ARE YOU LOSING SALES DUE TO POOR ORGANIZATION?
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Tips on how to to be more organized and not lose sales with Resa Gooding
- I help businesses understand how to be more organized and efficient, so they can use CRM and marketing platforms to scale their businesses and stop losing sales.
- If you don’t spend time cleaning up your database, it’s a problem. This will always repeat itself and your campaigns will never perform well.
- Start off by achieving quick and easy wins with the things that are easy to use.
- You have to have something as simple as content because the content is the thing that gives fuel everything else like your marketing automation platform.
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ARE YOU LOSING SALES DUE TO POOR ORGANIZATION?
I help businesses understand how to be more organized and efficient. They can use CRM and marketing platforms to scale their businesses and stop losing sales.
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Doug: Well welcome back listeners to the episode of Real marketing real fast. Today’s episode I’ve got a guest that I’m quite excited to share with you because we spent our entire podcast talking about sales and marketing, the integration, analytics testing, and getting better results from your marketing efforts using sales and marketing automation.
My guest today is Resa Gooding. She is a marketing automation and CRM expert who specializes in leveraging platforms like HubSpot, Infusionsoft and Salesforce to help companies generate more leads and improve conversions and close more deals. Resa is the co-founder and client director of a company called Coquille Media. She’s a HubSpot certified platinum partner agency with offices in Tel Aviv. That’s where she’s joining us from today, offices in New York, and Nairobi.
Using CRM and marketing automation processes set up by Resa and her team, startups and traditional companies are able to spend more time closing deals instead of being bogged down by administrative tasks. She’s originally from Trinidad and Tobago. Resa now resides and lives in Israel with her [family 00:01:11]. She came to Israel in 2007 for a two-week vacation, which turned into a 12-year hiatus, where she’s now planning and executing her client’s direct marketing strategies, training teams, and you’ll most likely find Resa sharing her marketing and sales expertise with a captive audience at any given co-working space.
I’d like to welcome Resa Gooding to the Real Marketing Real Fast podcasts today. Here Resa super excited to have you on the podcast today to share your superpower in helping business owners, entrepreneurs and startups get started and move the sales dial in a big way. Welcome to the show.
Resa Gooding: Thank you so much, Doug. It’s a real pleasure to be here. Finally, I’m talking to fellow marketers. There’s nothing more that excites me.
Doug: Yes, I love this. Most of my guests are in the marketing space, but I do talk to SAS providers. I have had the guys from HubSpot on and various different CRM platforms. I like workflow. I like automation. I like CRM. I like the way that technology is helping businesses grow. What I hear from people and what I see with my clients is often they’re overwhelmed and they’ve got three or four or five different programs that they bought that they’re not using. Why don’t you share with us what it is that you do to help your clients?
Resa Gooding: Sure. I’m based in Israel, which is the… They call it basically Wadi Silicon Valley or most Wadi Valley.
Doug: Wadi Valley, yes.
Resa Gooding: Exactly, It’s the second-largest startup tech scene here in the world. I work with a lot of startups and I also work with some traditional companies as well. Companies existing over 30 years still don’t have CRM, so marketing platforms. They made their money through old school marketing and still believe in that strongly. My goal really is to help these businesses understand how to become more efficient because they can use these platforms to really scale their businesses and become more successful and reach more markets using these platforms.
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ARE YOU LOSING SALES DUE TO POOR ORGANIZATION?
I help businesses understand how to be more organized and efficient. They can use CRM and marketing platforms to scale their businesses and stop losing sales.
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Doug: Okay, that makes sense. Now, when you’re doing this, not all business owners are born with a desire to learn technology and use technology. You get into business because you’ve either worked for somebody else, and you want to take that and get into that business, or because you’ve come up with a new idea to solve a problem. How do you help people overcome the hurdles of going, “Hey, I should do something better than keeping all my contacts on my desk, but business cards with a rubber band? Maybe I’ll get more sophisticated, and I’ll put them into an Excel sheet or a Google Doc.” What are the steps that you take to move people beyond that so they can really start to scale their business?
Resa Gooding: These are very good questions because believe it or not, whether they are young millennials or anywhere… Most people are tech-averse. You think everybody’s walking around without iPhones, it’s easy to get them to adopt these platforms. It’s not. Everyone has some pushback, everyone doesn’t really want to learn something new. It’s not very often actually that I will be able to go into a company and just say, “Hey, this is how it goes.” And set it up.
I spent 50% of my time just really trying to ease them into the situation of adopting these platforms. One of the basic things I always start off with is trying to show them quick and easy wins and things that are very easy. This is why I love HubSpot because, with HubSpot, you don’t have to know any coding. You don’t have to know any back end of the system. Everything is upfront. It’s a very user-friendly interface and everything. The best part is because I know a lot of it already, I can go in and set up these things before the clients even see their platform.
All I get to do is show them some signs like, “Okay, guess what? Look I connected your email to HubSpot,” for example. “When you send this email, you’re going to get a notification that that person opened the email. Isn’t that amazing? Now you know exactly when to pick up the phone and call them.” These little wins help even for showing them how I can log the emails that they sending to the CRM. So when their boss is asking, “Did you email that person? What’s happening with that lead?” They can actually just go to the CRM and see themselves.
These are little things I always thought of doing without them having to get involved in understanding how the platform works, but seeing actual value already from the minute they have purchased and installed the platform.
Doug: I think it’s a great lesson for everyone to learn. You’re not coming in there and giving them a sermon, so to speak on this is why CRM and here’s all the bells and whistles. It’ll do this, it will do that. They’re actually getting something tangible. They log in for the first time and say, “Hey, guess what, we’re already tracking… We’re saving all those conversations in a place that’s organized. You can find them later have a meaningful conversation.” Its immediate value opposed to months of learning.
Resa Gooding: Exactly because again, you will run into brick walls, if you try it. In the beginning of my career, I was very anxious and wanted to show them everything. Then I saw how overwhelmed people felt. Not only that, they will just freeze and they will not use this platform ever. They won’t touch it. I’ve learned from experience rather to just do things bit by bit and don’t try to give them the whole bells and whistles as you said from the beginning.
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ARE YOU LOSING SALES DUE TO POOR ORGANIZATION?
I help businesses understand how to be more organized and efficient. They can use CRM and marketing platforms to scale their businesses and stop losing sales.
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Doug: I guess that’s… Like you said, that’s just part of learning how to sell properly is you’re actually trying to show somebody what’s going to happen. The transformation. Today you’re here. If you take the actions that I’m suggesting, this is what your life’s going to look like next week.
Resa Gooding: Exactly.
Doug: You have less stress, you’re not going to have to go, “Hey, Who was that guy I met at that networking event? Who is that guy I met at that platform event?” You’re going to have all those things at your fingertips on your phone or on your desktop or laptop.
Resa Gooding: Exactly. You are so right Doug.
Doug: I’m a real techie guy. I’m not a coder, but I just love technology. Lots of times, my first move is to technology. If somebody’s running a business, and they’re going to make a decision to, hey, maybe I should get more organized, maybe I should get a CRM of some sort, instead of talking about the technology first, how should they look at this as… to be integrated with the marketing plan?
So it’s like, “Okay, I need to be more organized,” but what does that look like in their marketing plan before they go make the decision and spend weeks or months searching the perfect CRM?
Resa Gooding: Yes, that’s a very good question again, Doug, and I’ll tell you why. It’s really because… I cannot tell you how many times I’ve gone into companies who bought HubSpot or bought some platform and they said, “Okay Resa we’re ready to go, let’s go.” Then I’m like, “Okay, you don’t even have a website? What do you mean let’s go?” Exactly. They don’t understand… Sometimes most people don’t understand that there is a foundation that’s needed to power these platforms.
Marketing automation platforms cannot work without a website. If you don’t have a functional site, and I mean functional, meaning it wasn’t built in 1980, and it still sits there, it has to be one of these responsive sites that can really speak to your audience today because you have to have simple things like call to actions, buttons on the side. You have to have forms on the side.
There’s certain elements that your site must contain in order for these platforms to work because remember, the goal of these platforms is to collect consumer data. They want to collect leads for you. The leads have to have some way of interacting with something online to be entered into the platforms. You have to have that basic level first of all.
Another thing is to have something simple as content because content is the next thing that actually fuels everything that basically surrounds the marketing automation platform. If you have no blog, or you don’t really have a gated piece of content like an eBook or a guide, how do you set up drip nurture? How would you actually figure out how to bring these leads in and take them further down the funnel? You need to have these little things in place at the very beginning before you think of really investing in these platforms.
Sometimes I see that businesses aren’t there yet, especially when they are very brand new startups, and they’re still trying to figure out what the hell they’re selling in the first place, then they don’t really have these assets in place. It doesn’t make sense to invest in these platforms at this very early stage.
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ARE YOU LOSING SALES DUE TO POOR ORGANIZATION?
I help businesses understand how to be more organized and efficient. They can use CRM and marketing platforms to scale their businesses and stop losing sales.
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Doug: I guess that’s what I was getting at. That’s exactly the point was do you have a marketing plan and a plan to move forward? At the very least, you should be collecting, like you said, the consumer data, people that are visiting your website, people that you’re meeting out at business events. You have some automated way that if you want to respond to them. If you and I met at the ad tech in Israel, I could go into HubSpot and I can go source a lead. Ad tech, and it will give me a list of everybody who’s there and I can send them a note, say, “Hey, great to connect with you at Ad tech in Israel last week. Resa’s presentation is great. I’m working on an email platform.” Or whatever. You’ve got a conversation. That’s the beginning.
Do you coach people then in terms of how to leverage the tool because a tool is a powerful tool? I know lots of people who use it. Like you said, you need to have some content strategy. I know HubSpot produces an insane amount of content.
Resa Gooding: Yes, for real.
Doug: Good content. Do you coach them in terms of how do you get started? Here’s your marketing plan. Here’s your new business. You’re going to need to do… you need four emails. You’re going to need some blog posts and this is how they’re going to integrate with the system.
Resa Gooding: Yes, of course. This is always part of the beginning strategy when I do my kickoff meetings and begin to set them up. After showing them the quick wins and getting them on board, the next stage is you to have to help them actually develop what… I start off with a campaign. I don’t even talk about marketing plan or strategy, because that’s so too big for them to absorb.
I take it down to one notch and I say, let’s set up one campaign. Let’s think of a segment of your audience you’d like to reach. Let’s think of some little content we can find. Even if it’s not your own content for now, because sometimes again, they still at that stage where they’re not sure what they want to produce. I say to them, okay, let’s try to find articles online that’s relevant to your business and relevant to your audience. Just to show them how it will work so we can inspire them to now create their own content.
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SHARE THIS EPISODE: ARE YOU LOSING SALES DUE TO POOR ORGANIZATION?
ARE YOU LOSING SALES DUE TO POOR ORGANIZATION?
I help businesses understand how to be more organized and efficient. They can use CRM and marketing platforms to scale their businesses and stop losing sales.
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Sometimes even have a very good sales pitch deck or something. Because they’ve already been talking to lots of VCs or they’re trying to get funding, they do have some content available. My goal will always be to try to repurpose that content into something that can be much more digestible for a wider audience who are not really yet sure that they want to buy this technology they’re selling.
This is usually part of the process. Again, I define a campaign with them based on an audience. Then I have them choose two to three pieces of external content that might just exist on the website that we can use as part of drip nurtures. Then I take something that they have existing like a sales presentation and try to convert that into some type of gated content, like an eBook or… Not even a white paper, I wouldn’t go that far, but sometimes an infographic or something we can share with them. Then I show them how we can build a campaign out of these different content pieces to generate initially some leads for their database.
Doug: That makes sense. I mean, I share a lot of third party content, because I produce content, I don’t produce as much as I’d like. That’s a really good point. I just sent out my email to my list this morning and my topic today was all around welcome messages which would be a very simple thing when you… I’m sure when you set up Infusionsoft for people to… Not Infusionsoft, instead HubSpot rather, that they’re going to get this autoresponder and the numbers were 59% of the people opened it.
Resa Gooding: Amazing right?
Doug: Yes, which is crazy. Most people expect it and less than half the businesses send it. There’s a really super easy win, just get… There’s an easy piece of content to write. Just to welcome people into your organization or onto your list.
Resa Gooding: Yes, that’s amazing. You are so right.
Doug: Moving forward. You come into an organization and you help them get organized, when do they start to reach their stride generally. When they start to feel comfortable and their sales reps and their marketing people have adopted this and start to actually use the tool that’s there because I think so often tools like this are so powerful. What I see is, and I can speak for myself as well, I use 5% of the capability.
Resa Gooding: I know. That’s [crosstalk 00:14:07].
Doug: I’m missing 95%.
Resa Gooding: You’re so right because oftentimes… I sometimes go into companies that already bought HubSpot, have it sitting there for two, three, five years. All they’re using are emails and landing pages. I’m like, do you understand what machine you have in front of you? Do you know how much more this can do? They don’t realize that features like chatbots exist in HubSpot. They don’t realize that they can do workflows and workflows are powerful in terms of not just sending out emails but organizing a database for them so they can group people and populate different fields that they want through workflows.
They really don’t understand the capabilities and it takes a while I must admit for people to really get fully engrossed in it and they have to be willing to test and make mistakes without compromising their business too much. Again, most people get very tech-averse. They don’t really want to touch it. This is why thankfully we have jobs because every [inaudible 00:15:04] agencies [inaudible 00:15:05] guidance through that process.
My agency, I try to position us differently and I always say to my clients, I want to empower you. After a while, I’m going to take the stirrups off and you have to learn to drive this wheel. I will sit and I will guide you. I will be here for you to answer the questions but I want you to take control of that wheel now and start doing things yourself.
After about six months or so of being with the clients and helping them set up, I do start to take a bit of a back seat and I allow them to go into the system. Now, of course, they do make a [inaudible 00:15:44] a lot of mistakes as we say in Israel. They can mess up the entire system sometimes, and then they have to call me in to help clean up and reverse their mistakes.
Again, I appreciate that they go through that process because it teaches them how to not do certain things like that. I just finished reading Principles by Ray Dalio. One of the first principles he said to me, he has an issue log in his company. I think this is something that I would love to implement for my clients going forward. Is to have an issue log, so they understand what mistakes they made, why it was made, and why not to do it again. They have a reference point.
Because again, you do so many things on that platform every day. Sometimes… I saw in one post that you had on your website, where you featured Gary Vaynerchuk talking about email plus, why it’s so detrimental because he received an email without his first name in it and his name was misspelled.
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I help businesses understand how to be more organized and efficient. They can use CRM and marketing platforms to scale their businesses and stop losing sales.
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Doug: Yes, that’s right.
Resa Gooding: Exactly. These are mistakes that happen and it’s quite often it will happen with marketing automation because when you have thousands and hundreds of people in an email list, you don’t always go through the list to make sure that everybody’s first name is populated but what you can do is have a default that will say hi dear or hi friend or a colleague. If the first name isn’t there, at least it populates with that instead. These little things they miss and that’s why Gary received such an email. These are the things I’m trying to teach my clients to avoid making if they have such an issue log that picks up these mistakes eventually.
Doug: That’s a great idea. I guess I’ll be looking forward to you submitting a piece of content of the issue log for new HubSpot users. We can learn what mistakes everyone else has made so we don’t have to do that.
Resa Gooding: Exactly. The mistakes I’m telling you they are repetitive. I deal with dozens and dozens of accounts every month and it’s the same mistakes I see all the time.
Doug: I want listeners to go, hey, six months… She didn’t say it takes six months to get value. Then my question to her, I just want to reemphasize was, how long it takes people to get up to stride with the teams using it? The bad news is it’s going to take six months, you can’t do it in 30 seconds, it’s not a microwave. The good news is that you’re going to be still running your business in six months from now, whether or not you implement the system. The difference is how effective are you going to be six months from now?
Resa Gooding: Exactly. Again, usually, it takes us two weeks to set up a platform for people. They get to use it from day one. The problem is that they’re actually trying to depend on us to do everything for them. This is all well and good because this is most agency models that they try to take all of the marketing plans and strategies and tactics to manage that whole process for clients.
More and more again, you see how people are getting unhappy with agencies, is because agencies are not there in house. They don’t always understand the politics and the different changes that are happening within the organizations. This is why sometimes they’re not always very effective or their results don’t always match the value that the clients think they should be getting.
I’ve learned that mistake as well because I’ve worked with so many agencies. I see that, especially in a startup world, they came up with one product last week, and by next week, once the CEO rolls of his bed, he has a whole totally different new product. You in the agency sitting remotely will never get that information until it’s too late. My point is that always because of this disconnect with agencies and companies, is difficult for us to bring value consistently.
Even though at the very beginning, I’m there with my clients, holding their hand, setting up the campaigns, doing everything for them, the point of them taking control is because the changes that happened within the organization are way too quick that by the time we get the information, it’s not enough to make the changes to bring the results they need to. They need to be able to run that ship themselves so they can make those changes.
Doug: I think they should. That’s one of the comments I’ve often shared with people with regards to why should you be using lead magnets and building an email list? Well because you control that data. Where you don’t control the data on the social platforms, the social platforms go away. The same thing with the database. You should have someone on your team like you said, that’s hands-on in house that can deal with it.
If you do send Gary Vaynerchuk an email and you don’t put his first name, you spell his last name wrong and he blasts you on Twitter, at least you can get on there and you can send him a follow-up note. You know how to find him, and send him a sorry and maybe a… I don’t know what it is. Don’t send him wine because he’s got his own wine club. Send him some chocolate to go with his wife or something.
Resa Gooding: Exactly.
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ARE YOU LOSING SALES DUE TO POOR ORGANIZATION?
I help businesses understand how to be more organized and efficient. They can use CRM and marketing platforms to scale their businesses and stop losing sales.
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Doug: Can you share an example with us of a client that you saw a major transformation in some form after they went from their Excel spreadsheet to implementing with you guys?
Resa Gooding: They all do honestly Doug because it changes their life. I mean, think about it.
Doug: You can’t tell us about all of them. I just need you to tell us about one.
Resa Gooding: I will focus on one, but I will tell you why they see this value quickly. It’s also because I don’t know how it is in America because I’ve never really worked there. In Israel, the bosses here tend to micromanage a lot, which means that they always want to know what’s going on at every second in real-time. So our workdays are extremely long because of that. Also because we market to the US, we find ourselves working like 12 to 15 hours a day because of this.
With this system, can you imagine your boss no longer has to call you at 10 o’clock at night ask you if you send that email to that leader? In the system now, when they implemented systems, they have a need for fewer meetings once they have a system because everybody has the information in real-time. Everybody can see the same information as everybody else. No one is missing any loop so no one is wondering what happened today.
This is one of the first… When they see that it allows them to really reduce the number of meetings they would have normally, and get information in real-time. Most people appreciate the system for that. The next thing I think that they really… I saw one company, especially really saw value from is just getting processes in place and making sure that people have an understanding of what this sales process is especially because again, with a startup, sometimes it’s all over the place, right? The goal is just to get a customer.
Everybody tries different things and everybody does their own thing. With this system, it forces everyone to follow a certain pattern at least. Yes, you can try different things, but the pattern must be… The lead must be updated. If you sent a contract, you must have a POC, this point of tests that they are going to do with the software first. That stage must be updated. At least everybody’s on the same page with where the stage of the need is. That’s what’s important for these businesses is to really understand if they’re bringing real value to their audience or if their business even makes any sense because they will see the numbers every day on that.
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SHARE THIS EPISODE: ARE YOU LOSING SALES DUE TO POOR ORGANIZATION?
ARE YOU LOSING SALES DUE TO POOR ORGANIZATION?
I help businesses understand how to be more organized and efficient. They can use CRM and marketing platforms to scale their businesses and stop losing sales.
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Doug: That makes sense to like you said. It goes beyond and we are talking beyond the sales and marketing team, we’re talking about VP level, being able to go in there and pull reporting and look at and get data and see how people are performing and see where the organization is and see some metrics. See the number of new leads, and those that convert for the lead magnet and those that convert to a trial and those who convert to a sale. Instead of phoning say hey, like you said, “Did you send that email to X, Y, Z company yet? Where are they?” The data is there if they choose to log in and find it.
Resa Gooding: Exactly. Even if they don’t, have it emailed directly to them in the inboxes. This is important as well. They get realtime information in every possible way. It could come to their cell phone, it could come to their emails. They don’t even have to go into the system most times. This is what makes it as easy as well.
Doug: That’s really cool. Looking at technology and being that you’re living in the center of the world in terms of new tech and technology, what are you most excited about in the next six to eight or 12 months?
Resa Gooding: Wow, there are so many tools, but I think for as a marketer, the most… Two things I really want and I realized that the market needs, one of them is about better insights. Not analytics, but insights. I’ll tell you why. There a couple of companies trying to come up with something. This is something I realized that my clients have a challenge with. Reports are all well and good Doug. What happens, most people can’t interpret that data. They don’t really know what it means. They see the numbers and they see sometimes what they’re familiar with like how many clicks and views. But as a marketer, we know those are vanity metrics. Those don’t really tell you how well you’re doing.
You need to really get deep inside the numbers and see how different things are affecting and where the connections are, what the attributions are said, it takes a little bit deeper digging to really get those insights. What I would like to see or even develop myself one day, will be more insights that actually give pop-ups to the screens and to these analytic reports that tell marketers basically, okay, this is a good metric, but you’re still below the benchmark. These are the three things you can do to improve. It actually gives them actionable items that they can do right away without waiting to figure out what to do.
Because I think this is a big gap, which we see real progress and real value for these businesses to see. Get out of this system because analytics are all well and good and everybody has an analytics dashboard, but most people cannot read them. It’s a problem.
Doug: Like you said, we’re often looking at the wrong metrics. We’re looking, hey look at how many followers I have on Instagram but nobody likes, comments or clicks to your bio so who cares.
Resa Gooding: Yes exactly, but these are the things… They take what’s easy, I guess and they just don’t know really how to do cross reporting and all of these other further reports that you really need to understand how to set up and how to interpret. That’s at a high level, I think there’s a lot still to do on that side with analytics. Basically, let’s just say for 2020, what I’m most excited is getting into is chatbots.
Why it’s again, I think it’s not something that is very well developed yet, especially the Israeli market. Clients don’t always understand the value of it. They know they should have it because it’s a trend because of course you read the same blogs you and I do. Everybody talks about it so they think okay, it’s a trend, just put it on the site. But they don’t really take the time to format it and really understand what’s happening with it and measure the effectiveness of it to make sure it’s actually getting their audiences and converting them as it should be. This is something I want to focus on more for in 2020 to bring more value to my clients, for sure.
Doug: That’s interesting because I looked at chatbots as well. I saw that come out and I actually had a developer approach me. He builds them for big companies, but he doesn’t know how to market himself. I started looking at it, I thought, “Oh, this looks really cool.” I did exactly what you said. This looks really cool. I should have a look at this. What I realized was it’s no different than the example you just gave. People coming into HubSpot was it was going to require some time to go through and think about how does somebody get to the chatbot?
How am I going to get it in front of people? What information are they going to want? What is the conversation going to look like from the time that they first sign up to the time that they join my email list, to the time that they maybe buy a product from me and all the pieces that go back and forth in between? I was surprised at how much planning and work there was from walking people through the chatbox sale process.
Resa Gooding: Exactly. Even on the marketing side, we have to actually set up that text. That alone takes some brainpower because it has to be natural text, it has to make people think that they’re talking to a person because most people will interact with it and want to feel like they’re talking to a person, not a machine. You have to really understand how to build that text so it flows well and it doesn’t turn them off really.
Doug: Well. I think the other thing to consider too as a marketer or even as a startup is to have those solutions that integrate.
Resa Gooding: Yes.
Doug: So you don’t have landing page software and then you have outside analytic software, and then you have an email platform and then you have a CRM platform. Then you have a chatbot platform and then you have an SMS platform. Because most people that I work with have all those things. They don’t talk to each other. The sales rep doesn’t know that someone’s in a chatbot conversation, or doesn’t know that the marketer, the email guy sent an email out to their list.
Resa Gooding: That’s exactly why I recommend people to take HubSpot because HubSpot is the only platform that has every single thing in it. From the minute somebody enters your visual online assets as a prospect to the minute they close and even after they become a customer, you can do customer service with them on the same platform. Imagine having such a journey and such a visual of your customers’ journey.
It’s amazing because as you just pointed out, this is one of the biggest problems with most companies and clients. Their processes are too disjointed and they don’t speak to each other to know just the departments in these companies. Sales don’t want to talk to marketing, and marketing not talking to production. Nobody knows what’s going on. Everybody does their own thing and this is exactly what’s happening under platforms.
With HubSpot, because everything sits on the platform, it makes it much easier. For example, this is my winning line each time I talk to clients, especially since people who like to give me pushback about the top spot because they’re all Salesforce fans. I love Salesforce because I think it’s an amazing platform. But for a startup with no budget, Salesforce is not necessary.
HubSpot is a free CRM and one thing I always tell my clients is why you should invest in it is for this one reason only. When a salesperson is talking to a prospect and this person is almost closing the deal, oftentimes the biggest hiccup is when marketing starts sending out marketing emails. HubSpot has a way that if this is person books a meeting with the customer or changes status from lead to opportunity, then it takes that person out of every marketing email initiative.
You don’t have to worry that that person is going to a marketing [inaudible 00:31:07] because the minute that salesperson says is with me, it’s out of every marketing [inaudible 00:31:13]. That alone is a big win because you know how much friction there is between marketing and sales.
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Doug: That’s funny. I didn’t know. There’s something new I learned today, which is really cool. I had written down as you were speaking, sales and marketing cooperation is what I was writing down, as I was listening to you thinking, often sales and marketing, like you said, are a tug of war. Sales is saying, “Hey, marketing materials suck. They’re sending us bad leads.” Marketing says, “Hey, your sales guy sucks. They’re not closing the business.”
The reason why I like technology is that it takes the emotion out and if you’ll allow it, it’ll take the ego out.
Resa Gooding: Exactly.
Doug: Who’s right or wrong. It’s like, okay, here’s the marketing collateral you produced. Here’s the advertising that you’re buying for that. Here’s the response that the marketplace is giving to that. Everybody has a global view. It’s very flat and very transparent. You can see everybody’s roles. The goal at the end of the day is to keep the business alive, which means sales and marketing need to work together.
Resa Gooding: Exactly.
Doug: We solved everybody’s problems, so we can just go on do something else for the rest of the day, right?
Resa Gooding: That’s the goal. That’s always my goal.
Doug: When you’re out at an event or at a conference, and people don’t recognize you as the HubSpot guru. What advice do you hear them give? Couple people standing off in the corner talking about CRM, or Salesforce automation, and there’s someone who’s just speaking loudly, just telling the world how it is. What’s the bad advice that you hear?
Resa Gooding: Most times, they always talk about the systems are not working for them, and they have to do the work. Oftentimes, they give a lot of pushback, and I hear lots of people complaining about how difficult it is. It’s so much work and it takes so much time. Often why it takes so much time and why it’s so much work and it doesn’t bring them the results. I just had a course about this yesterday. The main big problem with them is how they manage a contact database.
I always stress to my clients that forget everything else in a platform. If you don’t spend time cleaning up your database, it’s a problem. This will always encounter, and always repeat itself and your campaigns will never perform well. You’ll find it’s more work to do everything because you don’t have a true source that tells you what’s really happening with your leads and your customers.
They need to spend time. At least I say half an hour every week. Just spend some time going through any new contacts that come in there. Make sure they have the basic set you need for your campaigns. For example, a proper email address. Most people love to put and jump because they just want your content and they don’t really want you to bother them. It’s fine but just delete them.
There’s no need to keep people in your database just for having numbers’ sake. You need to actually delete people who are not relevant and who give bad information.
Doug: Yes, that makes sense.
Resa Gooding: Secondly, I always say to them, take time as well to understand the system. As you said initially, HubSpot has a ton of resources. But again, it’s a good thing and a bad thing for them because people feel overwhelmed by so many resources. They don’t really go into it and they don’t delve into it. When they get these kinds of platforms, they don’t know where to begin and they set it up badly because they can’t wait. They don’t want to take the time to read and understand. They try to do things themselves without having that foundational understanding.
Of course, they set things up badly and it works badly for them because of that. A lot of my job is often to go in and fix all the bad setup they’ve done because they didn’t really take time to understand the logic and the system.
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I help businesses understand how to be more organized and efficient. They can use CRM and marketing platforms to scale their businesses and stop losing sales.
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Doug: That makes sense. I’d had that experience that we had some poor data. We had several staff data entering and we had some… Some older system, legacy systems and then we moved all that stuff into Salesforce and it wasn’t a Salesforce issue but it was almost like our admin team thought there was something magical. Like this was Harry Potter. Something magical is going to happen.
We are going to take all this data where things like state or country, some people use an abbreviation and some people use some caps. Some people use uppercase lowercase. Then you wonder why the data doesn’t perform there. There was no magic solution there was no wizard inside that was going to cast the spell and have the data be corrected. It really was a… It was a grind. It was hard work and we had to roll up our sleeves and suck it up and make a decision to do it or there’s no sense even using the system because this doesn’t perform.
Resa Gooding: Exactly your database is your source of truth. You have to take care of it. I will not help you if you don’t.
Doug: I like your analogy to, that it takes time to do this. That’s why… I’ll go back to the point that six months from now or a year from now, you’re still going to be in business. The question is, are you going to make a commitment? Even if it’s a small commitment. I’m going to commit to 30 minutes a day, or 15 minutes a day or an hour a week to learn, get deeper into the system and then look hat asset will have at the end of the year. When I started training at the gym, I didn’t go in there and say, “Hey, I’ve never been here before, but I would like to start doing 300 pound back squats on my first day.” He’s going to say, “No, start with an empty bar.” It takes time to build it up.
Resa Gooding: Exactly. That’s the whole point.
Doug: What advice would you give people that are saying, okay, hey, this sounds really cool. I’ve thought of this a million times or I’ve tried it and failed or I’ve tried that and I’ve failed or even set up HubSpot before and I couldn’t get it to work. What would you tell them to do?
Resa Gooding: First thing, whether it’s HubSpot or anything else, try to use the free version first. Don’t waste money and don’t spend money you don’t necessarily have to. HubSpot, for example, has a lot of free versions of its platform now. It takes time, but it’s worth it to actually take your time and invest in learning it, and seeing, and feeling around with it. I always tell people. When I started HubSpot, I actually was on maternity leave. I had just given birth to my daughter. It was about 10 years ago. The joke was that I decided I wanted to start my own business, but I didn’t really think of anything. I just wanted to learn marketing and learn HubSpot.
I used that opportunity now to actually start selling baby shoes because I had a baby and I thought, okay, I’m going to sell all these cute baby stuff. I used the platform to understand how to do the marketing for it, how to do different things, and that’s how I learned. It wasn’t a big risk. Sometimes you can think of just doing it on a side business. Something you have to decide that you don’t really have to think about messing up your core system. Then when you have the knowledge for that, then bring it into your business.
If you don’t have the time to do such learning, and just hire an expert, just go, there are so many HubSpot agencies all over the world now. You have no reason not to find an expert. Or just go on LinkedIn and find somebody whether it’s HubSpot, Keep Infusionsoft market. Whatever platform you need, there is always an expert out there who can help you and that can crunch the time of you understanding what to do. Just do it.
Doug: It’s a good point. You can take the time and do it over weeks or months or years or you can bring in an expert if you’ve got the resources and you’ve got a timeframe you want to get it done. You can shorten that time frame down considerably as you said to probably weeks to be up and live.
Resa Gooding: Exactly.
Doug: If they retain you, does that mean we get to come and train with you in your office in Israel and enjoy that beautiful country and all the beautiful food that you guys have?
Resa Gooding: Oh my goodness, I would love nothing better. I promise you, you will have an amazing time. Any clients that would love to come, they should just come over. We have an office here on the beach in Israel. You have a beach view, and you can run down there during breaks and then set up HubSpot when you’re stressed up.
Doug: Or I go to the beach and you can set up HubSpot.
Resa Gooding: That too, yes. You can go to the beach and I will setup up your HubSpot for you. Not a problem.
Doug: There you go. Who then guest do you think I absolutely have to have on my podcast?
Resa Gooding: This is a good question. I actually had a name, but since you told me you had HubSpot people, I wouldn’t call that person.
Doug: I can have another HubSpot person. I mean, there are lots of people in the organization. Feel free, Whoever you like.
Resa Gooding: I’m not even sure he does a podcast but he’s so talented and amazing in terms of marketing and sales advice. There’s one guy I love called [inaudible 00:39:59] Sharma. He is one of our upcoming directors there. He is so sharp. Every time I speak to this guy, I’m like, “Oh my God, you just gave me a whole jam.” I feel like if I went to university for five minutes and came out.
He’s one person but there’s another really talented woman I work with currently called [Clouda 00:40:18] Higgins. She’s my business coach. Again, why I loved working with her again, I think she’s also one of those people who don’t just understand marketing but understand the business side of things. She helps businesses to actually put them both together so they really work for each other because people don’t realize oftentimes why marketing doesn’t work is because of the business problems they’re facing.
It can’t happen that you’re going to have absolutely great marketing when the management is not set on certain things or the print [inaudible 00:40:51] isn’t done. There are so many basic things that have to work in business first for marketing, to work in sales to work… She’s one of those people who helped really get it and put it together.
Doug: Well, excellent. Because I know that you’re super organized and this information at your fingertips, maybe I could ask you just to make an email introduction to us and I will follow up with both of your recommendations?
Resa Gooding: For sure, I would be more than happy to.
Doug: Where can people track you down. They say, “Hey, this is really cool. I love what Resa was saying. I could really use some guidance and some assistance or I have some questions before I take the first step.” Where can they find you?
Resa Gooding: The easiest place is LinkedIn. Just look for Resa Gooding on LinkedIn, and I am happy to connect with you and talk to you more. Then from LinkedIn, you can find all the other resources. My website, blogs, everything else that you would want to know about how we work but basically LinkedIn is the first and easiest place to go to.
Doug: There you go, LinkedIn is just smoking these days. It’s now the new popular platform, it’s the new Facebook.
Resa Gooding: Exactly right.
Doug: Resa, thanks so much for taking time out of your day. I really appreciate you sharing and coming on the show and just laying it out for people in a really simple and easy way to understand.
Resa Gooding: You’re welcome, Doug. It was a pleasure being here as well. I really look forward to seeing you in Israel soon. Please make another trip.
Doug: I know my wife and I would love to come back. Hey, thanks for tuning in listeners. That was another episode of Real Marketing Real Fast. Today we talked about all things CRM, Salesforce automation. We talked about baby steps, how to get started, some considerations in terms of making decisions, and moving forward. I hope you found this episode helpful. I’ll make sure that I’ve got the links for Resa in the show notes when the episode is published. Thank you for tuning in. I look forward to serving you on our next episode.
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SHARE THIS EPISODE: ARE YOU LOSING SALES DUE TO POOR ORGANIZATION?
ARE YOU LOSING SALES DUE TO POOR ORGANIZATION?
I help businesses understand how to be more organized and efficient. They can use CRM and marketing platforms to scale their businesses and stop losing sales.
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Get in touch with Resa:
- Website – Cacao Media
- Cacao Media on LinkedIn