Burn The Playbook

Sales Is Broken. Here’s How to Fix It. | Scott Marker - Author & Business Growth Strategist

• Digital Rebels Consulting

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Scott Marker – Author, Business Growth Strategist & Networking Leader

Scott Marker is a two-time author of sales and marketing books, including the bestseller BROKEN – How To Fix B2B Sales, Drive Profitable Growth & Win. With two decades of experience spanning startups to Fortune 50 companies, Scott helps businesses accelerate growth through modern sales strategies, marketing innovation, and the use of AI.

He is the founder of MCA² LLC, where he consults with business owners to drive B2B sales success, design go-to-market strategies and deliver high-impact training and keynote presentations.

In addition, Scott owns and leads Network In Action (NIA) Treasure Valley, a premier networking franchise that goes beyond traditional meet-and-greet events. Through structured, results-driven groups, Scott helps Idaho business owners create powerful, revenue-generating connections and strategic partnerships.

A dynamic and engaging speaker, Scott is passionate about transforming how professionals think about sales, growth, and networking, equipping audiences with actionable insights they can immediately apply to win more business.

Scott Marker Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottmarker1
Network In Action: https://www.networkinaction.com
Scott Marker's Book BROKEN: How To Fix B2B Sales, Drive Profitable Growth & Win On Amazon: https://a.co/d/7KnmIA8

[0:30] Introduction

Marc Crosby introduces the show and guest, Scott Marker, a business growth strategist and author.

[1:17] Scott’s Background

Discussion of Scott’s experience in B2B sales, his books, and his consulting work.

[1:35] What’s Broken in B2B Sales

Scott shares early experiences that revealed issues in sales culture, such as internal competition and lack of collaboration.

[3:20] The Power of Storytelling in Sales

Both discuss the importance of storytelling, why company history is less relevant, and how stories connect with buyers.

[7:14] CRM Challenges

Scott and Marc discuss the pitfalls of CRM systems, why they often fail, and how to use them more effectively for sales and retention.

[14:39] Customer Retention Strategies

Scott introduces his “Strategic Customer Cycle” and emphasizes the importance of retention, sharing practical tips for keeping top customers.

[19:19] Compensation and KPIs

The conversation shifts to sales compensation, KPIs, and the need for customer-centric goals rather than traditional sales targets.

[27:05] Sales and Marketing Alignment

Discussion on aligning sales and marketing KPIs, the importance of collaboration, and account-based strategies.

[32:25] Cold Calling and Modern Prospecting

Scott and Marc debate the effectiveness of cold calling versus inbound and LinkedIn outreach, and how to make outreach more personal.

[41:00] The Customer Journey

They discuss mapping the customer journey, the importance of team selling, and involving multiple stakeholders on both sides.

[49:00] The “Three by Three” Rule

Scott explains the importance of having multiple contacts within c

Views expressed are our own and do not represent any organizations

© 2025 Digital Rebels Consulting. All rights reserved.


Scott Marker x Marc Crosby

​[00:00:00]

Marc Crosby: Welcome in. I'm Mark Crosby and this is Burn The Playbook. Today my guest is Scott Marker, author and business growth strategist and networking leader. Scott has spent over two decades helping businesses from startups to Fortune 50 Giants. Fixed Broken B2B systems drive profitable growth and actually win.

He is the author of two sales and marketing books and including Bestseller Broken, how to Fix B2B Sales and Drive Profitable Growth and Win. He is also the founder of NCA Square where he consults on [00:01:00] go to market strategy and B2B sales success. He leads the network in Action Treasure Valley, a networking franchise that helps business owners build real revenue generating partnerships.

Scott brings a fresh and welcome view of what's wrong with sales today and what leaders need to do differently. Welcome Scott.

Scott Marker: Hey, thanks Mark for having me on.

Marc Crosby: Awesome. Glad to have you. I love your book. Had a chance to read that before the, this particular recording, and I think that everything that you have said in this particular book is things that I've been ranting about for, for many, many years, just as far as what's broken with sales, with marketing, with alignment.

Scott Marker: Yeah 

Marc Crosby: so I'm just curious, you know, you have a lot of experience and all these topics, so when did you realize that sales and B2B was in effect broken?

Scott Marker: well there, there was several looking back, but that's hindsight. But probably one of the ones that stuck out to me was worked for a, a company for a short time, not on my LinkedIn and. found out after I got there that basically we were all fiercely competing against. [00:02:00] wouldn't wanna share anything because they'll go out and tag one of your prospects if you're not, if you, anyway, so we, I, we like run to the copy machine.

If we were gonna print off some stuff to take out, to like do a prospecting thing, we would. So, I mean, is that crazy that you're, you're, you're scared to talk about? In fact, I did once and another rep said, don't don't tell in your strategies to anybody else 'cause they'll just steal 'em and go. And so yeah, that was it.

And of course, what do they think? Oh, well, more the merrier because everybody's, you know, competing against each other. But I use a lot of sports analogies that's like, you know, everybody on a football team not wanting the other piece offense to win or defense to win. That's just crazy.

Marc Crosby: Yeah, I agree. And I think that, you know, even today, you know, even in my business and maybe yours, I, I mean, I love to learn from others that are doing the same thing that I'm doing. There's enough business, I think, to go around, and I think that it just helps to, to share those stories and strategies.

As far as what you've learned over the years I don't know. I'm, I'm pretty big on tribal knowledge myself, whether it's internal or external. But I even think internally there's probably a [00:03:00] lack of just people wanting to, to share best practices. We're just typically bogged down with the day to day.

You know, and I think that for, you know, today with, with AI and a lot of the sales strategies that are out there I think it comes down to differentiating yourself probably with storytelling. And I think that there's probably a lack thereof as far as just being more human telling better stories.

And I think that that's something that you've talked about too. But what pe, what do people get wrong about telling stories or, or not telling 'em at all as far as connecting, you know, their solutions to the buyer journey?

Scott Marker: I, I, I said in my first book you know, sell, but better yet, and I've been talking about that since 2009, my first book, and it's, and it's because I found that by telling success stories, one you keep focused on. The customer. So by telling success stories of other like customers, you talk about outcomes you've done for them and it gets you from about your company's history too much or a bunch of other stuff that has [00:04:00] nothing to do that they don't care about. They care about what have you done before. So you have proof points of other customers like them that they've done. And so I, I've always done that is because you get, when you get into talking to somebody like a bot, you know, your prospective customer, when you get in there and start talking to 'em, they wanna know, their time is limited and stuff.

They just wanna know, can you help him? And you can say, Hey you know, from what you told me, we have three other customers right now we're working with that. Here's how the first one we succeeded. And then telling them specifics and then outcomes. So that equal money is always the best. You can always do it.

So they told us that our new solution saved them 40 hours. week they said that equated by the end of each month to about $25,000 with our engineering time. And so is that, you know, are those some of the things you're over, you know, you're having challenges with Oh yeah, it's exact. And so anyway, then you can get them [00:05:00] fleshing out because too many salespeople are people and how you probe is with stories, success stories.

So

Marc Crosby: Yeah. Where does the company story fit into, I guess, a, a presentation? I, I feel like I was just at a conference not too long ago, and I listened to like, you know, dozens of different presentations from different companies. And every single one of 'em started the exact same. We've been around since 1902 and we started out in some old factory, and they just went through this long timeline of where they came from and where they are today.

And, and, you know, five minutes later you can just look around the room and everyone's asleep. So at what point do you ever talk about your company story or your company history? I don't know. Is is it even relevant to, to any buyers today?

Scott Marker: Story, maybe. But if you don't, it's something that really resonates and stuff. The, I would, again, I would lead with stories first, and then, and then if you wanna do some credibility saying, you know, Hey, we've been [00:06:00]around for, for 20 years here you know, in this area helping people like you. So that's good, but limit it. many companies spend way too much time on their whole company, company culture and all this stuff. And it's, it's, it's like, you know, buyers, buyers wanna know you know, it's, it's, you know, what's in it for me? So.

Marc Crosby: Yeah, exactly. I've never had anybody I think in any presentation raise their hand and say, how long has your company been around? You know why? Because it doesn't matter. The story that I like to tell though is the one that's typically in A CRM and you know, with a lot of businesses, B2B businesses, there's handoffs from account managers, different sales managers and people putting different information in.

And if I'm picking up an account or trying to figure out ways to enhance my solutions to a customer problem, it's typically going in and developing a narrative around what was already in the CRM. You know, where do we come from in the last five years? What does sales look like? What are some of the pain points that people put in there along the way?

And then formulating a [00:07:00] story around that. So, but then again, a lot of CRMs have bad data, so. Where do you see at least CRM failing companies today As far as how it's used and how they can shape a story?

Scott Marker: CRMs I have ran Hidden rape years ago, I mean, for years on them because they, and in most, most, okay, first off, the people. People who are the ones that buy them, don't have to use them like the salespeople, that's the first big problem right there. So they've never been customer, they've never been user friendly. They're, they're a pain in the butt most of the time to get all the information you be put in there. So right off the bat, how do you fix that? You have leadership that has a clue and has to be forced, forced to. If it isn't, if it isn't in the CRM, it didn't happen to do the same thing. And they'll find out really quick.

They need to help, come up with, and there's a lot of new tools that automate stuff and suck it right into your CRM. You need to help them do that. And so that, that's the thing. And [00:08:00] then make it part of the training and part of a culture of how important CRM information is. That's intelligence in there. And it, it's so important. It can help you obtain more customers you know expand more, more business and stuff. And so, but a lot of times. Again, the people that are, the managers aren't forced to use, like they have to use it and they've never had to use it. Correct. Teach it all. They, all it is, is a big brother or big sister thing.

They're watching it. So I think that's the big problem is one, they need to make it a priority in the company. How can we automate everything? I mean now, now on a lot of these like zoom type calls and stuff, they give you a, a complete, you know overview when you're done. So you can, you can take those notes and dump 'em in or they can automatically be taken in.

So that's the first step is this kitten acknowledging that CRMs, a lot of them are a lot of work. And then here's another thing no one talks about, I haven't heard about is most people don't understand the difference in CRMs [00:09:00]between you. The one sitting behind a keypad headset on is way different than if you're out in the field

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: you stop by cold call and you're at a networking type meeting.

You meet three different people now how do you capture those conversations and stuff and get. It, it, it takes time, you know? And then you gotta, anyway, so those kind of, some of the things, but along, okay, so that there, the way, the problems and stuff now from there, people need to know how, how powerful, I mean, I say it's a necessary evil.

I, I'm, I'm, for years, the companies I've worked at, I've been the own, I'm talking outta hundreds of reps. I worked for an international company and I,

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: one manager wanted us to fill out this stupid form and I'm like, why would I do that? I mean, what, what we band? I just printed off right outta my, my CRM, everybody.

I saw the contacts and I dropped that on this regional manager's desk. He goes, is awesome. Where'd you get it? Because I'm the only one using the [00:10:00] CRM. You know what I mean? No one else is using it. And so,

Marc Crosby: Right.

Scott Marker: a lot of time. But then, okay, now how, how do you h how do you leverage it is, and this is, this is a huge, my goal is always give huge takeaways.

So here's a good example. I've taught this for years, done it myself for years. I a lot of, I was a salesperson for years and years in leadership, so I, I know, and, and, and was like number one out, two companies out of hundreds of reps and stuff. And so, and what I was doing, no one asked me what I was doing.

And so

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: to share like what I've seen in other people. So here's a good example. C-R-M-I-I. Hey. Hey Mark. Hey. Thanks for calling me. You're calling, you're calling into me. I'm not putting you off. I really, I really am interested in what you have to talk about, but hey, I'm, I'm I'm heading, heading out to Hawaii for for a week. And oh, and then what, what do I say? I go, Hey, hey, hey. That's, that's great. Hey going there for fun. Oh, my, my daughter's getting married. Oh, hey, congratulations. That's great. Hey, so when would be a good time to call you back? And if they go Well, I'll call you back. Ah, you'll be sunburned. Always [00:11:00] keep the ball on your court.

I'll call you back. When should I call you back? perfect. Hey, congratulations again. On, on your, your daughter's wedding. Now in the CRM in bold, and now with automation, this could probably be automated. Call Mark back. He said, so as soon as I see that you could be juggling 30 opportunities or more, I, so now I have to check.

I note in there, if, if it's automatic, it should already be in there. But I always, I note in there, Hey, Mark's went to Hawaii for his daughter's wedding. Ask him how it was and tell him told you to call him back. That is so important because you get back, you've been gone for a week, you're gonna be buried under. I might not be a priority anymore, so I have to, when I call you up, I say, Hey, mark Scott, marker from, you know, a, b, C company. Hey, before we go any further, how was Hawaii? They might not

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: you. So [00:12:00] then, then you go, oh, and by the way, you told me to call you back because you said you were in anyway. That right there times 10, you know, is, is how you can leverage you and I'll, I'll talk to some other ones that, but there's one example where I've never heard anybody teach things like that because if you just call someone back, a lot of times the priority is an issue anymore if you don't use a script like that.

Marc Crosby: Yeah, and like you think, you were saying that there's really no excuse. I think today with, with all the applications, with all the tools, with artificial intelligence, with recording things, everything's on your phone. There's no reason why. You know, you shouldn't be able to put anything into the CRM. I know that, you know, maybe 10 years ago, you know, you had to get back to your desk because maybe Salesforce wasn't on your phone and you couldn't, you know, you still had to do it manually.

But, you know, today you can just voice transcribe it and just cut and paste it and put it into CRM. You can record your calls and have the transcripts there, cut and paste that, or have it automated, go into a HubSpot or a Salesforce. You know, it, it's easier now, I think, to get the information [00:13:00] there. But you just have to take a little bit of effort to, to do that.

Or just think of easy ways to make your life easier as far as putting the information in there. And, and I think that the cr and the more information that's in there, you're gonna get better insights. You're gonna get better analytics just from the qualitative information. I mean, I would say that the, it's a given as far as sales history and some of the quantifiable, you know, year over year sales.

I mean, that should be a given. But all the little nuances as far as you made a cold call and they weren't there, the Hawaii trip and things like that, that should all be in there. I mean, and it shouldn't be. You know, looked at as just big brothers watching and you should think about it. Like, you know, if the more information I put in there will help me maybe retain customers.

So, you know, especially as you're telling stories to whether it is your sales leaders internally, as far as where did we come from, how did we get here, what's the history of the account? Because I know that typically for account reviews, you know, you have to kind of dredge up the past. And the easy way to do that today is just go into the CRM and just do a quick summarize of everything that's been in there for the last couple years.

So I think it can help you retain customers and try [00:14:00] to tell a better story as you're trying to renew accounts, especially with your customers. 'cause maybe they forget and maybe your procurement person was replaced by somebody else, and you can tell them the history of, Hey, I know that Joe was in your seat before three years ago.

This is how we got here today. So as far as like retention, I think that that's another miss. That a lot of sales teams you know, don't think about. And I also think that there's just complacency and the quick wins for leaders to, you know, focus on the new shiny customers and not think about the retention strategy.

So I think you've weaved a little bit of that into your books and your writing. So tell me a little bit about how do we retain customers?

Scott Marker: First of all which I'll, I'll talk about in here too, but I have something in my book called The Strategic Customer Cycle, which in my first book

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: Strategic Selling Cycle. And I thought, I've tried to strip out a lot of the, I, I, when I speak, I do a lot of speaking. When I speak, I always say I'm a recovering salesperson, right?

So my language has to be customer centric, so I don't close. A new [00:15:00] customer, right? I convert them to, we're, we're fortunate to convert them to be a new customer so we can serve them. I don't,

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: them. I'm solving problems. I mean, it's a whole vocabulary. But on on retention, my, I have seven stages, which is they're all never stop doing them. You're always retaining, qualifying, prospecting, converting, fulfilling, and supporting. And, and so there's my, my strategic customer cycle and the, and the first stage, even somebody asked me this after they wrote, they wrote the book, I read the book, but they missed it in the book, is they said, you know, why is retention first? I said, because owners like you forget about your existing customers. So I'll give you a quick story. So back when I first,

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: my first book I was talking to probably a room full of 30 business owners, and I, and I, I had like 45 minutes to talk about. I was talking about retention. And so the first thing I said was, I said, how many people are here, have some profitable customers? Every raises their hands. How many people here

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: A strategic plan in [00:16:00] place are gonna keep your best customers? Not one hand went up, I said, Hey, by the way, this is a side gig I do. So if you could please tell me after this talk what industry we're in. you, I'm gonna put a strategic plan in place to steal your best customers.

And went right in my presentation. There was a line of people afterwards. And, and so you, you have to I, when I was writing my second book, I worked for this company and I, I just, I did, okay, who's our A BCD accounts, right? What percentage of businesses? And we were, we, I didn't know we were way top heavy.

And I said, okay, what

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: are we gonna do? How often are we gonna take these, these huge customers off to lunch? What, what other type things are we gonna do for them? Drop by once a month, drop off candy, whatever that retention strategy looks like. You gotta have something in place because guess what? Me as your competitor. I'm out trying to steal your best customers, and I'm, I'm hoping you become complacent because I'm gonna drop [00:17:00] by and say, Hey, here's another success story. Hey, I have a testimonial a couple testimonials from, and we just got another one this last month. I, I'd, you know, I'd love to help you out. And again, they're thinking, you know, that other company, I haven't talked, they haven't talked to me in a year anyway, it makes it easier to, to, to poach other customers. So it, it ha and again, the retention a lot of times, I think unfortunately, is of, especially if salespeople are caught commissioned off of them, but sometimes they care about, I mean, come, they care about those customers too.

You work so hard to get 'em in. And

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: the leadership, the owners, whatever, get so fixated on new logos

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: that red carpet dissolves. And so anyway, it's, it's a, it's a leadership problem and it needs to be taught that says, hey and again. A lot of this stuff, like you, you said in the book, fir first, we first started, Hey, a lot of this stuff I've been talking about for years, this stuff isn't, a lot of this stuff isn't rocket science. So [00:18:00] the amount of time existing customer is minute to how much it costs to get one, a new one like them. So why wouldn't you spend a little bit of time to keep 'em and put, and

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: always recommend putting a, a strategic plan in place on your top customers. What are you, what specifically? Who in the company, what are they gonna do? anyway. And that could, that part of that could be a newsletter going out, you know, once a once, once

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: Anyway, so there, yeah,

Marc Crosby: Yeah.

Scott Marker: Retention's huge.

Marc Crosby: Yeah. And that's, so something we talk about in sales meetings, it's always about, you know, moving your buyer through the funnel or you know, as far as you know, what the progression are is that they are, you know, in the buying cycle and it goes from zero to a hundred percent, you close it, but it should look more like the diagram you were just holding up.

For those that are watching on YouTube, but it should be more of a, of a circle, it should be a cycle to where we win the business and then we go through another cycle of retaining the business. But typically it's just a, a straight line and we stop, we win the business and we move on to trying to acquire the next business.

So I just think it's an [00:19:00] oversight. And I think part of that's just related to probably comp plans. And that's the way that a lot of sellers are incentivized. It's, it's getting new business, it's the new shiny logos, as you said. It's not about retaining the customers. And some, you know, people out there are saying, well, we have a comp plan that, you know, has retention as part of the compensation plan, but I don't think that many do.

So how should a compensation plan integrate retention, or generally speaking, how should a comp plan be developed?

Scott Marker: For, for sales. I, I I want, in the book, I was really bold. I'm just saying you should, you should. There's a Gartner study out and other studies out showing that the majority of buyers don't even wanna talk to a salesperson anymore.

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: they are, it goes up to like, there's one Gartner's, like 800 millennials.

It was up to 72%. Didn't wanna talk to, you know, any, any, any, any sales person. So the comp plan should be for. You should have industry experts in your company that should, it should be a culture that when you attract people here, say that that crazy [00:20:00] high turnover stuff that you've worked at other companies and stuff like that, that's not us. We're gonna be customer centric. Your compensation is based, their success. And not only have it based on their success, brag about it on social media. So for example, this happens all the time. And, and, and here's the problem. That took me two years to figure out, to narrow it down. The problem with traditional sales is the KPIs, compensation and goals have nothing to do with the customer success. everything to do with putting money in your pocket, winning a Tesla, or keeping your job. And that's why the Wells Fargo story, I, I put in the book because Wells Fargo thought

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: such a travesty. And it wasn't from the top down. They put, they said everybody's gonna be a salesperson in the banks.

And they put sales KPIs on them. Stretch goals on 'em and pressure and threaten to fire 'em. And what happened at the time of my book, 3.5 [00:21:00] million fraudulent accounts were set up the best people can be corrupted. So get away from the traditional KPIs and comp and compensation and goals about the customer success.

So for example, at the end of a quarter, a lot of times because of the traditional way salespeople bring in the wrong type of customers and companies don't know how expensive it is, is bringing the right type of customers. So you compensate them on, maybe have an onboarding team, they can rate knowledgeable was this customer? Did marketing do a good job? If you had marketing, did the salesperson, you know, or industry expert, I'd rather say have no salespeople but industry expert. know, so that a lot of companies are like, Hey. new customer doesn't know what the heck we do. Why? Because a salesperson just promised, even, even the marketing even over promised.

So you incentivize on the only the right type of customers and then you incentivize long term, like for [00:22:00]expansion different types of things like that. But you gotta be careful the way you do it. You're paying these people a full salary. None of this on target earning that, you know, you have to work your way up to it every time because if you have a culture that we're here to support customers and stuff like that, and, and your job is to, you know, help out do all that stuff, and, and some of these came and some of this could be, which we'll get into probably later on, but some of this could be warm calling, So marketing, which we, we will talk about, I think you, we we talked about it before. But, you know, marketing in, in a, in a perfect world. They in, in a per, and I've seen it done with Refine labs and, and, and Chris Walker, right? Well, so he did all the marketing and they did no outbound. But I found out during my book, because I, I know, I know Chris, that he was a freak in nature

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: companies can't kinda do what he, he, he, [00:23:00] he did. But but the marketing needs to be held accountable like salespeople do, right? And so they need to break, make sure there's some, and a big team effort. But the sales person, some of their KPIs could be, Hey, you might have to do some warm calling through like LinkedIn. LinkedIn for example, or something like that, and have some KPIs and how much you do and stuff.

But the whole focus should be on you being an expert and only talking to the right type of customers. And I tell you, it's gonna say, and then what's that? Do also help. which companies don't talk about at all, is the average salesperson for the last two decades. And this is an honor system, so it could be worse.

It's 18 to 14 months. So every year

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: a salesperson is churning. Just imagine if your company's average was double that you could brag on social media and say, Hey, you, you wanna talk to a bunch of newbies, talk to our competitors.

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: Our, we don't have salespeople, we have industry experts. And the average, we have double or triple the average experience of helping people like you and that anyway, so it's a huge [00:24:00] opportunity to get rid of all the old sales compensation, which, which buyers don't like and, and know, and they, they know that it's up anyway. So that, that's, I think

Marc Crosby: Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. And with that said, I mean, I do think that should sales and marketing have the same KPIs and the same goals, should it be a shared comp plan If we're driving towards customer success and customer centricity should those KPIs be aligned for sales and marketing, or should they be separate?

Scott Marker: Yeah, they, I, I think first of all, they need to be visible. Okay. 'cause I

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: lot of analogies. It'd be like a football team. Offense is out on the field and defense is in the locker room. They don't get to watch what's going

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: Guess what? Once offense is done, they touchdown or don't, don't get it.

They go in the locker room and the defense comes out. That's just crazy. They watch what the other one's doing. But the

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: of the traditional ways, companies sales doesn't know what the heck marketing's doing. And marketing doesn't know what the heck salespeople are doing. So I think, I just think there needs to be a, a visual view of what everybody's goals [00:25:00] are, and you're working 'em together. and, and part of that could be, for example, I'm, I'm really into account based marketing. And now, or a BX, which, you know, includes customer service or other people too, because, and gram has said that made famous a BM and flipped the concept. he said it, which was perfect, is that he said, oh, and when it comes to a BM, sales people have always been account based. So we spray and pray anyway. So, yes, I think marketing, some of this stuff they do is a little more at the top of the funnel, so they're gonna have to do a little bit more, a little bit different stuff than we do, but they have to be held

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: that they're not just a arts and craft department and they give, they bring in a bunch of crappy leads that what they bring in, and they all, they, and this is in my book too, marketing and sales and even customer service, all need to get together and go what does a good customer look like and agree on it. Because [00:26:00] marketing has been let just throw a bunch of crap over. People have to, you know, deal with all this crap and then not be

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: So anyway, everybody needs to be in the same team. and I think so the KPIs, the, they just all need to be all visual. So marketing's not gonna doing exactly the same thing, but at times marketing's me working with salespeople on campaigns to help them out.

Marc Crosby: Yeah, there probably needs to be more collaborative efforts and to include a customer experience and customer service teams, just so everyone's on the same page. I don't, I don't think that happens enough. Typically. Obviously a lot of people talk about sales and marketing needs to be aligned and we just complain about it and don't have any solutions for it.

You're talking about at least agreeing on what the ICP looks like, and so, you know, when that's defined and the salespeople have to go out there and capture new business, as you were mentioning before. Buyers don't want to talk to salespeople. So but I also hear this [00:27:00] revival on podcast and even LinkedIn is that cold calling is, is now a new thing because no one's doing anymore.

And, and there's still an opportunity there, but do you think that there is an opportunity to capture new prospects, new clients with cold calling? Is that still effective? Is that something that we should be doing or should not be doing?

Scott Marker: Oh, I do it sometimes and I'm successful. I, I, I, the reason I ran and rave about cold calling over the years saying that it, it, it, and, and here it is, is that it's because if you have a new startup, you're gonna be doing even the founder, founder led movement stuff they're gonna be doing, they're gonna be doing a ton of outbound. But as your

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: the second year, third year, fourth year, you need to have a, marketing needs to be kicking in. You need to have referral partners. You need to have maybe, maybe you go to some events or hold events to, to make more inbound. But what I found out, research from my book, the dirty little secret is, is. I'm talking companies that say they're inbound companies, so they, they teach other companies to do inbound. after one behind closed doors all told me, [00:28:00] oh, we do a ton of outbound. They all, they all, they said that that, that that inbounds nice take

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: and if you're trying to skill up. So think yeah, I, I just think it's just that, it's like anything, it's the nuances of the way you do it.

And so if it, like me, I get tons of, you know, you wanna connect with somebody on, on LinkedIn that, and there's a lot of these automated tools and they can work, which are not allowed, but everybody

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: But, so somebody comes and checks out my profile, something I have, and then ask me to connect and I glance at 'em and go, Ugh, are they gonna pitch me?

Marc Crosby: Yeah.

Scott Marker: I

Marc Crosby: Yep.

Scott Marker: there's, there's, there's three or four paragraphs of a pitch. mean,

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: wrong versus being more strategic, doing the same thing. Just saying, Hey, hey, mark, I see I, I see that you live here in the city with me. I, you

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: I, I out a lot of small business owners like you, and I'd love to have a Zoom call [00:29:00] sometime. That's it. Not, I mean,

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: hound them and stuff, but if it's, again, that, and again, that's owner to owner, so it's a lot easier, but it's still, it's so, yes, but you can, you gotta warm it up a little bit. But yeah, so I, I think still, I, I do it and I, I taught people, I mean, I have, I have a plumber and, he went out on his own and he's gonna go cold call some property management companies.

And I, I, I, I coached him exactly what to say. I said, you're not a salesperson. You're the owner. And it and plumbers are, are short and short supply. So,

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: and so you're gonna go out, knock on doors, say, Hey, I'm the owner of this company. It's a whole different way of approaching it. And by the way my, this is how many years of backgrounds I have in commercial and residential like this, and I'd love to be a backup if something, if you're, you're, whoever you're using, just assume they're

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: If they, and use a backup. He did seven and got one. So there they're a straight cold calling that works. But it's the way

Marc Crosby: Yeah.

Scott Marker: anyway. So it's just the, the, the, [00:30:00] the, the way a lot of the AI stuff is, is kind of millions and millions of things and burying people under that. That's not Yeah, it can work.

I mean, do it and I've taught people how

Marc Crosby: Yeah, you just have to make it personal. I mean, I think that you said it is that, is that you do it. You don't have ai do it. You know, you don't have ai write the message, you don't have ai, make the phone call or send the, send the email. You do it. Put a little bit of effort into it. I think there's just so many lazy tools that are out there.

Just I think that we were talking about with Graham Hawkins on the first one, we were saying, Brent Adamson was saying, you know, it just allows more people to do more of the things that are that add less value. And it's just, it's, it's frustrating because as you were saying, you get these sequences like on LinkedIn and it, it's you know, they like your post and then they send you a, a request and then you know it's coming, you know, the pitch is coming, it says, and even if they made that human, you just, you kind of.

You kind of know the sequence and you know, it's automated. So it takes a little bit of the authenticity away from it. And you know, I don't know, at least for [00:31:00] me, I, I'm a little bit less warm and fuzzy about wanting to do business with that particular person, even if they have a good solution. I don't know, maybe that's just me because I'm a little bit biased as far as just the AI tools, but there's a way to do it at least.

And I think part of that maybe is just maybe capturing information. You can capture information with AI and then have a human deliver that message. But I think if you're using AI to develop the message, that's where it gets a little bit lost. But I don't know. But that's just a little bit of a, just venting from my perspective for, for LinkedIn dms and then cold outreach.

But I think, yeah, cold, cold calls can work, but the, the problem is, is that I'm not answering my phone

Scott Marker: Oh,

Marc Crosby: and I don't know how many people are.

Scott Marker: I, I mean, I, I just switch carriers and my new phone does a better job than ever saying, most likely a

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: pick it up at all.

Marc Crosby: Yeah. At least for mine, I would have to have like, it saved as a contact or it's not gonna ring at all.

Scott Marker: Oh, wow.

Marc Crosby: So, I don't know. I got too many barriers to, to entry at least to do business with Mark Crosby. As far as the customer [00:32:00] journey what does that look like from your perspective to, you know, how many touch points somebody should have for, for a prospect to a close, and how many people should be involved?

I know that, you know, a lot of the statistics out there say that, you know, 10.5 people are involved in deals and maybe you should have an equal amount of people involved on your side as far as making connections to the other side. But what is the, what should the customer journey look like today in B2B sales?

Scott Marker: I tell you that that's one that it, it's, it's,

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: that depends. There's so many different scenarios, but one, one, the first things you need to understand is, is what's the lifetime value of your customer? That's how much, that's how much. People power, you can put behind it right off the bat. Too many people will say, oh, we need this many people. Da da. I mean, but, but you're making, you know it takes you you know, two years to get your payback. You know, it's, it's,

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: work. So it's, first thing is you gotta figure out how, what's the lifetime value of a customer. And, and then usually there's different types of customers, A, B, C, D type customers

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: And, and, and that just, and, [00:33:00] and put a game plan together with your teams if you have marketing or don't have marketing, to go out and go after them. And so that, that's, that's, that's, that's really, I dunno, that many companies just don't do a good job of again. Knowing who's doing what. You know, so marketing

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: to work together.

A marketing, customer service or customer service sales. It's like, again, letting people know, okay, here's and put 'em on. Sometimes I'll have electronic bo, you know, boards or on your laptop or on a wall or something. Or I'm old school. Sometimes prospects, you know, I'll, I'll put old school, like maybe I have five prospects or something.

I'll just stick 'em on the wall and in my computer too. But just stick 'em just to keep them like top of mind. But if you work, I'm, I'm not a solopreneur, but if you have a team, then you gotta say, okay, here's our five prospects. Who, who's what, who's going after, who's gonna get, get,

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: But going back to the cold calling, the challenge is, is that a lot of companies don't have any, [00:34:00]any other plans besides cold calling. You know what I mean? Don't, how, how, how, how may maybe, maybe marketing can send out do advertisement to 'em on LinkedIn,

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: And, and, and, and give them a message of your company. then if somebody responds to it, then have the salesperson reach out. Anyway, there's a lot I just, the, to men, you know, on your thing, the customer journey, it depends on how, how much they're worth. And then who on your team, once you know that, who on your team, how much can you afford to put a team together to go get 'em? But unfortunately,

Marc Crosby: Well, I think that.

Scott Marker: unfortunately most companies that, that the whole responsibility is on sales.

Marc Crosby: You kind of just segued into what I was gonna say is that it shouldn't just be a sales led effort and it shouldn't be marketing and customer service and everybody else working behind the scenes. I think that the most success that I've ever had in sales is when I'm going to a sales call, probably bringing a marketing person with me.

I brought customer service people with me on [00:35:00] customer calls too, because a lot of times they're handling customer complaints and things like that, and so they probably know them if not better than I do. So if you have a team effort, it should look like, kind of like you articulated earlier as far as just the sports, you know, you have an offensive line, you have receivers in a quarterback, everyone does their job and you bring the full offense to the meeting, not just, you know, one aspect of it.

If you're gonna have the great. Success that you should in B2B and large enterprise deals. Let's be clear, a lot of this, at least from my perspective, is we're talking about very large enterprise deals that have complexity where you're dealing with multiple stakeholders. And I typically, we think we talk about multiple stakeholders involved on the other side of the fence where we need to get more people involved on our side of the fence.

You know, bring in the marketing people, bring in your executive leaders, have everyone at least walk away with something that they heard that might be different from what your take was, and have a discussion about that. I mean, that's where I've had a lot of, I think more effective sales meetings or, you know, motions as far as just the customer journey.

But would you [00:36:00] agree with that approach?

Scott Marker: no, I do. 'cause like I said, some of my biggest successes were I, I bring in like iT engineer and,

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: and, and this is a big deal and the two, two ones are the same thing. And the, I'm kind of talking about the big picture, what their goals were, what the timelines are, what they're gonna do, what we're gonna do, and this and that.

And the decision maker, the, the, the buyer, the, the one's

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: it looks over at, at their IT person says, is, is this gonna work? And then that person looks over my IT person says, is it gonna work? Yeah, it is. Okay. Done. Sign. It's done. But again, it it's, it's bringing in the, that you know, that that gives you, and yeah.

And so I, yes, I've done that lots of times, but you gotta be careful too much doing, bringing, bringing re Again, it depends on the, the value of the customer. Bring it in. You know, you

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: or something like that, and continually the sales person bring an engineer to close deals for 'em. Is that it's okay if it's worth if you do the math and it's, it, it's the investment of [00:37:00] the engineer's.

Time is worth, worth it.

Marc Crosby: Gotcha. Yeah. Like you said, it depends. I'm not saying bring the full team and the full force on every single call but there's gonna be a right time at least to, to have that, that sort of presence. Just to, I think that also gives the other, you know, that your customer or your prospect, at least the feeling that they're dealing with more than just you.

And when we talk about you know, having at least some sort of, I don't know, relationship with a business. I mean, look, look at the other people across the room that you're gonna be doing business with potentially in the future. That should give you also, you know, a better warm and fuzzy as far as doing business with you.

'cause I know from a sales perspective, I think there's a lot of buyers that are out there that just, they might look at you and say, well, you're just in it to get a commission. But if you bring other people with you, then it's a, it's a team effort. And I don't know, I think that probably speaks volumes as far as just the approach, the partnership of how you can do business with us other than just me trying to get a sale.

Scott Marker: Here, here,

Marc Crosby: and I think we talked about,

Scott Marker: here's

Marc Crosby: go ahead.

Scott Marker: that, that, that made me just think about is I had something that's called three by [00:38:00] three. Because and it, and I didn't have that term, but my first book, I call it change of Guard. So if you have a prospective customer and, and that buyer leaves the company. The bell rings. And that's another, that's a change of, that's another opportunity for you to go in and talk to the, the, the new person. Okay. And then the next scenario is one of your great customers, your main decision maker leaves. Now you have

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: talk to the new decision maker and then when they come and explain why they're using you.

So that's why three by three is always good. You need to

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: there's, you know, three either decision makers or heavy, heavy influences within that company. And you need three people in your company. So it makes stickier. 'cause if one person leaves, then you know, something could go wrong fast.

Marc Crosby: Yeah. It shouldn't all fall apart just because one person leaves, so, [00:39:00] but I like that three by three.

Scott Marker: mean, I, again, I, if I found out someone with, like on LinkedIn, former life, I'd see somebody who left the company, I'd be going, they're the one that, that, that wouldn't give me the time of day. New person comes in, I

Marc Crosby: All right.

Scott Marker: off new reference stuff and a lot of times they'd talk to me and it just, because it's a new

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: something fresh, so it's an op, you know.

But then that being said, the retention thing, if you, one of your

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: makers, you have one, you have a huge account, an enterprise account, and you only have one person in that account that really the one that signs your, you know, re renews you every year. That is crazy. You need to make sure you have a whole bunch of people in that account.

I say three by three, but when I had huge accounts, I would know I had one, one big account and I, it was a medical account and the people that did the work, there were like three or four of 'em. They all knew me. I knew their kids' name. I knew everything about them. The front desk lady knew me. Oh, one of the doctors I did jujitsu with.

And he was one of the top doctors there and, and dad, all these other for me, and everybody loved [00:40:00] me. And then the decision maker, if I was lucky, I could say hi to her once a month.

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: else is always chirping to her how great the company is and stuff. Again, that's because I had all these other people in the company cheering me and my company on versus just one

Marc Crosby: Yeah.

Scott Marker: person goes away and you're just, you can be really li liable or exposed.

Marc Crosby: Yeah. That's the way to do it. Three by three. I like that. I wrote that down, posted up. We've talked about a lot. What's broken in B2B sales? What's ne what's not gonna change in the next five years, 10 years? I mean, even with ai, what's gonna be like the, the gold standard for, for sales going forward?

Scott Marker: The one thing I talk about in both my books and I wrote my first book, one of my

Marc Crosby: I.

Scott Marker: oh, that thing will be outta date. a year or two. And I said, no, it won't because I talked about it even before that in the martial arts, I talked about certain ways we do in Brazilian juujitsu stuff's been around for a thousand years. [00:41:00] And so I said and then Jeff Beso the shareholders were asking him back in, I can't remember when it was, 2017 or something, can't remember the date, but asking him, Hey, in the next five years, you know, what, what, what, what's, what, what do you see? What's gonna change? And stuff. And he says, I don't know. says, you can't build a company on what's gonna change. You have to build a company and what's not gonna change. And he said that, somebody posted that, and I, I sent them a video seven years earlier. Of me talking about my book at down at Boise State University. So here,

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: what's not gonna change, okay?

Real quick, I'll give an analogy. So, Boise State's I'm, I'm in, I'm in Idaho. So Boise State. I went to Boise State. The Bluefield, that's my, that's

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: So they're, they're in the, the locker room and they're down, they're down by seven. And the coach says, Hey, they're killing us on the corners.

We gotta make some adjustments. Do all the players throw themselves on the ground and say, Hey coach you know, we played 'em in the first year. Beat 'em. Why do we gotta change? No, that's just stupid. You know, their [00:42:00]adjustments are part of the game and change, right? But what people, companies don't like change.

I don't like change.

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: all this change management. 70% fails it just, But when the Boise State walks back out on the football field, back on the football field, there's a hundred

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: two field goals, four downs, offense, defense. I mean, the ball even stays the same. imagine. If every time they went on the field, oh, it's 200 yards, the ball's twice as big, it'd be chaos. 80% of the game never changes. 20%. That's an outdoor stadium. So, hey, it's raining that day. It's a hundred degrees. They get hurt. You get hurt, you can't control that 20%. But businesses need to have, what I came up with, my model is this, again, back to the strategic customer cycle. The

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: a reminder that just marketing sales is helping it for, in the customer success.

So [00:43:00] the seven stages, retaining, and I I mentioned before they're all verbs because you're all, you never stop doing them. Always retaining, always qualifying, always respecting, always converting, always fulfilling, always supporting, always expanding. That's your football field. So now when people come, when you bring somebody in your company, you guys gotta say where, where this is the customer, how we're gonna support the customer.

So where do you, where are you on this? Not only are you, where are your team members on this now? Where are your vendors? Maybe you have a, a chat tool that helps out where are they?

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: example where my friend is saying that, Hey, your book's gonna be outdated within two years. Right? Here's a good example. This doesn't change. 'cause now with all the AI going crazy, I just talked to a a founder of a local guy yesterday, and he had it, it was called conversational Intelligence. It was fricking cool. He, he had me, he had me call one of his customers and

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: telling me everything. I mean, it answered all my [00:44:00] questions, everything I needed to know, and then asked me if I wanna sign up, if it was a zoo, you know, sign up to, to come down and look at their zoo.

I'm like, this is cool. So then I said, no, I'm great. I, I I just wanna make sure the kangaroos are gonna be out. Oh, thank you very much. And then it texted me afterwards and kinda said, oh, here, here's how you can sign anyway, so. Where, where is AI going to help you in each one of these stages too? So this is

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: change, and the companies, need to do a better job of, of helping people.

'cause people don't like change, right? So

Marc Crosby: Right.

Scott Marker: a framework of what's not gonna change and retaining that's gonna be around for another a hundred years and all, all the rest of 'em

Marc Crosby: Makes sense.

Scott Marker: and, and, and prospecting. It's always gonna be around. So there's something that I, I've coached that actually, I had a, a, a Fortune 50 company that hired me.

And I, what did I teach All their commercial people? She, because I, the, the, the manager I, I, I showed her that. She goes, we need, we need that. Because they just, there wasn't, [00:45:00] the salespeople are running all over the place. we help them kind of narrow things down and say, where do you fit into this? And where don't

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: Or you shouldn't fit into this. So.

Marc Crosby: Yeah. Love that cycle. It's a good chart. I can see why you have it handy, because it it's applicable to a lot of different conversations. Good tips, conversational intelligence. I jotted that down. I'll have to check it out. Let's move on to burning or build it where we give you some rapid fire hot takes for sales and marketing today.

And so if you could just give us a burning or build it as far as things that we should get rid of or things we, we should carry forward for the next I dunno, few years. So we will start with the first one. Commission only pay.

Scott Marker: Burn it.

Marc Crosby: Burn it. I think we talked a little bit as to why, and we'll move on to the next one. AI replacing cold calls.

Scott Marker: That one, that one is actually both. it, if it's done poorly it's not gonna do it. But the guy I just saw yesterday talking that's pretty cool stuff. It was really good if, if, if, if, [00:46:00] if, if you're on their website. Also if you're on the website and you wanna have some information that AI wasn't the body there, but the ai, whatever it is, could have taken the whole conversation with me and scheduled an appointment. That's a, both, some of the crap that they have, there's lots of the stuff with the AI that, that I'm telling you, AI is improving so fast. I don't count anything out in going fu in the future. I build it too. Burn, burn

Marc Crosby: Gotcha. Burn it and build it.

Scott Marker: But build it. 'cause there, there's, there's stuff happening right now and it's gonna get better.

Marc Crosby: Gotcha. Makes sense. We talked a little about CRM data. Anybody other than sales reps should be entering calls into CRM.

Scott Marker: Yes,

Marc Crosby: So should marketing enter in sales calls, should customer service enter in, should everybody else?

Scott Marker: the thing I have trouble with too, is, is I, I have, if marketing has already touched them three times, right?

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: wanna have that conversation? Or if they opened up something up, Hey, and I, I even that's kinda [00:47:00] old. Hey, I saw you open this up, but still. Yes, yes, yes. It should be, again, it's customer centric.

You're a team, kinda a sports mentality. Everybody's

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: So if there's something that's in, hey, maybe they're on credit hold your credit department says, don't, don't sell 'em anything. That's a conversation when they,

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: order and the salesperson doesn't have a clue. So yeah, you gotta have everybody, everybody should

Marc Crosby: Everybody in.

Scott Marker: not tons of stuff, but relevant.

It's really relevant stuff should all be in there.

Marc Crosby: Sure. Number four, stretch goals.

Scott Marker: Burn 'em down big time.

Marc Crosby: Okay. Why?

Scott Marker: Be because another martial arts analogy, Brazilian, and this is in. I dunno if I put it in my second book or not, but I put it in in both books. But the analogy, what is about the belts is in Brazilian jiujitsu, when I first started a long time ago there was Pedro Auer came in here. You could barely speak English, and they had white, blue, purple, brown, and [00:48:00] black.

I told them, and then they had different red colors of black belt stuff. I told 'em,

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: not gonna work because my martial arts background, we had zillions of belts and stripes and stuff. I said, you guys are gonna have to add some stuff because the key is American especially, we like short term goals. goals motivate you. And so

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: that's where stretch goals. And then the you know, they have, they, they have the, the smart we need to get back to smart goals, which are, specific, measurable, attainable, and time bound. The attainable.

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: Stretch goals, a lot of those, they, they, they do 'em.

So you don't get the commissions and it doesn't motivate you to keep failing. So, no, I think dump 'em off. You, you gotta have goals. I get that. But, but try to give some people, some that are realistic, that if they work, you know, put some extra work in you, you can meet 'em and that motivates 'em.

Marc Crosby: Gotcha. Realistic stretch goals. Burn it. You heard it here first. Number five. Sellers are born, not trained.

Scott Marker: Wow. I think that's another one that I, I [00:49:00] don't, I just, I think that's a both one. 'cause I think if you do it the right way and you make 'em industry experts, a

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: the old school stuff, I, I like to talk to people. I'm good at talking to people. I'm, I'm good at making a close man. That stuff's gonna get further and further not as important as we go forward and with AI and all this stuff.

And we're, we're gonna be further and further to the end of the decision making. They don't want a sales person, they want somebody that's, that's, that's. knowledgeable in how they can help 'em out. So, but that being said, I mean, so I mean, so I think it's still a balance. I think it, it it can be both.

Marc Crosby: A little bit of both. We'll go neutral on that one. Number seven or number six. LinkedIn is more effective than cold calling.

Scott Marker: Oh LinkedIn's more and what was that again? Oh,

Marc Crosby: LinkedIn's more effective than cold calling. It's better if you're gonna do cold calling. LinkedIn's the way to go.

Scott Marker: I mean, can cold call on LinkedIn, you know, but I think link LinkedIn is, is [00:50:00] there, there's so many people on there that are business minded and stuff like that. It just, it just, it's just a much better environment to. Be able to give people stuff and, and, and, yeah.

And build relationships and get people at their, I mean, put on, put an event on, put an event on on LinkedIn and have people

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: and then, you know, hey are, it was great that you came to our, our, our, our Now they don't call 'em webinars, they call 'em live events. 'cause they don't, webinars have a

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: where they're, but to say, Hey, sad, would you wanna have any information?

And not nothing crazy. Yes, yes. No, but that's, that's, you know, so yeah, I'm a, I'm a big fan of LinkedIn. I think LinkedIn's a great place. But again, it's like anything, it's, you gotta do it. Right. then link, then two is diversification. You know, is, is LinkedIn

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: to float your boat? And for, a lot of salespeople, it might not be, they might have to, I dunno, go to events or go to networking events or do something else too.

Marc Crosby: You gotta diversify a little bit of [00:51:00] everything, but at least on LinkedIn you're a verified person with an actual picture of you. They know where you work, as opposed to a cold call, which could be a, a random number, you don't know who's calling. So

Scott Marker: Yep.

Marc Crosby: you probably have more success with LinkedIn than cold calling, but at least diversify your, your outreach, uh, channel, so to speak.

Next one, marketing should own the pipeline.

Scott Marker: I think it's pipeline's a team sport. I, I, I really

Marc Crosby: Agree.

Scott Marker: I think they need to be held more accountable because history, you know, they've just kind of thrown stuff around. So if you get all the stuff we've talked about, if you're all on team I think it should be a, a joint. I mean, even, even the founder, the owner might be able to bring some stuff in.

I mean, everybody needs to be, there's main people doing it, marketing, sales, but

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: needs to be feeding the pipeline. It makes it a lot easier.

Marc Crosby: You're right. Team sport. So burn that one. Sales role playing, and I'm gonna expand this a little bit since we've talked a lot about team and sales and marketing alignment. So I'll say sales role playing, burn or build it and then should, I'll give you a second one. Should other people [00:52:00] do role playing, like marketing and other people within the organization so they get a little bit of a flavor of what the objections might be and maybe honing their messages in.

So we'll go with the first one. Sales role playing burner buildup.

Scott Marker: it. I mean, it it, I mean just like, I mean, gong and all these type of, you know, things that you record your calls and stuff and there's all types

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: there that kind of coach you up. And I mean, yeah, you gotta, I mean, you gotta think about you again, sports mentality is that, got, you gotta role play.

And, and then with

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: the cool thing is they have bots now that you can role play with the chat GPT, and

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: and forth. I mean, I just, the other day someone showed me their sales bot and so there's, there's lots of things that you can do. So if you feel uncomfortable roleplaying with somebody else, you can have AI now role play with you.

But the bottom line is you just have to get better and more concise at what you say. And so, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Marc Crosby: Gotcha.

Scott Marker: And,

Marc Crosby: And should marketing do role playing too?

Scott Marker: yeah. Oh yeah. Like you were kind of inferring. Yeah, of course. [00:53:00] Because the challenge is, is that a lot of times marketing is marketing at the top of the funnel. And because they don't talk to, know, existing customers, that's why customer service and sales know they're the bottom of the funnel.

They know 'em so much. And that's why salespeople, I, my own content and companies, because I look at marketing and go. I, I've never heard one, no one ever say anything about that. So I created my own. So yeah,

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: They should, they should be on, in fact, this is my book. They should be on sales calls occasionally, because

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: can't,

Marc Crosby: Yeah.

Scott Marker: how do they know?

And then maybe you should be with them and marketing a little bit with them and see what, what are they doing If something's working show you, hey, here's what we're doing that's working. Some paid ads or some type of outreach or something like that. But yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah.

Marc Crosby: Gotcha.

Scott Marker: yeah. And then, yeah, listen to that.

And then they need to role play too.

Marc Crosby: Role playing, build it. Got it.

Scott Marker: Yep.

Marc Crosby: And the last one here for burning a [00:54:00] build, it is a lot of companies are having some sales issues. Let's get rid of the bottom. 20% of the people that are underperforming

Scott Marker: is a,

Marc Crosby: burn that strategy or.

Scott Marker: it. That is the most terrible thing. I've heard that before. A bunch of these SAS startups. What a horrible way. You recruit a bunch of young. Usually college kids outta school and, and they, they hire 50 and they know that once they get their next round of funding, they're gonna cut the bottom 20%.

That is, I think that's, I, that's horrible. So burn it.

Marc Crosby: Burn it. Got it. I agree.

Scott Marker: people like

Yeah.

Marc Crosby: yeah, that's not a good way for business and doesn't probably wanna, it's not a good recruiting tool to know that if you get hired, you might be in the bottom 20 and you're just living in fear for when you might be next.

Scott Marker: again. And then are you gonna do the right thing? You're gonna bring the wrong customers in? Yeah.

Marc Crosby: Right. Yeah. Okay. Final thoughts. Let's leave sales and marketing teams, sales leaders with one thing that they can implement this week without some overarching strategies for their organizational success. So what's one thing that we can leave 'em with that they can [00:55:00] implement today?

Scott Marker: okay. I'm, I'm gonna give, I'm gonna give more than one.

Marc Crosby: Okay. Far away.

Scott Marker: is I'm all about referral partners. And so

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: you ask, you, what you do is, is you, you get on whatever your favorite LLM is, chat Claude Gemini, right? I, I use chat usually. But I, so I get

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: 'em, I, I've coached companies like a home service company, okay? You're the owner. You're a woman owned business here in the Treasure Valley, Idaho. You, you ran this company for 20 years. And what would be some great referral partners great cross marketing partners and why are each good partners explain why and make a duplicate list because 90% are gonna be the same I found out, right?

And then take that prompt, dump the prompt back in again and say, please make this prompt better. It will make it even better than that. Now, the exercise, when you run it, you'll look, [00:56:00] you'll look at it and the exercise is a lot of 'em are gonna go, nah, those are, are already new that the exercise is. If you can get one or two. The aha moments. Like, holy crap, I've never thought about partnering up with, with, with them. Like,

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: is you have a window washing company, local, very successful one here in the valley. And I, I, I was speaking and so I knew him and some people were gonna show up. So I, I, I did that for them. And one of the ones he thought was cool is car washes, cross

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: car washes and your windows. And, and so thought of that before like that. And so I, I'm all about referral partners because referral partners are a cheat code. If you have good referral partners, they have the same customers as you, but don't compete against you. So for example, on a, b,

Marc Crosby: Yep.

Scott Marker: model or, or we will go bbb B2B. So now you have a web development company and they, they who wants to partner with them back and forth? FinTech, people [00:57:00] that take a CH, you know, account stuff and credit cards and stuff like that. Because if they don't do it themselves, then they wanna part.

So those are, those are perfect partners. 'cause if somebody comes to the web developer and says, Hey, now I want to start doing a e-commerce site and stuff, oh, well you're gonna have to set up some type of FinTech type of situation and take some credit

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: aach h maybe. So now when they send that person, now usually they already respect the web development company. So when you refer 'em, okay, here's the deal, what it is, all this, 90% of companies are out, you know, 95 connect companies are outta market. Your referral partners are sending you people in market because they told them they have a problem that you can fix. And now you have to continue building it. But also, you, you, you, the trust level is already up because you've been sent by somebody else to say trust.

Anyway, so there

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: that everybody can do for referral partners and cross marketing partners. And I, I've just had so many people, again, the exercise [00:58:00] is. To them. It's not like a sales call. It's like, Hey, I, I thought about it and I think we, we, we should have coffee or we should have a zoom meeting because I think we have the same customers and we could help each other out. there's one. And then here, here's, here's the marketing and sales salespeople can do.

And I just found this out today 'cause I was doing one extra step I didn't have to do, but my workflow, I do, I do marketing people, salespeople, we do writing and a lot of us use chat TBT or whatever. So here's, here's what I'm doing that I could have written my book much better. I, I, I can't spell or anything like that.

So I'd have a million editors to go, go through it. So now I don't need, need that stuff. So this is a workflow that can help people in any type of people who are doing writing, especially posting emails or online or whatever you're doing is, first of all, I use voice and I just say it on a Word document.

I just say it out loud, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's read everywhere. that and dump it into my favorite LLM chat,

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: say. [00:59:00] Hey, please proofread this and make all changes in bold text. 'cause that's the tough part is seeing what it changed. So now you

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: and go, I like that.

I don't like that. The final step to take it and now Gemini and, and, and chat. I, I, I didn't, I found it 'cause I was going one extra step, but you can have it. Read it back to you. I can't tell you that I catch, I'm a, I'm a quick lazy reader, but you will catch so much stuff when somebody reads it out loud to you and Gemini and chat. Read it back to you you and go, okay. So that process I've used in voice, it's more natural to get my stuff out. I type it sometimes, but either way, dump it into

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: LLM say all changes in bold text. And then the last step is have it read back to you. That will. Streamline your processes and make you have said, oh, one last thing. So another thing I do when put in copy is Alex Ramzi. I like him, I guess, book [01:00:00] here on my

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: And

Marc Crosby: Mm-hmm.

Scott Marker: said that he always writes stuff at a third grade level. 'cause people need, if you're gonna put, need, need to be able to understand it really, really quick. So I'll say on some of my posts, write it at a third grade level and use Alex Ram's best practices on copywriting. And, there's something else you can do too. So there, there's some things that I think can help out anybody in marketing or sales.

Marc Crosby: I love that referral partners. I love the transcribing your, your words and having it speak back to you and then make it very simple for anybody to understand. There's, there's are great tips. Anybody can implement that right now. And so those are great things that sales and marketing team can use.

So where can people find you, Scott?

Scott Marker: LinkedIn. Yeah, LinkedIn's the best place to get reach out to me. I have the same shirt, glasses

Marc Crosby: Gotcha.

Scott Marker: on, but LinkedIn. LinkedIn. I'm, I'm big. I'm, I love LinkedIn.

Marc Crosby: Very cool. You can find me there too. This is a great discussion. Appreciate you joining. Burn the Playbook.[01:01:00]

Scott Marker: Yeah. Awesome. Hey, it's been an honor to be on the show.

Marc Crosby: All.

Scott Marker: Thanks. 

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