81:  Harmonizing Sales and Marketing for Manufacturers- with Melanie Varin

Lori Highby: [: 00:00:00

Kris Harrington: Ooh, I'll, I'll start. Um, so between the farm and work, I don't have a lot of time to volunteer. I wish, I hope that that's some, a path that I go into later [00:01:00] in life.

Um, 'cause I think there are so many awesome volunteer opportunities, but, um, you may know that Polly works for Hunger Task Force here in Franklin, Wisconsin, where they. Uh, serve. They have a large farm, 200 acre farm where they grow food. Uh, they rely on 6,000 volunteers, uh, a year to help them grow and prepare and distribute food, um, that goes to local pantries and, and, and people who need it the most.

demanding part of the season.[: 00:02:00

How about you Erin?

Erin Courtenay: I love this question. Lori, this is a great question. Um. I, I'm always the first to throw my hand up for any, um, neighborhood type activity. I have volunteer with my kids' school, but the reason I'm like lit up about this question is I was just today reading about the, like, the need for third spaces and places to like, bring people together that's outside of work and outside of home.

Mm-hmm. Um, and I was. Just thinking like, I'm excited for when I'm in a season of life where I have that availability, like Kris mentioned. Um, because I would love to get involved in, in starting or working on something like that. What about you?

Lori Highby: Well, um, you may or may not know, but my family started a foundation in memory of my late father for, it's a nonprofit to raise.

e, uh, scholarships to youth [: 00:03:00

But I love the opportunity to be able to give back. Yeah. That's beautiful. Um, all right, well, let's get started. We've got an amazing guest today. Uh, Melanie Varin is an author, business owner and process consultant with over 25 years in executive leadership, strategic planning, global marketing, national sales management, and quality.

h, how Rev Ops and the Go-To [: 00:04:00

She's experienced the superpower that comes with great alignment of go-to go-to-market teams and delights in sharing that wisdom with others. Melanie, welcome to the show.

Melanie Varin: Thank you, Lori. It's really a delight to be here.

Lori Highby: Excited to have you here, and I know we've met and chatted and I didn't realize you wrote a book, so let's, yes.

Let's talk about that. What, what inspired you to write it and, and let's go from there.

Melanie Varin: Okay. Well, back in the day when I was working at GE Healthcare, I was leading a global marketing team and my boss needed to cut some costs and decided to ask me to, decided to basically eliminate this national sales leader and asked me to take on that role as well, so I became like a twofer, right?

pful as I thought. So we put [: 00:05:00

I mean, revenue went up. Margin went up, customer sat went up, uh, employee retention went up. I mean, everything that you want to go up went up. And I'm like, more people need to know about this. So then when I joined my own company, which Fred and I have co-owned since 1999, I'm like, how are we doing this for our clients today?

And I realized we were doing it and maybe not as explicitly as, uh, as. Originally thought, but um, we got a lot more intentional about it and I'm like, you know what? I'm just gonna write a book about it. I love to write and I love Patrick Lencioni, the guy who wrote Five Dysfunctions of a Team. He tells a story and then he summarizes the concepts.

d, and the benefits and the, [: 00:06:00

I won't bore you with data today, but there's a lot of data in the book that says these are the kinds of improvements you can expect. So my experience at GE wasn't just a one-off. There's lots of other companies that have experienced these benefits as well. So yeah, that was my motivation.

Lori Highby: Cool. I love that.

And that, that is a, a story of sales and marketing being married together that I feel is so important that needs to be told because they're often siloed segments in in pieces. Absolutely.

Melanie Varin: Yep. Yes, absolutely.

Announcer: This episode is brought to you by AdCirrus ERP, your trusted partner for cloud ERP solutions. Learn more at adcirruserp.com.

mentioned, uh, the five dis [: 00:07:00

It's, uh, it's a great recommendation for anybody that's listening along with, uh, Melanie's book as well. But if you really framed it around that, um, you know. It. It's interesting because you can see dysfunction within sales and marketing teams today who aren't aligned, right? And yes, it's almost a really good tie in to what happens when you don't have organizational alignment across these two teams.

Yeah, there's some people for each other.

Melanie Varin: Yeah. It's really basic and fundamental, and it's not rocket science, but. So few people are doing it. In fact, when I started researching the book, I learned that the disconnect between sales and marketing costs businesses a trillion dollars per year. Wow. I mean, that's with a TA trillion dollars per year.

rocket science. I basically [: 00:08:00

Erin Courtenay: I always like to kinda play the ddu. Um, maybe, maybe I am the dumb, dumb, I don't know. But, um, this is one of those things where. The tension or the difference or the sort of misalignment between sales and marketing sort of receives a lot of list service as a like a recognized problem and then. We move into resolving it, but I'd like, can we just sit for a minute with just a sort of a description, if you don't mind, a sort of a top line description of what is that tension and why it exists?

hear in your words what that [: 00:09:00

Melanie Varin: Yeah, so a lot of the tension comes with, and marketing is so much bigger than just lead generation, but I'm gonna just focus on lead generation for example.

You know, the marketing team does what it can to generate leads, whether it's podcasts like this, whether it's webinars, whether it's blogs, whether it's social media, whether it's pay per click, whatever they're doing to generate leads, and then they submit the leads to sales to follow up because it's, Hey, after all, we did all this work, we spent all this money here, take these leads and follow up.

Sometimes sales just simply doesn't follow up well, why don't they follow up? Maybe they don't know where the leads come from. Maybe they've followed up on leads in the past and they didn't go anywhere. Maybe they don't feel like the leads are qualified enough, so there's a little bit of mistrust because marketing often is doing all this effort to create leads, to assist sales, and then sales doesn't follow up.

oes follow up, makes a deal, [: 00:10:00

And so, um, one of the things I say to get rid of some of that distrust is, you know, let's, let's close that loop. Let's help sales see a little bit more about what marketing is doing and why. And may marketing see a little bit more about sales is doing and why, and how they're succeeding or not. So that smarter investments can be made, pivots can happen.

Adjustments are more seamless, and at the end of the day, everybody feels like they're rowing in the same direction on the same team, rather than at odds with one another.

Erin Courtenay: That was awesome. Thank you. Welcome. Great explanation.

Lori Highby: Everything you're saying sounded amazing. I wish everyone would get on the same page with that 'cause it is such an important message and, and yeah, I was resonating with that.

You know, we do a [: 00:11:00

Melanie Varin: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, honestly, getting alignment to happen, I just say it's four basic things. First of all, you need to have the same definition of who is the customer, right? I. Um, that's pretty fundamental and it sounds kind of simplified, but at the end of the day, there's a lot of. Detail that goes into who's the customer?

And if there's a sales process that has maybe some distributors in the middle or some, um, you know, uh, manufacturing agents or other sales figures in the middle before you get to the end user. Are we talking about the end user? Is the customer or are we talking about somebody else in the sales process?

ecision maker or the one who [: 00:12:00

Like back in the day I ran track those handoffs, that baton, getting it to the person ahead of you without dropping it, without fumbling. It is so, uh, key to having a good time in the race and winning. Same thing with. Sales to marketing handoffs, marketing to sales handoffs, then have a have hum and goals if you're, you know, working toward the same goals, you know, you share a revenue goal.

And a lot of times marketing doesn't wanna have a revenue goal because they're like, well, we don't sell. Well guess what? Sales doesn't develop the product either. They can't define the product line, but they're out there to sell it so. Have the same goals, at least some of them. Some of them can be different, but some of them need to be same and then have the same platform if you can.

And if your platforms [: 00:13:00

Erin Courtenay: make it sound so easy, easier said than done. No, I, I, I mean, sometimes you just need clarity, right?

You just need somebody to kind of write you the formula so you can follow through on that.

Melanie Varin: Yeah.

Kris Harrington: Yeah. You know, it's interesting. As you were talking, I was thinking about something that we did on our team when we had. The sales team document the 10, uh, most common questions that they got from customers, and they gave that to our marketing team and just the eyes that were opened up after that exercise.

if we really want this, the [: 00:14:00

'cause now you're writing content based on, uh, the, you know, those clear questions that customers are having.

Melanie Varin: That's really awesome. Back in the day when I was back to that GE example, one of the things I had was have my marketing team ride along with reps and if they're outside reps. And in that case it was meeting with clients and hospitals and cardiology departments and whatnot.

product show up on time and [: 00:15:00

Those aren't fun questions to get, but sales gets those as well, right? So, yes.

Kris Harrington: Yeah.

Melanie Varin: Mm-hmm. Okay.

Erin Courtenay: Yeah. And marketing here is with different ears. Yes. Sales is solving for that one case and marketing is listening. Do I see a pattern? Do I see a possible barrier to receiving more information about the product?

I think that's a really great idea. Plus it would be fun. Yes. Instead of just you staying at your desk, you get to go out and. Talk to people. That's awesome. Exactly.

Melanie Varin: Yeah. Yeah. That was one of them. You know, I saw a graphic recently. If you think about the sales funnel, the top of the funnel is bigger and you go down and eventually you have a proposal and a a closed deal.

% down the funnel is the [: 00:16:00

Erin Courtenay: So that's so interesting. Tell us why, why, tell us more about why It's, it's, um, permeated further down into the marketing is further down in the funnel.

Melanie Varin: Well, it used to be that we didn't have so much access to information as we do now. You know, marketing's responsible for the websites and, and, um, a lot of the digital information that you can glean if you wanna go out and research on your own.

So, so many people now go out and do a lot of research on their own before they ever wanna talk to a sales rep. And they've already practically made up their mind based on the data they found or on referrals or whatever, but. Just the access to data that marketing is largely providing gets you so much further down the sales cycle than you used to.

of dating myself. I, I admit [: 00:17:00

And with all the AI tools now, like with chat GPT and you can search on things there. If your material's online and good, it's gonna show up there as well. So, yeah. Um, marketing is so much more critical to helping drive down that funnel than, um, they ever used to be. So sales really needs to recognize that and, and be, you know, collaborative, uh, and appreciative.

Also, if, if the marketing team's really doing great work.

Lori Highby: Great. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Oh, I feel like I wanna talk about this forever, but I know there's other questions we wanna ask you.

him and, um, listened to his [: 00:18:00

He's such a good leader. That's one of the things that is just so, um, impressive about him. And I'm, you know, you're a leader now. You, you've got your own organization. What, what sort of motivates you about that role? What do you, what, what lights you up about, um, that leadership role in your company?

Melanie Varin: Well, my team here is about 16 people, and we probably have the strongest team that we've ever had.

And just seeing folks join us who may not know a ton about this particular space. So we, we help our clients put together the tools for building valuable relationships. So think your CRM and your digital marketing and putting the integration of that together so sales can see what marketing is doing.

y when I was leading an even [: 00:19:00

Who were selling or providing application, engineering support or marketing or whatever. And, um, I, I truly appreciate helping them find, you know, the best version of themself and growing into their potential as well. So that's super exciting for me. I also like learning new stuff myself and as a leader, um, you know, there's always new stuff to learn, so that's, that's part of what motivates me.

Um, you know, being in a big. Fortune 100 company like GE versus being in a small family owned business is very, very different. But all those same leadership concepts apply, right? People are people and they like to be inspired. They like to be motivated, they like to be recognized, they like to grow, they like to make a difference.

And so, yeah, that's part of what, uh, makes me tick every day. So.

r. Not all of them approach. [: 00:20:00

Kris Harrington: Yeah. The leaders that are focused on people are always the most enjoyable to talk to because they just, their thoughtfulness in general, uh, it is very different than the self-interested leader who is motivat motivated by their own, uh, power or growth and or focused only on the monetary aspects of, of the, of the work.

Mm-hmm. I think. Mm-hmm. When you can, uh, do right by your people and your customer's people and all the people in your, your people chain, uh, of what you're delivering it, it just creates a different experience and that's what it should all be about. Right. So, yeah.

Melanie Varin: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely that answer.

Kris Harrington: Yeah.

's, it's such an interesting [: 00:21:00

So I'm curious how you would answer that.

Melanie Varin: Yeah, absolutely. Well, first of all, my heart goes out to manufacturers right now who are having to deal with tariffs and all of the uncertainty that goes with that. So I applaud the leaders who are able to navigate that. That's, uh, its own challenge, but whether you're in that situation or whether you're in a more of a stable economy situation, you know, growth doesn't just happen.

ng about price, 'cause price [: 00:22:00

That's true, whether it's manufacturing or software or services or whatever. Um, but really kind of get back to some of the basics that I talked about in the book. You know, since your growth engine is really anybody who's. Dealing with a customer. A cus your customer facing team, your sales, your marketing, your customer service, your customer success.

Make sure they all know, you know. Who the ideal customer is. So they're chasing the folks who are really gonna appreciate your services and be willing to pay for them, and not just any opportunity that pops up. Because ideal customers will work with you, they'll love you, and they'll refer you. If you're working with customers who aren't ideal, you could be wasting your time because you might never be able to make them happy, and that might turn into a bad referral.

n place to help your team be [: 00:23:00

Not overly complicated, sometimes less is more simpler. As better. And I like to say as common as possible, as different as necessary if you're, if you're working with teams that have different needs, but um, you know, make sure they have the tools that they have, make sure they know. Why the tools are important, what they're measuring, make sure you're getting the value out of those tool investments because.

If you're not getting the value out of them, then why are you doing it in the first place? That's one of the responses I get when I say I'm in the CRM business and people say, oh, I put all this data in. I don't get anything out. Well, then there's a problem, right? Somebody, somebody didn't do something right?

lient, when you're keeping a [: 00:24:00

And then of course you need targets and goals because what gets measured gets done. So you're gonna wanna get out there and, uh, and make sure everybody knows that good communication, that clarity, and all moving in the same direction. So at the end of the day, it is a lot about alignment, but it, a lot about it is knowing where you're going and why.

So, yeah.

Kris Harrington: Yeah. Thank you. That was really, I, I think very clear and very actionable for people. Um, I, I really like that list and, and think people can put it to work right away for them. Thank you.

Lori Highby: Yeah. Yeah. And I, I appreciate your, it seems like your overarching theme is alignment and I, I think that mm-hmm.

what have you just learned? [: 00:25:00

Erin Courtenay: Okay. First of all, I have to kick this off with, I have a little bit of a Reddit habit.

I don't know if you guys either know that or I'm not into Reddit. I don't know why I keep, keep forgetting that. Yeah, I keep good. Just stay, just save yourself. But, um, one of the subreddits is, is today I learned that, so I'm a little bit of a cheater, but it's so cool. It's one of my favorite subreddits. Um, so I'll show the one that I, that I saw today, which is, and they're always like bonkers.

This one.: 1917

Kris Harrington: so, yeah.

Erin Courtenay: Yeah. What about you, Kris?

ell, I thought this would be [: 00:26:00

So what they did is they brought large equipment and, uh, you know, members of their company to the National Mall so that people from Congress on both sides of the aisle could come out. Take a look at the equipment, um, talked the different equipment manufacturers and really those people could directly share what's.

be right there and share it. [: 00:27:00

And you can have, uh, a seat on the front line to actually communicate. There are associations like a EM that will give you that opportunity. So I thought I would share that, uh, with everyone when I learned that they were just there this past week.

Lori Highby: I love that. I think that f fantastic Kris. Yeah. Think that's so, so important.

Yeah. I'm part of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business Program and um, every couple of years they'll put together alumni. To go and, and speak to our, you know, our politicians. I, I've sat in a room with some representatives and telling them what small business needs right now. Yeah. And I, I think it's a very important, um, thing, you know, to be advocating for ourselves right now.

Really important. That's right.

an, our vote is one way that [: 00:28:00

Lori Highby: Oh, man, I, my mind is like always exploding with AI stuff, right? So this one's more, I don't know, a. It just was an interesting little aha moment, but, um, I, I read that, uh, when, you know, when ChatGPT first came open and you're looking at who was the, the first folks that were using it, and if you think about the, the.

ying, no, don't do this. And [: 00:29:00

Um, and some professors are using it to craft their whole curriculum and some students are against that, you know, so it is just an interesting conversation that's happening. But to, to look at, um. Uh, the, the study that I was reading, it said 90% of college students are using chat GPT for their homework right now, which I think is like, wow.

And, and I am, I'm on the fence about this because I, yes, we need to understand how to use it because if we're not using it, you're just gonna be so far behind. But we also need to understand. That there's this critical thinking factor that is so important, and if we're just kind of not flexing that muscle, um, and just trusting technology there, it, it'll be interesting to see what our future brings.

up, and I won't take all of [: 00:30:00

Mm-hmm. And that AI is moving into a space where it is better at working with humans. So you want to make your human, your human students very good at doing human thinking. So that they can work effectively with the AI that 90% of the students are using. Chat GPT. Just to be clear, I think is a good thing.

balance kind of gets thrown [: 00:31:00

Lori Highby: It, it's a very gray idea. It's not, it's not black and white. And, and part of the challenge is it, it, the technology's evolving faster than anyone can even keep up with. So That's right. How do you create a process or this is the rule, or this is how we're using it and teaching it. If you can't even. If it's changing every single day.

Kris Harrington: Yeah.

Lori Highby: But

Kris Harrington: I, I've, uh, I've been reading a lot about this in recent days too, and I, uh, I can't imagine the incredible challenge that they're facing and, and really just the way teaching is changing and the way learning is changing and how we adapt to all of it. Um, uh, you know, the skill sets of the future.

Are still going to be the [: 00:32:00

Uh, this is gonna change and evolve and I have a feeling we're gonna talk about this again soon.

Lori Highby: For sure. Uh, all righty. So Melanie, what have you just learned?

Melanie Varin: Well, I, I was actually at a, uh, conference this morning at Carroll University and they talked a lot about skills evolution, and one of the things you just mentioned remind me of the statistic they provided that skills are changing so fast that from what you learn as a sophomore in college now, by the time you graduate, uh, if you're in the IT space, like 75% of what you learned might already be out of date.

's, that's really incentive. [: 00:33:00

Erin Courtenay: It's

Melanie Varin: incredible that that changes that fast. It's much more of, it's much bigger, faster change in the IT space than say in the space where you're working with your hands and whatnot. But when I think, I used to talk, I studied engineering back in the day and I heard that like the half-life of an engineer is like five years.

Well. That was a long time ago. I feel like the half-life of an engineer now is probably like two and a half because things are just changing so fast. So half of what you're learning is changing, you know, every two and a half, three years. And they kind of validated that with, uh, some data this morning at, uh, the Waukesha County Business Alliance had a workforce development forum at Carroll and it was incredibly insightful.

So a little bit scary, but we need to all keep learning. Kind of goes back to that right?

Lori Highby: 100% percent. Yeah. That was,

anged change, but to kind of [: 00:34:00

That's really interesting.

Melanie Varin: Yeah.

Lori Highby: Well, and that it's so fast, like

Melanie Varin: Yes.

Lori Highby: And, and to you kind of. Touched on this, Erin, just that you're learning something your sophomore year in college and hoping you're gonna actually use that information when you, when you go out into the workforce and to find out that it's obsolete and no longer in existence.

Um, but hopefully, you know, the, the thinking, the logic, the str strategic process around it is really the insights that you captured. Um, yep, that's a great point. Yep.

Melanie Varin: Yeah. Learning how to learn and, and how to think clearly and, and also cut through the stuff that doesn't matter.

Lori Highby: Yep. I remember when I was in design, when I was in school and we'd learned on some very specific design software that I.

I have never used since I've been in the workforce, but it's just the principles behind it is really what's important. Right,

Kris Harrington: right.

hby: So this was a fantastic [: 00:35:00

So, Melanie, if anyone was interested in getting in touch with you, uh, how, how can they best do that?

Melanie Varin: Yeah, so the best way to find me is at my company Topline Results and, um, so my name Melanie dot verin@toplineresults.com. So that's M-E-L-A-N-I-E dot V as in Victor, a RIN, at topline results.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn and, uh, if you go to Amazon Ignite top Line Growth, look for Melanie, and you'll find me there too.

So

Lori Highby: cool. We will include all of that information in our show notes. Melanie, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today.

Melanie Varin: Yeah, thank you, Lori, Erin, and Kris. Great to be with you. Very enjoyable. Thank you. Awesome. Okay.

Lori Highby: All right. This is a great episode. We, uh, encourage you to continue listening.

you liked what you, what you [: 00:36:00