Increasing Revenue with Sales and Marketing Alignment
Meagen Eisenberg, CMO of TripActions shares her insights on how to increase revenue with sales and marketing alignment, the power of the sales marketing road warrior, and how to shift from reactive to proactive marketing.
Welcome to demand and visionaries.
I'm Ian Faison, CEO of Casperin Studios and today I am joined by a special
guest, Megan,
how are you?
I'm doing well.
Great to have you on the show.
First time on this show, we've chatted in the past through the ups and downs of
the past
two years, but I'm super excited to talk with you today.
After everything about the going on at TripActions and you're one of my
favorite marketers.
So excited to get into it today.
But first was your first job in demand.
Yeah, my first real job in demand was back in 2007.
I was at a company called TriRiga and we were selling workplace management
systems, had about
a team of 12 salespeople and a couple people in marketing.
And I also managed our SDR team, which was three people.
And so flash forward to today.
Tell us what it means to be CMO at TripActions.
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely we've come a long way.
As a CMO, I've got near 70 people on my team from a marketing standpoint and I
now also
run the SDR organization, which is a team of 50 and we're growing it to 125 in
the next
six months.
So a lot of hiring for SDRs going on.
Wow.
Okay.
So I definitely want to get really into that.
That's fascinating.
And I'm sure it's something we'll talk about here shortly.
Let's get into our first segment, the Trust Tree.
This is where you can go and feel honest and trusted and share those deepest,
darkest
demand, gin, marketing secrets.
What does TripActions do?
Yeah.
So TripActions is all in one, travel, corporate cards and expense management
solution.
So you're full suite of T&E.
And who are your target customers?
Who are the folks that you're looking to market to?
Yeah.
So we are all the way from self-serve to enterprise.
So we have, you know, the startups like Zoom, Loom, maybe Zoom's not a startup
anymore,
but Loom, Zoom, Netflix, Octa, Adobe, Thompson Reuters, Creighton Barrel, Way
fair.
So we've got retail manufacturing tech and it's global.
So Primark all around the world, we're supporting people in their travels and
expense management.
And who's the buying committee for TripActions?
Yeah.
So the target really, our main persona is the CFO because they typically are
managing the
budgets for travel and procurement.
They care a lot about the accounting side of it.
So the closing of the books every month and quarter and making sure that policy
is enforced.
And even more today, a lot of them are managing people and have a people role.
And so they care a lot about safety of their employees while they're traveling
around the
world.
So yeah, the finance and accounting departments.
You know, it's funny, it's travel effects, as we've seen over the past two
years, it
probably disproportionately affects, you know, sales and marketing, right?
It's like, it's such a key stakeholders in this.
Is that something that like you're, you know, aware of, acknowledging, you know
, all that
sort of stuff?
Or is it something that sales at the end of the day?
They just, it doesn't matter quite as much to them.
And it's ultimately CMOs call or CFOs call, excuse me.
No, you're right.
I mean, our road warriors pull us in to deals all the time and we'll have heavy
travelers,
CROs and heads of sales that have used us at a prior company and go to the next
company
that doesn't have us and they'll pull us in.
So it's great demand for us actually.
That kind of bottoms up referral side of it.
When you have like that type of key stakeholder, how do you think about
marketing to that person?
Is that someone that you're thinking about that your team is thinking about?
So if you're talking, you know, our main with the CFO and the stakeholder?
So yeah, I meant like on the stakeholder side with the, with like sales and
stuff like that.
Like when it's, you know, someone who's, who's not, not going to sign the
dotted line, but
I mean, we think about, I mean, for sure, we think about it every day.
We've designed the product around the user and the traveler and our co-founders
are very
fixated on the user experience.
And we think that's more important than anything else because if you don't have
adoption of
your travel program and your spend and corporate card and they're not complying
with policy,
you don't have a great program.
And so with high adoption, you get what you want.
You get visibility into the spend, you get a lot more control and you get cost
savings.
So yes, we care deeply about the traveler and the road warriors is specifically
sales marketing.
How do you structure your marketing organization?
Yeah, I have it structured functionally.
So I have certainly a demand gen team or growth team.
I've got a web systems and operations team.
We are heavy dependent on technology over 40 different technologies that
integrate with
our sales force and CRM.
I've got a field marketing and events team, which has come back in full force.
It was a little anemic during COVID, as you can imagine, but we're thriving and
events
are back.
And I've got a corporate communications PR social media team.
I have a brand and design very, very much focused on our visual identity.
And then I have a team that is localizing everything to the different ge
ographies.
So I have an EMIA marketing team that matrix into the other functions.
And how do you think about demand?
You mentioned that you might call it growth.
How do you think about demand within your marketing strategy?
Yeah, I mean, I see demand as us aligning with sales teams on our targets.
What are the goals?
What do we have to hit?
How does that break down?
What are we going to be sourcing and managing the SDR team in a large part of
their pipeline
and funnel is going to be coming from the demand go-to-market organization of
marketing
and sales development.
And so I'm really, that's a key part of success, sales alignment.
And then do you have a specific kind of demand-gen strategy?
How do you think about that?
Yeah, I mean, back to that point, what are sales targets?
What do I need to align?
What are the segments we're going after?
Enterprise is a very different go-to-market than self-serve or even SMB.
And so I break down the targets by the segments because we're going after all
those segments.
And then I apply the budget and the focus of the different members based on
their targets.
And then we run the programs that make the most sense.
We have the web experience match the segments as they're coming in.
And that's kind of how I think about it.
Alright, let's get to our next segment, the playbook.
This is where you open up that playbook and talk about the tactics that help
you win.
You play to win the game.
Hello, you play to win the game.
You don't play to just play it.
What are your three channels or tactics that are uncuttable budget items?
And same thing, it depends if it's enterprise versus commercial or self-serve.
So if I think about the enterprise side, I've been a lot about account-based
marketing.
What are those named accounts we're going after?
And what do we need to do to surround them?
And that's flushing out the target, the ICP, the CFO, the control of the
finance procurement.
And where do they go for information?
So that's content syndication, that's direct mail, that's creating these
interesting,
engagement events that they can network with their peers.
We did a really amazing office hours during COVID.
It started out weekly and then went to biweekly and then now once a month.
And we had over 75 CFOs joining.
And we weren't talking about trip actions products.
We were talking about what they need to do in the current environment.
How are they budgeting with the unknown?
How are they dealing with empty office spaces?
And so we brought in topics and we brought in customers to speak and then a
bunch of prospects
joined to just shared ideas.
And we really developed a thought leadership and brand with CFOs in topics that
they cared
about.
So then when they were looking at their RFP or going to bring on a travel
solution or expense
management, we were top of mind.
That's so fascinating.
Can we dig into that for a second?
Sure.
It's always so scary starting an initiative like that, right?
Because what if I do this and two people show up, one person shows up, right?
I'm curious, early days of that, before you had 70 people, how did you think
about trying
to kind of prime the pump there to make sure that people actually showed up?
We already had customer advisory boards of 20 of them.
So I was surprised.
I would say how many showed up to the first one, but it was such an odd time,
right?
People were working remote.
They had these big budgets for TNE.
They weren't sure what that was going to look like.
They had empty offices.
They're trying to figure out, do I downsize?
How long is this going to go on for?
What tools are you using?
We have all the software.
Do we need more?
Do we need less?
They ended up needing more, right?
Because everyone was remote.
And everything was going online.
And so I think if you have a topic that is relevant and everyone has questions,
you're
going to get the audience.
I think it comes back to do you have the right content and then are they aware
that you're
talking about it?
And so we had our influencers, which were CABs.
We had our own CFO inviting colleagues.
We had our sales leaders connecting with their prospects and inviting their CFO
s.
We had our customer success managers reaching out to our customers and making
sure they
were aware of it.
Those coming together, right content with right target audience and a
compelling email
and phone call is what it takes.
It's funny.
Not for the CFO.
This is something a little different, but we did something like that for CIOs
where we
talked to this one CIO.
And he was like, did the question I get all the time is like, how do I appear
on more
boards?
Like, I want to be on public boards and I never get asked.
And like, I want to do that.
And he was saying he was like, I get this no joke one person a week reaches out
to me
to ask how to be on more public boards.
And so we did an episode of a podcast about it.
And like, that's the sort of thing that if you were making your content
calendar, you
would never make that be a piece of content, right?
How can CIOs be on more public boards?
It just wouldn't come up, right?
But if you actually talk to people and figure out what people are asking for,
then you can
start to make it.
Yes.
I mean, the best thing to do is go ask your CIO.
What do they care about?
And what do they do?
I mean, certainly we went to our CFO, Thomas, and said, what's top of mind for
you right
now?
What are you concerned about?
What would you want to join to talk about?
I'm curious to know how you dealt with that.
CFO is obviously very busy people and they get pulled in a lot of different
directions.
So I'm curious, as you were making those asks and you have an ask out for the
cab, you have
an ask out for maybe some other things like speaking at an event in the not too
distant
future, because maybe not that exact time.
But how did you handle those requests to make sure that you weren't overburd
ening but also
kind of adding value?
I think it's key the relationship you have with the CSM, so the customer
success manager.
We certainly track all our customers and our advocates and where they're at and
if they're
open to, "for press release" case studies videos.
And so we can see how much we've interacted.
But I think in this case, we felt like we were adding value.
And so it didn't feel like we're burdening anyone.
We're actually trying to bring them something they care about and be a resource
to them.
Yeah, totally.
It's always so tough making an additional ask.
Seemingly on our teams, we feel like as marketers or the PR team, especially
they always feel
like it's an extra ask, it's an extra ask.
And I think we feel that way sometimes because we feel a little like, "maybe
this is kind
of lame or maybe this is whatever."
When you're asking someone, you just talk to your CFO and you're like, "yeah, I
would
love to meet my peers and talk about blank."
It's like they probably feel the same way and if they don't, then they'll opt
out of
it.
But there's a lot of people who want to hear from their peers.
They're always is.
I also think it matters.
I mean, we have high NPS scores.
We have high adoption.
We have high customer satisfaction.
We take very good care of our travelers and our customers.
And so I mean, I think if you don't have that, it could be a harder ask.
But if you're adding real value, it's not, I think they're part of that
community and
they're going to be more than happy to help you when you need their help.
Yeah, that's a great point.
How important customer success is in that piece is you have to, if it's an
unhappy customer
and you're asking them to do stuff, it's not going to go well.
No, it's not.
And the other things that surprised you about that again, like getting 70 plus
CFOs together
is no small feat.
Yeah, I mean, I think we were smart too.
We didn't allow media and we didn't allow sales and we weren't recording it and
posting
it externally.
So it was truly a group coming together, feeling very comfortable, discussing
relevant topics.
And so we protected that space.
Yeah, that's really interesting, especially digital, which can feel kind of
already like
there can be a recording button at any time, right, to message that clearly.
Yes, yes.
And then after that, taking those insights, did you turn that into additional
content
and things?
Certainly, if a topic came up that surprised us, we would write a further
content on it
or a blog or we would go do research, we would come back.
We certainly saw we didn't use it as a lead gen.
We didn't like follow up and say, "Hey, you attended.
Now we want to sell to you."
We were very careful about that, but we certainly found within two months,
three months prospects
ended up coming to us, asking and meeting with sales and wanting to learn more
and buying.
And so sometimes it's that building of rapport and brand that helps you in the
future.
So I think that's a big part of it when you're creating content.
It's not always the immediate.
It's how you're building your brand.
We did a lot of things like that during COVID.
We thought, "Okay, right now a lot of people aren't thinking they need to buy
travel solution,
but how can we be useful?"
We built out a university with courses because we figured when travel managers
came back,
they would want to be the best at what they could do.
And then we also created courses for finance and they could get certified and
we brought
real value to those courses.
And as you took and gained knowledge, you also learned about us as a company.
And so we tried to add value that way.
We created a community so people could go in real time and ask any questions
they were
having.
And so we had content for finance, content for travel managers and procurement.
And for our suppliers and partners, they were on there.
So if you had a question, airline questions or hotel questions, they were in
there answering
what were COVID rules.
We created a bunch of information around COVID dashboards.
We integrated with Sherpa.
And so that kind of value for all the unknowns to get them the resources in one
place really
brought us stronger in our relationship with our clients and future prospects.
I love that.
Just doubling down is such a cool, kind of a powerful concept to, you know,
when people
are needing the resources most to double down on that.
Any other uncuttable budget items that you had over the past year?
Uncuttable.
You know, I, one of the things, you know, certainly events went away so that
got cut right away
and really budget went away when you're in travel.
So we were very specific in what, where we spent our money.
But the things that got sort of the best type of response was still direct mail
Very targeted.
And we had to figure out where they were.
They weren't in offices.
Now people are back more in offices.
But that sort of surprise and delight that, you know, we just had some really,
we just
had some really good things.
We did things we did for our customers.
We did a picnic basket, like get outside because we were all at home.
And we know sunshine is great for the, you know, vitamin D and soul and
everything else.
So we sent picnic baskets out and just encouraged people to, you know, we
called it Project
Sunshine, get some sun.
We saw a great response.
We did this.
Well, I would say the worst thing we did and the best thing we did, we had
created this
program around Alpacas and Alpact and ready to go.
Well, of course, nobody was traveling.
So that got put on hold.
But as we've come out now, we've sent these out now and it's amazing the
response for
getting with it.
People love it.
They're having, you know, fun with this gold alpaca on their desk, some fun
travel stickers
for their laptop.
It's just sort of this fun human thing.
And so I would, I would, I would be hesitant to get rid of direct mail because
there's
a lot of noise in all the channels online.
And that's one thing that if it shows up at your home or out on your desk, that
kind
of gives a response and emotion and you just don't throw it away.
You're curious who sent it.
What is it?
So yeah, I think those are things you shouldn't get rid of.
Any insights there on what CFOs like, like to show up in the inbox?
I don't know if you can share your trade secrets there.
Oh, as far as direct mail?
Yeah.
I mean, we've done lots of different things, even things like succulents.
They're easy to, they're a living thing that's easy to ship that you wouldn't
throw away
because you feel like you're throwing a living thing away.
So branding the base and it sets on their desk.
You know, that those are types of things that get opened.
Yeah, I'd have to, we sent chocolates.
You know, we've sent those sort of fun things.
We sent sunblock, like go take a personal vacation.
Oh, that's funny.
Here's sunblock, right?
That's a great one.
Because you're definitely going to use it.
Yeah.
Well, hopefully.
Yes.
Yeah.
And put it, you know, the sunblock and then put it in a branded trip actions
bag.
And it's not, you know, you're going to use it.
It's clever.
It ties to it.
And who's not happy when they get sunblock?
I mean, you're going to go outside.
Maybe you're going to go on vacation.
It's just those sort of things.
And chocolate.
Who doesn't love chocolate?
That's a really, really good one.
You know, it's always the things that are consumable are always a great one to
send people because
they're going to use it, right?
That's how like food and drink is such a great thing because, you know, they're
going
to use it.
That's really fun.
You know, I got, I got one at the beginning of the pandemic.
I got one that was a one of those little letterboards and ended up using it
when my wife got
pregnant.
And so we had all of our like baby things on there.
And it's like this, it's like this branded thing that I got sent.
And it's like, we always, we always joked about it and we're like, our baby is
presented
by Procore.
That's fun.
Yeah.
But it's like one of those fun things.
You said that, you know, events are coming back, they're roaring back travel,
obviously
roaring back.
Everyone's excited to get the heck out of Dodge.
Yes.
So how are you, how are you thinking about investing in events going forward?
Has anything changed for you?
I mean, we're, we're going after it.
We're certainly going to be present at events where CFOs are at and finance and
accounting.
We're going to be present at tech events, early adopters.
So yeah, we've got a full lineup of events this year.
A lot of them are in the fall as they naturally are and they're global.
And we know we see our customers traveling, they're going to sales kick offs,
they're
going to company meetings.
A lot of people have had their folks remote, so they're bringing them together
for team
meetings and off sites.
And you know, we have a team travel product that's supporting that and making
it easy
for people and meetings and events through our Rita Mackay side of it.
And, you know, I think we've seen a lot of best practices in this environment
as people
are getting back and ready to get together.
I also think that people that are online for too long, there's no loyalty.
Your teams are poachable.
If they haven't come into an office and if you've never met them, I don't know
how you've
got that much loyalty there.
And so I think, you know, it's smart for the ones that are getting their people
together.
And certainly we've seen it.
We have people back in the office and we don't see high attrition from that.
In fact, we see happier engagement scores as people are coming back together.
Advice.
If you haven't seen them in person, they're liable to be poached.
Great advice.
It's also a time for people to interface with your brand, right?
Those moments when you add an event or they interact with you or they
experience it, there's
nothing that solidifies that relationship than having the, you know, when we
ran our
annual company event, we did traverse with our partners and suppliers.
That engagement matters a lot in loyalty and retention.
I'm curious, like part of marketing, obviously getting your marketing folks out
there to
listen to the market, to be talking to people, getting those insights from
sales, but also
doing it yourself and talking to people.
But you know, budgets kind of figuring out how to get marketing people.
Is that something you'd recommend for CMOs is like, hey, get your marketing
people out
there in the real world and go into events so that they can be learning more?
Because it seems like, you know, how we went to market two years ago versus how
we're doing
it now with hybrid and all this other stuff is really changing and probably
important
to get an asthma check there.
Yeah, I mean, I think there's two things.
One, we have a software called Chorus.ai.
Your marketers should be listening to sales calls.
They are, you know, they're recorded.
There's some good learnings.
You can ask your best sales reps what calls would make sense.
And I'm definitely on the product marketing team all the time.
Get close to the customer.
You're going to understand their pain, why they're buying.
You're going to create better sales, enable my content.
And so that's an example of online and the ability to get in front of them.
I also tell them get on the calls when sales is calling, they should want you
on those
calls.
You're so invaluable.
You have such great domain knowledge.
You should be on those.
And then you're right.
In person, there's nothing better than getting out and meeting your customers,
a person,
understanding them, what they need.
We were just at South by Southwest in Austin and we were targeting startups.
Like I mentioned, we have our self-serve product.
Nothing better than going out there and showing them your liquid card and
buying them a coffee
and the automatic expensing and showing them the cool app and how it works and
how you
didn't have to deal with receipts and then listening to their feedback and how
they
interact and having people combine to do demos.
You boost your marketing team, make sure they can give a demo and talk to the
value
prop and making sure they're listening and how the SDR team gives the demo or
sales and
how can we tweak it and prove it, where are the hiccups in that demo that we
need to
smooth out.
So yes, nothing beats in person getting close to your customers.
You mentioned self-serve, this is obviously a huge deal for you all to have
this self-serve
motion.
It's also, as you know, much better than most, that totally different go to
market than what
you do in enterprise.
How did you think about building this muscle both internally but also building
that self-serve
motion?
Yeah, so I think a lot about product-led growth and how you're partnering with
the product
team.
What is that really understanding the flow once you capture someone's attention
, understanding
just your site traffic and how you're getting in front of people and driving
awareness.
So I mean, when I think about it, self-serve, a lot of it's the marketing
motion but it's
also a growth partnering closely with the product and optimizing that
experience.
It's partnering with your PR and comms.
It's where you place your awareness, where are startups that would want self-
serve.
Are you getting in front of the we-works of the world and making sure they're
aware
of your offering for their startups and how you partner?
Are you doing stuff at SaaSter and these events that have a lot of startups?
Are you going to startup communities in Atlanta and Salt Lake City and
certainly Silicon Valley,
Silicon Slopes, all the different Silicon Alley?
I mean, there's tons of startup communities around the world and making sure
they're aware
that you have this ability to sign up and address their needs as a startup.
So I thought a lot about how do we get it out there that I wear, what's the
experience
like.
Once you go to those targeted communities of startups, what does paid search
look like
as people are looking for these solutions in that segment?
What technology are you using on your website to segment?
We use Clearbit and some of these others that let us know a little bit more
about who's
visiting our site, making sure the offerings appropriate to them.
But also if they come in through a channel, can they quickly get in front of
sales?
Because as they go up market, it's a better experience for larger companies to
partner
and have a sales assist and really structure the solution around what they need
And so very clearly aligning around segments, what route they go, what the flow
is, what
the handoff is and the follow up.
I just signed up right now.
Oh, nice.
Took two seconds.
I love it.
Yeah.
We got to get some liquid cards to our leaders.
Yeah, I love the feedback too, where if you see something that we could adjust
or anything
that you learned in the process, but I love it.
But it is funny.
I mean, Cass, for the past two years, pretty much 100% in the proverbial lab
here, making
a podcast, but we don't really go anywhere.
We've had producers that go here and there to different events and stuff like
that to
report on different things or that.
But when you get those expense reports or when you get those expenses back and
you're
like, man, I really wish that I didn't have to deal with this.
And that's like one or two things.
But it's like it is one of those startup concerns that when you hit that moment
where
you say, okay, we're going back on the road or going on the road for the first
time, it's
like that moment in time, we're like, which, what should we do here?
Yeah, you know, the interesting thing about liquid is it's T&E travels about 70
%, but the
other 30% is purchase.
So you can use the card to buy microphones, office equipment.
You can use it to buy software, FedEx and shipping.
And so there's a lot of different things.
So any sort of spend paid search dollars, you can actually use liquid for our
corporate
card.
And so we focused a lot on those use cases in the past two years, but you're
right now
that people are back on the road, we're focused a lot on the travel side of it.
Mentioned a little bit, you know, some of the investments in your website, you
have a phenomenal
website.
I love just from a branding perspective and the drop downs and how like
colorful and all
the stuff, it's very cool.
Thank you.
But I'm curious, like, you know, how do you view your website?
How important is your website?
I mean, I think it's pretty important, probably the most important thing for a
marketing team.
It's where people go to validate who you are, learn about you.
It's a huge funnel, a lead generator.
Are you global?
Are you secure?
Are you trying to hire employment branding?
Is there getting in, bringing in talent?
Are customers come to log in?
Instead of going to app.tripactions.com, more than half of them are just typing
tripactions.com
and then they log in.
So you need to have it, you know, render right away.
It has to be a great experience.
It has to really visually show your identity and brand.
It's a very important touch point.
It needs to be searchable.
SEO optimized.
You name it.
It's one of the first things I really look at when I join a company and figure
out what
the plan is to take it to the next level.
But it's really crucial for everything the company does to operate.
And especially like, you know, as we've talked about a bunch, when you have
enterprise
and you have SMB on the same site, right?
It's like those experiences are so different.
What you want, if a CFO comes to tripactions versus, you know, Ian from Cast me
in studios,
like it's just you want to make sure that those people have separate paths that
get
them to where they want to go.
It's true.
Yes.
What is one thing that maybe you're not investing in or a tactic or something
that might be
fading away a little bit?
You know, it's an interesting question.
Sometimes I look and come in and out of those different social channels, right?
So, you know, for a while, I was trying to figure out how to Snapchat play in
this.
What should I be doing from a B2B standpoint?
Then you look at TikTok.
I tried to, you know, get my team learning.
TikTok, try the new thing.
How do we leverage that for our business?
And we did some fun things for that.
But I don't know that it's as important as things like LinkedIn, like Facebook
anymore
or like even Twitter.
It's interesting.
I think you could segment different age groups by the different social
platforms.
So it depends on your target audience.
Some folks are not on Twitter and Facebook.
And some folks are certainly are.
I'm always shocked, but I don't find someone on LinkedIn.
And then I realized that, you know, I'm 46 years old and that might not be a
thing being
used by, you know, mid 20s and 30s.
It just, you got to figure out where your target audience is going to get
information
and market.
And so those sort of channels I'm always watching in awe of and trying to be
creative
in how we represent ourselves and who we're trying to reach.
Yeah, it's such a big difference between where you spend, you know, some
advertising
dollars versus where you want to create content for.
And that's like, I think that you see these myths like, hey, if you want to
spend a bunch
of money to create a TikTok account that's like, you know, doing millions of
impressions
and stuff like, I've heard businesses do like really well, like get tons and
tons of
impressions and stuff like that from creating like pretty simple stuff on Tik
Tok.
But you know, at the end of the day is that where you want to be investing, you
know,
your time and your effort versus, you know, like we're pretty much everybody's
on Instagram.
Yes.
Right.
So it's like, you can serve, but it's like, yeah, it's great if they're sitting
at their
house at nine o'clock at night and, you know, doom's growing on Instagram and I
can remind
them that, you know, they have a trip that trip actions exist.
Like, that's great.
But do I need to sit there and cultivate a brand account that has like, you
know, viral
Instagram content?
Maybe not.
I think it'd be cool as when I think about how you would integrate these tools
with trip
actions specifically as a travel tool.
Let's say like next week, I'm going to Berlin and I'm going to meet with the S
DR team and
we acquired a company come travel, but it would be great if it was somehow my
account
was integrated and in Instagram and maybe even Facebook, I start to see cool
things about
Berlin, maybe restaurants.
I should be going to that kind of experience that would tie me to the trip
actions brand,
but it's, it's personalized because they know I've got, you know, I've allowed
them to do
that, but they know I'm going to Berlin.
And those are interesting things that I care about when I get there and how
often could
we do that and really make this impression through these platforms that people
are on
that are visual, right?
Travel is very visual.
Yeah, yeah, right, right.
You mentioned the SDRs.
So I'm so curious.
I think, you know, definitely some people are of a mind that marketing should
own them.
Some people, you know, that sales should, should own them, but I'm curious,
like you're
investing heavily in SDRs.
You're hiring a bunch.
How do you manage SDRs?
Yeah, I mean, our SDRs are aligned to our sales segments.
So we've got, you know, a team that's focused on enterprise.
We have a team that's focused on mid market growth and then certainly regional.
And then we've got, you know, a team focus on the dock region and France and
then, you
know, UK, UKI.
And so, you know, we're hiring based on our sales targets and the support and
the pipeline
targets that we need.
And then I see them just as I see sales, they need to be enabled.
They are very critical part of our funnel.
If, you know, I don't think companies give enough time to their SDR
qualification teams,
if they're converting at 30% versus 10%, that's huge.
And if they've got, if they're great, they're well trained, they're qualifying
and they're
set it up, can you shorten the sales cycle of your sales team, measuring the
success
of the sales cycle based on how they're prepping a prospect or an account so we
can get productivity,
great productivity with reps.
And, you know, I think they're also part of driving awareness.
If they're, you know, emailing, I don't know, 300 people a day and calling 100
and, you
know, you're getting the word out.
It's another very important channel that you're out there, especially I think
for startups
and small businesses that you're trying to get in front of and having that, you
know,
research that they're doing to get in front of that size accounts and then
targeting the
right people.
Yeah, and just the energy of your SDR team.
And I love the organization and the energy and the hunger that they have.
It's a tough job.
And I think you've learned some really relevant skills.
You're learning about our prospects, our customers.
You're learning about our product.
You're doing demos.
Yeah.
And I, you know, I love it.
Our Austin office is in full, you know, they're in five days a week, Dublin's
in five days
a week.
And just when I was in Austin two weeks ago and I was in Dublin last week and
just the
energy of those teams and what they do and the sharing of knowledge that they
're doing
in the office, I think is really important to their success.
So the loaded question or do you think marketing should own SDRs?
I think it's half and half.
You know, I think half the time it sits under sales and half the time it sits
under marketing.
Honestly, I don't care where it sits.
I think it's an important part of the funnel and that if it, you know, for me
it usually
sits under sales.
And but either way, I'm enabling them.
I'm building their content.
I'm measuring.
I'm looking at conversion rates.
I'm trying to figure out how do I get more of inbound through them?
How do I get them more out in the market, giving air cover for our reps?
And so I've always focused from a metrics and enablement and productivity
standpoint on
that organization.
So I think either wherever you put it, as long as you give it the focus and
time, I
think the wrong thing to do is make it a recruiting arm.
I think they're truly the best teams are set up to optimize and bring in
qualified pipeline
should be their number one thing.
And then of course they want to typically be in sales or CS after they do that.
And to making sure whether they sit in market or sales, they have that path to
develop themselves
in their career.
Let's get to our next segment, the dust up.
So we talk about healthy tension, whether that's with your board or sales team
or competitors
or anyone else making have you had a memorable dust up in your career.
I mean, I always like to think the competitions outside the company and that,
you know, I
love competing.
I like going after markets.
I think competitions healthy, it keeps us on our toes.
I think it's what makes marketing and sales exciting.
It's, you know, a competitor will make a move and then you need to make a move
and you'll
build something in the product and they'll build it.
And so I do think that's part of a market and what makes it fun.
As far as conflict internally, I think it's a great way to get to know people
is how you
address and deal with conflict and actually think that builds stronger teams.
If I look at we had the biggest conflict of our life at a travel company, COVID
, how the
executive team came together and we're very focused on what we were going to do
We had to streamline.
We had to be lockstep and I will tell you, I have very close relationships with
the team
that I went through this with my marketing team, you know, we downsized and
then I've
just hired 35 people this past year.
You know, we had to go down and now we're building back up, but that team that
went through that
moment in time, I feel very close to, I feel like they're highly skilled.
If you could sell a travel solution during a pandemic, you can market and sell
anything.
So we've got some, you know, really impressive salespeople and marketers and I
feel like
this year's the reward of that because now we've got inbound back.
People are traveling, they're coming to us for it's so much easier to be
marketing and
selling in this environment than it was last year's, but it made us really
refine our outbound
motion and our compelling story and our positioning.
You know, we've just got much better in all of that just by survival and we
really understand
the value we bring to our customers.
And so, yeah, it's, I think the dust up is going through conflict and
challenges with
the team and how strong you become coming out of that.
Yeah, we, there's going to be the most, you know, amazing case study at the end
of this
of, you know, from you all, it's truly, truly fascinating and I'm excited to
kind of follow
along over the coming quarters to see what, you know, how you capture all of
the value
that you created during some absolutely brutal times.
Yeah, I mean, we went up market, we targeted enterprise and it really, we
brought in a
lot more logos in the enterprise space which really validated us as a player, a
serious
player in the market and allowed us to do self-serve all the way up to
enterprise and
really push and strengthen the product and the different use cases.
And yeah, I actually think we'll come out of this stronger as a travel company
because
it knocked out a lot of the weaker players that didn't have the right product,
didn't
have the right funding and didn't get their burn down and it weakened the
legacy players
because they had so much heavy infrastructure and I would say, fat that they
had to deal
with.
We were nimble, we invested in the right places, we got our burn down and our
engineers could
build on very modern tech stack and so we were able to build product that was
necessary
in the moment and the future.
Fascinating.
Yeah, that's just incredible stuff.
Okay, let's get to our final segment.
Quick hits.
Quick questions and quick answers.
Just like how quickly you can talk to somebody, if you go to Qualified.com,
this show is presented
by Qualified.
There are best friends in the whole world and you can talk to your prospects,
customers
quickly on your website with Qualified.
Quick and easy just like these questions, go to Qualified.com to learn more.
Megan, are you ready?
Yes.
Never one.
What's it?
I'm telling her skill that is not on your resume.
Ah, I think execution, I am pretty great at you give me the goal that you want,
figuring
out how to go after and execute on it.
What is your favorite book podcast TV show that you've been checking out
recently?
I mean, one that keeps coming up is the hard thing about hard things, which was
really
relevant, I think during the last two years, but it gave me a deep appreciation
for the
role of the CEO.
Do you have a favorite non-marketing hobby that maybe sort of indirectly kind
of makes
you a better marketer?
Well, I mean, I have four dogs, I have three French bulldogs and a great dean
and I don't
know if it makes me a better marketer, but it certainly I feel makes me a
better human
and empathy and I think their joy.
What advice do you have for a first time CMO who's trying to figure out their
marketing
strategy?
I one come in and ask and listen, ask a lot of questions and listen, but talk
to not
only your team, but the sales team and just ask for feedback on what people
think needs
to be done and it'll be interesting what you hear back and you'll be able to
quickly
formulate where you think you want to focus just by collecting that sort of
intel and
then I would make sure to align.
My second thing would be align with your sales leader and your product leader
because product
launches and what's coming is really going to be form the story and the vision
and the
direction the company's going and sales needs to really need to understand what
they need
to be successful to get pipeline and close business.
If you weren't in marketing or business at all, what do you think you'd be
doing?
I hope I would be hanging out with my kids and my dogs.
I have three kids, four dogs and yeah, that's what I would be doing.
Megan, thank you so much for joining today.
We really appreciate it.
Any final thoughts?
Anything to plug?
Yeah, I mean, we talked about self-serve, tripactress.com, but the other thing
is we
at the same site at the very top in the banner, if anyone wants an easy way to
donate to
Ukraine, we have a whole resource center with great companies that can
facilitate the funds
to really help the refugees and what's going on in that situation.
Amazing.
We'll put that in the show notes as well.
We'll link that up.
Megan, thanks again.
Really appreciate it and take care.
Bye.
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