Leaning into the Art of Continuous Product Design
Efrat Ravid, CMO at Quantum Metric, is an evangelist for her customers and how continuous product design has changed the marketing game for her and her team.
[MUSIC]
>> Welcome to Pipeline Visionaries.
I'm Ian Faizan, CEO of Caspian Studios,
and today I'm joined by a very special guest, Efraat.
How are you?
>> Very good. Thank you so much for having me.
>> Thanks so much for joining
Excited Ivy on the show,
Excited to Chat Marketing,
Excited to Chat about everything that is going on in
the world of quantum metric,
and of course, a little bit by your background.
Today's show is always brought to you by qualified.
Our friends at Qualified.com are the best.
Qualified is the number one conversational sales and
marketing platform for companies, revenues,
teams that use Salesforce.
Head over to Qualified.com to learn more.
First question, Efraat, what was your first job marketing?
>> I found myself in marketing really by chance.
I am a software engineer,
very technical, I spend a lot of time with robotics and manufacturing,
and I was head of the product and the product created 400,000 leads.
The CEO of Canderin said,
"What do I do is this 400,000 lead?
We created the product and so solve it."
This is how I found myself dealing with leads,
coding, distribution, and all the fan things about marketing.
>> Flash forward to today,
you've been ahead of marketing a CMO multiple times over,
and now you're the CMO of quantum metric.
Tell me a little bit about what it means to be CMO there.
>> Quantum metric is just a wonderful place to be.
Being a CMO, it means to be the heart in my opinion.
This is why I love marketing, by the way.
I did all of the repositioning the organization, technical,
sales, operation, and I chose to be in marketing.
To be a CMO, especially in quantum metric,
where passion for system integrity is what keep us alive as a company,
is to deal with what I love the most,
working with customers, working without sales team,
delivering the product messaging to our customer,
working with a customer's success to
highlight their own customers and how successful they are.
So really being in the center with all the things altogether.
>> I love it. Marketing is the heart. That's awesome.
Let's get to our first segment.
That's the trust tree.
Trust tree is where we go and feel honest and trusted,
and you can share those deepest, darkest,
pipeline secrets.
Ephra, what does your company do?
>> The company is, I'm calling it the next generation of digital analytics,
which means how many times we went to our website,
let's say to buy a flight ticket and people walk and you're self- frustrated.
So what do you do? You leave the site.
So we have this big enterprise that have so much complexity on the digital
asset,
it's mobile or kiosk or the website.
We understand what doesn't work or what is the opportunity.
How much it actually costs them because there is one small issue that only
opens,
it wasn't representative who cares.
But if it's impact one million dollar a week, then you care.
So we tell them how much it costs, what's the source of this issue
and get really inside of the website and the digital experience?
>> Tell us a little bit more about the company,
with who are your customers, who are you selling to,
what does that buying committee look like?
>> We are selling for big enterprise or airlines and big retailers,
financial service, telcos, and companies like Lulele Lemo,
which is one of my favorite brands and our customer.
And the bank committee is very interesting,
especially when you sell to big enterprise,
that an auto product attaches so many things.
Our secret in the product is it actually touch from the head of digital
and e-commerce to IT to marketing people to product people,
so they don't need to use different types of analytics,
only one type of analytics.
So when you touch so many people,
it actually creates a complexity when you buy,
everyone wants to provide an opinion.
So usually the main persona is a chief digital officer or chief data officer,
the CDO, but this person usually buy the title,
they like to create consensus.
So you need to talk to the IT people,
and you need to talk to the product people,
and to use an experience,
because it's marketing people in each time they're on language,
which can be different than the entities.
>> Yeah, it's such a fluid landscape selling to that persona,
that digital officer, that data officer.
Sometimes the lives in IT sometimes lives outside of IT.
Sometimes it lives within the chief product officer's organization.
It's so fluid with how people look at that stuff.
And then also who owns web properties and things like that.
Anyways, it's complex and a lot of different mouse to feed,
which is also part of it too.
>> Absolutely.
And it's really interesting because it's also after COVID.
I think before COVID, they had their own respect after COVID.
It becomes the most important people in this organization.
One of our customers told us that before COVID,
the executive meetings, they would ask, it was a week ago.
Okay, week ago, how is the stores and the head of stores with COVID?
How is the financial and the designs that are creative?
And last five minutes in the end, it's like, okay, how are we doing digitally?
And now he was a vaccine VP of digital now,
he's chief digital officer.
And he's like, the first one that helped the executive.
And there's a possibility for going like crazy,
which helped our company as well, of course.
But we can see that Zell, Tiger, and Zell,
importance in the organization completely changed.
>> Yeah, and who owns digital customer journeys
is different in every organization?
Like, is it the chief customer officer?
Are they responsible for those things?
Like, it seems so crazy that there's not someone who,
you know, owns that in every single organization.
But being, you know, being able to figure out how different
people interact with you and what, you know, what route they choose
and how they want to go through it and what is the preferred way.
And like you said, those little hidden secrets that happen all over the place.
Like, is this important? Is this not important?
Like, none of it happens without having tons of data.
And it's crazy selling into that,
because there's so many different people who are buying it,
looking for the same sort of outcomes.
>> Yeah. One of the things I love the most is our user confluence.
Once you're able to see it, it was in Austin.
And the reason for that is that you would expect one type of person
coming to your organization, like one type of
persona. But because we are sending to so many people,
and because as you said, the owner of the digital in different industry
is actually different, you get this variety, like from airlines,
you get it as people that are responsible for the digital.
Sometimes they're much more technical compared to the retailers,
as the people that are responsible for the digital are much more creative
and marketing. And it's really interesting to see that all coming
to one conference, all in one deal with how I improve my customer journey and
experience
that they are all coming from stretch to different experiences.
They are not like if I go to an IT conference or to a security conference,
it's a persona, it's kind of the same.
Yeah, it's like the variety is just amazing for you.
>> That is fun.
Yeah, so how do you structure your marketing team in your order to go acquire
those accounts?
>> I think we structure the classic way. We have the handles,
digital and the permissions, well, she owns the data and the operation.
And even the budget, she helps me with the budget and we understand the
pipelines and not else.
And then we are doing a lot of events, like we call it experience.
And the experience we do webinars and virtual, but we also do face-to-face
from the self-to-enterprise. And we need to close these enterprise builds.
We do need to meet the people and where they are.
And we do some small field events and we do some participating big type shows
like the
money 2020 and shop stock and so on and so forth.
So I have the handles experience and then I have partnership, which is from the
bottom,
because we believe in ecosystem. And product marketing, which is kind of a
blame and domesticing.
>> Yeah, and how do you think about your marketing strategy, where does demand
fit within that?
>> So how do I think about demand and pipeline?
This is how I measure marketing. So marketing, in my opinion,
measured by three things. One is pipeline and new pipeline.
And secondly, it's a brand and how many hours people are now
using repotissipate, the website, the follow-ups and social media and so on.
And the server is custom marketing. Custom marketing is a little harder to
measure,
but it's still an effort that's super important to us.
When I look at pipeline, since our own sense cycle is a little longer.
And it's also, it's not only enough to talk, let's say I find the studio,
I have the messaging for them. It's not enough.
I need, as I mentioned before, to really discuss the entire ecosystem and
bonds and marketing and the idea and all the people that might say yes or may
to our product. And sometimes I'll say, I'll talk to them and sometimes many
times I say,
I'll say, I exist. And the marketing, my job is really to make sure that we are
talking to
as many people as possible. And this is why even after the opportunity created,
because we know as many people are educated about what we do and how we can add
value,
we are more likely to engage with this customer or to be discussed about it in
the search language.
Any other thoughts on marketing strategy?
So the marketing strategy to me is very simple.
It's really finding the customer, whoever they are, and work with them on the
language
and on the part of the way they have today. So my job is not to sell them
automatic.
This is why I have the most talented sales team behind me.
My job is to find what is the challenge they have right now and to engage with
them with the
language they need or with the answers they need for that. So for example, when
there was a crisis
with financial services and everyone was a little panicking about what happened
in the Silicon
Valley Bank. We had one of the most excellent squad finder who was a CEO of
First Bank,
was us interviewing him about how can we communicate as a CEO, as a banker, how
can we
or digital banking, how can you communicate to the team or to your customers or
to the world
about what's going on. So this is the world that we're working with right now.
They're not working about housing, of course, or digital experience. They're
working about if
something happened, how to communicate. So I will give the expert to talk about
that when
later on, the economy are going down and they care about efficiency. I'm not
going to
talk to the top of this and about digital conversion. I'm going to talk to them
about
how to make sales a life more efficient, how to do more with less, how to
prioritize better, right? Because if they are under pressure to have less
people doing more,
the most important thing is prioritization. We cannot spend 24, 24 hours a day.
So it's all about prioritization. So it's really finding the customer, what
levels they are,
and talk to them in the language they can approach. I also love our customers.
We have really,
really amazing relationship and I don't know if it's strategy or tactic or how
to call it,
but it's what we do. It's that we bring them to every part of our marketing. I
would call it
a task or mission or whatever we do, we bring customers. If it's user
confidence, we bring
of course customer to speak. They don't come to hear us. They come to hear
themselves. If I have
a webinar, I don't mind the product to show up on the demo, but I want to show
up actually
our customer how they do what we do. If we have a campaign, even in a trade
show, I love my trade
show. The most things, the biggest, everything is big and shiny, but everything
there is around
our customers. So I always like to show our customers everything we do.
And they love to be part of it because we have this kind of relationship.
I love that. That's awesome. And it's so, that's like the modern marketing. It
's a necessity,
featuring those customers and getting their stories out there as much as you
can.
Can you tell me about continuous product design? Because it's one of the things
that I didn't
necessarily know before this interview and how you think about it from a
marketing perspective.
Yeah, absolutely. So when the CEO and I joined us about over four years ago,
we were really talking more to IT people. And we were trying to really
understand what's
and write messages about it. And he kind of said, go and figure it out. I don't
know what
the product is. It's interesting for some time, but I really don't know. So I
did what every,
I think, what Katiu will do, ask the customers. So we bought our CDOs from all
around like 10
CDOs. We put them in a very fancy hotel. We give them really good drinks and
food. And then we said,
okay, now we are walking. And we asked them very simple questions. The first
question was,
why you bought a product? Like, why did you buy the quantum metric? And they
all said what we
thought like our sales pitch. And we said, ah, our sales pitch is exactly, we
have some
questions. Why are we there to change? And then we said, ask them a different
question. And we asked them,
what's the value of the product actually going to you? Like, if you forget
about what we tell you,
what you and the world they use was completely different. They were talking
about
releasing this confidence. So every time you have an update on the website, you
need to release.
And think about your element, like you might do that, and you need to release,
you can like
something, right? Or think about your bank, like you mentioned, people can stop
restore money because of the mistake you make. And it's can have a real impact.
So releasing with
confidence was amazing value. And other things they mentioned is being able to
test and try again
and again, and not be afraid of that. So all of this think about continuous
improvement,
because you cannot, a website is something very dynamic. It's not something you
fix and roll.
You fix and you change. And there is a new other campaign. And if you are,
there is another, if you are a telecom, there is another phone and another
thing that you
are launching and another product. And there is a peak level if you are a
retailer during
Christmas and things a given time. And the Black Friday, and there is always
things that happen.
And there is a new technology that's coming. And you need to be able to
continue this
improvement. And not only that, if only one person in the organization have
access to data,
this is a world thing that can happen to the organization. If you have a very
small analytics team,
and only they can answer the business question, what happened is that you ask
them once, and they
said no problem, three weeks I will give you a response. So you ask them twice,
in the
same time, you just start guessing. And it happened more than you think. All of
them
are thinking organizations. Most people don't have access to data because it's
complicated,
because it's, you need to be trained because there are afraid of the data. So
the continuous
product design is an idea that everyone has access to data, and you are
bringing them in
when they need it. The data is very simple. It's exactly what the customer is
doing right now,
and where they struggle, and it's opportunity to improve their customer journey
So you have a product on your website, and your resources, that's this
continuous product design
certification. And you have an assessment, which is like how fast you're
digital org, and you have
this certification process. How do you think about that from a marketing
perspective?
I won't tell you this is marketing, but this is marketing. This is playing
marketing.
You want to sell a product, but you want people to understand why we exist.
What is your purpose?
When we talk about our purpose, our purpose is not to sell most of it. Our
purpose is to make
sure that the entire organization are aligned with what is really important and
customer.
And if I can certify not only the chief digital officers, this is why they
exist, because why
is there a big data or digital digital? They understand that everyone has
access to data,
so they need to try the product in, and they need to try the marketing, the
existing,
and this is kind of a one language they can all speak and understand how they
continuously improve
the product. And to us, of course, our website is a product, right? It makes
sense. But they cannot
tell you how many arguments we had internally and externally, because in some
industries,
they look at the website or their app as a channel, or they look at it as a
website,
but they don't understand that it's actually a product that you need to keep
improving.
And this is kind of what this continues for the design saying, that your
digital asset is the
most important product you have. It's you, usually actually, completely
important. So,
the certification is at bringing alignment of teams. I have customers that have
hundreds of
people who are certified on the continuous product design. And I know that they
will not
launch, and they cannot mention the name of the customer, but they cannot
launch another
digitalization system that's evolved mid because of COVID, for example, without
these
alignment, these are teams that they can't continue for the design. So, they
actually
certified the entire digital organization. I just love that. I love the
approach, and I love when
people have, when companies have that sort of any type of university, or any
type of training,
or any type of thing where they can certify people, obviously, it always helps.
But I also
love those maturity assessments. I think it's just such a good way to get
someone in the door,
offer them something for free that teaches them something about their
organization. I love that stuff.
Thank you. The maturity curve was something very interesting to see, because
there are companies that are really few companies to be super honest, even in
our customer base,
in the continuous, meaning that they are all aligned, they are all always
looking at data,
and they all make only decisions by data. I cannot even say about my teams at
Korea or
myself. Actually, it's like going through the moon idea, is that you want to
get them one day,
and we are all sensing in between. Between, I'm just on a gut feeling, and I've
known the
other day, and I don't look at data compared to I have visibility, but I cannot
really prioritize
and quantify. The quantification is much more important than we think, because
you can see a
lot of issues. Most of us actually have much more issues that we can fix. The
idea is that,
how do I know which one to work first? You can know about it only if you can
link it back to the
business. How can I know that this part is more important than the other part,
usually,
because it tells them to tear them off. If you can link it back to the quant
ification,
so some of us do quantification, and then at the end, as I mentioned, is a
quick game.
So, the maturity curve is super important to understand where you are and where
you need to
inspire. Okay, let's get to our next segment. The playbook where you open up
that playbook and
talk about the tactics that help you win, what are three channels or tactics
that are your
unaccutable budget items? It's a really interesting question. I took the time
to rhyme on this
this question, and I have to admit that I'm not married to any tactical.
And I will give you an example. I love this. I love the more customers. It's
something I love the most.
And one day, it's called COVID, so you shut down all our events in one day.
I thought it's all done. Yes, I believe in the digital assets channel. I do a
lot of
four-year-olds. But some best leads that, like, the really close came from
events,
meetings at custom-l. And we were doing the best ever in doing COVID, right?
And we were talking
to the customer, and actually we got tough things. And even in a close-up way,
because I saw that
house and they saw the kids behind them. And I love talking to post-work and
everything, webinars
and roundtables and kids are going around. So, yeah, actually one of the webin
ars, I bought a
basketball function. So, it's open for everyone, for your kids, for your family
, and it's actually
one of those. So, saying that, events are very difficult for us to cut, but
with COVID within,
LinkedIn is a great, in general, digital channel is fun, but LinkedIn
specifically,
because our customers are a lot less in the Facebook or the Kickstarter and so
on,
and more mature individuals and executives, so if we find them, we find
themselves.
And the sell-one, sell-do-one, sorry, is customer marketing. I'm a huge
believer in that,
that our customer actually brings their funds. So, some of them, we do it like
in a world way and
it's a growing system, but some of it is just so organic. So, you just want to
share the good
and the good and the good and the fun. And sometimes I get to live and say,
this and this is so
amazing about, oh, this is great. What are the different ways that you sort of
get those customer
stories out there? So, we are working with really big organizations. The most
difficult part of this
toy is actually getting legal approval. Yeah. Even not PR approval, it's a
legal approval.
Once we and we need to work with them, that it's actually not endorsement, but
it's actually
showing the customer story. So, for example, in our conferences, they are
coming. I have a great
story about the amazing label in CBS that I met in this hair in Atlanta, and I
asked her,
do you want to come and speak for us? And she said, yeah, I want to talk about
the public speaker.
And I said, me neither, but I really want the people to hear what you did. I
really think
that your story, forget about the company, forget about the number of how you
tools it, how you create efficiency. I don't care about that. I want to hear
about what you did,
how you become a strong leader. And she had such an amazing story that I had
people serving in the
lots of room. And now she feels like such a great and she's like, this big
object speaker. So, yes,
you are. So, it's really about telling the sales story, how they become
successful. We have
equated some example of the CDOs that came to the US for India, and he didn't
have a lot of
participation. And he started this career. I cannot just say all the names. So,
I'm trying to say
how I'm saying it without mentioning names. But he worked in a retailer and his
own product. And
all the time, he signed amazing insight, promoted him and recently became a CDO
And this is a story that we want him to hear about how he got promoted and less
about,
you know, yes, he was too too, who the ranking in the app for two stars, for
the half stars.
Which is amazing. But the real story to me is how he imported his career and
became a CDO
such a short term. So, possibly a great success, right? How do we make your app
very successful?
And how to bring your sales to become a stronger leader?
That's such a cool story. Because I think that there's a lot of hesitancy. I
mean, obviously,
we do this all day, every day, with creating podcast series. And for a lot of
people that are not
familiar, or a lot of the guests that we have on the show are not super
familiar speakers
with across 60 plus shows and thousands of episodes. And it really is crazy
because those people
who have not done a lot of media have such amazing stories that they've never
told.
And they're usually not a writer. So, I'm not going to just like sit down and
knock out a
two thousand word blog post. And so, sort of the only way to get those stories
out is to do some
type of conversation or interview and pull those insights out. Because
otherwise, they would never
live to see the light today.
They would never, and they don't know how amazing the snow. Yeah, I actually
think that
the people that are public speaker, we hear the story over and over again. And
the people that
are a little hiding, you know, really, our job is to really find them and put
them
on the camera because it's also even more inspiring to all of us. Because we
are like them. We feel
the same feel. We have the same struggle. The story is much more old and doesn
't have all the,
you know, it doesn't have all the story above it. It's real. It's just the real
story.
How do you measure success of your campaigns and channels and tactics?
I don't have anything exciting to share here. I have one goal. It's to sell
more and to
bring more customers, to enjoy the quantum metric product. And the way we do it
is that we measure
it by how many people respond to the campaign, how many of them succeed to meet
with us or meetings
that will impact by their marketing effort, then how many things become
opportunity in pipeline and how much of the pipeline actually close. And then
other time,
we also want to measure velocity. How long do you take? It sounds very simple,
but it's actually
a little more complicated because as I mentioned, there are a lot of people in
each organization.
So for each win, there are a lot of touches. So what if the touches were like
if I, as a
little touch is a complication and all the, just read the paper and the most
serious touches is
it came to event and talked to our customer for 50 minutes. And after we talked
to an existing
customer on SuperHappy, the day future is done. Any other thoughts on budget
items,
on cuttables or things maybe you're excited about investing in? I'm always
happy to invest in
everything that creates customer engagement. So for example, we have the book
suite for the US
Open and we are going to bring some amazing customer to watch with us. And so I
always bring like
so-to-so customers, 70% prospects are to believe. And this is priceless, as I
mentioned before,
the customers see it through the prospect. So there's nothing I need to do. I
don't need to
book that school itself. I don't need to bring anyone else. I just need to go
and see to see
together and talk about what we do. And as I mentioned to you, as a beginning
about continuous
product design, they describe what we do. So much better than what we do. I
write messaging,
I create power points, I do case studies. I'm teaching the story of the
customer and just
please just say it because they live it every day. So that my only job is super
simple, just going
to do the aspects and customer to one place and the magic just creates it right
itself.
It really does. It's so true. Prospects and customers together is always, I
shouldn't say always.
If you have a great product like you, then always, it works. All right, let's
get to our next segment.
The dust-up, before we talk about healthy tension, whether that's with your
board,
your sales team, your competitor, or anyone else, have you had a memorable dust
-up
in your career? Of course. A lot of them, I'm Israeli, so I'm the director. I
have a lot of
memories. So I think there are the most interesting tensions that exist in
between sales and marketing.
And I think it's actually very, very healthy tension. I think without that, it
's not interesting
to wake up in the morning. And one story I would love to tell is that there was
a CEO who came
from IBM and he was the head of sales there and he came to the CEO of our
company and he came to the
room and he said about this campaign, looked at this campaign, like, what is
this? This is the
boss thing I've ever seen in my career. And he was curious. I was like,
somebody who's going to slow
at the asset. It was very, very difficult company. So of course, I was the only
woman there and I
started doing, I cannot say that you mentioned his name, but what is your
background? And he's like,
I was the head of sales of IBM and he said, and you hate it. He said, great.
This is awesome.
I'm selling to mechanical engineers. They freaking love it. That's his toy. And
he said, okay, we
was tested. We tested it for two movies a best thing. Sings a girl that the
lawyer wouldn't
stay in and the poverty wouldn't stay in. She has a story, but it was the best
campaign ever to
walk for our mechanical engineers. The campaigns that were super successful in
the US was, for example,
five minutes, one minute deep. That's what really well in the US. And then go
to Japan and look at
me and say to me, this is the most insulting campaign I've ever seen. And I
said, why? And they said,
I'm studying five years to be a mechanical engineer and you can tell me that in
one
you can give me a take. So what I'm trying to say in this story is that my
desktop is that
really know your customer. It's thus this is the crux of marketing, right? You
are not going to
please everybody all the time. So you need to find things that people love and
give them that.
Because that's how you stand out. You don't stand out by doing the exact same
thing that's super
boring for everybody. Let's get to our final segment. Quick hits. So quick
questions and quick answers,
just like how qualified.com helps companies generate pipeline quickly. Tap in
your great
assassin website to identify your most valuable visitors and instantly start
sales conversations.
Quick and easy. Just like these questions. Go to qualified.com to learn more. E
phraat, are you ready?
Always. Number one, do you have a hidden talent or skill that is not on your
resume?
I think so. My hidden talent is I can read home. I can go to anyone and know I
can I know what's
going to happen. I just put 15 of the people. I have this six cents. That's a
good one.
Do you have a favorite book or podcast or TV show that you've been checking out
? I love the
happiness lab. It's one. Oh yeah. It's one that I really make me a better
person.
What advice would you give to a first time CMO who is trying to figure out how
to build their
pipeline? Don't be afraid to make mistakes. Just try new things and don't do
what everyone
helps you. That's really boring. Just try new things. Be creative. Love it.
Well, this has been
absolutely awesome talking to you for our listeners. Go to quantummetric.com to
learn more.
You could check out they have a bunch of cool stuff. As I was mentioning
earlier about continuous
product design and you can get a certification all that stuff. If you're into
that, you can go do it
and you can take an assessment for your digital work. Any final thoughts of
fraud? Anything to plug?
I really enjoy it. They cannot wait to listen to the next year. I'm going for
you. I really enjoy it.
Thanks so much. We appreciate it and we'll talk soon. Sounds good. Thank you so
much.