Dive into the latest episode of the B2B Go to Market Leaders podcast, where Julien Sauvage, the GVP Marketing lead at Clari delves into go-to-market strategies, emphasizing the importance of understanding the buyer’s perspective and aligning internal teams. Julien shares his career journey and insights on breaking down silos within marketing teams. He explains how he structures his marketing organization at Clari to foster collaboration and shared goals.
The episode provides valuable takeaways on effective marketing strategies, the significance of emotional engagement, and the necessity of integrated teamwork in achieving business objectives.
Listen to the podcast here:
Collaborating With Sales For a POV That Resonates: Insights From Julien Sauvage
Signature question: How do you view and define go to market?
Yeah, I love that question. It’s a road and yet narrow I feel like. So my attempt would be to talk more about the people and the buyer. So I would I would say something like changing to me, go to market is changing how your buyer thinks and acts so that they end up identifying the problem and find you as the solution. They choose you, they keep you and they’re happy with you.
Right? I love yeah, I love the succinct way, the the way you describe it. I mean, I love the fact that first of all, you start with the buyer. That’s number one, right? It’s not about internal people and functions and so on.
Yes, those are important. But you start with the buyer. And I also love the fact that you called out how you’re helping the buyer think and shift and act so that they see you as a solution for that problem.
Yeah, I think too often. Thanks for reading between the lines. And this is very unprepared. So it’s not like a definition I have off the shelf. And I just use it over and over again. But I think I’ve seen definitions where people tend to over-rotate on the act piece or on the think piece. Right. And we both know that actions without thinking or thinking without actions are pretty much useless. So I think it’s both sides of the brain of the buyer, how they feel, how they think, and ultimately how they act.
Yeah, absolutely. When it comes to thinking I would actually add one more complexity to this how do you make the buyer feel right? And it starts with that. And then if you leave them with the right emotion or the urge or the desire, then they think in that direction and they act 100%.
Yeah, I’m glad you said that. I like the I know we’re going a little off script. Well, there’s no script, by the way, for any of you listeners, there’s no script. But yeah, the emotion, the feeling is so important in my mind. And that actually is my definition of of brand. I was, I was being asked what is brand to you the other day. And there’s no unique definition, as we all know. But like while I really like things that people would say around, it’s how people think of you when you’re no longer in the same room, you know that’s your brand. Or they would talk about, you know, changing how people feel. To me, it’s the first impression, the first emotion that you as a vendor can trigger to your buyer. And that would be what will stick to them. And then the rest becomes, you know, easier in a way. So it’s the first emotion you can evoke with your buyer.
That would be my definition. Definition of a good brand.
Very cool. Yeah. I love the fact that you articulated, the brand as well. And you tied in the brand in the go-to-market piece. And then of course, the other topic is the nuance, which we alluded to, but then we didn’t cover a whole lot, which will cover a whole lot in the remaining conversation, which is about now that you got the mind on the buyer. Now, what do you think about the internal teams and the alignment, the execution?
Yeah. I mean, are you asking me the question now?
It’s up to you. I just had to share that. It’s up. Yeah, yeah. Take it off from there.
Yeah. I think at the end of the day, it’s kind of like. I know it’s going to sound very theoretical, but the internal alignment and the internal team that you would include in a good market has to be aligned with what the buyer needs for you to effectively go to the market to them.
Right. And so I think with that in mind, certain companies may be smaller markets. They have a pretty straightforward and good market motion because their buyer wants one thing. And we pretty much know what this thing is. And as such, your good market team internally should be, you know, A’s and Aces making that up. But sometimes the market is more mature. The solution is more developed. All the post-sales aspect matters. A lot of the marketing education, because it’s a newer category, matters a lot, and as such, your internal go-to-market team also has to mirror that. And then on top of the traditional ask duo, I would add CSS, Post-sales, implementation consultants, marketing, and the whole thing. So it really depends on your market and your buyer at the end of the day.
Fantastic. Let’s switch gears here. I know you can go on and on for this entire show, just on a good market topic, but let’s switch gears here. Yeah. Tell us about your journey, your career journey so far, and what led you to what you’re doing here to that clarity.
Yeah. Good question. I mean, so my journey has been very, I would say incremental in a way, like I started back in France, pretty technical, roles. I was in data science before data science was hot and the thing and then moved into a solution engineering role and then back in 2013, I think it was I got the opportunity to become a PM. And that’s why I came to this side of the ocean and came to the States, to San Francisco, where I live today. And then incremental in the sense that I then became like, I went from the PM IC to a PM lead or a given product line that was back at Salesforce, and then I became the VP of PM. And then on top of PM, I added customer marketing, and then on top of that I added corporate marketing and brand and now events. So it’s been a good I would say, almost linear and incremental journey for me which which I’ve enjoyed. So today I lead brand, corporate marketing, product marketing, events, and many other functions at Cleary.
And yeah, I’m very passionate about tying all these functions together. I’ve seen so many silos within the marketing organization that I do not have experience with those silos and the pains that come with it. And I don’t want my people to have to go through the same pains that I’ve been through as an I see in my past life, so very passionate about good market and marketing and trying to, like, break the silos as much as possible.
Very cool. Yeah, often we keep hearing about silos and how broken marketing and sales are, But I love the fact that we are talking about breaking silos within marketing. Yeah, across the functions within marketing allow that fact.
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I have many times maybe it’s like sometimes the bigger companies, right? But like you have a brand doing its thing and PM is doing another thing. And I’ve seen plenty of examples of that at Salesforce, to be honest, where you know, like brand and corporate marketing would own the main Dreamforce keynote, for example.
So they created their messaging and their narrative on their own. And then if you’re a PM while you own the keynote for that one product line, I was on Einstein, for example. So my team and I would own the keynote for the Einstein product line, I mean product keynote. But of course, you then create your own thing, and then at the end of the day when you have that big kind of review meeting with your CMO, they see messaging that doesn’t map, they see a weight. The corporate keynote talks about ABC. You guys talk about def you know WTF? Yeah. So that’s a good example of silos across the board and brand. And PPM is a classic one. But of course, brand and growth is another one. Mobs can also be on an island, and so there’s silos everywhere in the enterprise. And it’s our job as leaders to try to break them as much as we can.
Yeah for sure. Let’s go back in time. I mean, you said you started off in a technical individual contributor role, and I’m looking at your LinkedIn profile, very interesting set of brands that you work with, right PSA Peugeot, Renault, and Airbus France.
Leading brands in France, and SFR as well. And then you come to the Bay area. You’re not in product marketing yet. You’re not in marketing. You’re still in the sales pre-sales side. What prompted you or what gave you that moment? Or what is that moment like? Like you said, hey, you know, product marketing is what I love.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I actually came here as a PM. That’s the that’s the transition. I would say the transition from technical roles to a C is pretty, you know, easy to understand. Right. But then the transition from SC to PM I think also makes a whole lot of sense. When you think about it. You end up, you know, like going deep into your market knowledge, your product expertise, and so that you can do a nice technical pitch and you can do a nice demo and you can do things. The difference between an AC and a PPM is that you move from a 1 to-1 capacity that would talk to that one account, and then PPM is one to few or one to many, but you end up being the champion, the wingman, the wing woman of your product.
So, I think the transition from sales engineering to PMS makes a whole lot of sense. And yeah, that’s what made me come here back in 2013, PM in France wasn’t as big. I don’t think it still is that big, to be honest, sadly. But yeah, that was my transition.
Very cool. And right after your role as a senior PM at KXEN, you jumped to Director of Product Marketing at SAP. That’s a nice jump. I mean, talk to us.
Yeah, so it takes KXEN was small it was an I don’t know six people marketing team. Right. The marketing team was six people I believe give or take. And so I was the sole PM there and we got acquired by SAP. That’s that’s why. And so SAP believed in me, invested a little bit in me and made me kind of, you know, move up the ranks. And I became a director there. But then shortly after I left and went to Salesforce because, you know, as a young, still somehow young back then, ten years ago, French marketer, you, you know, you come to the Mecca of marketing, Silicon Valley, and you want to work for like, the cool brands.
And that felt like Salesforce was a cooler brand for me.
So that’s why for sure. And then at clarity, and maybe even just in the prior roles, you started building, not owning, not just product marketing, but the other aspects of marketing, like, yeah, how was your pitch like to your leaders as to, hey, invest, I believe in me, I got this and then how are you showing results?
Yeah, I don’t think that was the pitch. I think typically I you you just do it right. Like you try to seize every opportunity in a non-opportunistic manner. But you know typically I would I don’t know I would like I would, I would, you know, I would do my normal like scope of work. And then on top of that, I would see opportunities that other teams wouldn’t pick to do a little more. And then I would just go ahead and do them with the, with the those team’s permission, of course. And then my leader would see the impact and, you know, the quality of work.
And as such they would be like, oh yeah, well, maybe Julian should own that as well. So I think it’s less a pitch and it’s more like you go out and you try and you do it and sometimes you fail. By the way, excuse me, but you just, you know, you just you step up, you this there are always opportunities for everybody to step up and try to own more if they feel like it.
Yeah. And was this I mean, I’m trying to go back to the time when you actually did this and was successful. First time looking at your LinkedIn, it seems like maybe it was at Gong. I don’t know, because you were on product marketing and customer marketing?
Yeah. Well, I was brought in to do both customer marketing and product marketing, so that was like part of the initial role. But I think the role expanded into I ended up having thought leadership as well, which then moved into a different part of the org. But that was part of my thing and I touched, I forgot, I forgot now a little bit of category, a little bit of enablement, a little bit of like programs and stuff.
So, you know, and sometimes you, you know, you those functions stay with you. But I always say even if they don’t, it was the best learning, you know, like I think everybody the only reason and way to grow and own more is to just be really curious about the variety of things and try these different things again, not stepping on anybody’s toes, but just offering to help when there’s a gap. And that’s how you show your worth and that’s how you you learn.
Very cool. And then on a lighter note, because you’ve traveled and worked in across geographies, across companies, across roles, how does your family? How do your family members describe what you do for a living?
Oh my God, I do that in French or in an in English. Go for.
It. Both. And then you can translate it for us.
Yeah no I don’t I don’t I’ll stick to English. That one. Yeah, I think a lot of, a lot of my friends and my family are not in tech.
And marketing in tech is… It’s not as in France. It’s it’s not as big as it is here in the Bay area or in the US, say. Right. So the first thing I’ll say is I don’t think they understand marketing. I think they see me as selling okay. Selling stuff. Yeah. And so typically they would say like, oh yeah Julian. Yeah, he’s doing his thing. He’s selling software to other people. Setting software? Okay. Yeah, that’s what they would say, right? Because at the end of the day, tech as we know, starts by setting to other tech companies and then they breach or cross the chasm. so I think that’s how they would describe it. He sells like an app to other people selling apps. Okay.
But that was I mean, it’s actually a compliment. A marketer being called as sales a salesperson is a.
Yeah, that’s right man. Yeah. I don’t think it was meant as a compliment from them, but I’ll take it.
I’ll take it. Very cool.
So coming back to your role at clarity. So yeah, I mean, I’m sure a lot of the listeners are not familiar with clarity. So what does clarity do and what do you do and who do you serve your customers?
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So Clari is one of the leading tech companies. We. Our offering is around a revenue platform. That’s how we call them. The revenue platform automatically captures data, uses analytics and AI to analyze it, and then suggests, the next best actions, executes flows and automation as well as gives insights to mostly three personas. Rev tech I’m sorry, rev ups, CRO, and the actual sales rep. So we are mostly doing that, I would say. yeah, we’re trying to see the value props around the CIO persona. It’s a little new to us, I think to the whole market. But like most, our audience is revenue leaders and revenue practitioners. And we set up a revenue platform.
Got it. So revenues cross and sales reps and individual contributors and sales managers maybe that’s right.
Are there specific segments industries geographies?
Yeah. Good point. Yeah we’re global and we’re cross-segments I would say we’ve been really successful with I would call them mid-market. Plus, you know, like Zoom, Aacta, those types of companies, they’re all up on the website. And then we started to see really good traction with the actual enterprise accounts. Some of the names I can’t disclose, sadly, because they don’t want us to talk about them, as you know, but like really big Fortune 500, even Fortune 50 companies. So I think it’s encouraging for anybody in tech. It’s obvious that it takes time, but people do end up crossing the chasm. And you can break free from just sitting to, to, to same companies as yourself, and doesn’t have to be just tech setting to take as per my or your point. Yeah.
Fair enough. And then since you’re responsible for marketing, talk to us about the marketing, like how you structure your team, the budget, the number of people, break of the functions, and so on.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I can break it down entirety because we’re a private company, right? So like at the high level, there are various parts of the team. We do, I have five of them PM content which includes customer marketing. Creative marketing, which is the visual branding. Yep, corporate comms and exit comms and events. These are the five. Yep. Then under another leader, there are marketing ads and campaigns, and the website is part of marketing ops at Kerry. That’s the way the team is structured. I don’t even know how many people we have, give or take total, but we’re clearly as a whole seven, 800 company employees. So we’re not big, but we’re not small either.
Fair enough. And then from a budget investment, I’m just talking about like a percentage split. Not not specific. Like, yeah, a budget split point of view. Where do you invest in terms of programs and what kind of programs?
Yeah. Good question.
So the programs the heavy investments would be, I would say mostly brand and corporate marketing. That’s the big the big-ticket items. So in there, you would find things like Gartner and Forrester or subscriptions. We all know how, you know, expensive. Those can be, a lot of content, you know, working with agencies, copywriters, paid sponsorships, big, you know, professionally produced content assets, including multimedia. That type of stuff. So it’s, I would say the bulk of the ticket items or the money goes to corporate marketing in my case, yeah. We all know PM work is less costly in a way because it’s more like internal facing right, like cells and demos and whatnot, Excel’s pitch decks and whatnot. We do have some nice little things around product videos and product tours and, you know, that type of stuff. But in the grand scheme of things, the investment there is a drop in the ocean of the brand and corporate marketing world.
Yeah. And you also mentioned a very important point early on, Julian, which is being the orchestrator and breaking down the silos within marketing. So how do you as a leader, as a marketing leader, like how do you structure and orchestrate, like product marketing to brand to content, demand, events, and corporate, and so on?
Yeah, it’s a good question. Well, first off, I feel, you know, lucky enough and grateful to have all these teams under me. Like, I think it naturally breaks the silos. If you have one leader, then the teams just get together more, so it makes it easier, I would say. The other thing is we have a cadence. We run our marketing business with a bunch of marketing cadences. So a cadence what is the cadence? The cadence would be a weekly, monthly or bi-weekly meeting with not a whole lot of people, just a few key stakeholders in which we really inspect every aspect of the marketing business that matters, independent of the team and the function.
So it wouldn’t be like, oh, a PM cadence, for example. It’s not that it would be more a middle funnel cadence, or it would be a content and brand metrics cadence or top of the funnel, you know, website. Everybody touches the website. So it’s more, I would say by channels or by stage in the funnel. And, that’s a great way for people to just get together and work together. I really believe that silos are like hard to avoid in the enterprise. They just happened, right? But the easiest way is to just like, put people to work into the same work streams, and then they get to know each other and then they realize they’re actually doing great work together. Yeah. So that’s the way putting people in into the cadences, into the work streams, sharing metrics is a big one as well. I like having shared KPIs. The same KPI would be shared by two different people from two different teams. It’s going to break the silos there.
Yeah. Those types of tactics.
Yeah. And if I have to echo or give an example, maybe I’ll take the example of like, hey, we need to move mid-market KPI for this month. In that way you would structure someone like, of course, there have to be UPS or some marketing ops. There has to be a content person, there has to be a product marketing person and maybe someone else likes design for sure. Yeah, content, and so on.
Exactly. Yeah, I think I think the best way to create silos is to keep the cadences about the team and not about the work. Right. So it should be the opposite. The cadence is about the end product optimizing a given program a given channel or a given stage of your funnel. And then the team would kind of like self-organize itself to make that cadence happen.
Yeah, this is great. And then I’ll blow it up. Leveling this, I’m sure you must be mapping all your marketing KPIs to the business objectives and sales, and maybe even customer success like post-sales.
Yeah. So how are you running that cadence?
Yeah, it’s a good question. I mean, it’s not it’s not perfect. Never is. I don’t think any company can say, oh yeah, I have everything. All my OKRs are perfectly mapped out. There’s a beautiful, you know, Russian doll structure. The way we’re doing it is I don’t even know if I should start bottoms up or top down, but like, yeah, we have our. Well, first off, marketing is mostly measured against pipe, creation pipe influence. Right. As it should. A little bit of pipe maturation and velocity as well. And if you go all the way down to PMS, they should own metrics. Own as in they contribute the report on IT metrics like competitive wind rates and ASP. Right. If you have good sales assets and good messaging, you’re just going to sell faster and more and bigger. So that’s kind of the that’s kind of the way the way we we try to map things to like the bigger picture is we have we share the same goals as the company.
So for example, I’m going to make those up, you know, accelerate growth, keep innovating on product, and dominate the category. These could be three company goals. We would then have the exact same goals at the departmental level, like marketing. And then we of that three kind of North stars, if you will. We then map our programs and our targets against those. So that’s the right way. We kind of like, you know, match company level with departmental level, like sharing the same goals and then, you know, like the tactics and the mix would and the targets would differ by, by department. that’s the way. And then, yeah, as I said, like every person in my team has three KPIs. I try to have a mix of like what I call a yes-no KPI. Like, did you complete that program? Yes. No. You know, like, it’s just like completion. Yes. No. Yeah. One leading indicator and one lagging indicator.
Leading indicators would be a number of downloads pipes and whatnot. Lagging would be actual you know closed one revenue or pipe velocity that you’ve influenced with your program.
Very cool. I love the fact that you have three KPIs for each individual, and it’s not always black and white, but you do enforce a black-and-white. Yes, no, and then a leading and lagging. I like that structure. It’s very clear. I mean, most often I see like lagging. But anything is controlling the input and the output is the effect and the activities on the input.
That’s right. Like if you just do lagging like it’s so downstream that there are so many touch points and things that can happen between your program and the actual thing that you’re measuring as a lagging indicator. Right? Like it’s just it’s almost unfair because like, you know, you like you don’t control the cell cycles, right? There’s a there’s no way. So but I still want I don’t want people to just have a leading indicator and be like, hey, I’ve created my pipe, I’m out.
So I think I think, you know, bringing in the leading and lagging. The thing is a good balance and for people to stay accountable, but also not being measured against things they can’t control. Yeah. Very good.
Yeah. So this is awesome stuff, Julian. I mean, I love the fact that you how you share. First of all, thanks for sharing those details on how you structure, how you think about marketing, breaking all the silos, and how you also think about KPIs and alignment within and outside of marketing. Now, switching gears to another but related topic, as you and I know go to market, there are two sides. I mean, you will always not be just successful but always be failures as well. So share with us samples of like a good market success story and a good market failure story.
Yeah. Yes. There’s there’s many of them I think on both sides. The success story I would have in mind first would be our recent one. So this is going to be a clearer example, our recent announcements around the fact that we just surpassed $4 trillion of revenue under management.
Revenue under management. That’s a that’s a new metric. And that’s one of the reasons why I like it. So what we did there was we strong. We sent a strong signal to the market that the company is doing well. There is momentum. But also more importantly, you know, we’ve reached a specific milestone which then helps us amplify our POV in the market with that credibility. The fact that we’ve, you know, reached that point in itself doesn’t matter a whole lot. It just gives us the credibility and the momentum to then have a seat at the table and be listened to or be heard by the audience. And then what we did of that is, well, you know, because of all that data flowing through Clari’s revenue platform, we have learned so much. And our gift to you, buyers and audience is we’re going to share those learnings with you. Yeah. And that that was so it’s classic thought leadership play right? In which we used kind of an internal thing to create momentum, create awareness, and then have the credibility to express our POV.
And so that was a massive success that happened I think, a little over a month ago. Now we’ve got time as the time is a blur. But like we had a really strong social activation and takeover, a bunch of follow-up assets and campaigns, omnichannel of course, social website, email in product, you name it. So it was a really nice, nicely done kind of omnichannel takeover to, you know, to make noise in the market. And of course, that week we saw not only did we see I forgot the exact number, but like almost a million social impressions, a 20% increase in web traffic, a big spike, more demo forms. So all of that demand that you create actually gets captured and of course, translates into the pipeline. So that’s a good example. Yeah. Let me pause here. See that? I mean, do you have any questions?
First of all, congratulations to you and the team. That’s a big achievement and campaign for sure. I do have follow-up and drill-down questions in terms of like who was the lead? Was it you or someone else, and how did you or that person think about a campaign was like a campaign brief? And then how was it structured in terms of execution output and metrics?
Yeah.
So the lead, I would say would be a combination of myself and Devin, my head of content at Clery, Devin Reed. But then, of course, a lot of people were, you know, contributing to this from, you know, the social team to the PM team and whatnot. The exact sponsor was Andy, our CEO. He was very he stayed very close to this, which I think makes it a success. Right. If you want a big, big market-moving moment and not just yet another campaign. Yeah. And your CEO has to be bought in and give you feedback and direction and, and amplify. So, so that’s that was the kind of the, the crew, if you will, the cast. And then. Yeah, we had our strategy deck for it. You know, talking about the, the why we’re doing this. What’s in it for us? What’s in it for the audience, the, you know, metrics and the targets in terms of expected outcomes, the bill of materials, the deliverables, the races, the owners are like down from strategy level down to like the tactical details.
So from start to finish, was it like one, 2, or 3 months or even?
Yeah. That’s why yeah, it’s a good question. Everything was very, very fast. It’s like it went from an idea to full execution in frankly less than a month, which is crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was it was very intense but very rewarding at the same time. So my advice to every marketer would not be to rush through things like, like that. I think typically you do that big integrated campaign and lightning strike if you will, talking about category here. You do that once a quarter. So you give yourself like three months to execute. Ours was a little more condensed in terms of timeline, but it ended up being very successful.
I think it’s a combination, right? One is you need to strike when the moment is hot or when you hit the KPI. Not like it was done like six months ago, kind of a thing. Yeah. At the same time, you want to make sure that it’s thought through like you’re 80% through versus 100% perfection.
For exactly.
KPIs, assets, and so on.
Exactly. Yeah, that’s exactly right. Yeah. There’s like that’s the thin balance that every hard bar inside every marketer has to strike. Right. Like like the time is now and it’s market-relevant now. But at the same time, you need time to execute and have the quality of outcome. So how do you balance speed and quality at the same time?
Fantastic. No. Thank you for sharing that. This is a great go-to-market success story. Yeah. On the flip side, the go-to-market failure story.
There’s a story. Yeah man I have I have so many. It’s like everybody else. I fail a lot, but I keep trying. I can start with maybe I’ll do two, two stories. One is going to be still at clearing is not everything is perfect. That clearly never is anywhere. And the next one would be Salesforce. So I’ll keep it short. Clearly, I think back to the kind of category thing.
So we launched, we can call it a manifesto if you like the category POV. It was before my time to over two years ago. Now I believe it was in, I guess exactly two years ago in June 2022. And so it was like really well received by the audience, the market. That’s where we introduced our villain in our story called Revenue Leak. And so the story’s about, you know, using a revenue platform to identify the leaks and then prevent them from happening. Right. But the story was a bit much. It was if you go and look at the actual narrative deck, like the beginnings of some, and then it starts becoming like there’s too many concepts kind of thrown together.
Is that the 50 slides that are shared on LinkedIn?
There are multiple decks shared on LinkedIn. I feel really good about the $4 trillion LinkedIn. Yeah, I can. I’ll send you the it’s. Com slash thrive like thriving thrive. Yeah, it’s great. It’s amazing by the way. It’s like an amazing POV.
It’s just a little too much right? Like because then we end up talking about collaboration and governance. And it’s just like. And so we threw a lot at the audience. It still worked. What didn’t quite work? 100% was the reps felt like it was a little too much. And so they sometimes would have a hard time articulating what that’s, you know, market level POV actually means for their one buyer that they’re talking to right now today. And so and it’s not a sales enablement issue like that. Sales enablement is such a scapegoat for all the things in the enterprise. It’s awful. So it’s a company issue, right? Like if you have almost a bit of a bloated POV with too many ingredients to it, then you know, your buyer might get lost or your reps might get a little overwhelmed. So that’s sort of a bit of what happened. We saw that and then we trimmed it down a little bit, removed the fat, and removed a few concepts that were great but not fully helpful to the story.
And now we feel like we have a much better, just simpler story to tell. So I love the.
The fact that I mean, a lot of companies, a lot of leaders go to market leaders. Think about having a point of view. You should have a point of view. And lots of people feel proud that, hey, we actually released the point of view narrative, which is important, but allow the fact that how you guys nailed the problem was at the rep level, you can have a point of view, but people on the front line, if they’re not able to execute, it’s not going to land. You won’t see the KPIs and outcomes. Simple.
Okay. That’s right. Exactly. Yeah.
And so how long did it take for you to find that problem?
I think I would say it took us longer than I thought. Maybe a year. Something like a year, you know, because, like, what’s what’s shocking is that we have a lot of, like.
Well, I’m a tech nerd. Like, I really love, you know, having the tools and the apps for me to do my job a little better, me and my team. So we have a variety of apps and we’re we’re recording the calls and the sales calls, and then we use an app on top to analyze that. So we could tell that the adoption of the full POV was lagging, but we or people using the POV like reps in cycles, right? That would result in a much higher ASP. So it’s kind of like I’m going to make up the stats because I can’t disclose the stats. But assume that your POV is only used fully by 60% of your reps. But for those using it then it yields a 40% higher average selling price. So we were still like okay, let’s convince the remaining 40% of the reps to also use the full POV because they saw that it helps sell bigger deals, right? But still, there was a lot of resistance. And I can’t blame anybody because I do think that fundamentally the pop was a little too much to absorb and to, you know, to use.
So now we streamlined it. As I said, we haven’t lost on deal size lift, but the adoption of the new POV amongst sales is much higher. Very cool.
Yeah. Good stuff. And then the second GTM failure story.
Yeah. Salesforce. Yeah, yeah, this one is this one is more funny, I guess, than anything else. I don’t even know if there is like a good lesson to be learned, because I guess the first one, my lesson from that failure would be don’t boil the ocean and the more sophisticated POV isn’t the strongest. Like sometimes simple is better. This is more right and tracks adoption and track impact, right? That’s my learning. All right. So the second quick failure story would be Salesforce. It was my last year as an employee. So back in 2019 doing Dreamforce and I was on the Einstein team. And so we had 20 2019 was an 18 I believe like the explosion years, the years of the explosion of smart speakers.
Like it was just like Alexa, all the Alexa and all the Google homes and all of that stuff. Right? And so we thought that it’d be a good idea to have an Einstein smart speaker. And so we actually had an Einstein-shaped smart speaker, which you could talk to to ask him or them, I guess. Hey, Einstein. Like, what are my top three opportunities in North America in tech right now? And then Einstein would respond to you with a fake British accent, because that’s one of the voices we tested, and it’s the one that people loved most for smart speakers. And he would be like, oh, I believe that your top three opportunities are over. So it was a fun moment and a fun demo at the Einstein keynote, but then it really confused the heck out of our audience. People felt like this was the thing they could buy. Like, I think we even got pressing. Is Salesforce now entering the hardware market they’ve been saying no software, so maybe they want hardware.
And it was just and the whole thing was a little cringe and very cheesy and obviously fake. And I don’t think he was I think it was a fun project, but I don’t think it helped. It was it was kind of bad marketing in a way, you know, like just creating more confusion in the buyer’s mind. So that’s that was my lesson. Like, think about it. Yeah. Like it’s it’s cool to have a fun activation like this. But if you’re if you’re going to end up confusing your buyer, then don’t do it.
Yeah, that’s definitely a funny story. I mean, I can imagine, especially in a keynote or even a customer meeting someone doing that demo. But then someone asked me, hey, can I buy Einstein? It’s a whole different conversation.
That’s right. Yeah. And like, I remember we had a plan of like, we would ship because we had, like, because those were custom made. Right? So very expensive, as you would imagine.
And then so we had to plan for like ships, 50 of these smart speakers to like the key locations like the EBC executive business centers of Salesforce so that people can use that. And it’s just it became like a logistical nightmare, and we just kind of gave up on it.
So switching gears a little bit, but again, on a related note, what are the one, 2, or 3 go to market skills that people approach you for? They say, hey, you know what? I’m struggling with positioning storytelling or brand or demand or events. Let me go and talk to Julian. So what are the skills and how do you build those skills?
People outside of Clari like inside or.
Outside like like if I’m working on the positioning or a pitch deck or a brand new, like, brand building exercise. Yeah, I’ll. I’ll think. Okay. Julien is the person I need to go to.
Yeah, I think my brand is very much PM because of my background.
Yeah. Which is a curse and a blessing. Like, I’ve tried to not be seen as the only PM guy because now I own pretty much the full stack. Right. But yeah, having said that you would come to me with questions around positioning, strategic narrative category design, brand, making bold brand campaigns and visuals, and identities and ideas. Yeah. and I think actually team leadership, like, I don’t should maybe write more about this. I try to write every day on LinkedIn and post, but like, I’m really passionate. The one thing that keeps me happy, that gives me joy isn’t a great story. It is not a successful launch. It’s not a bold brand move. It’s making my team happy and successful. Yeah, and I know it sounds cheesy, man, and I don’t care. I always say I have all the right to be cheesy because I’m French, I like cheese. Yeah. but, yeah, like, so people would come to me with like, leadership advice on how to best structure and grow the team.
Yeah. I mean, those are all amazing skills, by the way, people, leadership skills. You also mentioned, brand positioning, storytelling, and so on and so, and by the way, I’ve seen storytelling be used a lot. People say, hey, tell it to me or create this asset or a paycheck in a storytelling manner, but then it just gets thrown out or thrown and the term gets used way too often and people really don’t know what it means. Oh yeah, maybe you get like a one-minute thing of how would you approach storytelling, maybe in a campaign or a pitch deck?
Yeah, storytelling. I agree, it’s one of the most overused and not well-thought-through words in B2B marketing tech, right? Storytelling isn’t. It comes after. It comes after you have your positioning actually comes after you have your messaging down, and it comes after you have your POV. So like typically you start with the positioning statement like this is who we are. This is how we’re different.
And then you start messaging like defining your messaging around it like well how would you convey that? Yeah. And then you have a POV like this is our POV on the market. We believe that there is a big, big problem out there that hasn’t been solved. And it’s a revenue leak. Yeah. For example. And then after that, you can start crafting your story. And so a story typically has the usual elements. I mentioned the villain which is a revenue leak In our case, the hero crew is the hero for us. The obstacles to plugging the leak. In our case, it’s the old legacy tech Salesforce CRM you know, and then you the story would have all the transformation like here the hero journey going into the expected outcome and the bliss. But that’s what it is. So story. It’s just at the end of the day. Storytelling to me is the the thing that comes after you’ve nailed your positioning, messaging, and POV, and it’s just an elegant way of combining all these elements together to tell a cohesive, cohesive narrative.
I think the biggest takeaway for the listeners is the way you sequenced it. Julie, and I love the fact that you sequenced it more often. A lot of times I’ve seen, like leaders say, hey, trust me, a storytelling tech stack in a storytelling format. But then a lot of elements, foundational elements are not there. So the best way to think about this is to have the positioning done. Check. Messaging. Yeah. Check. Point of view. Very important. Yeah.
And then and then the story by the way like POV depends on every company, right? Like in my mind, POV comes first, like POV is market level, and then positioning is you in the market. So I think you need the POV on the market before you talk about yourselves in that market. So the actual order in my mind is more POV positioning messaging story. Yeah.
Very cool. I know we are coming towards the end of time over here. Yeah. The last couple of questions for you.
What resources do you lean on to stay up to date on the different topics?
Yeah, it’s a good question. I wish I was one of those persons who, you know, would say, I listen to X amount of podcasts but I don’t I don’t listen to a whole lot of podcasts. Sorry for people listening to this. I try to do well. I subscribed to a few newsletters that I find helpful. I like Miss Stratton’s newsletter called Punchy on Messaging. I read that every religiously, every Saturday morning, of course. lucky enough to have Devon Reid on my team at Clari. So I read his stuff. I read the category Pirates, Substack, and the newsletter. So that’s the way I consume information. I have a few books as well here. That’s one of the one of the Bible categories. Yeah, for sure. Play bigger. But yeah, I’m mostly like a short-form content type of consumer. Like more newsletters and even LinkedIn posts. I agree, I mean.
There’s a lot of good content coming out on newsletters of late, and I’m a big fan and a big consumer of really good newsletters for sure. Yeah, yeah. And then if you were to go back in time, what advice would you give to your younger self on day one of your go-to-market journey?
Oh my gosh, to my younger self, like it has to be about me. well.
Yeah. I mean, if you were to meet or redo.
Or people who are in that phase. And you’ve been through that.
I’m thinking because I don’t have a pretend answer, I would say it.
There should be no, no pre and stuff.
Yeah. No no no never. You’re right man I think it would be go deep. go deep. Keep going deep. Going deep into the relationships with people. It’s all relationship-based, right? It’s the people you meet. So spend the time to go deep with the people, the key people you’re meeting.
Forge those relationships. Find your mentors. So going deep into relationships, going deep into product expertise, even if you’re non-technical, don’t be scared like you can. You can open the product a little bit and like take a look at it and try to, you know, get into the technicalities a little bit if you can. And going deep into product knowledge, the voice of the market, the voice of the customer reading things, and it is reported. And from that POV, I think at any stage of your journey, you can have a POV on things, you can go deep on things. So that would be my advice for going deep into relationship products and the market.
Very cool. I love the fact that you can put it into like two words and go deep. And because for me that encapsulates staying curious. Yeah. And being intellectually honest with yourself. Hey, you know what? Okay, I know so much. I’m being humble, right? And it would.
It was a good one. Now I realize I might, I might replace my go deep by staying standing curious.
But I think they go hand in hand. Go hand in together. Yeah, yeah.
This is awesome. I mean, I wish we could talk more about this, but it’s been a great conversation. Julian. So good luck to you and the team at Clari.