Welcome back. I'm James, and this is Behind the Madness where we talk about business growth, ways to work smarter and the fundamentals of business, all geared to unlocking your brand's peak performance, so let's dive into this episode. Team collaboration. Want to start with a joke.
Start with a joke why not. Lighten up people to your personality.
So I was um I was lying in bed one morning and my son came in and poured a gallon of milk all over me.
Strong strong child.
Yeah. I mean, I was, I was angry.
Understandable.
I mean how dairy.
To anyone who's lactose intolerant, so I'm very sorry.
Legend.
Dairy. That is good. Yeah, that is good.
Thanks. I've got an ant one. We'll save that for next week. Right. Yeah. yeah.
That's unlocking that growth.
I can hear them unsubscribing.
What's the counter just flick away.
So Jamie today, team collaboration I am joined by Jamie. If you hadn't gathered already. We've even improved our podcast gear.
Crispy.
Much better. So hopefully it should take Paul a little bit less in the post-production.
But we'll do more.
Yeah more episodes, less editing.
Yeah, head of podcasts
Yes
Paul's new role
Adding to the rest of the roles that he's already We are today talking about team collaboration still, we're still talking about it. A lot of teams, obviously don't talk, they work in silos. We are going to try and help people work closer together now, obviously for us, it makes sense to talk about teams in terms of sales teams and marketing teams and working together. And it's something that we work closely with, with our clients, and it's something that we probably know more about.
So there are obviously within your company, there were a lot of different organizations that had a lot of different silos. And they don't all talk to each other but specifically today, we're going to focus down on your marketing team and your sales team. So do you want kick us off J?
I think sales and marketing is one of the most important team collaborations that you can have, because encapsulates the whole user journey really the customer journey. You think you try and grab people's awareness from being a stranger, and then you take them all the way through to conversion and then advocacy of your product and that is what sales and that is what marketing does. So it makes sense that those two talk to each other.
Because if you get a clear, defined handoff point where someone has done all the marketing and they've got ready to buy, and then a sales guy comes in and hasn't spoken to the marketing team. Then there's going to be a disconnect. There's going to be friction. And with that, you're going to lose people, they're going to realize there's not that personal touch. There's not that care, and people care about that nowadays.
It's it's has to be brand connection and by building out togetherness within a business, then you build that out as the customer experience as well. So that's really, really what you want to make sure you're doing connect those two teams, because your marketing efforts will dictate what you do for selling and your selling efforts will dictate what marketing you put out and by working together, you will become a much more collaborative unit, aka better customers.
Yeah, I completely agree, what I tend to say is, think about it on the phones. If somebody is connecting with you on the phone and they're giving you one message. Let's say even if it is the marketing, that's just gone out, it's all a certain messages, a certain tone of voice, and then you've bought into that and the marketing team have done their job.
And sales step in to pick up the phone to give you a call, and they're all of a sudden talking about something else, completely unrelated or different messages to what you've already experienced. It's going to knee-jerk you in, in down the one wrong route yeah, you want something that's continually nurturing you into that final goal, which is obviously to convert a a prospect into a customer.
I think a really nice way you could probably look at it as an overview is rather than sales and marketing it's customer experience and user experience. And then those two are sections of that department, because like James says, if you disrupt that experience then you're going to lead to more friction. Potential abandonment potential, not buying, not conversion and that's not what you want.
I think in smaller companies you do tend to find that, certainly sales and marketing, can be the one role. So a lot of the time they're more aligned in smaller companies and as we grow, we separate these teams and they're not communicating with each other. Also sales and marketing when we first talked to a lot of companies are generally at loggerheads.
The sales are shouting at marketing for information or leads, and then the marketing, the shouting at sales to, you know, give them some feedback on, on calls if they are at all. But they're being very much reactive to what's happening. Whereas if sales are saying, well, you know, I'm speaking to people on the phone all the time about they're wanting more information on this product or this product line, then get some resources in place that can support your sales team.
So when they are speaking to people on the phone and a customer asks about a certain feature, you could have a PDF, a presentation, a resource that is there ready to go, could even be a blog or a podcast.
And the sales guy can straight on the phone go, yeah, absolutely, I'll follow this up with an email we've got some great resources on that feature that I'll whizz over to you digest them in your own time and I'll, and I'll give you a call back you know, in a couple of days, once you've had a chance to read them. All of a sudden that's marketing and sales working together to give the customer what they need on that point.
So talking to sales and understanding what their pain points are, rather than just them trying to. And sales I'm notorious for just trying to push it through and maybe not feedback constructively, what they want or think along those lines, I think is a really, really good place to start.
So James, you're a business owner, you're a business owner who has started the business and has then subsequently grown it. So you have firsthand seen how sales can be sales marketing can be one role, then it can be divvied up. So obviously before you did a lot of Methods client facing stuff, which could be their sales. Now, obviously we brought Andy into the team as well, who is being more client focused. So, how do you think you found that?
What problems have you encountered that you can obviously pass on? kind of a, almost a been there, done that wisdom, to the business owner this is.
I think communication. So I think bringing them in. And certainly with the way we work, we already had a lot of resources that Andy could pull from. We had a very good blog with a lot of information on there. So we were, I think we were led more in the terms of the marketing and the resources that we were, that we were producing already because we are very, very customer focused. So because we were already customer focused. Andy has now got a, a huge collection of resources.
and assets that he can pull from. Two. To send to people on, on, on the kind of the email, but all those touch points. So I think we were very lucky in that regard. If anything, I think he's got too much. So obviously he's been with us now for about three months. And still finding new stuff kind of all the time to use unto sent over.
Do you think that's a problem. Can can you have too much, as well as obviously too little.
I think we need to find a way of kind of, obviously before our blog wasn't even searchable, which now is a lot, lot easier. So Andy can now type in a keyword and actually find what he's looking for. So with the new website, it actually makes his job a lot easier. So while he's on the phone and people are asking him questions, he can actually do his research while he's there and get that out there.
Obviously with our main resources, we don't have too many of our lead generators, but as downloads, we've kind of picked a few and run with those ones that we know work very, very well. So, that makes it a lot easier, but in terms of blogs we have as you said a huge amount, and I don't think you can have too much. I think what he is now doing is realising, because obviously three months in, you're still trying to find your feet.
You're still trying to really know a bit about us and how we work as well as what people are asking him for on the phone. And once you've done it for a while, I think, you almost know the pain points, you know what objections you're going to find on the phone because we've all, you know, we've all had somebody do sales and we won't phone up anybody out of the blue, there'll be a reason for them calling. And then we can generally now know what blockers are in place.
So when we phoned somebody up, we almost can pre-empt what they're going to say before they've said it. We know what route they're going to go down, we know the objections that they're going to try and throw at us. Once you get to that stage of understanding what your prospect is going to say back to you, you can then have your arsenal ready to say, well, actually, yeah, no, that's absolutely valid point here's a blog, here's a resource that we've actually produced to combat that.
And that's where if we don't have them, we go back to what we've said originally. That's where we need to produce it because if it is a blocker, or a blocker to sale, then we need to have some way of combating that.
That's a useful point by utilizing sales who are firsthand, obviously involved with the clientele, for Method also for all businesses that feedback from direct customers then can be relayed to the marketing team to then produce the goods or put out social media content topics on podcasts, blogs written. How a website looks all of this stuff that gears the marketing can be utilized from that direct feedback.
Yeah, completely. And I think you'd go back as well to. Yeah, I know we're not really talking about service here we're talking very much about the sales and marketing, but it ties into it of being the bigger the companies get is then all of a sudden you will have a big sales team. You'll have a marketing team and you'll have a, a service team. And being on the front line we all of a sudden, like, I used to do everything, not very well, but I did everything.
I had to do the sales, I had to do the marketing. I had to do the work ,I had to do you know the accounts. Pretty much everything fell on me, which is great as a business owner because then I can understand how the whole business works. But then as we grow, you tend to lose sight of what's actually happening in those areas.
And we don't have so much interaction with the customers luckily we're at a size where we've stayed at the size so we can all have touch points with the customer, so we know exactly what's going on. Everybody within the company, because we're at that size knows how a customer feels or, you know, whether they're having any troubles with anything or whether it's all rosy.
But as you get bigger, you lose that, and I think that is something where business owners need to go back to the frontline and understand well, what's happening, why are people feeling like this, because, you know, as we've always said then you can refine your product, your offering, but at the same token, you know, if they're on the front line of understanding what's happening in sales they can influence what their marketing is being produced.
If they're on the front line of service and getting the feedback from support tickets or feedback from sales, they can then go all the way back and feed marketing again for you know what we should be saying or what we should be combating.
A nice circular economy
Yeah Exactly. Yeah. Being, being completely customer facing now, luckily because of what we do, we are and we've started there, as I've said before. But yeah, you can obviously it's been a huge learning curve for Andy to come in and take something which is very much been me doing all of it to now somebody taking over. You know, I've done it for 20 years. So I understand the business inside out for somebody to then to come in and try and pick that up is tough.
And he's not going to have the expertise in all of the offerings and the services that we do, whereas I can on the phone, be very kind of talk through that person's problems and almost rectify them if you like straight away. He hasn't got that expertise so, we need to provide him with the information to allow him to give the right content to those people to solve those problems without him necessarily being an expert, and I think that is very hard to get up to speed very quickly with.
So when it comes back to kind of delving off into the different roles there, because I think it is really important to understand what each department do to have that empathy to collaborate. So to kind of wrap up this episode, if you had five ways that you could throw out to business owners to help team build, almost because that's what it comes down to is, is departments liking each other, not working in their silos. What would you say?
Like making sure Christmas parties happen, making sure there are team events that not everything is work. How would you help?
So for me, I wouldn't have a sales team and a marketing team per se. So obviously it's a little bit harder now when we got a lot of companies who are working remotely, but I would make sure that they are more joined at the hip and working together for that same goal. Be that let's say a lead comes through, rather than just a nice handover of a lead to sales they kind of work together maybe on that lead or they're working together. So they are more joined at the hip.
In terms of like working office space
Yeah possible yeah. Yeah as I said, it might be harder now being remote but if you're using tools like Teams or Slack, you know, maybe have them in the same chat group, a channel where they can work together, where they can talk to each other and have that communication. I think the lines of communication are very much as we know, we'd love automation.
We'd love sending over things to people and that I think we need to be able to send that communication rather than being automated I think it should be done more manual between the two people or between the two groups of people. So there is that communication together. So yeah, I think good communication whether that's being in the same office or the same channels or remotely,
So I'm going to speed you up here. So that's one of five.
Yeah.
James loves chat, weird that it's been hard to get on a podcast. Second second to five go for it.
Resources, I think have a good bank of resources that you can use that are focusing very much on the customer.
Who's creating that.
I think marketing needs to be fed from sales, so, yeah, they need to have those problems fed to them of what it is. They will have a good idea., But I think if we're talking about, you know, marketing and sales working together here, I think sales will know what they're struggling with and what they require. So this is kind of more of a sales tip, I would say rather than the marketing and the sales, but stay off emails.
With an email you're just prolonging the no, and that's why we kind of do it. So we all like to be liked and I prefer salespeople to be people rather than you know, that the cutthroat ring, a bell, that all kind of stuff. I think very much people selling rather than salesman selling I think works a lot better and in that regard. We then fall into the trap of, oh, we'll just send an email but all that does is prolong somebody to say no, because they can say, oh, sorry, I didn't get back to you.
I'll get back to you next week. If you pick up the phone to somebody, they're going to say no, you're going to get a quicker answer you're going to waste a lot less time if you like on that lead or that prospect. So pick up the phone and speak to people. Follow it up with an email, sorry I missed you today I will try you again in seven days or whatever, but, but use the phones and speak to people.
Three out of five. Let's get on to that fourth,
Fourth so
How important in the world of remote post COVID working situations are things like summer parties, Christmas dos. How important is it to bring that social aspect back?
Yeah, I think massively I think the trouble with, with obviously a remote working now is.
Obviously here we've, we've always been very remote, but when the podcast happens, when we have our content days, we're all in the office and we waste half a day talking about football, talking about everything else, because we don't get our 10 minutes around the water cooler every day we get that has all of that stored up for our, yeah one or two days a month where we do meet up and then we need that time to bond as a, as a team again.
So, you know, I'm very relaxed about our content days, being a day when we really do the content and half a day, because we need those touch points together as a group. And I think that is us as a smaller organization, but as we grow and as you meet some bigger companies, they will have a marketing team party, they'll have a sales team party, and I think that just doesn't all that's doing is just creating those divides and making it harder for that collaboration.
Whereas dropping down your guards and having, you know, a night out. No matter what it is, I think meeting up as certainly the sales and marketing and I think that would getting together and meeting up really, really helps.
Fifth and final, are we scraping the barrel or we got something in there.
So fifth and final. Is a CRM. We are still talking to people at bigger organizations who are running their business off Excel or Google sheets.
Uh we know you want to say. Say say which CRM
Having the best CRM that's out there.
He's wearing orange. I'm going to give that as a hint.
Which we believe is HubSpot it might not fit every company. 90% it will fit, is such an important thing to have. As we say, we are very customer focused. The reason being that we were customer focused is because we understand that everything that is going through with that customer and having that stored in a CRM is allowing us to do it. So when we are handing over somebody from marketing to sales. we are going to have all of those touch points that they've had with us prior to that handover.
So rather than kind of saying, oh, I've got John, yeah, he lives in London and he's interested about this product. We're going to have so much more information around John, where he's been, what pages he's been looking at.
So watch out john
So John we're after you and that is probably the primary point. Yeah, have a good CRM that you're all using rather than having, obviously you could have different CRMs. Have one central CRM that everybody's using and all the information is stored upon.
And there you have it. That is James's extended five top tips to collaborate and make teams more cohesive. Thank you for joining us again on Behind the Madness. We are always looking for ideas and feedback from you guys about what topics you want us to cover, as you can see so much shorter, some are longer. Let us know the comments, do you prefer quick fire?
We want to make sure we're making the podcast as accessible and as easy to digest for business owners, we know how busy you are, James outro for you.
So, yeah, I think as Jamie's kind of very, very nicely said, we are building this out, we're going to get more guests on. We've got some really interesting guests lined up. We want to get more. If you're interested in jumping on the podcast, give me a shout. The best way to get in touch with me is on my email, which is James@hellomethod.co.uk.
In the show notes
In the show notes as well. And I think, that's what we want to do. We want to kind of talk to business owners, talk to marketeers, talked to anybody who has really anything around kind of business or fundamentals of business, or struggles or anything we can kind of talk through on the podcast that may help other people is certainly somebody we want to get on. So yeah, so reach out to me and we will get you on one of the next podcasts, as I said, we've got some really interesting guests lined up.
And as we've kind of said, the madness here at method never stops. So we'll be back soon with our next chat. We've also got, as I said, a huge load of resources. We've got 23 episodes of our podcast now, which we are trying to get better at, as we've said. So go have a look through those. If this is your first time, welcome, if you've listened to all of them, then thank you. If you've listened to all of them.
Hi, James's mum.
If you've listened to all of them, like my mum has leave a comment. The comments really, really do help us. So if you are enjoying them, leave a comment. If you're not enjoying them. As I said before email Paul. We will be back stronger. So until next time, thank you so much for listening.