Episode Transcript
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That's not sufficient. For marketers focused
on externally promoting a brand. That's necessary,
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but it's really nice sufficient. You
are listening to bb revenue acceleration,
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a podcast dedicated to helping software executives
stay on the cutting edge of sales and
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marketing in their industry. Let's get
into the show. Hi, welcome to
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be to be a revenew acceleration.
My name is already amoutier and I'm here
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today with John Rougie from sky fight. How are you today, John,
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being read and Realian, how are
you? I am very, very good.
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We suffering of what we would could
a hit wave at the moment in
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the UK, but I'm blessed enough
to be in a condition room, which
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is fantastic. So today were well. Yeah, is you John, to
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speak about internal evangelism as part of
your brunning strategy? But before we go
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into the the details of it and
the details of the ID behind it,
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could you please s tell us a
little bit more about yourself, as well
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as sky fight or the company at
your represent yeah, happy to so.
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I'm the VP of marketing at Skyfy
and I'm currently based in Lexington, Kentucky.
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Among other things, I'm the proud
father of four girls. But look
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at sky fight. We or a
software and services company that helps physical venues,
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places like shopping centers, airports,
universities, retailers. We help them
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understand who their visitors are and have
a behave and then we give them some
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tools to engage with those same visitors
on multiple channels based on visitor profile and
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visitor movement. So my role at
sky fire is really focused on two things
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right now. First of all,
you know, sky fire was a company
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that expanded in Australia that two thousand
and twelve. So the majority of our
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business is based in a pack and
other parts of the world. We have
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obvious as in UK, South Africa
Brazil as well, but our focus this
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year and going forward is shifting a
lot of our time and resources towards the
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North American market. So big part
of my job is helping US build a
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presence here, build some core relationships
and get some initial customers off the ground
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so we have a critical mass business
here and then, I think secondly,
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you know, my role is really
focused around rebuilding our brand. We've done
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a great job in investing in the
products and are engineering over the last several
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years, but we've gotten to a
point where we really need to kind of
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shore up our messaging and come up
with a much clearer position in the market
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place. So I've been working on
and kind of an internal project for the
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last few months that's going to take
us through most of the remainder of this
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year just to really revise and and
kind of revitalize our brand so again we've
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got a much clearer and succinct and
consistent message with the people that were trying
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to do business with. Good Wells, some some some big missions and big
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job coming coming ahead of you,
which is which is which is exciting.
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So to be that we want to
took about, as already mentioned, is
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into on the evengetism, a spot
of y'r Brend beings frequent cheat. Recently
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you probably should not see coding folds. Well, you spoke about the internal
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evangelism and and and the fact that
it's often overlooked by bomb by markets here
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and you please show his all audience
the concept of intnot evangelism and why it's
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more impact important on evil. Yeah, happy to so. The idea behind
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internal evangelism is this pretty simple.
It's just really the idea that it's not
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sufficient for marketers focused on externally promoting
a brand. That's necessary, but it's
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really not sufficient to grow a company
or, more actually to reach the potential
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growth that your company should be able
to reach. So we just explain that
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a little bit further. You know, when you're marketing a company externally,
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this is true for both BBC and
and bb but a big part of your
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message and one of the core reasons
for why people buy is based on your
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values and the Vision for where your
company is headed. You know, it's
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not enough to just compete on speeds
and feeds and features and benefits. Those
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are important, but when you're looking
to do business with somebody long term,
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your just as interested in and where
they're heading and and who they are,
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and I think that's just that's becoming
especially prevalent in the BDB space because,
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you know, we're a lot of
us are over sold to, we're over
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kind of over marketed to in many
ways, and I think we just start
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to crave more kind of human and
authentic connections with the people we do business
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with. So a lot of that
goes back to the talk that time in
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senected a few years ago about people
not so much buying what you do,
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but why you do it? So
the issue is, if you promote your
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brand solely externally and fail to kind
of evangelize that same vision and the same
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values internally, is that if your
customers start to see that your team is
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acting inconsistently with the way that your
brands presented itself externally, then they're really
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just not going to want to do
business with you or they'll take their business
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with with someone else will come across
as an authentic and and really people just
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don't want to do business with with
someone who's an authentic. So really what
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I'm trying to get at is,
as a marketer, your job is to
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continue to focus on, of course, the external promotion of your brand.
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That doesn't go anywhere. But along
with that, think, especially in the
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BB space, your job really has
to include, many cases, an equal
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focus on espousing and promoting those brands
are started to brand vision and his brand
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values with with your team, your
employees, but also your partners as well.
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Enough, that makes delfect sense,
but we has an organization of the
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protects. We've most of all,
people that trually probably ninety nine Peroc of
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the people at well for us,
of a client's facing role and and we
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want to make sure that they reprison
the brand, that represent what we do
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correctly. You know. So it's
it's something that we try to debate.
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I guess it's kind of leading me
to the next question, which is,
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and based on what you say,
that the most sought food and impact,
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full eat external promotion, if all
are great, but won't maybe have a
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lasting effort on your customer mills off
on your brain image. So how can
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you make sure that your team is
reflecting positively the value of your company?
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What are the ways you suggest to
do so? Yeah, sure. So,
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look, it's a great question and
there's no perfect answer. There's not
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a silver bullet that just, you
know, allows your internal team to take
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on those values and then sure that
that's going to be the case forever.
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But you know, there's some things
that you'd I've seen others do and some
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things that I've tried myself that that
help you get there. So I think
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really fundamentally, the first thing you
recognizes as marketers you can't work in a
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bubble, and you know that's something
I've been guilty of myself. You know,
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previous roles I think I tended to
focus just on the pure aspect of
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marketing. That external promotion not enough. The the internal piece. So it
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really starts with there's just if you're
a marketer or if you work with marketing,
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it's understanding and recognizing that your role
needs to be something broader. I
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think if you started there, things
will stem from that naturally. I think
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the second thing is leadership. Involvement
is really key, you know, and
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some organizations marketing sits right it there
on the leadership board or the the CEO
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himself or herself as a marketing background, but in other companies marketing takes more
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of a subordinate role. So in
either case, though, the idea of
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a company's vision and its values,
they need to be something that is discussed
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and and brought into at the leadership
level. Yeah, so that's something that
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I worked really hard on and continue
to work really hard on the sky FY.
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Thankfully, in our CEO and our
leadership team were extremely supportive of the
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idea of of really shoring up our
vision and our values and we've been having
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a lot of great discussions internally about
what those mean and and how those will
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affect the future direction of the company. Thank you. Don't do that,
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then, marketing ends up working in
isolation and maybe the marketing team or the
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head of marketing might feel really good
about it, but you know, those
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efforts don't really extend beyond the marketing
roles. I would say. You know,
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in some companies you HR is more
of a independent function. Obviously,
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small companies HR sometimes blended into other
departments, but I think the other pieces
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recognizing that. Well, in a
surface they might seem like completely disparate ends
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of the spectrum and in many ways
you need to to speak to each other,
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especially when it comes down to hiring. You know, I don't know
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if for you really and what you
know, how you go through your UN
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hiring process, but I don't for
me, obviously competencies is something that you
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have to look at, but you
know, character and values, I think,
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are really even more important. You
know, if you can eat for
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us, that's key for us.
I mean we will often say to people
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when they come yes, look,
we're not you're just looking for a job,
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please go straight away. If you
want to discuss a cary, it's
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a two ways decision. You know, it's got to be a decision for
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us to get you on Boob,
but it's sort of a decision for you
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to come on bold. So if
you don't share the value, film on
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the on the value, if you
don't believe in the value, it will
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never walk. So we will actually
quite big very early on, and I'm
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glad you you bring it in your
response because I guess as well as what
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I was like, I was expecting
in a way to here. But I
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think it's very important. From the
very first conversation, even from the potentially
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the job add you're very clear about
what you are looking for. For US
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particularly, were not in the business
of, you know, recruiting Ph d's
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or Mbas or people who done business
degrees or whatever. You know, we
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a bit more of we've got a
flixibold type of background approach to our recruitment
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process. So really the value is
key because if people don't believe in the
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value and you can't truly, you
know, evaluate them based on what they've
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done in the past because it may
not be relevant to what we do,
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they've got to at least stick with
the value because if they don't believe in
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the value, is going to be
a very short, short, short shot
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work experience with us and probably won't
go one go any far. So,
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yeah, I get your point and
up it's very important in our recruitment process.
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Yeah, and you know, I
reference something image earlier about customer facing
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and non customer facing roles. In
a way you can almost make an argument
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that almost any role is customer facing
to degree. It may not be directly,
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but I'll use it very maybe obvious
and probably or reach example, but
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it's being here because it'll costraight her
point. You take a role like accountants,
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that's probably one of the least customer
facing roles out there, at least
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in terms of how you would traditionally
look at that. But if you take
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a classic example like Enron, you
know whatever values they had, if they
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had in me at all, you
know they were certainly reflected in the county
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department, in the way that they
did their books, and so it I
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would out. The reason I mentioned
me that example is it's not just the
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sales people in the customer service people
who need to understand the company's vision and
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the values. Really anyone who makes
a decision on the on behalf of the
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company, whether that's doing your accounting, whether it's, you know, determining
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who you you know, build a
partnership with whether it's determining your privacy policy,
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those affect the customer at some point
and so really we should all think
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are of ourselves as as having customer
facing roles, or maybe customer influencing roles
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to a degree, because we're all
making decision on the path of the company
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and if we're not making those decisions
with the values and the vision of our
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company in mind, then we're going
to go off track. So you know,
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in a Banan example, you're just
going to, you know, create
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some inconsistencies in your message and that's
just confusing to people and it makes it
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harder for you to sell. But
if you take that too far, then
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you end up with people taking a
media unethical or malicious actions, which is
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a different problem in of itself.
But I think you can probably see aren't
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edited. Absolutely absolutely think I think
you got you got to great example.
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I mean that sort of I'm a
going I won't mention any name on that
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one, but I was chased for
paying invoices. The invices walk treating current
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but they had on that accounts payable
person or someone in the account department was
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basically chasing I don't know if he
was an internal or an external person to
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that company, to be honest with
you, but the way they were going
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about it was was not really what
I was expecting. You know, I
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think they were just emailing for too
many people. They were very aggressive about
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the way they were going about it. There was no explanation, it was
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really short response and you just kind
of consider say, the business with that
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company because, quite frankly, I've
got an issue with the invoice I received
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and nobody's talking to me about it. But just just lead me. You've
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got to pay it and I would
draws up someone that talk to me and
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even make me feel that it's the
correct thing. You know, if I
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don't know if you know what I
mean, it's just sometimes the the impacted
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that person adds on my perception of
dub the business that I was working with.
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It's pretty bad because I kind of
change my way of thinking about that
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business and maybe I keep my eyes
open and the next time that I will
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meet my accompany joined that business,
I'll probably be a little bit more close,
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way close, I mean, you
know, not not as open with
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a person as I may have been
if I was treating a different way.
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I think it's right. Every single
part of the business should do it,
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and you know, we truly tend
to do training with our guys about that,
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particularly when we've got people going to
events. We work in sets,
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so there is lots of events.
What people will have, drinks after the
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events, etc. Etc. So
we want to make sure that you know
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our team is representing us in a
very professional way. You know, the
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sort of events can go little bit
out of hand sometimes times and people who
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are used to it may have a
drink too many and it's okay because they
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are senior, but when you are
the provailor, you've got to be careful.
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So we actually brief our guys before
every single event to make sure,
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I they don't get out of line, if you will. But I think
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it's important because it makes sounds simple, but I think it's you are representing
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a company. You may be out
of working ours, but you are still
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representing our brands, and our brand
doesn't do that. So if you want
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to have fun, just go five
miles away from the place where the party
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is at and do whatever you want, no problem. While you are representing
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us, make sure that you are
representing US professionally and we take two steps.
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That's that's that's that's interesting. He
helps me to kind of move on
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to the next question because obviously we
spoke about the theory of a probably agree
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with you, by the way.
I think it's a very interesting concept and
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definitely something that we do at operatics
and I think that more business should do.
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But do you have any practical example
of internal evangelism that has been walking
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or you've seen like very successful and
and maybe some other example where you've seen
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it maybe not failing but being less
successful? Yeah, sure, well,
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if you don't mine, I do
want to speak to that example you mentioned
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about the cultural events, because you're
asking me earlier about, you know,
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some tactics and approaches to make that
successful, and I did want to hear
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on one more and I think it's
really important and then I'll come back to
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your question, if that's okay.
I think the last thing I wanted to
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mention was that really have to lead
by example, and this will this will
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kind of lead into the specific example
I share in a moment. But you
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know, I think the temptation is
for marketers is to kind of write down
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these values, these vision and based
on guidelines on how to talk about the
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business, and you've got it in
a nice document, but that's really not
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going to be sufficient to drive those
values internally. You know, I hate
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to say it, but you know, if you have a hundred employees,
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how many of those hundred are going
to actually read the stylid guide or refer
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to it regularly? And maybe they'll
read it once during the orientation, but
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they're not going to come back to
it time and time again, at least
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most of them want. So what
really has to happen is you have to
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lead by example. You have to
show other people on your team what it
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looks like to live out those values
and to kind of move that vision forward
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in a very kind of public way. So I think that's that's probably the
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most important thing, is just giving
those concrete examples, leading by example,
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showing your team that this is what
it looks like. You know, it's
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it's we encourage it, we encourage
you to act in this way and then
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I think the rest kind of follow
suit. So again, it's not it's
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not just having a nice document that
kind of sits there on your desk or
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on your internal website, but it's
just living those those ideas out your actions.
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So yeah, so I'll come back
to your question. was just some
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examples of companies that have done that
well. So I just want to mention
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two that I think are probably relevant
for me and the BB space at the
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moment. And so those those two
companies are going to be drift and terminus.
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And the reason I'll mention these two
is I think for both of them
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to degree. Haven't read this in
their internal braining documents, but the idea
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of kind of a human connection,
a personal connection and are authentic brand seem
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to be very coore to both of
those businesses. You Drift, they're selling
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to a broad range of customers.
They've even have a free product. So
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you could argue the SMB your that
the freelancer market is something they're going towards.
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Terminus is more of a enterprise company. But in both cases, you
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know, with drift you've got their
head of marketing, Dave Gerhart. He's
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very in a public and talking about
the company he's very is kind of off
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the cuff. I think his personality
lends itself to coming across that way,
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to acting that way, but he's
always talking about the brain. He's talking
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about, you know, the new
things they've developed for their customers. You
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know, it's not always perfectly Polish, it's not always there's not always a
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high production value, but you get
the sense that, you know, for
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drift they're all about they have this
idea of conversational marketing. That's kind of
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their their stick, and so Davis
himself, and then to a degree that
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their CEO, Dave cancel is,
is making these these conversations with people through
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their podcasts, with the Linkedin videas, etc. And then you also see
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other people on their team, people
people have not met before, but you'll
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see other people in sales and marketing
making videos themselves talking about the product,
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talking to each other, and you've
just seen that idea of these having the
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conversations and the value of these conversations. You'll see that spread through the organization,
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which is which is really great to
see. And then I'll mention terminus.
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You know Sangroum, their CEO.
He's kind of doing this, something
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similar in a way, and he's
in that his whole ideas account based marketing
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and, you know, instead of
just, you know, spamming people,
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are prospecting people, hunting them down
in some ways, just kind of like
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drift. It's their focus on building
for authentic connections with people. So He's
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done a great job in the way
he's talked about the company. He's always
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talking to other people on Linkedin,
in comments, videos, things of that
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nature. So that's that's probably a
great example of living by example. is
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just being very outward and very kind
of public in the the personality of his
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brand and the values at his brain
stands for. Okay, and obviously any
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company doing a budge abot it,
it's easy to pick on on the bad
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guys. So look, I'll just
mention I can mention a couple just because
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they're in the public spirit already and
it's not going to be new news to
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anyone. I'm not going to pick
on someone that's that's not already been played
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lambasted publicly. But you know,
Uber's probably the example that comes to mind
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for me. First, I'm like
in that part world as what was in
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Theozole at the about recently on double
he should seemed out to that, but
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here. Yeah, so I think
in their case it wasn't so much the
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fact that their external brand wasn't reconciled
with the internal culture. I'm not sure
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that they had much of a kind
of value system to begin with, my
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think a lot of their done a
great job of growing the company. And
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don't me wrong, they that's very
smart and tellented people there. They've done
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a great job on kind of the
performance, the growth side of marketing.
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You can't really argue with that.
But when you look at some of the
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things that they've kind of gotten slapped
on the wrist for, they had think
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greyball was one of the tactics.
I don't remember the specifics, but it
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was the idea of kind of collecting
data on people without their their consent or
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just maybe using that it in in
ways that were not entirely above board.
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Obviously you have some of this sexual
harassment cases that they came about and I
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think it's really unfortunate because you have
a very kind of innovative and destructive company.
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That's absolutely what I think about it. Yeah, yeah, and so
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I think if they had kind of
redefined their marketing to include not just the
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growth aspect but, you know,
the brand aspect of their company, then
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they may have avoided some of those
issues all together. To that point,
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it's also the probably the most viral
compaign that could have existed. Imagine if,
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for the drivers, I mean how
many drivers, when you take a
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whole back, truly complain about working
for a bow? Because so I may
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not complain, but don't really give
you a you wouldn't want them to tell
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you I'm really happy working for about
this is a great company to give me
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an opportunity. How many both do
you take a week? I mean that
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like a few and I would you
would be the best way to actually portrayed
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the company and make everybody feel at
boys the best company ever. And I
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think maybe I had that feel at
the beginning when go was was really new,
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but although the years I think he
just got a little bit I think
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there was issues in with drivers in
India, in some mosop places, and
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you'll become a little bit confusing and
almost make them look as a cheap brand
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from my perspective. I'm talking about
my own opinion here, but I think
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what an opportunity they had, because
the rich that they have with everybody in
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the market do the rich that they
had was thatcom customer is is incredible.
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You actually spend ten, fifteen minutes
with someone walking in the company in a
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cow probably once or tways a week. So he said, perfect opportunity to
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discuss with someone and yeah, to
the point that you formulated before, if
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those guys were really in that reflecting
positively on the value of Uber, wow
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the impact would have been could have
been fantastic. That's right, and you're
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right. A few years ago,
when you took an Uber, you would
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just see the Uber Sticker on the
windshield and now you see is least in
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my experience, is there's the Uber
Sticker and there's a list sticker right next
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to it. Yeah, when I
talk to the Uber Drivers, you know,
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they don't, they don't feel all
that closely align with the company itself,
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at least with my experience, they're
more opportunistic in terms of and I'm
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not vaulting me for this, I
would do the exact same thing. But
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what I've been told is they all
know one week Huber will run a special
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for the drivers where there's kind of
a bonus rate for that period of time,
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and the next week lift counters it
with another, you know, special
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or bonus that you know incentivises the
drivers to work for them, and so
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the drivers go back and forth.
And then, you know, Uber and
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lift in a way they're competing on
price, not price to the customer,
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but you know, the rates that
they paid paid the drivers and, like
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you said, real reliant. It's
unfortunate because Huber did have the opportunity to
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create a stronger bond with the drivers
and really bring them on as part of
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the company culture. But there's more
of a rift where the drivers have distanced
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themselves from Uber corporate in a way
and, you know, as a result,
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they have less quality to them as
a driver. Yeah, absolutely,
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absolutely. Yeah, yeah, that's
a great, great example. I could
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I feed youtube because if I think
you will speak to everyone, because you
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know, we've all been I mean
they maybe of people will listen to this,
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but get that I've never took a
Huba in the life, but I
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think for the most part of us
will probably spend a few, a few
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dollars or pounds or euros in all
with a Nuba. So that makes perfect
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sense. Okay. Well, thank
you very much for that and and for
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your insight and for sharing all those
best practices and IDs with us today.
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John, I'm sure that some people
in audience will want to reach out to
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you and it may want to,
you know, discuss some of the takeaway.
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They may want to have a conversation
with you. Pick your brain.
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So what is the best way for
our listener to get in touch with you,
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John? Sure, well, I'm
assuming you'll put my some of these
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links and the show notes consorted.
Like. Like you, my last name
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00:22:51.480 --> 00:22:56.079
isn't one that you'd be able to
sell just by hearing it. But yeah,
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00:22:56.119 --> 00:23:00.069
I couldn't for non say it's but
you know that's that's the that's about
355
00:23:00.109 --> 00:23:03.390
it. Well, your French background
certainly gave you the edge and pronouncing it.
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00:23:03.509 --> 00:23:06.549
But the best way to reach me
is either on email, which is
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John Dot Rougie as Guy Fycom,
or you can also reach me on Linkedin.
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I'm usually pretty active there as well. Okay, wrest once effect.
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But again, thank you very much
for your time today, John. Ready
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appreciate your time. Dean site that
you provided today to concosaition was real interesting.
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00:23:22.539 --> 00:23:26.299
So yeah, thank you very much
and hopefully we see you back against
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soon. Let's step baking in the
next book guest. My pleasure really and
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next for having me on the show. was great being with you. Thanks.
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00:23:32.769 --> 00:23:37.009
Thank you very much. Jen operatics
has redefined the meaning of revenue generation
365
00:23:37.250 --> 00:23:44.319
for technology companies worldwide. While the
traditional concepts of building and managing inside sales
366
00:23:44.400 --> 00:23:48.079
teams inhouse has existed for many years. Companies are struggling with a lack of
367
00:23:48.200 --> 00:23:55.910
focus, agility and scale required in
today's fast and complex world of enterprise technology
368
00:23:55.950 --> 00:24:02.430
sales. See How operatics can help
your company accelerate pipeline at operatics dotnet.
369
00:24:03.309 --> 00:24:07.670
You've been listening to be tob revenue
acceleration. To ensure that you never miss
370
00:24:07.670 --> 00:24:11.740
an episode, subscribe to the show
in your favorite podcast player. Thank you
371
00:24:11.779 --> 00:24:12.819
so much for listening. Until next
time,
