.

Alicia Picard
Absolutely.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Because it's not like these people that are on an account-based marketing list are being... You're not contacting these people daily.

Alicia Picard
Correct. Great. Absolutely not.

Tim Fitzpatrick
There is a gentle cadence in the process, and you might be touching them on LinkedIn here, or you might be leaving a message, or you might be sending an email, but you're just hitting them through multiple channels over a period of time to build that relationship.

Alicia Picard
That's exactly right.

Partnerships as Growth Drivers

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay, cool. I love it. Let's shift to partnerships because you touched on that. Major growth driver for you guys. Tell me more about this. What types of partnerships are they? How do you build and strengthen those relationships over time?

Alicia Picard
With our existing partners, we're getting more strategic with that. It's through the effective delivery of, are we delivering what we say we're going to. When you're working with large systems integrators or carriers, if you misdeliver on... You don't get a whole lot of at-bats. And if you misdeliver on them, you're not going to see a a lot more. So it's not just the account executives and their relationship building, it's across the entire ecosystem of our business who is engaging with them. So the operations team that works with them. One of our purposes is building trust every day, and that's across everybody in the business. So from the operations team or the project manager working with them, are they doing what they say they're going to all the way to our accounting team and how we invoice our customers. As we're getting more strategic and we look at rolling out, one of the things we're going to be doing is business reviews, and it's not necessarily... It's taking it more than just a lot of times someone will do a business review and I'm saying, this is what we had and it's here we are today and what we did in the past. That's going to be a little small piece of what these review and conversations conversations entail. It's going to be, here we are looking forward, bringing to them, these are new capabilities that we have. Or even if you look at, say, a heat map of, these are all of the services we have. This is what you're utilizing today. These are the ones you're not talking around that and then understanding where are they going and sharing what are your objectives for this year? These are our goals and having some transparency with those customers. And then also leaning into the executive relationships that can be fostered above that.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. So just so people are clear, the partnerships that you're talking about, are they larger company? There are larger companies that are bringing you into projects that they are managing it as a whole. Is that right?

Alicia Picard
It could be that. It could also be we have partnerships with OEMs. They could be equipment manufacturers, and we're providing the service side, so they may sell hardware or security equipment, and we're doing the service side of doing the installation for them.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay. So is the end client being billed by you? Do they know that you're Connext, or do they see you as the partner?

Alicia Picard
It could be the end customer, or they see us as the partner. It's a mix.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So it's a little bit of both. Okay. Got it. But One of the things that I think is really interesting that you're touching on is, these partnerships, in your case, it's not just a relationship that's being managed by one person within the Connext organization. Because they're being touched through the entire customer journey. And so you need to make sure that you have people... Everybody at Connext is on the same page about this partnership. But then you also still have somebody that's really driving driving that main partnership where you're talking about, Hey, setting up these, whether it's quarterly or semiannual or annual meetings, to just say, Hey, here's where we're at. Where are you at? What else can we do to help support you in your goals, right? So, yeah, I love it. There's a lot there.

Alicia Picard
Yeah. It's funny. We had a town hall meeting today, and our CRO, he likes to Everybody's on the sales team. Well, everybody's on the sales team. Everybody's on the client delivery team. We're all very instrumental in the experience that our customers have. And it really starts with the employee journey. What is the employee's experience? If they're having a good experience and we're giving them what they need to execute consistently, they're able to do that for our customers.

Conclusion

Tim Fitzpatrick
Cool. I love it. Let's end with a little bit more marketing stuff here. I know one of the things you touched on was a lot of your focus with marketing is on earned media, more guerrilla marketing tactics. Anything you can share with us there about something that's worked well and maybe one that didn't work out as planned?

Alicia Picard
What I'm learning is what's going to work better is, so from an earned media standpoint, we had some success, where positioned some of the successful work that we did. It was in health care, an IoT device deployment in health care with about 7,500 of these IoT sensors deployed within the health care system. Positioned that to an organization and found that we were selected as case study of the year. So that was the And that win is what was my launching pad to say, hey, here's a great opportunity to earn some exposure. And things that have not gone as well that I'm learning from is just like everything in marketing, it's the long game. And there's a relationship building. And from research that I've done, I haven't had the success yet, so I'll have to touch base and let you know when this is successful. But the positioning of expert people versus a success story will be more successful. So I will check back with you and let you know if by positioning a success story, that's not always going to be the win. Positioning a resource who is an expert in a field that is actually a topic of interest in other media today. So is there AI media going on? And we have resource who could be a quoted resource expert that will be more successful. So that's my next approach. And so I'll have to let you know how it goes.

Tim Fitzpatrick
That's awesome. I appreciate you taking the time, Alicia. This has been a great conversation. One last question before we wrap up, which is knowing what you know now, anything you would do differently?

Alicia Picard
Wow. There's probably a lot of things I would do differently. I think I learned late in the game, don't make decisions out of fear or don't not make a decision because you're afraid. Just jump in and try things. It's not going to be perfect, and that's okay. Just don't screw it up too bad.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Where can people connect with you?

Alicia Picard
People can connect with us. Our website is teamconnext.com, and I'm on LinkedIn, Alicia Picard.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Awesome. We'll make sure that both of those are in the show notes. Alicia, thank you. I appreciate you. Those of you that are watching, listening, appreciate you as well. If you want to connect with us, you can do that at rialtomarketing.com. The other resource we've got for you is over at revenueroadblockscorecard.com. When we help clients build their marketing engine, we focus on nine key areas. If you want to know which of those nine are slowing down your growth, that's where you can do it. Revenueroadblockscorecard.com. Go check it out. And thank you. Till next time. Take care.