Business Builders Podcast

Aligning Sales and Marketing with Tarnia Conti

• Brenton Gowland & Ron Tomlian • Season 3 • Episode 45

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Are your sales and marketing teams working together seamlessly, or are they struggling to find common ground? Join us for this eye-opening conversation with Tarnia Conti, a seasoned expert in aligning these critical departments. In this episode, we explore the challenges that can arise when sales and marketing aren't well-aligned and learn how these misalignments can negatively impact customer experiences.

Tarnia shares her wealth of knowledge from her extensive background in marketing, sales, and operations across various industries. Throughout our discussion, we emphasize the importance of empathy, effective use of CRM systems, and a strong focus on the customer journey in creating alignment across departments. We also discuss breaking down barriers between product, sales, marketing, and customer service teams to increase customer loyalty and satisfaction.

The topics we cover in this episode are:

  • The Challenges in Aligning Sales and Marketing Teams
  • Why Empathy is Important to Help Align Sales and Marketing
  • Aligning Marketing and Sales With CRM
  • Getting Your Teams to Walk a Mile in Each Other's Shoes
  • What Management Can Do To Align Sales and Marketing Teams
  • How AI Will Help Sales and Marketing Teams in the Future
  • Tarnia's Top Three Tips to Better Align Your Sales and Marketing Team

In our next episode, we'll be joined by a world-leading futurist for an exciting discussion about what we can expect in our near future!

Adapt_CO
Helping businesses find their new shape.

SA Business Builders
Business leaders social group based in South Australia

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Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Business Builders Podcast. Until next time, KEEP ON BUILDING !!

Brenton Gowland:

Hey there Business Builders. Today we're talking with special guest, Tarnia Conti, about how to create alignment between your sales and marketing teams. We explore building empathy, effectively using CRM systems and harnessing the customer journey to create alignment across all departments of your business. Well, welcome to the Business Builders podcast. We are your hosts, I am Brenton Gowland.

Ron Tomlian:

And I'm Ron Tomlian.

Brenton Gowland:

And, Ron, I'm going to the Flinders Ranges this weekend. Well, you told me, You're usually the one going away on holidays, but I thought I have to follow in your footsteps. You're always telling me to get a work life balance. So

Ron Tomlian:

I thought I would get you're finally listening. I'm very impressed

Brenton Gowland:

if it's you know what the great thing is? What's that? I've heard that it's raining there all weekend.

Ron Tomlian:

Oh, well, just take your four wheel drive when you go.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, I talked to some people. And they said, it's actually really good time to go up there when it's raining because you get all this flooding. And I'm like, wow, that's really exciting. I'll go see the floods. No, no, no, no, no. You go and look at the creeks and the rivers. And you go around those areas, and they said is really beautiful with the water moving. And so yeah, I'm still looking forward to it, I just hope we get a bit of a clear sky so we can see the stars because I gotta admit, that's part of the reason I want to go to the Flinders because you get these unabashed views of just glorious heavens, there's no natural light. So if you're listening internationally, and you don't know where the Flinders Ranges is, it's in South Australia. And it's a beautiful spot to kind of visit and we're not a travel show. And just being patriotic, because this is the first holiday I've been on in probably a year.

Ron Tomlian:

Fantastic.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah. And I'm also really excited, Ron, because we've got a guest on the show today. We do indeed. And I'm particularly excited about this guest because I've been working with her for on and off in different ways for gosh, 20 or more years.

Ron Tomlian:

It can't be

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, I know.

Ron Tomlian:

She doesn't look that old.

Brenton Gowland:

Well she doesn't. But I do.

Ron Tomlian:

Well, that goes without saying you got a face for radio.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, that's correct. So look, what we're talking about the topic today is we're looking at how to align your sales and marketing teams. And this is a massive thing in business. And our guest today is Tarnia Conti. And she is a business growth and transformation specialist with a rare mix of analytical, commercial and creative skills. And as I said, she's got a bit of experience in the senior roles, certain amount of years 20 or so, that kind of aligns with what I said earlier. It does. Yeah, so she's worked across Australia, the USA, Africa, Southeast Asia, and she has an impressive lineup of qualifications in international trade and economics, marketing, Asian Studies and leadership. And most importantly, Tarnia goes into business as a catalyst of change. She's helped them to understand the importance of customer experience. And she helps businesses succeed by aligning their brand operational capacity sales and marketing investments. And she also spends a lot of time juggling two active boys and an even more active dog.

Ron Tomlian:

Wow, I can't even keep up with all activity.

Brenton Gowland:

Well cop this. You know, I said, this is my first holiday and like a long time, Tarnia goes on off grid adventures all the time, including taking well when I say all the time, I mean, probably once every six months or so. But she goes on great adventures like takes the boys and the family sailing and off road adventures and stuff like that. We could probably learn from that. Even you who goes away fairly often.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, I think everyone should take time out. realign themselves. Sounds like Tarnia's all over it.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah. Now I just wanted to add before we introduce Tarnia that I first met Tarnia, like I said, a long time ago, working as a graphic designer. And Tarnia was, I think, the marketing manager, one of the companies we were working with. But then when I started running my own business, I realised I needed to learn sales. And I started looking everywhere for resources, how the heck am I going to learn to go out and sell because one of my clients said to me, Brenton, no one says like the boss. And I started thinking, Boy, I better learn how to how to do this. And I remember watching Tarnia work with this particular company, and she went in as their marketing manager. And I remember, they said to her, Look, your job is going to be to grow revenue by 30%. And she said, revenue or gross profit, and of course, they said profit. And she said, right, well, we better start by raising a purchase order and running it through the whole organisation. And I believe it took two years to do that. And the reason it took two years as they found a lot of gaps and a lot of holes and a lot of things that needed to be improved. And Tony went through the process of working with them to improve it. And I believe she almost hit her figures just by doing that process without actually going out and doing any marketing. And I remember that impressed me so much. I thought I want to know what this person knows. So Tarnia was my first official mentor. I paid her to help me learn so she did that for a year and what I learned was invaluable. So, Tarnia, I gotta say, it's great to have you and I'm really serviced Like, because now I've got two mentors, because business builders started off with Ron, my mentor and I doing this thing now I've got two of you here. So I'm outnumbered. But it's great to have you here.

Tarnia Conti:

Oh, thank you very much for having me.

Brenton Gowland:

Absolutely welcome. So I think I might kick it off. Tarnia, I just said a whole lot about you. But maybe in your own words, you can tell us a little bit about yourself and your background in both marketing and sales. So people get a little bit of an insight into you.

Tarnia Conti:

Sure, I can do that. So I'm thinking about it as you were actually doing the introduction, which is interesting hearing you talk about me like that. But it's been an interesting journey. So I started university a lot later than most, it's been an long and non linear career. And I've typically gone in the area of marketing and come out in the area of Chief Operating Officer or something in that regard, mainly because I follow the customer journey, as you say. So bring, bring all of those areas together, particularly the front end of the business, the front of house, the growth drivers, I've been fortunate enough to work in a number of industries. And that's taken me to plenty of places overseas, and it's been hugely enjoyable and rewarding, being able to access those learning opportunities. And it's anything from international development assistance. So working with US aid Asian Development Bank, through defence as well, intimate manufacturing, retail renewable energy. So it's really given me a good insight into different industries.

Ron Tomlian:

Well, with all that experience, we're talking about aligning sales and marketing. So what are some of the common challenges businesses face when their marketing and sales departments aren't well aligned? And how can this impact the overall success in your experience?

Tarnia Conti:

Yeah, it's a really good question. The sales and marketing is often misaligned, mainly, it starts at the top in terms of the organisation structure. And sales are focusing on revenue generation. And marketing is focusing on brand awareness. And often what I see is that because they have different goals and different leadership, there's a little bit of misalignment in that space as to who the customer is. And the customer doesn't see sales and marketing, the customer sees the business. And if they're not aligned, they get to different experiences, which is not a good outcome.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, I've had the same perspective on that when sales and marketing aren't aligned. It can be disastrous, from the customer's perspective.

Brenton Gowland:

That happens a lot though most of the businesses I go into I find that sales and marketing, usually on two different pages or even against each other, it seems to be more common than not. Is that your experience?

Tarnia Conti:

Yeah, quite often, what I see is the marketing department focus mainly on the promotional side that there are four P's to marketing. But quite often promotion is what they're saying is or the term I hate, but it's true, often are the colouring in department. Yep. And so So see, marketing is producing things that aren't necessarily useful resources for the sales team. And the marketing team often see the sales team as sort of a loose cannon saying and doing things producing documentation, visual assets, promotional assets to serve a more immediate needs, such as closing a sale.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, it's an interesting story. I like your introduction, were when you were talking about yourself that you said, you come in as the marketing manager, but you end up being the operations manager, I find that very interesting. Because that means you approach marketing differently. And I saw that with you at the company that I was telling you about. So how do you end up starting in marketing and ended up being the operations manager? What happens in the business that gets you to that?

Tarnia Conti:

Yeah, it's a it's an interesting journey. And it's happened over time. So I used to just work in the marketing area. And then I worked in an organisation that had financial troubles, actually, then that led me to understand that the delivery side of the model was really important. And for want of a better word, if you ring the dinner bell, and you bring a bunch of hungry people into the dining room, and you've got nothing to serve them, all you've done is just annoyed a whole lot of people. So working in marketing is only one part of the equation, the customer experience is more holistic. And it involves everything from awareness to impact, which is effectively the delivery of the service, you've promised, the fulfilment part is really important.

Brenton Gowland:

So does that mean you just started then getting involved with the operations team and calling the shots or what happened? You became the boss?

Tarnia Conti:

Yes, so, well, as you sort of said in the intro, I guess I do attach myself to a purchase order. And I run myself through the business. I do a lot of mystery shopping. I travel in cars with the sales team. So I ask a lot of questions. I'm curious by nature, and I like learning what people do. I think empathy is really, really important. It's walking in the shoes of the people, whether you're in marketing or sales, understanding the different roles. The other sort of areas that bolt on to marketing and sales is also product management or those that are responsible for the delivery or the service on offer. And also customer support, which can be pre and post sales as well. So I've worked across So all of those, and by attaching yourself to a purchase order, you actually get a very good understanding of where the roadblocks are in the customer experience. And often that leads me from being front of house to back of house. And the reason is I'm competent in the front of house. But if you, as I said, ring the dinner bell, and you've got nothing to serve, then you've actually wasted a lot of money. And everybody knows marketing is expensive, and having sales teams are expensive as well. So sales is an extension of marketing, and every overhead could be 150 to 200k a year, once all of those costs are on, if you've got 10 of those people, then that's quite a significant investment in the extension of your brand ambassador, investment.

Ron Tomlian:

Brilliant. So what you're talking about is a strategy for aligning marketing and sales is that customer journey, everyone understanding that customer journey? Yeah, that's right. So how can businesses accurately measure the return on investment that their integrated marketing and sales efforts make? And why is it important for making informed decisions?

Unknown:

Yeah, there's a there's quite a few questions there. And I'm just thinking about how best to structure the answer. The investment in sales and marketing is not only the overheads, it's also the above the line spend, there seems to be a lot of focus based on where are we spending the marketing money, which is understandably important. But there's also a lot of value and money tied up in the resources and the overhead that an organisation carries. The best way to calculate a return on that combined investment is to add the overheads as well as the above the line budget expenditure together and divide that by sales, and then that will give you total cost of your return on investment for the brand, what I call the brand ambassador function of the business.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, we've been talking a lot about this concept of marketing based assets, the brand being one of those marketing based assets, people who are, in my experience, often reluctant to put money into that. Why is that? Why do management resist the investment in marketing based assets like a brand.

Tarnia Conti:

So often, it comes down to the skill of the marketer and able to articulate the value of that investment there. And also, most likely, the sales team looking for something that has a quicker return. So if you think about CapEx versus OpEx, which is an accounting term, and I guess I come from sort of a background in economics and finance as well, the best way to articulate the marketing brand investment is capex investment. It's kind of like the same, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. So the best time to invest in your brand was years ago as well, because it does take time. And the reason it takes time is because 95% of the time you're marketing to an audience that is not ready to buy. So you've got to be able to create all sorts of assets that enable people to recall your brand at the time that they're ready to purchase. And so these assets take time, there's a creative investment, and they don't have a return that's tangible immediately. So the best way to do that is actually a CRM. So to come back to one of the other questions is being able to actually measure the leading indicators around brand awareness and engagement. So that you know that at a point in time when a customer is ready to enter the market to solve a problem that you're on their shortlist for doing so.

Ron Tomlian:

I've often found that a lot of people in business don't want to appreciate the value of investing in things like the RMS things like brands, because they haven't had the advantage of being educated about the fact that this is a long term investment.

Brenton Gowland:

It's also a little bit scary for companies to implement a CRM, I sat with this particular company, a large company with more than 1000 staff. And just the thought was daunting in when we went through what was involved in putting a CRM in, they were like, wow, that's too much work. How do we record everything? How do we go from where we are now to what you're talking about? And like little step to eat an elephant one bite at a time, that it can be really daunting for companies? And there's a lot of them around who don't have a CRM? How do you tackle that one? Because I know you're an advocate for CRM, because I hear you talking about it a lot.

Ron Tomlian:

Very quickly. CRM, customer relationship management,

Brenton Gowland:

I forgot to tell you if we try not to do acronyms, I do acronyms all the time. And Ron corrects me constantly.

Tarnia Conti:

That's, that's very good, because that is probably sales and marketing jargon, who it is. And if you've got business owners listening, there'll be like, what is that you're talking about? So there are big brands out there and I don't know whether you mentioned any of them on the show like Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics or HubSpot, and there are other smaller ones as well that are not necessarily tier one, but certainly capable effectively. A CRM is a tool that you use to capture interactions that the business has With a customer, and it does it at two levels. One is company to company. So it's my business talking to your business. But then it also drills down to person to person. So it's me, Tarnia, as a representative of company X talking to you, Brenton, who represents Company Y. And what we know is people change jobs as they do. And so you can actually build up relationships. And most businesses have experiences where you form a relationship or a good opportunity with an individual, they change businesses, and they usually take you with them. And so CRMs enable you to maintain that connection, even while people leave the role. So that's on the marketing side. On the sales side, if you're actually running a sales team, there is a conversation going on about your brand and about your business. And currently, that's being represented by an individual that's employed by you, that individual won't be employed by you forever, for whatever reason, they leave, they go on holiday, whatever happens. And so you want to onboard a new salesperson, well, what's the conversation and what's the context has taken place. So the CRM is really important because the customer wants a consistent journey. And if any of us have ever had a conversation on a phone call, where potentially there's been a complaint or a troubleshooting concern, you tell someone what it is, and then the phone call gets escalated, or it transfers to someone else. And then you've got to retell the story. The opportunity with having a CRM is that the customer is front and centre at the entire journey. And so the organisation works together to deliver a cohesive experience.

Brenton Gowland:

Fantastic. The CRM can be a really good conduit between a sales and marketing team, because they both have to input into it and use it. The thing that we're really keen on today is talking about how to bring alignment to those teams. And we talked about when we started, about how they can be misaligned. Can you talk to us about what strategies you've seen work best for actually helping bring alignment to the sales and marketing team and what the results of that might be?

Tarnia Conti:

Yeah, I like both roles. I love selling, and I love marketing. So I might be a little bit strange. Look, empathy is the key to unlocking the connection between the two. So I create opportunities or engineer opportunities for sales and marketing to actually walk in the shoes of each other. Particularly if I'm working in the marketing area, we'll develop some assets like a PowerPoint deck or a proposal or some pull up banners or maybe an infographic. And then what we'll do is we'll work with the sales team. And we'll test it in a live situation, for example, a corporate event or a home show or something like that, where we can get real life feedback. And so we use these tools, and just produce them at a very inexpensive cost. And we work with the sales team. So marketing and sales go together, they take what you call a prototype asset, and then they'll test it and see the real time feedback. And as a result of that, sales and marketing are working together, because they're understanding whether this is actually resonating with the customer who is at the centre of this.

Brenton Gowland:

oh, we were having our pre chat today, I was talking about my little theory about if you want people to get to know each other, you get them to do the dishes in the kitchen. Because as long as they're not flicking each other with tea towels, they get to know each other. And even the flicking with details can work to actually building a relationship with people. But it sounds like what you're saying is you get the sales and marketing team working together on different projects, whether it be one you're talking about, or some other one where you get the marketing people to go walk a mile in the shoes of the salespeople. How do you do that in reverse? How do you get the salespeople to walk a mile in the shoes of the marketing people?

Tarnia Conti:

Well, it's not as easy. And typically, if we go back to CRM, the sales team often feels the CRM as a threat. Why? Well, I know what they tell me, which is it's a big brother feeling. So it creates an emotion of people are watching me don't you know, I'm doing my job? Why do I need to have this conversation and then enter the details of the conversation, duplicate the work effort. So it's a waste of time.

Brenton Gowland:

It also keeps an eye on them in a different sense, because I know that I'm going to be controversial here. But a lot of sales people want to protect their network, because it's there's, I'm working for somebody else, I don't want to give them all the details of my network, because then I'm giving away my IP, so to speak, have you come across that?

Tarnia Conti:

Not directly, but one would argue that if they're employed by an organisation, those customers are actually the organization's customer base, and that they've engaged the salesperson as a representative for that purpose. I do see that where people obviously hire salespeople because of their connections, but those connections will survive a CRM entry, because you can see those connections on LinkedIn. They're not sensitive.

Brenton Gowland:

I've seen both have literally had people tell me what I just told you. My view is that having a CRM in place means you actually get people who are more committed to the business. You have the CRM in the first place and you go out looking for salespeople, and they know they're coming into a business We're going to have to use one, it means that they're prepared for means they're willing to accept. And it means that potentially the kind of person you want.

Unknown:

So to bring sales and marketing together and head of sales, look at marketing as an asset and a useful resource, probably one of the best ways to describe it is, salespeople usually have a roster or rotation that they go in market. So typically, a face to face opportunity with a client could be anywhere between 10 to 12 weeks. So what happens in between that time? What are the opportunities to touch base with the customer and remind them remember, we're looking for mental availability here, they're not in market at the moment. So if the only time that they ever actually have exposure to your business, or your offer is when a salesperson does a face to face visit or a phone call, then that frequency is once a quarter. So if the sales and marketing team work together, there's a bunch of tools that the marketers can use to create really good opportunities for learning educational resources, invitations to webinars that they can download on demand. And effectively, what that does is that creates a connection between the organisation and the salespersons customer, and increases the frequency of contact, which can also increase that know like and trust journey. Typically, when I work with sales teams, I always say the customer hasn't said no, what they've said is not now or not sure. So the art is actually understanding where they are. And if it's not now, then let's just provide good useful, educational, resourceful tools that they can use until a point when they're ready, which is in the future. And so sales and marketing can work together. Because most customers, if you're out actually exploring a brand or a product, you're going to a website, that's usually run by the marketing team. You're receiving emails that's run by the marketing team, you may download a white paper that's been created by the marketing team. And eventually, you may actually click to say, I'd like to talk to someone at that point, that may be pre sales, or that may actually be an account manager, which is what we're talking about today was the salesperson.

Brenton Gowland:

Like you're saying to get salespeople to walk a mile in the shoes of the marketer, those materials, how much input to the sales team have into creating those white papers, or those EDMs or those other materials with the team?

Tarnia Conti:

Well, from my perspective, they're integral to it. They're the first audience so I'm always a big fan of if you can't sell it internally to your own team, don't try and sell it to anybody else. Because your internal organisation needs to be your biggest advocate of everything you're doing. All of those people are potential brand ambassadors as well. They're going out at barbecues, people are asking them, what do they think of certain things, if they think the place they work for is not good? If they think the products, the place they're working for isn't good, then you know, that's an issue. So the opportunity is to really make sure that the team, the sales and marketing team, and also the product team. So I'm going to extend that a little bit further. Because the product, if you're selling tangible products, a product team is an extension of your sales and marketing team because you sell products. Yeah, they've all got to be onboard.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep. And when they're working seamlessly, what does that do for the business,

Unknown:

When the business agrees that there is one customer and we all serve that customer, then growth is possible, because you spend less time fighting and shuffling blame games between trenches, and we're all there to serve one customer, which we all recognise who that is, you may define that in different target markets, but effectively, we're unified.

Brenton Gowland:

I like that answer.

Ron Tomlian:

We've talked before about management, not necessarily thinking about the long term marketing objectives and building assets and so on the fact that sometimes the marketing department doesn't see the value in the short term objectives of sales. How do you recommend an organisation striking a balance between that short term sales objective and the long term marketing goals, building assets and so on, to ensure sustained success for your organisation?

Tarnia Conti:

It's a good question. And there's a whole theory on this called the long and short Biolase Burnett and Pete field, in marketing literature, but it does depend on the maturity of the company as well. So to cite an example, at the moment is Airbnb, when you're trying to grow a business, and it's more of a startup, so more in that growth phase, you usually focus 80% of your marketing investments on transactional. So you're looking at acquisition. And the reason for that is you've got to sell to survive. So your motivation is quite different. So you're probably pigeon holed 20% to start building that brand asset. And then as the business matures, and the example would be Airbnb now, where they've actually swung the pendulum back, people know who Airbnb are, there are a lot of customers, there's a lot of repeat customers, so therefore, they can actually spend a lot more money on those longer term brand assets.

Brenton Gowland:

And just before we start getting into the wrap up questions, you were talking about having one customer before and I really liked that, because that means the business is focused, because we talked about what the sales and marketing teams can both do. Right? So empathy, you said was a real key, I walk a mile in their shoes, but what can the management of a business do to bring the sales and marketing team together?

Tarnia Conti:

The best organisations I've ever worked for, have a unified fight, like, what's our fight? What do we stand for. And another way to look at it is the founders mentality. So if you think of a business that's founded by somebody, they are passionate about the product, they've probably invented it, they've had to develop their own marketing materials, and they've had to go out and sell it. And so they get real time feedback from customers. And that is critical. And so the challenge with organisations that as you actually grow, you structure your departments. So you've got a product department, you've got a sales team, you've got a marketing team, you've got a customer service team, you actually lose sight of the founders mentality. So one of the key things that I bring is pulling that back together. So tearing down the walls between the product team, they don't always like it, because I'm making them go out and talk to customers, and shop like customers and observe what customers are doing. The sales team, we need the information in CRM, we're not trying to be big brother, but we use it to be your six, when you're not in front of the customer, which is every 10 weeks out of 12. The marketing team needs to be able to build messages and collateral that actually resonate and work otherwise, the marketing team get cordoned off and call the colouring in department that doesn't add value, which also frustrates me. And I guess the most important piece of this puzzle is the customer support team. Because if we're not getting it, right, that's where the buck stops. So I use CRM extensively in customer support, because I track all the inquiries that come through into a business. And that becomes a feedback loop for marketing product and sales, around managing expectations. If there's regular concerns about a particular product, there's an opportunity to design that out or improve the operating instructions. And if we're receiving a lot of questions about something that that means that we've missed something in our customer journey, or in our collateral. And so the feedback loop continues, but at the end of the day, the customer is at the centre of that.

Brenton Gowland:

So that actually sounds like a big job, right? Because what I was kind of getting at is what can the management do? So it might be that management brings in someone like yourself, or management does this or that, but because we're talking to business builders, people who are committed to developing themselves in order to develop their businesses, I can see that that founders mentality, it's fantastic. I'm dealing with about two different companies at the moment that are quite sizable, and they've got exactly that scenario. So if you are running one of those businesses, what do you do to fix that.

Tarnia Conti:

So probably a quick win, get the sales team to actually use the marketing material or participate in the creation of marketing material and take it for a test drive, it's really, really important. The other thing is the marketing team need to get over themselves and go out there and sell. Because I call it they need to eat their own dog food. That's great. Let's see if this stuff actually really works. Let's see if this food really tastes nice. You've made a very nice can and a very nice logo. But let's go try it. Yeah, the other thing is actually elevate the status of the CRM, take away the brand, or the connotation that is big brother, the CRM is the single one tool that connects the business to the customer, and the customer to a unified experience from anyone in the business, whether it's accounts, whether it's customer service, sales, tech support, etc.

Ron Tomlian:

So it gets back to that customer journey and understanding that, and it's a mechanism for doing it. antastic

Tarnia Conti:

if it was hard, I wouldn't be able to do it. Yeah, you know, customers go through a journey they've never heard of you before. I mean, you can take this podcast as an example, no one's heard of me before, they don't know who I am. At the end of this, they'll have heard of me, throughout the podcast. So then form an opinion about whether they like me or not, so we're now from note to like, and then later on, maybe they want to engage and let's go get a coffee or something like that in sales. That's a conversion, right? So that's trust. So people go through that in products, they go through that and services. And the, probably one of the fastest ways to expedite the know, like trust is a referral, because you don't have to have heard of them. You've gone straight to trust because if you've asked a friend what they think, or trusted person, what they think, then if they say we'll go here or buy this, you'll just go and do it. You won't even if you've never heard of it before you bypass all of that. But for everyone else, you've got to go through the know like trust journey.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep. I actually talk about know like, trust a lot. And you know where I got it from yourself. Many, many years ago, when we did the coaching, it was really interesting because Tony would say you bring the content, I bring the structure. And so I would bring all the bits and pieces I needed to do or deal with and Tony would help me put structure to it. But one of those frameworks was the know like trust framework and I found it very, very helpful ever seen. It's thinking in those simple terms that I want to pick up on one other thing. You said it's very simple or I won't do it. Now, what I've seen is what's simple to one person is never necessarily simple to another person, not because it's not simple and logical, but because they don't think that way, or they haven't been exposed to that kind of methodology before. Otherwise, why would they need you to come into a business and help them do that? Yeah, sure, it is simple. And you can run on with it later on. But sometimes you need people to help you see the rocks from the trees, the weeds, from the bushes, all that kind of thing. So I think what you're talking about is really important.

Tarnia Conti:

Yeah, well, thank you. I think, because of the fact that I've had all these roles, whether it's been in product management, I've run customer service teams, I've built call scripts, on sales and marketing, and then moved into Chief Operating Officer. So then being responsible for the delivery and the profitability of businesses as well, it gives you a really good insight into how all the functions come together to serve the customer. And I think the opportunity, really, for businesses, particularly those small businesses that are listening to this podcast is to be able to have everybody showcase what it is that they do and understand their role and that customer journey.

Ron Tomlian:

Now, everybody's talking about the new technologies, AI and all the new application. So there are a number of technologies that are around at the moment that becoming more obvious. How do you envisage these being used in the future of marketing and sales over the next decade or so? And what should we be prepared for?

Tarnia Conti:

Well, it's interesting, because I've already seen some organisations as part of their onboarding policy for staff ban the use of AI technology, which may be short sighted. But I think it's like saying if Excel ruined accounting? No, it didn't. So effectively, AI technology is actually going to deliver and support customer experiences. The use of the marketing automation tools and customer support tools with AI and their natural language processing technologies, will deliver great customer experiences. I think we've all had a chat with a chat bot, and it misses the mark. And we've all probably been on chat GBT now or another product and AI tool. And the question and answer experiences phenomenal. Imagine that in the customer support that you would receive with a business, which is 24/7. And effectively, the value is going to transition from being a knowledge expert, to someone who has excellent soft skills and people skills because computers and robots can't do that. And that's really what connects people. Being the smartest person in the room and regurgitating information can be done by a computer.

Ron Tomlian:

So what you're saying is that these technologies will form the backbone of the support for people so that they can interact with other people more effectively in the future.

Tarnia Conti:

Yeah, I think that's actually a really good way of articulating. And I wish I might have to steal that. Because you're right, the tech support team, the customer service team, the sales team and the marketing team, a lot of the literature that they write, can be automated. And that means that they can actually get out from behind the desks and behind the keyboards and form the real relationships, which is the human connection.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, that's really interesting. So what I'm hearing is that the technology will help us focus on the customer. So I'm, I'm also thinking that the manual processes of entering data into a CRM and so forth may become easier. All those things that AI can help us do, just so we can focus is that the point you're trying to really influence?

Tarnia Conti:

Yeah, so when I was in sales years ago, on the conversation of technology, I used to finish the sales call and jump in the car, put the phone on, I can't remember the product now. But anyway, it would, it would actually transcript so then I would talk about the meeting that I had, it would transcript it and send it to me as an email so that I could insert that into the file notes of the CRM. So that was 10 years ago. And that technology is obviously a massive now and way easier. But the tools actually help people. And if you're not a keyboard, Warrior, or not a fast typer, or you actually hate that sort of thing. Then talking to an app, the app will transcribe it learns your tone, it learns your language, use your accent, and then it just sends it to you as an email.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, that's fantastic. And there's more of this stuff coming out all the time. Look, when we were talking beforehand. For this podcast, we're playing around with a piece of software that we can now edit our podcast, like a Word document, which sounds great in theory, and I can see where it's going. It's a little bit of getting used to, but it's going to change everything Adobe and now bringing exactly the same thing out I use a bunch of video editing platforms like DaVinci and Adobe Premiere, they're all bringing out similar editing systems. So from what you're hearing, I would imagine we just encourage To be able to play with this stuff and experiment.

Tarnia Conti:

Yeah, I don't I don't see it as the enemy. I think the most of the AI tools are actually there to enable.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, that's great.

Ron Tomlian:

I like the analogy used before with Excel and the accountants to my way of thinking all these take away the boring stuff, and allow you to do more what I call the fun stuff, which is interacting with people. And I think that will continue.

Brenton Gowland:

So the Business Builders podcast, we're all about providing practical advice. And I think you've really given some but how would you summarise what you've been saying today into three key tips for the business people that business builders that are listening about what they can take away and do right now to start better aligning their sales and marketing teams?

Tarnia Conti:

Absolutely, one of them would be build that empathy. So have them walk in each other's shoes, a few role Change Overs would be great, some ride alongs marketing right along with the sales team. And the sales team actually involved in using some of the product collateral. The other thing is, if you don't have a CRM, then you better get a CRM, if you have a CRM, you better use your CRM. And everybody needs to understand the customer journey. And it should be on the wall. There's usually a lot of values on the wall, but I would be putting the customer journey on the wall. How do they hear about us? How do they form opinions about us? Everyone in the organisation is a brand ambassador and is they understand that then they realise they're also part of that customer journey?

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, that's fantastic.

Ron Tomlian:

And what I love about what Tarnia just said is, it mirrors so much of what we've already talked about in the previous podcast and marketing. So thank you for the validation.

Brenton Gowland:

I really love that bit about the customer journey because a lot of the organization's I work with we get the values we get the understanding the customers, we get the personas, we usually have the customer journeys, restricted to certain kind of groups, so they understand it, but I love that idea of publicising that everywhere. Getting back to your one customer comment from I think halfway through the podcast. That's good.

Tarnia Conti:

Yeah, well, to put it in context, if there's manufacturers that are listening in on this podcast, as well, the customer journey is also the unboxing experience. So if you're if you're in a factory, your role is equally important how you package that product, and how it ends up presenting on the shelf creates part of the customer journey. So if you map the customer journey correctly, everyone in the organisation can understand their role in creating the perfect customer experience.

Ron Tomlian:

And if you want to see a good example of that unbox an iPad, or an iPhone

Brenton Gowland:

or go watch a video about it is people make careers out of unboxing videos, I kid you not on YouTube, they get paid to do it. Well eventually, if they're good enough if they've got an engaging personality,

Ron Tomlian:

but there's an organisation as an example that has thought about what is the experience like when a customer is excited, gets that product home. And so often it's a terrible experience. Take an Apple product, and it's a fabulous experience. It really is just it just continues that validation of the decision they've made to buy their product. It's been thought about. I love it.

Brenton Gowland:

Today's been really great and wrong. I think we should have Tarnia back.

Ron Tomlian:

Love to.

Brenton Gowland:

Would you be interested in coming back?

Tarnia Conti:

Sure.

Brenton Gowland:

That's excellent. Well look that's all we've got time for today but we will be back in two weeks with a very special guest. We've got a world leading futurist joining us and that is of course after I've been to the Flinders Ranges. So hopefully I will not get wet. And that's goodbye from me I reckon.

Ron Tomlian:

And goodbye from me.

Tarnia Conti:

Thank you for having me, and I'm signing off now.

Brenton Gowland:

Excellent. See you everyone.