Smart Marketing with a Sales Perspective
Dan Verley shares his insights into achieving sales and marketing alignment, why having curated content that is easily digestible is important, and why marketing is an invaluable tool when paired with the needs of the organization.
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Welcome to Demand Gen Visionaries. I'm Ian FaZe on CEO of Caspian Studios.
And today we are joined by a special guest, Dan, how are you?
Fantastic. Thanks for having me.
Yeah, excited to have you on the show. Excited to chat about all things, Canon.
And you know what's interesting about today is we're going to look at
marketing and go-to-market from a seller's perspective. You spend a lot of the
vast majority
of your career in sales. So this is a little bit of a different type of an
episode for us to talk
about it from the sales perspective. So can you tell us a little bit about your
role at Canon?
Yeah, I mean largely my role is we've got roughly 600 direct from Canon to end
users, B2B sales,
on that I oversee through four zones across the US and those are broken up into
regions.
You know really my goal is to make sure that we have a revenue generating team
that can
meet the needs, the revenue needs of the organization. And obviously we're a
large manufacturer and
they count on our division along with our value dealer partners to make sure
that we can move
product to keep the business and the market share that we desire. And usually a
little bit more than
that. Yeah, of course. Let's get to our first segment, The Trust Tree. This is
where we go and
feel honest and trusted and you can share those deepest, darkest sales secrets.
So who just can
and sell to? What are the types of customers that you're selling to? So we've
really in
especially in the last few years is COVID has kind of changed our marketplace a
bit.
Canon Solutions, America, My Division, which is the B2B arm right, we're
selling Canon products
as a Canon entity. You know, we've really focused from a vertical strategy to
the high end users of
our products. So simple layman's terms, you k through 12 schools are still
large users higher
ed, community college universities, healthcare is a fantastic business base for
us.
Verticals that you may not think of, verticals like legal are still high end
users, architect
engineering. So really where paper still plays a critical role. But more than
that, we've also
begun to evolve into managing digital documents and enterprise content
management ECM
through some Canon software solutions and third party that my organization
sells as well.
So that's really where our focus have been. I'm sure I've left a few others out
and
you know, FinTech I didn't mention, but that's another obvious one, banks, etc.
Where there's
still a good amount of need for the products. What does the like buying
committee look like for that
for your products? Like who sign in the dotted line? Who are the different
stakeholders that
are making decisions? You know, today from a committee standpoint, you've
clearly got the
facilities planners because it takes up office space. So they play a role in it
, like there's
electricity involved. So you've got facilities management, a lot of times there
's involvement
from a production center, a mailroom where there's being staffed, the products
that we sell are
being staffed by employees that might report to them. Then you've also got an
IT group.
IT groups are very interested in our product because it's on the network. So
that presents
benefits, great benefits. It's an on ramp for paper to get paper out of the
office,
ironically. A lot of our devices are now used to scan documents as much as
print documents.
So that's a benefit, but then obviously they have security control and cost
control concerns
that we have to make sure we address. And then last but not least, you've got
financial considerations.
So CFOs might get involved, VP's of finance might be involved. Really from a
budgetary standpoint,
you know, if you look at a P&L, we found a loving category called SG&A
typically,
unless you're a commercial printer, then you know, we're the tool you use to
print that you sell,
but in the real world, I'm SG&A. So they want to control that. And you know, we
try to think of
ways to creatively use our technologies and oftentimes pair our technologies to
help reduce
that for them in unique and interesting ways.
And for our listeners, what's SG&A? Sales generally didn't demonstrate it.
That's right. Yeah. So pretty diverse kind of buying committee. A lot of
different people
sort of shaping the deal. I'd imagine that that's pretty complex. How do you
structure your
organization to acquire those accounts? Like what types of accounts matter? Or
what type of
way do you organize to look at those key accounts and to kind of deal with that
complex buyer committee?
Yeah. And that's where the comment I made about verticalization plays in a
little bit. So in a
lot of cases, and I'll go to one segment that's really fine at commercial print
. So if you just
think of the commercial printer that's printing things that you might get in
the mail at home,
you know, we sell into that space. So there, the buying committee is typically
a commercial
printer and owner, a production manager. So we take our sales force and we
segment it by
that vertical, the same thing for legal or in K through 12 in the elementary
school,
middle school, high school business, because each of those verticals have
unique needs,
unique security concerns, and sometimes really customize workflow to their own
industry.
And you know, they want some of those workflows to be used right on our device.
So like a real
world example is if you're dealing with a law firm and they have our device,
well, when they
take in the paper, let's say they scan in the documents, they want to be able
to know where
those documents are, what case they're related to, and be sure they can secure
those documents so
they're only shared as appropriate. And they want to capture that at all at the
device now. So the
old days you'd scan that in, you'd pull it forward to a computer and then you'd
do all your coding.
Now they're really capturing that at the device, either utilizing technology or
manual entry.
So back to your question, the answer is we need specialization within the sales
force. So those
unique questions aren't met with the, oh, how do you specifically use that,
which is when we were
very generalized in our sales force would happen. Everybody knew a little bit
of everything, but
success almost came with tenure because you learned a little bit about
everything as you aged through
our industry. I've now been in over 30 years and you didn't learn those things
until you were five
and 10 years in. With specialization, they are much more prepared as sales
people to go to market
and talk within the context of the customer, knowing the customer's needs,
the customer's vocabulary, how they make money, how our device fits into their
world,
whether it says a direct tool in a commercial printer, a little bit with a law
form, or as a
tool to facilitate learning and education. There it's more about paper movement
between schools,
controlling costs, tracking costs, making sure you have very secure access to
these devices because
they're oftentimes in public settings instead of only private. So that's really
how we're
strategizing from a sales standpoint is to as much as we can specialize in.
And then I'm curious, how do you partner with marketing? How do you think about
marketing as integrating with your sales motions as you go to market strategy?
Marketing is an invaluable tool and partner. I work very close with RVP of
marketing.
When done well and when paired well, and we all consider the needs of the
organization and what
role we each play, it's really a powerful tandem when you go to market if
things are aligned.
I can think of instances where perhaps things hadn't been as well thought out
and it's difficult.
One story that comes to mind many years ago, we were launching digital file
storage back
before it was really a common concept. The idea was it was just so cool that
people would talk
about it and it was and marketing did a great job and there was tons of
interest but really,
it just tied up the sales force's time because everybody wanted to talk about
the digitization
but nobody had a budget for it. Nobody really had a concept of what this was
going to cost.
So we engaged in these really elongated sales cycles that just never closed. It
stayed out there.
We took the exact same product, marketing did some great research and looked
into an industry.
In this case, it was logistics and said, hey, they really need this. They're
experiencing a
cost related to this as we speak. So that's a capital expenditure that we can
show them
reduction in. And we took the exact same product. We said instead of selling it
to everybody in our
space in a geography, we're just going to target the 50 or so logistics
companies and then we were
very successful just selling it as a logistics solution instead of a digital
file drawer,
which is how we first came up with it. And it just goes to speak of what I
think marketing does a
really good job at when paired well is kind of the line of business, the end
user needs and
identifying that with input, obviously, from sales, but then positioning our go
-to-market
strategies, the communication materials, verticalized to those needs of those
clients.
So it speaks uniquely to them. Everybody looks at a product, we have a bit of a
different interest
in why we want that product. You really have to speak to them on their terms.
And so that's
where I think the combination of marketing and sales works best is when we look
at it from both
angles. And it's a powerful tool when we do it. All right, let's get to our
next segment,
the playbook. This is where we talk about tactics. You can open up that
playbook and talk about all
the tactics that help you win. So in your opinion, over the past handful years,
what have been the marketing channels or tactics that you've seen that are unc
uttable?
Three things in the marketing tactics that I just absolutely wouldn't do
without.
So the first is really from a marketing perspective, they've done an excellent
job
with demand, Jen, in our company. So that sits outside, obviously, as a sales
team. We do our own
prospecting and networking as a sales team. But as part of the marketing
function, they've set up
a verticalized demand, Jen team with an outbound calling and an inbound. So
they'll run different
marketing campaigns, ad campaigns, web campaigns, internet campaigns. And then
they've done a great
job bringing on new tools. A tool like Zoom Info has really been really
excellent tool for us to
add to our portfolio. So they're seeing real time who's having interest in our
products on our sites,
you know, kind of the Google ads, if it's bouncing up to the top concept, you
know, they see where it's
coming in for us. And then funneling those leads to the sales team so that we
can act on them. We've
gotten numerous sales from accounts. Ironically, we didn't even know. The other
thing from marketing
that I think has really been helpful is they've really adopted storytelling.
Instead of kind of
specs and speeds and feeds as we tend to call them in our industry, they've
gone to storytelling
and I wouldn't want to see that go away. And what do I mean by storytelling?
They're really no
different than short abbreviated solutions to known business problems within
vertical and then
creating that content in a brief way that we can carry it to the field in a
consistent way.
One of the challenges we have sales have in particular industry, it's not a big
secret. Our
industry does hire people without experience. Not everybody walks in
understanding everything
about it. So to those people, you know, there's a good chunk of the sales force
out there, you
know, 10 to 20% that's under a year. So they don't have all of this industry
knowledge. And so
to have created content, curated content that they can quickly understand,
digest, communicate to
the customer really helps a lot. To make sure we get the right message out
there, which is very
important. But I think more important, we don't get the wrong message out there
. And then, you know,
for the third thing, I think it's just really the programs that they give us to
go to market with
when they see industry changes. In our company, the way it works is marketing
really is the
arm to work with the manufacturing side or the manufacturing side of Canon or
our business partners.
So, you know, perhaps a business partner's product has started to lag behind in
the industry in
terms of price, functionality, acceptance, what have you. And their ability to
manage those
relationships and make sure that they keep the solutions we're asking the sales
team viable is
critical. A confident sales person who believes in what they're doing, despite
whatever training,
you know, I may have over somebody else or somebody else over me confidence in
your product and
belief in your product is powerful. I mean, it's the equivalent of a religion.
If you believe it in
your soul and you can look them in the eyes and say, Hey, here's why you want
to do this. This is
what I would tell anybody no matter where I was and why this is the right
solution for you.
Customers are smart. They sense that confidence. They also sense the lack of
confidence.
Yeah, they're worried. Then if you're worried, they become worried. If you're
bold and confident
in what you say and you believe it, which requires this pre marketing effort to
make sure we're in
the right spot with the right product, the right product price positioning, it
just adds to that.
So it's hugely impactful to my sales team in terms of their self esteem, their
confidence level
when they're out there making those calls, trying to close that deal because it
's facing you're not
always going to be the cheapest. You may not always be the fastest, but there's
compelling arguments
to be made for your solution that you believe in vehemently. That's still a
powerful sales person.
I love it. Yeah, that's great. I think that it's one of the things that we see
a lot on here is
whether it's a piece of anchor content or a sales enablement tool or an
assessment or something
that you can really equip the seller with that they can use and refer back to
and say,
Hey, our research team put all this stuff together. I'm curious if
if there's a tool or series of tools, you know, you mentioned zoom info, B1
that's been too
helpful that that are really helpful that kind of bridge that sales marketing
kind of gap. It's
like extremely critical to kind of like zip up the sales of marketing with that
market texture
and the sales architecture and and joining it. So I'm just curious, like, you
know, your thoughts on
on technologies, what you're seeing that you like and what are some things that
you're excited about?
Yeah, you know, like you mentioned zoom info and I think people generally know
it's a great
database, a great place to search for contacts, the right phone numbers, radio
email addresses.
It's a good place to filter and sort down information, but really, you know,
more interesting and
some specifics were, you know, we would take a territory out of Salesforce
territory that existed
and then developed, you know, as Canon, it evolved. It was, you know, a
development of Canon business
solutions over the years as a direct sales entity. And then we bought a company
called Osay that had
imageistics embedded with it. If you trace its lineage back, it was the old Pit
ney Bose copier
and fax division. So there was a lot of data that kind of came into Salesforce
from a lot of
different angles. And yet we would take the data, we'd put it into zoom info
for a set of zip codes,
and then we'd filter on any company over five million, which not a bad prospect
force. 30% of
the companies weren't even in Salesforce. So you start to look at market
penetration. I hadn't
even identified that despite all the cold calls and all the telemarketing calls
and all the different magazines we'd read and, you know, back in the day trips to
the library to get
reference USA lists. I can remember that back in the 80s. You know, all that
still hadn't found
these clients because businesses evolved, their names changed, they merged,
they combined.
Sometimes they just grow very quickly in today's day and age, you know,
prospects that didn't exist
10 years ago are now billion dollar companies as we've seen. And if you're not
staying on top of
that, you're missing huge chunks of your opportunity chasing down, you know,
what used to be a big
organization and not pursuing what today is. And so something like that is more
powerful.
I think the biggest challenge we have sales is to appreciate the power. You
know, we've had that
tool now a year and a half. We're still not using it to its full capability and
going back and
training reps and getting mind sharing how they can use it to drive. And, you
know, reps are really
obviously motivated by success and income competition. It's still a healthy
motivator for my sales
team. So really when you start to have people having success and the others who
went through
the training, but maybe didn't embrace it and didn't put it into their daily
cadence. Now they're
coming back here, latest thing. Oh, there's a lot more to this. I thought it
was just a list in the
sky. It's much more than that. And so I think those are great tools. We've been
using another
product called Brain Shark recently, which we're getting to know. And that's
been a nice tool because
we'd love to go face to face as often as we can. I'm still a little bit old
school. Call me a
dinosaur if you want. I still like doing business face to face across the desk.
Or I can see people,
I can see the reaction, I can sense what's going on in the room. But with Brain
Shark, to when it
can't happen, you know, we can voice over a proposal using the tool. We can
send out content. We can
have contests between people on, you know, what we lovingly call the elevator
pitch,
starters to conversations with strangers, which is the new way of calling a
cold call. You know,
we can use it for training. We can use it for voicing over proposals. We also
can use it as a
marketing tool. You might know that somebody has a particular solution and a
new product came out.
Like we just launched the V1000 commercial print. It's got some unique features
that address some
problems we know a competitor has. So, you know, maybe you can't get in front
of somebody, but you
send a nice link with the, "Hey, we know this is how things are now. Wouldn't
it be great if it worked
this way?" And just get that short little brief content out there in a way they
can ingest it
on their time when they have time instead of, you know, when we interrupt their
world, whether it's
knocking on their door or dialing their phone, sending an email, trying to
schedule the teams.
There's a lot of people that still want to ingest content on their own time.
And this gives us the
ability to do it, but with our voice. So, it's a nice intermediate step to, you
know, I think the
preferred method, which would always be face to face, but we take what we can
get in the sales world.
I'm curious then, you know, kind of going on the rabbit hole a little bit
further.
You know, our guests, you know, obviously always trying to figure out ways to,
you know,
increase that predictability, that, you know, the lead flow, you get more
high quality leads to sales is always the name of the game, but shaping those
accounts and all
that sort of stuff. When it comes to folks, the right accounts to go after
figuring out the folks
that are, you know, on the website that are, you know, that are cruising around
, that are doing those
sort of things, how important is that to you as a sales leader to make sure
that you know, like,
you know, what, what accounts are the ones that are hot, that are poking around
the website,
that are doing those sort of things, and to make sure that those are getting
the requisite priority.
The best sales we have from a sales perspective are when we uncover a problem a
client doesn't
know about, but it's significant to them. And we can carry it to them. Because,
you know, the average
customer is pretty appreciative. I walk in and say, "Hey, I have a better way
to do this," and I take
them down to use your term, the rabbit hole of, "If you did it this way, it
would reduce your operating
cost 30%, or if you did it this way, it would affect your overall, you know,
hours spent on this task
by 20 hours a week." Now, if we can train them in that, most people are
satisfied, if we can give
them a significant savings, that they don't necessarily go out and collect 50
proposals,
because the customers are appreciative of the solution we come up with was
engineered by us,
and there's a value to that engineering of coupling the solution, understanding
their business problem.
Now, some can take the work we've done and go and shop it around, but there's
at least the sense of
they're getting the added value of we took the time to learn their business, we
took the time to
talk to their end users, we took the time to bring this, and they're willing to
reward us with that,
especially if it's a great net savings to them. They're like, "Yeah, okay, I
can put you through the
procurement grinder and beat you for another 5% off of this price, but what
will I really get for all
that time and energy?" And what might I cut out of it to match a competitive
price? So,
so part of me always kind of knee jerks, I don't want the leads that everybody
knows about, right?
Because then I'm just in the market, and I'm one of four or five proposals, you
know,
can and fair as well, we're very competitive, but if I can get somebody into
the market,
solve a problem, bring tremendous value to them, and take them out of the
market,
before that they necessarily have done tons and tons of research where I'm
adding the value,
that's much better than the client who comes and says, "Well, I want A, B, and
C. I just sell
outsourcing." So, so back to your your question of hot leads and how do I view
hot leads? Well,
they are great, especially ones I didn't know about. I wasn't involved in. That
's fantastic,
especially if they have an interest in particular in Canon or Canon
functionality, things that are
specific to us. Obviously, we feel we've got great pricing, great product,
great service,
a good reputation in the industry. We're definitely number one in market share
in most categories.
So, we feel we can compare and compete very well in a competitive situation.
That's a very different sales dynamic. You know, the customer calls me up that
says,
"You're my sixth quote, and here's the Excel spreadsheet of things I want to
buy from you."
And the customer that says, "You know, I'm spending $200,000 a year on my
printing needs, and
my boss came to me and said, "I need to trim my budget by 20 percent. I can
walk in and save them
30 percent and be a hero." So, very different sales cycles, both important,
both valued.
That's the name of the game, right? If you can bring the the code leads
something or the code
accounts, something new that they, you know, some new info or asset or teach
them something
about yourselves. You know, obviously that's just as important as keeping the
hot stuff, you know,
in pipe. Okay, let's get to our next segment. Dust up. So, are we talking about
healthy tension?
Whether that's with your board, your competitors, your marketing team, or
anyone else,
if you had a memorable dust up in your career. Wow, dust ups. So, yeah, there,
there've obviously
been some. If you've sold for this long, there have been, there have been
challenges from all sides of it.
I was with a company in one organization back where I had started in this
industry,
and they really felt like they were falling behind in the higher end of the
market. So,
they ventured into making rapid, quick partnerships with other OEMs and then
private labeling the
product and kind of inundated the high end of the marketplace with products to
put politely.
I won't name them because they're not picking on them. They were at the end of
their life cycle
with these OEMs, right? The OEMs have gotten to the point where they couldn't
sell it either.
In my mind, as a salesperson, I imagine they were kind of snickering like that
old cartoon with the
little dog that used to snicker. Like they're marketing people at that company,
if the OEM was
snickering, that we'd be crazy enough to take it on, commit to selling X number
units and putting
our sticker on them, and then they dump the product into our lap and say, "Go
sell this. It's great."
And I'm like, "Yeah, 10 years ago. It was great." And that's why all this is in
the market space,
but there's this new technology that's replaced it. We're the only people out
trying to sell this now.
I think I'm a pretty competent salesperson, but I don't know that I can do this
for you.
And they really kind of committed us in a way that we couldn't get out of.
All right, let's get to our final segment. Quick hints. It's your quick
questions and quick
answers. Just like how quickly you could talk to somebody from Qualified. If
you go to Qualified.com,
Qualified Prospects are on your website right now, and you can talk to them
quickly with Qualified.
If you use Salesforce.com, you need to use Qualified. Go to Qualified.com to
learn more.
Dan, are you ready? Buckle Dan. What is one hidden talent or skill that's not
on your resume?
Wakeboarding. Do you have a favorite book, podcast, or TV show that you've been
checking out recently?
I've gone back to read emotional intelligence. If you weren't in sales,
we're business at all. What do you think you'd be doing? A preacher.
What would be your best advice for a first time VP who's trying to figure out
their sales strategy?
Listen to your people. Dan, that's it. That's all we got for today. Thanks
again for joining,
and we'll talk soon. Thanks much. My pleasure, Ian. Thank you.
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