During this episode of Tech Qualified, Tristan Pelligrino and Justin Brown chat with the Head of Marketing at Theorem, Andrew Upah. Andrew breaks down his background and discusses how Theorem’s main mission is to upend the traditional world of consulting. Andrew talks about marketing and selling consulting services to the Fortune 100 and how it’s important to add value throughout the entire customer journey. With sales cycles of six, nine months...or even years sometimes...Andrew provides some insight into what Theorem is doing to keep prospects engaged.

Episode Highlights:

• Andrew discusses his professional work experience what brought him to Theorem (hint: opportunity strikes at any time...even when sailing around the world)
• Theorem builds innovative products for startups and even some of the biggest organizations in the world
• Theorem uses a slightly different model for building digital products - the organization calls their teams of highly experienced practitioners - “squads”
• Theorem has a very high price point, so sales cycles can be very long at times - sometimes 6-9 months, or even years
• Theorem is a 100% remote work environment, but the organization still maintains a focus on one-to-one conversations with prospects and customers
• Theorem often invites customers to co-present at events and other functions to help build rapport in the process
• One of the biggest competitors of Theorem is internal teams - teams at their prospective organizations who are driving development projects
• In the world of social distancing, events are no longer an option - so Theorem has looked to stand up other virtual initiatives to fill the gap                 
• Content generation stems from a lot of feedback and experiences with customers
• If Theorem could pursue a “test” marketing project, the organization would strive for more work in public relations                

Key Points:

1. Being in the room is ideal, but no one is doing that right now. So, instead of delaying those conversations, Theorem has shifted to video conferencing.
2. With a range of capabilities, Theorem needs to establish itself as an authority in a number of different areas. So, it has to be done over time with thought leadership content.
3. Theorem likes to break down their services into sprints versus long, complex projects that need to be “pitched”.

This episode is produced by New North. New North is a strategic B2B marketing agency specializing in working with tech companies. Going beyond conventional tactics, we craft a personalized marketing strategy, conduct research, lay a solid foundation, execute dynamic campaigns, and continuously refine our approach through analysis.

With New North, your small, scrappy marketing team transforms into a powerful growth engine, achieving your goals with less pressure and more precision.

During this episode of Tech Qualified, Tristan Pelligrino and Justin Brown chat with two marketing leaders from JazzHR. The conversation features the CMO, Allie Kelly, and the Content & Communication Manager, Kelly Peters, of JazzHR. The conversation provides a glimpse into their backgrounds, uncovers how the organization leverages content within their overall marketing strategy and dives a little deeper into what JazzHR has done to respond to the uncertainties prospects face right now.

Episode Highlights:

• Allie Kelly and Kelly Peters each discuss their professional work experience and what has brought them to JazzHR
• JazzHR helps organizations streamline their hiring process, especially smaller organizations that don’t have the internal infrastructure in place to manage the entire process
• Allie discusses the transition JazzHR has made from a complete “on-premise” team to a fully remote team
• The two professionals discuss how JazzHR has become a way for organizations to leverage remote hiring practices
• Allie breaks down the unique offer JazzHR developed to help health care organizations with their hiring process during the coronavirus pandemic
• With applicant tracking software, there are a number of solutions available to companies and the market is crowded
• JazzHR has a big commitment to helping out their channel partners
• JazzHR is essentially a 100% inbound organization, using content and other marketing initiatives to drive demand for their software 
• Even though JazzHR has a price point that seems transactional, the sales process operates very much like an enterprise sale because it touches everyone within the organization
• JazzHR has an extremely low churn rate and content plays an important role in this process
• The organization leverages feedback from customers to generate ideas and content topics
• JazzHR uses a lot of data to build helpful reports and other educational content for prospects and customers
• Engaging with peers and colleagues remains one of the biggest sources of inspiration & information for their existing roles                                    

Key Points:

1. JazzHR created a completely free offer for organizations in the midst of this pandemic situation and built an entire campaign around it to get more traction and simply he

This episode is produced by New North. New North is a strategic B2B marketing agency specializing in working with tech companies. Going beyond conventional tactics, we craft a personalized marketing strategy, conduct research, lay a solid foundation, execute dynamic campaigns, and continuously refine our approach through analysis.

With New North, your small, scrappy marketing team transforms into a powerful growth engine, achieving your goals with less pressure and more precision.

During this episode of Tech Qualified, Tristan Pelligrino and Justin Brown chat with Jennifer Karpus-Romain, the Director of Marketing Services and Industry Outreach at FayeBSG. Jennifer walks us through how she got her start as a writer and then transitioned into a B2B marketing role. Jennifer also discusses how she’s positioning the organization during this tough time of social distancing and what she’s focused on for the rest of the year. 

Episode Highlights:

• Jennifer talks about her foundation as a writer and how that has helped her find new ways to tell company stories
• FayeBSG recently merged with another company, so the organization has been involved with a transition on the marketing side.
• Jennifer spearheads the content initiatives at FayeBSG where they focus on a lot of industry research to inform their customer base.
• Depending on the size of the organization, FayeBSG can have several different ideal customer profiles. In a lot of cases, their services are sparked by the need to evaluate and rollout a new technology stack.
• Jennifer discusses the key messages FayeBSG is sharing with prospects and customers during the social distancing period that is in place. 
• Jennifer pointed out that everyone has slightly different working hours now and it’s important to create content that can be consumed at any time (webinars, podcasts, etc.).
• Jennifer is focused on creating content that isn’t too “pushy” right now and is focused on helping sales professionals navigate conversations with prospects.
• Jennifer’s team has operated in a remote environment for awhile, so many of her day-to-day activities haven’t changed with social distancing rolling out.                                             

Key Points:

1. In times of crisis and uncertainty, we wanted our messaging just to be like…”we’re here for you.”
2. Right now, it’s important to create virtual experiences, podcasts and webinars...because everyone’s hours are different.
3. In this type of situation, there is growth that can come out of this period. Everyone can take a step back and test out new technologies that might be more effective moving forward.

Resources Mentioned:

• Jennifer Karpus-Romain: LinkedIn
• Jennifer Karpus-Romain: Twitter

This episode is produced by New North. New North is a strategic B2B marketing agency specializing in working with tech companies. Going beyond conventional tactics, we craft a personalized marketing strategy, conduct research, lay a solid foundation, execute dynamic campaigns, and continuously refine our approach through analysis.

With New North, your small, scrappy marketing team transforms into a powerful growth engine, achieving your goals with less pressure and more precision.

During this episode of Tech Qualified, Tristan Pelligrino and Justin Brown chat with Rachel Metzler, the Marketing Director at Alight Analytics. Since most marketers and small agencies don’t have an in-house data scientist, Rachel’s company helps fill this gap. Rachel talks about her background, some adjustments the company has made in the midst of social distancing and discusses how analytics can really help improve your campaigns.

Episode Highlights:

• Rachel talks about her experience in cybersecurity marketing and how this is her third role in marketing B2B technology.
• Alight Analytics is a small, startup style company and she works with a small marketing team.
• Rachel’s company works with two different ideal customer profiles: 1) Small agencies and 2) SMBs.
• Recently, Alight Analytics had to take its core team of 50 people and transition fully to a remote team for social distancing purposes.
• A big thing right now is just trying to be empathetic with customers’ situation when prospecting or even communicating with customers.
• Webinars are a big initiative at Alight Analytics and the organization has a passionate CEO who can spearhead these types of presentations.
• Content marketing and content syndication is a relatively new territory, but the organization plans to use this avenue more effectively.
• When co-marketing and getting leads from co-marketing campaigns, the organization has implemented a system where SDRs follow-up with one-to-one communications and this has improved results significantly.
• LinkedIn has been a really successful online advertising platform as of late. 
• Rachel discusses some projects she would execute if given a $20k budget to just “test” things out.                                              

Key Points:

1. With social distancing in place, the organization has really shied away from large email blasts, focusing instead on one-to-one communication.
2. Digital channels are huge right now. Alight Analytics had already made a large investment in webinars before social distancing was implemented.
3. Marketing qualified leads - that metric for us, is not where we measure success.

Resources Mentioned:

• Rachel Metzler:

This episode is produced by New North. New North is a strategic B2B marketing agency specializing in working with tech companies. Going beyond conventional tactics, we craft a personalized marketing strategy, conduct research, lay a solid foundation, execute dynamic campaigns, and continuously refine our approach through analysis.

With New North, your small, scrappy marketing team transforms into a powerful growth engine, achieving your goals with less pressure and more precision.

During this episode of Tech Qualified, Tristan Pelligrino and Justin Brown talk with Joe Staples, the Chief Marketing Officer at Motivosity. Joe talks about some of the adjustments the company has made to their messaging during social distancing, discusses strategies around paid search and engaging prospects using high quality content.

Episode Highlights:

• Joe Staples shares information on his background and his journey of being a head of marketing or CMO for about twenty years.
• Joe leads marketing efforts for an employee recognition software platform that allows team members to give and recognize accomplishments of their peers.
• Joe discusses Motivosity’s ideal customer profile, largely consisting of HR departments.
• During the social distancing period, Joe has pivoted Motivosity’s messaging a bit to coincide with a lot of the remote work situations faced by prospects and clients.
• One of the big components of the customer journey is determining how much education needs to be provided up front - many prospects are unaware that a solution like Motivosity exists for their situation.
• About 80% of the sales is done virtually as prospects go through demos and get to experience the platform before making a purchase.
• Motivosity has done a few trade shows, but are fortunate enough to not have trade shows as a major driver for demand.
• It’s important for us to figure out how to get multiple hooks into a deal and get to the right people that will make the call and make the ultimate decision.
• We use as many mediums as possible, videos are great. Whitepapers, articles and webinars are all a great tool for us.
• Motivosity elected to hire internal resources to prepare video content versus leveraging outside freelancers. 
• When building a team, Joe focused on graphic design as one of the very first full-time resources.
• Joe Staples discusses some projects he would execute if given a $20k budget to just “test” things out.                                              

Key Points:

1. Digital demand is the name of the game for us. 
2. For us, since we’re an employee engagement platform, it’s more important than ever.
3. We look at the topic and then determine the best medium to share that topic. If the

This episode is produced by New North. New North is a strategic B2B marketing agency specializing in working with tech companies. Going beyond conventional tactics, we craft a personalized marketing strategy, conduct research, lay a solid foundation, execute dynamic campaigns, and continuously refine our approach through analysis.

With New North, your small, scrappy marketing team transforms into a powerful growth engine, achieving your goals with less pressure and more precision.

During this episode of Tech Qualified, Tristan Pelligrino sits down and chats with Latane Conant, the Chief Marketing Officer at 6Sense. 6Sense is an Account Engagement Platform that allows companies to proactively target the right accounts based on real-time data and behavior. Latane talks about her background before becoming a CMO, discusses the trends in B2B buying and talks about this uncertain time we are operating within right now.

Episode Highlights:

• Latane Conant shares her background as a professional and talks about how she graduated with a degree in accounting...and found her way into a sales role.
• Latane discusses the ideal customer profile for 6Sense, which includes B2B sales and marketing teams.
• In a B2B buying cycle, there’s a concept of a “dark funnel” where buyers are conducting a lot of research before making a purchase.
• Only 13% of sales and marketing teams actually have confidence in their CRM data.
• During several virtual coffee talks with CMOs around the country, Latane discovered a few key themes - one being the fact that “putting our heads in the sand is the worst thing we can do.”
• Another key theme discussed with CMOs is around automation and how we shouldn’t be sending anything automated right now...and probably shouldn’t be doing that anyway.
• When operating in this climate, it’s ok to acknowledge what’s going on and empathy is very important.
• Latane mentioned that there is a lot of public shaming on LinkedIn and discusses how coaching can be done privately versus in public forums. 
• BDRs have a tough job and it’s even tougher right now. So, their team is focused on educating and learning. Right now, maybe it’s important to put double the amount of time into account research.
• Latane discusses the pros and cons of having BDRs report to marketing versus the sales teams.
• Latane talks about how she works with the leader of the BDR team and they collaboratively set the tone for the week...each week.
• ABM is really about understanding your ideal customers in real-time and identifying those key buying signals.
• ABM is more than just selecting the right accounts, you have to define a business objective up front as well.
• Latane breaks down how their podcast/video series was created and how they use it within their own marketing strategy.

This episode is produced by New North. New North is a strategic B2B marketing agency specializing in working with tech companies. Going beyond conventional tactics, we craft a personalized marketing strategy, conduct research, lay a solid foundation, execute dynamic campaigns, and continuously refine our approach through analysis.

With New North, your small, scrappy marketing team transforms into a powerful growth engine, achieving your goals with less pressure and more precision.

During this episode of Tech Qualified, Justin Brown chats with the Director of Marketing at Rootstrap. Rootstrap is a company that builds apps from scratch, rescues existing products and provides additional development muscle for internal projects. Patrick talks about how the organization builds relationships with prospects and has a focus on both inbound and outbound strategies.

Episode Highlights:

• Patrick Ward shares his background within marketing and talks about what drew him to the opportunity at Rootstrap.
• Patrick discusses the ideal customer profile of Rootstrap which mostly covers three different industries - e-commerce, e-learning and healthcare.
• Rootstrap engages customers in two very specific ways: 1) Either they come to them with a product which needs to be built or 2) Staff augmentation.
• The sales cycle for Rootstrap’s engagements can be three, six or even nine months to close, so it’s important to nurture prospects throughout the entire journey.
• Rootstrap uses both inbound and outbound marketing strategies. 
• Rootstrap’s podcast serves as a way to generate interest with prospective customers and helps establish thought leadership.
• Once Rootstrap has determined a client has a problem which they can solve, it becomes more about education to help them convert.
• It’s almost like marketing and sales is one in the same, in the b2b space. You really need to be a consultant.
• If you genuinely provide the best solution for clients, even if it’s not yours, even if it’s recommending them to someone else, that’s going to get you a much better referral from the person and will build a long-term relationship. 
• Marketing is a lot about building systems and this process allows Patrick to create initiatives that run themselves. He then focuses on analyzing what is working effectively.
• What are some Patrick’s favorite resources to keep up with #b2btech marketing?                                               

Key Points:

1. Patrick urges marketers to enable products and services to continue to help other people - to keep the economy moving during the pandemic situation.
2. If your marketing is focused on inbound, you’re less at risk to algorithm changes and other major platform changes.
3. It’s helpful to listen to practitioners instead of just theorists.

This episode is produced by New North. New North is a strategic B2B marketing agency specializing in working with tech companies. Going beyond conventional tactics, we craft a personalized marketing strategy, conduct research, lay a solid foundation, execute dynamic campaigns, and continuously refine our approach through analysis.

With New North, your small, scrappy marketing team transforms into a powerful growth engine, achieving your goals with less pressure and more precision.

During this episode of Tech Qualified, we chat with Dawn White, the Director of Marketing and Account Management at Integrated Design, Inc. (IDI). Dawn talks about her background in account management, how she transitioned to marketing, why she focuses on the success of customers first and outlines some of the major changes she made when taking over marketing. 

Episode Highlights:

• Dawn White shares her background story and talks about how she started in account management at IDI...then transitioned to overseeing marketing as well.
• Dawn discusses the ideal customer profile of IDI, which includes both direct customers and partner organizations.
• Dawn talks about the homegrown CRM that existed prior to her rolling out Hubspot to the team.
• One of the first initiatives Dawn went through in marketing was to complete a content audit.
• Hubspot is an integral part of the marketing and sales infrastructure at IDI. 
• Dawn focuses on really keeping in touch with customers, through newsletters and simply picking up the phone.
• Dawn discusses how the website is used to complete a pre-evaluation for prospects and then how this information is shared with sales & partners to create a relationship.
• When moving into her marketing role, upselling was a component of her job...but so was customer satisfaction.
• Hubspot is a crucial component to ensuring marketing and sales teams are on the same page throughout a customer’s lifecycle.
• From the account management side, it’s important to never ask for more than we are giving in the relationship.
• At IDI, we’re consultants. We’re not trying to sell you something that you don’t need.
• Our sales process involves consultation. It requires a deep-dive into a customer’s environment and overall organization. 
• Dawn took a Storybrand course to further refine IDI’s messaging. One of the big lessons learned is how the customer is the “hero” in your messaging.
• What are some Dawn’s favorite resources to keep up with #b2btech marketing?                                               

3 Key Points:

1. Hubspot is a key part of IDI’s technology stack and ensures marketing and sales teams are aligned throughout the customer journey.

This episode is produced by New North. New North is a strategic B2B marketing agency specializing in working with tech companies. Going beyond conventional tactics, we craft a personalized marketing strategy, conduct research, lay a solid foundation, execute dynamic campaigns, and continuously refine our approach through analysis.

With New North, your small, scrappy marketing team transforms into a powerful growth engine, achieving your goals with less pressure and more precision.

During this episode of Tech Qualified, we talk with D.J. Haskins, the VP of Marketing at SilverCloud. D.J. talks about the dramatic changes happening in the banking industry right now and pinpoints the importance of using empathy when engaging with prospects & customers.

Episode Highlights:

• D.J. Haskins shares his background and discusses his role at SilverCloud. 
• D.J. Haskins talks about his background as an agency owner and what made him want to switch over to the other side.
• What does SilverCloud do for their customers and how is their solution important in today’s environment?
• What types of shifts do we see in the banking industry - especially with digital and mobile access?
• With social distancing and the “new” work environment, how does SilverCloud communicate with customers and discuss their offering?
• Why is empathy so important when it comes to communication with prospects and customers?
• From an outbound point of view, we need to be very empathetic. But, from an inbound standpoint, we need to almost double down when someone needs our solution.
• Why is it important, now more than ever, to “give” first in the marketing lifecycle?
• How does a webinar fit into a marketing strategy in this type of sales environment?
• SilverCloud’s prospects and customers are still going about their business and banking customers are demanding quite a bit of information right now.
• SilverCloud has a small marketing team and D.J. serves very much as a “player coach” in their environment.
• We’ve gotten really efficient in terms of content design - enabling us to get out content quickly.
• What are some of D.J.’s favorite resources?                                                                    

Key Points:

1. We’re very targeted and webinars are one of our best lead sources.
2. We just had our biggest webinar of the year [despite the social distancing many individuals are operating within].
3. A lot of our target audience is still going about their business.
4. We’ve committed to content design and creating templates, this allows us to generate high quality content quickly.

Resources Mentioned:

• D.J. Haskins: Linkedin
• SilverCloud: www.silvercloudinc.com
• Revenue Collective: https://www.revenuecollective.com/
• Motion: motionagency.io/access

During this episode of Tech Qualified Podcast, we talk with Ray Grieselhuber, Founder and CEO at DemandSphere. Ray Grieselhuber talks about how DemandSphere’s core audience, how they serve their customers, his interest in SEO, the difference between keyword searches versus semantic searches, and how SEO is evolving with audio and video.  

Episode Highlights:

• Ray Grieselhuber shares his background and what he is up to at DemandSphere. 
• Ray Grieselhuber’s interest in SEO came from its combination of all the technologies he was interested in. 
• What does DemandSphere do for their customers and their connection to the start-up community? 
• What was the state of DemandSphere when it was happening in Japan? 
• What has helped expand the skillsets needed for growth?  
• Ray is an engineer who also likes to talk to customers.                                        
• Ray Grieselhuber talks about DemandSphere’s core customer profiles and how to stay in their lane with the companies they can help.  
• What is the right time for an organic search strategy? 
• How do you penetrate the market when there isn’t a lot of information on the service you focus on?                                   
• Talk to your customer and listen to what they need? 
• Should you start with a budget and look at your goals within those restrictions? 
• Ray Grieselhuber discusses the difference between keyword searches versus semantic searches.                                         
• How much weight should you place on single pillar pages of content versus content clusters? 
• How do you balance the call-to-actions at different stages? 
• Capture emails and figure out how you can show potential customers benefits.   
• How do audio and video factor into SEO? 
• What are Ray's favorite resources?                                                                    

3 Key Points:

1. DemandSphere handles programmatic SEO for very large database-driven websites with a lot of automated content generation.  
2. The main customer profiles for DemandSphere are large websites driven by data, many of which are on the e-commerce side or start-ups in the technology space. 
3. The marketing funnel that you need to reach 500 really high paying customers is much smaller than the funnel you need to reach 20,000 low-level paying customers.

Resources:

• Ray Grieselhuber: Linkedin
• DemandSphere: demandsphere.com
• Hacker News: news.ycombinator.com/news
• Found Conference: foundconf.com
• Motion: motionagency.io/ultimate