Are Your Marketing and Business Development Efforts Aligned?
Transcript
00:00:01 Sarah Johnson Dobek
Welcome everybody to Practical Ideas for Growth.
00:00:04 Sarah Johnson Dobek
I’m Sarah Johnson Dobek.
00:00:06 Sarah Johnson Dobek
I’m happy to be back and joined today by one of my favorites, Adam Klein, who is now the, what’s your official title, Adam, Chief Growth Officer for Bennett Thrasher.
00:00:16 Adam Klein
Yep.
00:00:17 Sarah Johnson Dobek
Probably should have double checked my notes on that.
00:00:19 Adam Klein
That’s okay.
00:00:20 Sarah Johnson Dobek
Well, welcome.
00:00:21 Sarah Johnson Dobek
I’m excited to have you here.
00:00:23 Sarah Johnson Dobek
talking specifically about this topic that we’re going to chat about today, which is the integration of marketing and business development and how to do that successfully to drive growth for a firm.
00:00:33 Sarah Johnson Dobek
You’ve been in a BD role for a very long time and working cross-functionally with marketing and operations teams.
00:00:41 Sarah Johnson Dobek
And we were just discussing that this is not something that we talk about as frequently as we should.
00:00:45 Sarah Johnson Dobek
We just sort of assume
00:00:47 Sarah Johnson Dobek
it’s all going to work together.
00:00:48 Sarah Johnson Dobek
So I’m really excited to have you here and to sort of dig into this.
00:00:52 Adam Klein
Likewise.
00:00:52 Adam Klein
Thanks for having me.
00:00:53 Sarah Johnson Dobek
Absolutely.
00:00:55 Sarah Johnson Dobek
So marketing and business development, these two roles are very much distinctly different roles, but we kind of call them growth, right?
00:01:03 Sarah Johnson Dobek
And they have different needs and responsibilities.
00:01:06 Sarah Johnson Dobek
What do you see as the difference between those two things?
00:01:10 Adam Klein
Yeah, no, I think it’s a good question to start with.
00:01:13 Adam Klein
And I think maybe the first point is you’re right, is that they’re both oriented at growth, right?
00:01:17 Adam Klein
That is the core central goal of both functions, if you would.
00:01:24 Adam Klein
And then some people are running, well, where’s sales in all this, right?
00:01:27 Adam Klein
If you have a, if you actually do have, you know, what some people refer to as, you know, sales.
00:01:31 Adam Klein
a sales function within your firm, right?
00:01:34 Adam Klein
And again, the common goal singularly of all these is growth, right?
00:01:38 Adam Klein
It’s how do we grow and drive further success in the firm?
00:01:42 Adam Klein
And I think when you look at it, you can look at sort of how has marketing and business development maybe traditionally been characterized and differentiated and how are those done today, which is a little bit different.
00:01:55 Adam Klein
But I think really at its core, when you look at it, I mean, marketing is effectively, at least
00:02:01 Adam Klein
in my vantage point is, building the brand, driving the identity of the organization, right?
00:02:08 Adam Klein
In many cases, identifying market opportunity, seeding the market for opportunity, right?
00:02:18 Adam Klein
And business development is typically then looked at as, you know, the group, the individual or the team or the function that’s out there actually
00:02:28 Adam Klein
taking that brand identity, taking that seeded, effort in the market and turning it into actual, growth opportunity, turning it into selling opportunity.
00:02:43 Adam Klein
And I think, you look at the trend right now, it is while they are distinct, really again, they’re working towards that common growth goal and really,
00:02:53 Adam Klein
the more distinctive they work or separate from another, I’d argue it’s probably not as effective.
00:02:59 Sarah Johnson Dobek
Well, absolutely.
00:03:00 Sarah Johnson Dobek
And I couldn’t agree more.
00:03:01 Sarah Johnson Dobek
I do think marketing and sales roles have changed quite a bit.
00:03:05 Sarah Johnson Dobek
And so much of that, we definitely saw through COVID, it was a massive shift for accounting firms in their investment into relying on digital and really looking at marketing as more than, yes, they own the brand,
00:03:19 Sarah Johnson Dobek
Oftentimes they’re described to disagree with this on the people that make things look pretty.
00:03:24 Sarah Johnson Dobek
And while they do do that, while they do make us look really good, it’s about so much more than that.
00:03:29 Sarah Johnson Dobek
I like to think of it as the top of the funnel, right?
00:03:33 Sarah Johnson Dobek
Marketing is driving that brand awareness.
00:03:34 Sarah Johnson Dobek
It’s going to feed the top of that funnel.
00:03:36 Sarah Johnson Dobek
And business developers, nurturers, and salespeople are going to pull that through the funnel.
00:03:41 Sarah Johnson Dobek
But it takes both groups
00:03:43 Sarah Johnson Dobek
to be able to do that effectively as we look at it.
00:03:46 Adam Klein
Yeah.
00:03:47 Adam Klein
Well, I think you’re right too.
00:03:48 Adam Klein
I mean, to me, I agree with you, Sarah.
00:03:51 Adam Klein
I don’t think there was a better example than what you saw through the pandemic.
00:03:55 Adam Klein
And particularly if you look from the CPA firm standpoint, look at PPP and ERC, right?
00:04:00 Adam Klein
And firms started operating in a way that very few really had, and certainly not to that extent where firms saw, well, wait,
00:04:09 Adam Klein
We can go out into our market or heck other markets for that matter, right?
00:04:13 Adam Klein
A national market, and we could deliver thought leadership and content and advice and perspective in a way they never did before, right?
00:04:24 Adam Klein
Almost much more true outbound
00:04:28 Adam Klein
marketing, if you would, and what does that do to then generate interest coming in?
00:04:33 Adam Klein
And they saw that then there was an opportunity to turn that into business, right?
00:04:37 Adam Klein
And then that’s where your business development function really can drive that.
00:04:41 Adam Klein
But I think it really, in my mind, it really turned the profession on its head in a big way and very quickly.
00:04:48 Sarah Johnson Dobek
It did.
00:04:49 Sarah Johnson Dobek
You know, this was a trend that was moving that direction, but yes, COVID advanced that so significantly.
00:04:54 Sarah Johnson Dobek
And
00:04:55 Sarah Johnson Dobek
We saw that through the growth survey that we do and the responses to how budgets were being allocated, the investments, the software that firms are now utilizing.
00:05:05 Sarah Johnson Dobek
You know, and it’s not something that’s going the other direction.
00:05:08 Sarah Johnson Dobek
Like once the investment’s made and we’re down that path, we’re there.
00:05:11 Sarah Johnson Dobek
It doesn’t mean that the traditional stuff doesn’t go away.
00:05:13 Sarah Johnson Dobek
But to me, if you’re a firm that doesn’t have that as part of one of the channels of growth for your firm, like we’re missing an opportunity.
00:05:24 Sarah Johnson Dobek
right?
00:05:25 Sarah Johnson Dobek
Major opportunity to compete on that.
00:05:28 Adam Klein
100%.
00:05:28 Adam Klein
Yeah.
00:05:29 Adam Klein
I mean, go ahead.
00:05:31 Sarah Johnson Dobek
Oh, as I say, you and I were together at an AIM presentation, maybe almost a month ago now.
00:05:37 Sarah Johnson Dobek
And you were talking about buyer personas with one of my colleagues and a couple other people in the AIM group.
00:05:44 Sarah Johnson Dobek
Becca Johns.
00:05:45 Sarah Johnson Dobek
And specifically, we were talking about marketing and sales, how disconnected they are and how you’ve overcome this.
00:05:52 Sarah Johnson Dobek
And I thought it was such an important, valid point.
00:05:55 Sarah Johnson Dobek
I’d love for you and for our audience of listeners to hear a little bit more about how do you try to get that connected?
00:06:01 Sarah Johnson Dobek
Because there is a major disconnect and it can significantly impact the success of any initiative when marketing and sales are sort of like
00:06:10 Sarah Johnson Dobek
in two different mindsets.
00:06:12 Adam Klein
Yeah, no, absolutely.
00:06:14 Adam Klein
And it’s funny because prior to that presentation, as we were preparing for it, I was talking with a colleague of mine, a very successful business development professional at a large firm who also has a successful, who leads business development, who also has a successful marketing organization, but they operate very distinctively.
00:06:33 Adam Klein
And they operate, in some cases, I think,
00:06:36 Adam Klein
he would share in some cases, maybe even a little adversarially.
00:06:39 Adam Klein
they don’t, they’re not operating on the same page.
00:06:42 Adam Klein
And I’d have to say this wasn’t my, I’m not the creative behind this idea, but at my former firm, you know, what we saw was, again, that common goal was growth.
00:06:51 Adam Klein
So the concept that, you know, when I was at my former firm was, let’s bring these two departments in under a single roof.
00:07:00 Adam Klein
And really that is a growth team, right?
00:07:02 Adam Klein
And that’s a growth team that consists of
00:07:05 Adam Klein
business development functions and marketing functions and other related functions, but really operating as one group.
00:07:12 Adam Klein
And so when I got here to Bennett Thrasher, shortly after I was here, that’s one of the things we did as well.
00:07:17 Adam Klein
And I think it’s more than just sort of the name.
00:07:21 Adam Klein
It’s more than just saying, oh, look, you know, Kumbaya, we’re this cohesive team.
00:07:25 Adam Klein
It’s that we really do look at everything in cohesion and we look at strategy, you know, again, from that growth, you know,
00:07:34 Adam Klein
viewpoint, right?
00:07:35 Adam Klein
And how is everything we’re doing aligned?
00:07:38 Adam Klein
And I think what it, in the case of what we talked about with the buyer personas and someone, in fact, in the audience, probably good example, said, well, a marketing department could develop, you know, all the buyer personas they want in a sense.
00:07:50 Adam Klein
And if you have business developers or rainmakers, you know, at the partner level who sort of aren’t a part of that process or don’t buy into that line of thinking,
00:08:01 Adam Klein
sort of what’s the value there, right?
00:08:03 Adam Klein
So I think the alignment is incredibly important.
00:08:06 Adam Klein
And I think one of the ways, at least at my firm, that we found to do that is to bring those two sort of oftentimes to stick departments in together.
00:08:16 Sarah Johnson Dobek
And I love that they do need to be aligned together.
00:08:19 Sarah Johnson Dobek
I fully agree with that.
00:08:21 Sarah Johnson Dobek
I don’t think that they should be separate tracks operationally, right, and reporting to different people.
00:08:28 Sarah Johnson Dobek
But the other thing that I thought was a really good part of this conversation, and we talk about this all the time, is I think the piece of integration, right, that becomes so valuable is the
00:08:40 Sarah Johnson Dobek
people that are doing the messaging, which are often the marketers and creating the communications, visually written video, whatever format it takes, they need to understand the things that are resonating on the sales side.
00:08:54 Sarah Johnson Dobek
And I think that’s where the salespeople become so incredibly valuable because they’re just not going to be in that seat.
00:09:01 Sarah Johnson Dobek
And they’re not, they’re marketers because they’re not usually sales minded people.
00:09:05 Sarah Johnson Dobek
So there’s some things that they have to learn and vice versa.
00:09:08 Sarah Johnson Dobek
And that’s usually where I see the biggest disconnect.
00:09:10 Sarah Johnson Dobek
I don’t know what you’re seeing and how you’re trying to tackle that over at Bennett Thrasher to try to get that bridged a little bit.
00:09:16 Adam Klein
Yeah, no, I think you’re spot on there, right?
00:09:18 Adam Klein
When those two efforts or the, again, the viewpoint or the mindset is not aligned, you know, they just don’t have the same, they’re not seeing the world the same way in a sense, right?
00:09:32 Adam Klein
And again, it goes back to this colleague of mine who I was talking with said, you know,
00:09:37 Adam Klein
if my marketing team develops buyer personas that don’t match the reality of what I see on the front line, if you would, or out in the market, then there’s that disconnect, right?
00:09:50 Adam Klein
There’s that discord there.
00:09:51 Adam Klein
That’s where I think the most, when you see success with be it a buyer persona process, or really, I’d argue any, you know, again, growth initiative or marketing initiative or BD initiative, it’s when there is that alignment
00:10:05 Adam Klein
And the folks developing are looking at it from both angles, from what makes sense from sort of the marketing theory, if you would, or implementation, but what also makes sense to the people on the ground, out doing the interaction and doing the work.
00:10:25 Adam Klein
So I think that’s, again, an example, you’re right, where that alignment’s key.
00:10:30 Sarah Johnson Dobek
And for some of our audience, right, the foundation of buyer personas is to help with all of the messaging from everything from marketing assets all the way through some of the sales assets.
00:10:41 Sarah Johnson Dobek
And it’s sort of twofold.
00:10:43 Sarah Johnson Dobek
And for our listeners that are like, oh, we don’t have any salespeople.
00:10:47 Sarah Johnson Dobek
Like, that’s not something we ventured into.
00:10:48 Sarah Johnson Dobek
We’re not quite big enough.
00:10:50 Sarah Johnson Dobek
Your salespeople are your partners, right?
00:10:51 Sarah Johnson Dobek
They’re the people out doing the work.
00:10:53 Sarah Johnson Dobek
So whether you call a partner or a salesperson or whatever you term it in your organization, I couldn’t agree more that we have to get that.
00:11:04 Sarah Johnson Dobek
The other thing that I’m curious about, right, and we’ve talked a little bit about this too, is that professionals in both roles need to be clear on the firm’s overall plan so that they know where they can add value.
00:11:16 Sarah Johnson Dobek
How are you identifying on your team or how are you approaching this?
00:11:19 Sarah Johnson Dobek
I know you’re still relatively new at Bennett Thrasher and still building out your team, but how are you identifying who has the right skills for the seats that you have and distinguishing between kind of that marketing and sales function in the firm?
00:11:31 Adam Klein
Yeah, no, it’s a great question.
00:11:33 Adam Klein
And I think
00:11:33 Adam Klein
I think, in my situation, sort of 7 1/2, 8 months into a new role here, I think it starts with a few things.
00:11:43 Adam Klein
I think, A, it really does start with, again, growth, be it business development leadership, marketing leadership, but growth leadership, really, A, having a seat at the table, you know, from a firm leadership standpoint, right?
00:11:57 Adam Klein
And being a part of driving
00:12:01 Adam Klein
what that firm’s vision and future and strategy is.
00:12:05 Adam Klein
And then to me, and I think something that’s been very effective here, and I think from what I hear from our team is refreshing is, I almost bring total transparency down to my team, as appropriate, to share with them, look guys, this is where the firm is going.
00:12:21 Adam Klein
These are the goals.
00:12:23 Adam Klein
These are the objectives ahead.
00:12:25 Adam Klein
So I challenge our team to,
00:12:29 Adam Klein
sort of use that lens under everything they do, right?
00:12:32 Adam Klein
And as I’ve said, I want you to think about the things we’re working on and the things we’re tackling.
00:12:38 Adam Klein
Is it supporting, is it aligning, sorry, I keep using that term, aligning.
00:12:43 Adam Klein
Is it aligning with the firm’s growth strategy, with the firm’s future?
00:12:48 Adam Klein
And I think we have to look at it in that, again, from that perspective.
00:12:53 Adam Klein
And then I think to the second part of your question is, do we have the right people
00:12:59 Adam Klein
to do, to accomplish the stuff we need to in order to meet the firm’s goals and to be aligned with that growth strategy.
00:13:11 Adam Klein
And in many cases, I think traditionally firms have not.
00:13:14 Adam Klein
And I think we’ve seen that change in the last few years.
00:13:16 Adam Klein
I mean, look at the growth we’ve seen, particularly, I think, in marketing departments, with people coming in from a digital standpoint, people coming in from a brand standpoint, people coming in from a design standpoint.
00:13:27 Adam Klein
I think we’ve seen
00:13:28 Adam Klein
so much change, particularly in those marketing teams, to align with where the firms are going.
00:13:36 Sarah Johnson Dobek
Absolutely.
00:13:36 Sarah Johnson Dobek
Firms are making huge investments on the marketing side.
00:13:39 Sarah Johnson Dobek
Our survey showed this year that a good percentage of the firms that were responding were planning to make at least one hire or augment their staff in some sort of way.
00:13:49 Sarah Johnson Dobek
And I just thought that was really interesting that not only were budgets increasing and being reallocated heavily towards digital,
00:13:57 Sarah Johnson Dobek
but they were also investing into their folks.
00:14:01 Adam Klein
Yeah.
00:14:02 Adam Klein
Well, I think I’ll go back real quick to the point you made before, right, about the marketing traditionally being looked at as the ones who make things pretty, right?
00:14:09 Adam Klein
And unfairly, we know that’s not the case, but it is sometimes the stereotype.
00:14:14 Adam Klein
And I think there’s real power.
00:14:17 Adam Klein
I saw it at my former firm.
00:14:18 Adam Klein
I see it here in just rebranding, if you would, our team as the growth team, right?
00:14:23 Adam Klein
Because I think it gives us a
00:14:27 Adam Klein
a position to show how we’re positively impacting the success of the firm from that growth lens, rather than just, well, we’re the marketing team that sort of does these things, or even we’re the BD team that goes out and tries to just drive new business, right?
00:14:44 Adam Klein
It’s what are we doing to contribute to the firm’s success?
00:14:47 Adam Klein
And I think the optics matter.
00:14:50 Sarah Johnson Dobek
And I’d be remiss to say what does growth look like for firms today, because most of our firms are looking at us and going, we don’t really need that much more business.
00:14:58 Sarah Johnson Dobek
We’re fine on the business front, but
00:15:01 Sarah Johnson Dobek
where I think marketers and salespeople are adding value and can continue to add value is people, right?
00:15:08 Sarah Johnson Dobek
So how are we developing our people?
00:15:11 Sarah Johnson Dobek
How are we getting the firm’s brand out there to help support some of those recruiting initiatives?
00:15:16 Sarah Johnson Dobek
Because without our people, we don’t have a product.
00:15:18 Sarah Johnson Dobek
That is our product at the end of the day in a professional services business.
00:15:22 Sarah Johnson Dobek
So
00:15:23 Sarah Johnson Dobek
it’s interesting to me, we’re seeing firms reallocated.
00:15:26 Sarah Johnson Dobek
And I remember entering the profession and people being like, don’t get involved in HR and recruiting.
00:15:30 Sarah Johnson Dobek
They’ll think you’re an administrator.
00:15:32 Sarah Johnson Dobek
And I don’t listen to other people’s direction very well.
00:15:35 Sarah Johnson Dobek
I tend to follow my own guts.
00:15:37 Sarah Johnson Dobek
So it served me well in my career and it ended up serving me well.
00:15:40 Sarah Johnson Dobek
But you know, that’s most of the conversations we’re having these days.
00:15:45 Sarah Johnson Dobek
I’ve had three today just on what are we doing to help do, you know, recruitment marketing.
00:15:49 Sarah Johnson Dobek
and how are we supporting what those initiatives are for the firm?
00:15:52 Sarah Johnson Dobek
And I think there’s so much good things that can come out of that collaboration between the operations teams and the recruiters in HR and marketing and sales if they just spend a little time talking amongst themselves.
00:16:06 Adam Klein
That’s right.
00:16:07 Adam Klein
I heard one of the, very recently, I heard one of the thought leaders in our space that you and I both know made a comment to the effect of
00:16:14 Adam Klein
All the energy and effort, growth or marketing or BD has typically put in over the last several years to growing the firm’s new business and growing the firm’s clients really should be realigned
00:16:27 Adam Klein
to growing the firm’s people and growing the firm’s brands, right?
00:16:31 Adam Klein
So that we are bringing new people and new resources into our firms and making us better firms and smarter firms.
00:16:39 Adam Klein
And I think that’s where, to me, again, growth isn’t just about new revenue, right?
00:16:45 Adam Klein
It’s a big part of it, but it really is about the overall growth of the firm.
00:16:49 Sarah Johnson Dobek
Absolutely.
00:16:50 Sarah Johnson Dobek
Well, Adam, thank you so much for joining us and thank you to all of our listeners.
00:16:55 Sarah Johnson Dobek
We would encourage you to think about how you can better align your marketing and sales teams and your operations teams to better support the growth of the firm.
00:17:04 Sarah Johnson Dobek
You can find this on a replay of our podcasts on Spotify and iTunes.
