Nick Bennett is the director of field marketing at logz.Io, a cloud observability platform for modern engineering teams.
Before joining logz.Io, Nick headed field marketing at Clari, a revenue operations platform that helps b2b organizations increase win rates, shorten sales cycles and improve forecast accuracy by using AI and automation to create full-funnel accountability across go-to-market teams.
Over the years, Nick has developed a reputation for being able to effectively build and incorporate fully-integrated field and cross-channel marketing strategies and generate impact results throughout the sales and marketing pipeline.
He is also a founding member of RevGenius, a community of revenue-generating sales and marketing professionals brought together to learn, share, support, and grow with each other.
Nick joins us on episode 9 of the MOV Podcast to talk about the importance of being in a community of like-minded peers, the importance of building a personal brand and the core fundamentals that can enable B2B marketing and sales teams to tide through the challenges bound to the COVID-19 pandemic.
So without further ado, tune in to learn more such interesting marketing insights only on the Mad Over Videos Podcast by guch featuring Nick Bennett.
Pranav Chimulkar: Hey guys, welcome to the MOV podcast. This is episode nine. And this is a special one for us. Because of the number nine, like nine of November 2019. Last year, we did the mad over videos event, which is the reason why we are doing the podcast, because of the pandemic we couldn’t pull off that event this year. And today’s the ninth episode and another special reason for the episode is the guest that we have today. Again, somebody, I’ve been looking forward to hosting on this podcast for a really long time. So, before we add the guest on the show, I’d quickly like to show you a little bit of the small sneak peek into what happened last year on Mad Over Videos at the event, and then we’ll quickly add the guest.
So that was Mad Over videos event. And this is our guest, Nick Bennett.
Nick Bennett: Hey, thanks for having me. How you doing?
Pranav Chimulkar: I’m doing very well. Thank you so much, Nick, for taking our time and joining us today. I’ve been trying to bring you on for a long time. And I think it’s a great thing that you made it today. And on this ninth episode. I think it’s a special thing for me as well.
Nick Bennett: Absolutely. I’m excited to be here.
Pranav Chimulkar: Awesome. I quickly like to get started. I don’t think I’ve done your introduction. Till now. So I’d like you to introduce yourself. I mean, we all know that you’re the Director of Marketing at logz, but then just tell us a brief about what do you back?
Nick Bennett: Yeah, definitely. So as you said, I’m the director of film marketing for Logz.io. I’ve been working for startups now for the last couple of years. It’s kind of what I enjoy. Outside of work. I play baseball, I’m big into sports. So I’m really into that and trying to stay active. Plus, I have a two-year-old daughter. So she keeps me very active as well. And yeah, I mean, my goal is to help be the voice for other field marketers out there. And let people know that field marketing is not dead, it’s transformed.
Pranav Chimulkar: Absolutely. I think what you just said that you want to be the voice of other field marketers? And you are in fact, like, that’s how I discovered you. Right. I saw you post on LinkedIn. I was watching a few of those. And then I happen to send you a connection request, we connected and It also shows that creating quality content is something that makes a reputation and puts you out there. Right? Please tell me what has been the success or the secret behind your success of the content that you put out on?
Nick Bennett: Yeah, you know, it’s funny because I was always the type of person on LinkedIn that would just browse content. I never commented, I never posted my own stuff. It was basically 100% work-related. I would basically share posts when someone told me to share posts. And when the pandemic happened in March in the US specifically and things started to get shut down. I said oh In my previous company, I had a VP of growth in enablement, he put out a question to us and said, You know, this is the opportunity to build your personal brand and start to take it to the next level. So I started to create content daily, literally, I started Monday through Friday, I try to stay away from the weekends, occasionally, it will go in there, but the biggest thing that I’ve noticed is you need to provide value. And on top of that, you need to engage with other like-minded people that you want to be connected with. And it was funny, you know, um, when I started out, I only had about 2000 followers on LinkedIn. And I’m actually just about to hit 10,000, super close. And all of that happened within like a six-month window. And there are no hacks to it, you have to grind, you have to be able to put in the work because what you put in is what you get out of it. And the number of people that I’ve been able to meet these last couple of months, and just being able to be part of these, these podcasts and just be able to get the message out there wouldn’t have been possible if I didn’t start there to create content every day. And I just, my goal is to really just provide value and engagement, those are the two things that I go for. And if I can do those two things, and I make at least one person happy, then I’ve done my job.
Pranav Chimulkar: I think you’ve ended up engaging a lot more than one thousand. And you just mentioned consistency. Why don’t you tell me how important is being consistent with content? I mean, all of us come up with one good content piece once in a while. And it does really well. And then we all go back into versions. I think we all come back after a month, and then we try to put another one. And that flops, right? Like, how important is consistency?
Nick Bennett: Yeah, consistency is key. Because what’s gonna happen is that, like you said, you may come up with like, like one piece here, and then you’re gonna fall off from it. And you’re gonna say, Okay, yeah, I’ll get to it when I get to it, but then you may not post again for a couple of weeks out. And if you keep on doing that, it’s just going to snowball, and it’s just gonna, you know, you’re just gonna fall out of it. Like you have to consistently people say, two to three times a week, I honestly think daily, but I don’t want this platform of LinkedIn to become another Facebook, where it’s basically everyone just putting you know what they had for lunch every day. I want it to provide actual value. And that’s one of the biggest things that drew me to it. Like, I want to meet other marketers and like-minded people that I can learn from because we’re all trying to uplevel our careers, we want it all to take it to that next step. And I feel like that’s such a good platform to be able to do that. It’s important to stay consistent in both postings as well as engaging with other people.
Pranav Chimulkar: Absolutely, I think even I did not realize the power of LinkedIn for a bunch of like years, because I had my LinkedIn account created long back in towards the start of my career. And it was just dormant I, I had to go back, reset my password in order to like, take charge of my account when I actually started coming back. Right? That shows how much people are valuing LinkedIn right now, for somebody to come back from, like oblivion and then now sort of being so active, someone like me, who’s like right now are doing a podcast almost every single day. It’s insane, right? Everybody’s seeing the power of the platform. And I just happened to read a post today that was very interesting. Saying that, the original poster just mentioned that he happened to speak with a CMO and the CMO said, I have not seen a sale coming from a podcast. And that’s possibly the stupidest thing that a CMO could say. Right?
Nick Bennett: Yeah, I mean, it all comes back to the personal brand that everyone’s trying to build right now. It’s, you know, I can 100% say that the personal brand that you build on LinkedIn 100% ties back to the company that you work for. And you may not be able to directly measure the results that come from it. But I can 100% tell you that the brand that is going to be elevated, and mean people when they think of my name on LinkedIn, they know exactly where I work because it’s just it kind of goes hand in hand. And likewise, for me, these certain people that I follow every single day, like when I see them pop up, like I just know, okay, this person works for there. And those are the people where if I ever need anything, or like a service of that company, those are probably going to be the first people that I go to as well.
Pranav Chimulkar: Yeah, yeah, I think I think on that note, I’d like to know who are your favorite marketers who are doing it right on LinkedIn and which are the brands who are doing it right on LinkedIn?
Nick Bennett: Yeah, definitely. So there’s a couple of brands that comes to mind that is doing this really well. Right now, obviously, Gravy is a big one that’s well known. So you got Tara, Casey, there’s a bunch of them that are posting content daily. Honestly, the gong team is another. Yeah, exactly. And a big shout out to any over there, Danny on the marketing team does an amazing job along with them. And they do an excellent job and like everything that they put out is awesome. drift is another company that’s absolutely crushing it. And honestly, you know, the company that I came from Clary, they put out really strong content, and that’s kind of where I got my start. And a lot of people still connect me to being there. And just they think, okay, you know, Nick was from Clary, and like, now they’re starting to realize, okay, now he’s at logz. And I’m trying to get more people on the logs team to start to kind of build their brands as well. And like, I’ve had a bunch of conversations like internally of like, hey, these are the results that can happen. Like, it’s important to start to get out there and try to do these things. And, my thought is 90%, of what you put on LinkedIn should be about your personal brand. 10% should be about work-related things because everyone can hit the share button of like, here’s a webinar that’s going on, but like people really care when you provide value.
Pranav Chimulkar: Right, right. I think as you said, Everybody knows the brand, because of a few star marketers, I think I did not know about Drift before. Like I knew about Dave, and I didn’t know about them. And there’s quite a big brand. I mean, I started realizing how big they are only when I found them out. Because the same goes with Gong, I think I love the consistency in which everybody posts I think, I’m not sure there was a rumor going around that they don’t get their paychecks if they don’t post on LinkedIn. That’s how consistent and that’s how good they are at posting content on LinkedIn. But I think all of these that we name are startups. And you see why they value making content so much, right? When you don’t have large marketing budgets to spend on PPC, etc. You always go back to content. Right?
Nick Bennett: Right. Exactly. Right. Yeah. And I mean, that’s so important, especially, and then you throw a pandemic. On top of that. I mean, marketing budgets are basically cut, but you still are expected to get the same results, or maybe even more, and it’s like everyone’s trying to find that silver bullet right now.
Pranav Chimulkar: That’s true. That’s true. You also come from a bunch of startups. I think. Two of them have been IPO. Tell me a journey. What has been working at startups.
Nick Bennett: Yeah, honestly. So so you know, I kind of came across a startup by chance,, I never knew that this was even what I wanted to do. And logz is my fifth startup right now, in my previous two logs, I was at Clary, so they’re still going, the three companies I was with before that all actually were acquired, one IP owed and then ended up getting acquired, but all three ultimately ended up being acquired. And I’ve just been like riding that wave, honestly, you wear so many different hats, and there’s no red tape, like, no ones gonna point a finger at you and tell you that you suck or like that something’s terrible. Like, we’re all in the same boat, trying to make it work together, and allows so much creativity, to think outside the box. Because especially with everything that’s going on, like we’re all trying to do the same thing, who’s gonna stick out first, and those people are going to be the ones that are most successful. And honestly, I could probably never go back to work for a mega-company. Like, it’s not my style. I love the grind. I love being able to build something from nothing and see it come to fruition and then be able to be like look back a couple of years be like, I made that.
Pranav Chimulkar: Yeah, I think I think once you are in that fast-paced environment, and you see your work, go to the consumer and you see the returns on that really quick compared to a large corporation. That’s something very satisfying, I think, personally, also I like the ordered chaos, right? I like to say it is ordered to that chaos because there are a lot of people who ensure that every experiment that they do, however random It is, is not actually random because it’s all linked to a certain goal and it’s measured, but it’s so brilliant to walk into work every single day and have a new thing to do. Right.
Nick Bennett: Exactly. And that’s one of the big things why I like film marketing so much is people ask me like, what your day looks like, literally, every day is completely different. That’s what I love it. I’m not the type of person that could do the same thing Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, like nine to five every single day. Like, I need that variety. And I need that excitement. And this is perfect.
Pranav Chimulkar: Absolutely. Also, like, what comes with that excitement is that the sort of downside to this is you have fewer resources, right? So you have to sort of optimize everything, try to get the best out of whatever you have. And I’d like to point out this or bring up this quote that I recently read. I think it was by Gary Vee, where you don’t have coins to spend, you spend sweat. Right?
Nick Bennett: Exactly, yeah, it’s all about the sweat equity. And it’s just like, you know, especially depending on what stage like if you’re an early stage, like pre-Seed Company, or even like, a sage, like, the team varies, and it all depends where your AR is, as well. And like, as you grow, hopefully, you start to expand the team, but like you have to not be afraid that, regardless of what your title is, you’re gonna roll up your sleeves, and it’s gonna get tactical, as well as strategic, but people that just think, okay, you know, hey, this is gonna kind of be I’m gonna have other people do this for me, that doesn’t work in startups like you need to be able to grind and like you need to be able to roll up your sleeves and just be able to jump in whenever someone needs help.
Pranav Chimulkar: That gives me the word I want to know, what does a typical day for you look like? I mean, you can tell me one. How does a typical day look like today when we are in the middle of a pandemic? And then before I think you were at Clary when the pandemic hit, and you can just walk me through the life of a field marketing director, what goes on?
Nick Bennett: Yeah, I mean, as I said, you know, every day is different. So like, the big thing for me is sales is my customers. So my goal is to drive the pipeline for sales. And so whether that’s joining sales calls, whether that’s joining your prospect or customer calls, whether it’s planning events, right now, everything’s virtual, of course, but before, it was a lot of in-person events, both geography-based as well as kind of larger scale, it’s working cross-functionally, with not only every piece of marketing, whether, your demand Gen team, your content team, your product marketing team, you’re kind of like the quarterback to everything, and you’re pulling it all together, to execute in like, I like to say, you know, you’re kind of the CMO of your specific region or territory, like you’re the go-to person, you’re the one that’s helping create that plan for go to market, that is totally driving results in. Now that everything’s virtual, its fatigue is starting to set in where, you know, people just are so over jumping on webinars, and just anything, so you have to start to make them exciting. And if you’re trying to do that in the silo, with basic marketing, doing their thing, sales doing their thing, it’s never going to work, like you should be developing these plans in conjunction with sales and what works and say Boston, doesn’t work in London, and like it every single territory, region, country, it’s all got to be specific to that place, and then specific also to your ICP. So every day is different. And that’s what’s so exciting about it.
Pranav Chimulkar: Awesome. Like, I like to, like make this point clear, because a lot of people expect every single marketing activity to result in a sale, or, like you need ROI on everything. And then I saw this post by Dave, he’s currently with them now. But then he was with our drift when I think he made this post, I’m not sure. But I saw him hold a placard outside his office or outside his house. And that’s it. ‘Everything may not be measured, and every marketing will not have an arrow’. I think a lot of things that you do to ensure the brand has recalled value has branded, because a lot of people who might be watching you right now, maybe they won’t buy from you right now. But when they know that they need something like that, at a certain point in time when they’re ready to buy, I think you’re going to be at the top of their mind.
Nick Bennett: Exactly. And that’s why it all comes back to the brand too. And it’s just like, I completely agree with that. Not everything in marketing can be measured, but there’s there are leaders that work in some companies and they think that everything can or should be measured and it’s up to everyone else to basically change that mentality. Because think about LinkedIn going back to LinkedIn for an example. When I was at Clary, we literally had I had interactions with prospects on there that 100% converted to an opportunity just from a conversation that may not have been measured because it was just a relationship or a conversation through a thing. And it wasn’t a specific program that was tracked. But relationships, and there are so many other things that can’t be measured always, but do provide a ton of value. And I think it’s just getting more marketing leaders and just leadership, in general, to understand that not everything can be measured.
Pranav Chimulkar: Yeah, not everybody has the luck to have a CEO who understands and believes in marketing. Every CEO could understand what a marketing genius could bring to his team. We would all have been in a better place. But eventually, I think you need to like because every function that a business invests in, should somehow tied to revenue, I do believe that it has to guide revenue, it has to also, as you said, sales is going to be your internal customer, where you then sell better. So a part of your marketing team can focus on sales enablement, and things like that. Or even in pre sales, I just happened to read another LinkedIn post, which said that marketing should actually get on to sales calls and help them sell better. What’s your thought on that?
Nick Bennett: Yeah, I mean, I think I think marketing and sales should be tied at the hip. And I think it starts from the top down, if you have your CMO or VP of Marketing, like interlock with the counterpart on the sales side, then it will push down. But if that’s not there, or the trust is broken, everyone’s just going to try to do their own thing in silos. And then as you said, the ultimate goal is revenue. And if everyone’s working in silos, it’s never going to get to the point where you’re truly achieving the Predictable Revenue that you want to achieve. And I jumped on, I jumped on GBRs, I jump on your sales team calls and like, not only film marketing should be doing that, everyone in marketing should be doing that. And like, especially when you get into some of the marketing, like product marketing, and like, they should be jumping on customer calls, to get more quotes, they should be jumping on the video to be able to do things with them as well. Like, it’s not just one person in marketing that can make this happen, it needs to be a collaborative function to truly pull it off.
Pranav Chimulkar: I think one of the important points that you just mentioned, and I don’t think so this should go unnoticed is like getting onto calls to understand the words that your customers speak. I think a lot of copywriting geniuses that we all know, post on LinkedIn. They all happen to mention this point in their tips that, try and modify your copy to suit what your customers say, use the words that they do it and go look at reviews on jeetu, crowd era, like beyond customer calls, read a few customer emails, feedbacks, and then draft your copy for your marketing needs.
Nick Bennett: Exactly. And I mean, if you think about it, know that people buy from people, and at the end of the day, we’re not buying from robots. So if I get to the point where I feel like it’s very robotic on the other side, that’s just a huge turnoff, if you’re talking to me, like a human person. And we can kind of get together like that it’s gonna make me want to buy your product more. And that’s just the last thing I would say, people buy from people, and everyone needs to realize that whether you’re in marketing or sales.
Pranav Chimulkar: Absolutely. Look, going back to marketing, leadership, I think part of it is also like setting your goals like, what’s your go-to strategy when it comes to goal setting for marketing? How do you align your team, all your audio members to like, look at one single Northstar, and then sort of break it down into different aspects for each one of them? What’s your process?
Nick Bennett: Yes, I mean, I think it comes down to what is like, what’s our AR goal, what are we trying to achieve, and then backing into that process? And the big thing for me is a contribution to the pipeline. So both from a source per sec perspective, as well as an influence perspective. There are other measurements like you could take MQLs that play into it. I’m not a huge fan of only measuring MQLs because, at the end of the day, sales don’t make money on MQLs, they don’t care how many MQLs you get because half the time marketing says I did my job, but sales don’t think that quality leads anyways. So when you’re measuring contribution to pipe, it’s a solid number that sales can relate to that marketing says okay, this is what we’re contributing and then you create programs that are both at the middle of the funnel, the bottom of the funnel, what can we do to accelerate this pipeline, as well as get top of the funnel in. And if you’re doing it by yourself, you’re never gonna get anywhere, but you should be developing these metrics and goals with the sales team. So you kind of come together as one revenue organization marching towards one goal.
Pranav Chimulkar: Sure. And when you set a goal, how do you align or allocate your budgets? I mean, it’s typically very difficult for a marketing leader to sort of get that additional budget for his quarter or for his entire year. How do you sort of do that ask right from your CEO or the CEO? Whoever is the sanctioning in charge? And then how do you allocate that, like, you looked at quarter wise? Or do you see that okay, that I’m going to be having certain spikes, certain occasions where I have to also splurge a little bit? Apart from you. Of course, I’m talking about salaries that remain constant. Anything that is apart from salaries?
Nick Bennett: Yeah, I mean, I think if you have the pipeline that you’re contributing, in, you go and you can show quantifiable metrics that you’re driving, I think that will help basically any increase in budget that you’re asking for. And I mean, I think a huge piece of its playing right now is on the digital side. I mean, that’s where I would try to invest a good amount. And I mean, honestly, even video, and you know, I was telling you this before we went live, but anyone that sent me a personalized video, as an outreach more rep, I would take the meeting with them, because I can’t tell you the number of messages that I get for that’s basically a copy and paste from based up from a script. And I put special pieces on my LinkedIn that tell people about me, in hopes that if they reach out, they’ll actually use that in, I would say, 99% of the time, no one ever reads it. And I’m just giving people layups, like, I’m willing to take meetings with people if they actually personalize something. And just, I don’t know, maybe people are lazy, maybe they’re just not into it. But it’s unique quantifiable metrics to be able to ask for the budget, and then I would roll that into digital size, especially, you know, search and SEO, PPC, things like that. And just trying to figure out what types of internal or I guess, hosted events that you can do that will drive the need to versus trade shows as well.
Pranav Chimulkar: Right! You just mentioned receiving a video message. I happen to, like speak with my colleague who heads enterprises for us at guch. And his name is Rahul, shout out to him. He just mentioned that he was in touch with someone on LinkedIn, I don’t happen to recollect the person but then he was sending out text messages. And in return, he received a video message from another person. And he was like, wow, this was unexpected. And, and he also recorded that video, he shared it with everybody on the team. And so it adds that amount of delight that you don’t expect the other person to do something special like that. And it doesn’t take a lot, right, it’s just flipping your camera over and just being yourself on the camera. It adds so much more value than just writing some lines of text.
Nick Bennett: Exactly. And all you have to do is kind of look a little bit into the person to personalize it. And I’m not asking for like, you know, a book about my life but just you know that I like sports, know that I like baseball, know that I co-founded a baseball league. Like if you mentioned that in a video, like I may have no need for your product, but I’ll at least have a meeting with you.
Pranav Chimulkar: Good that you mentioned that my next question was about what I am like being a sportsperson. I also have been a sportsperson in my I played badminton and basketball as sport during my college and my early parts of my career. How does being a sports person help in your career like in your job as a marketer and in general otherwise? Also, I think the disciplinary aspect of human life.
Nick Bennett: Yeah, I mean, honestly, it’s made me super competitive. I think that’s a huge piece of it. And it was funny because I actually wrote about this maybe like a month or two ago, and I said, you know, does being an athlete make you a better marketer? A lot of people said there’s a direct correlation between the two where they do feel like the athletes out there are the best marketers because they’re used to competing they’re used to grinding they’re used to thinking outside the box to get it done. And honestly, it made me think a lot because a lot of the top and points that were brought up, I thought of myself, and I was like, wow, this actually, like, I think it is true. And I tried to do everything, you know, everything that I put into sports, I try to also put into my own personal life of just trying to work hard every day trying to be better. And I think you can literally put all three of those things together in they can just kind of go hand in hand.
Pranav Chimulkar: Absolutely, I cannot question that I have to agree to whatever you said, apart from that, as one more profession that I really feel adds a lot to the personality whenever you happen to switch over. And that is if you have served in the military, right. It’s it’s it brings so much more perspective. You’re so much more focused, and things like that.
Nick Bennett: Absolutely. Yeah. 100% agree with that.
Pranav Chimulkar: So I want to talk about how long’s uses videos if you were to just quickly tell me and then I think starting from that webinar that you just did, there’s no question that videos are something that is a luxury today, it’s a must-have for all the brands. Everybody’s consuming so much more video. How does the strategy at last?
Nick Bennett: Yeah, so I mean, we just did, we just did a webinar with Haller, which is a customer of ours. And I think, video specifically to also portray customer stories is important, because everyone can read a case study. But if you give me a two-minute video of a customer case study that I can kind of consume how I want, I’ll take visuals over text any day of the week, it’s just so much easier to understand. And like just see, I mean, not even just customer videos, but so logz actually uses something of like why logs and it was a video that basically our founders kind of put together. And it paints a picture that is very nice to follow. And we use that in a lot of the things that we do in like our follow up in our events that we do in our webinars, we always try to tie it back to that video, because it tells a nice picture of like, what the company does, how we got started, how we solve the issues that everyone’s facing today. So I 100% agree that video is like you said, I think it’s mandatory that business is used, especially in the b2b market.
Pranav Chimulkar: Yeah. It’s, I mean, often looked at as a slightly more expensive asset to produce, I think everybody sees that it’s very easy to write a blog or magazine, write a 10-page case study or a white paper and sell or even do it face to face. But oftentimes, what happens is, there are things that you want to refer to and project to the person on the other side of the table, a story or a picture that you cannot really describe in words, and it’s always better to show it in the video. Let’s talk about the community angle like every marketer would agree that building a community around what they do for you, it could be around the usage of the ELK stack, the whole community around people could do that. How important is the aspect of engaging in a community in general?
Nick Bennett: Yeah, I mean, honestly, I think the community is huge. And so there are a couple of communities that I’m a part of, unlike the marketing side, and I’m going to give a huge shout out to Rev genius here. So Jerry gave them they started that, and I was one of the founding members of it. And we started as basically a LinkedIn group. And there was like, 10 of us. And we were just kind of chatting. And then literally, I mean, it’s only about four months old. And we’re at almost 6000 members right now. It’s Yeah, it’s huge in the number of people that I’ve met in there that has given me advice, both career-wise, personal advice. It’s tremendous. Like, if you ask a question, people just jump on it and are willing to help you without really asking for anything in return. And I think that’s, that’s something that I was always looking for, as a marketer, as a community to basically talk to other marketers. And there was really nothing out there that specifically dealt with marketers. And now I have access to all not only marketing but all these sales and Rev ops people that are out there, too. And it’s just I’ve met a lot of amazing people. And one piece of advice to anyone that’s not in a community. I highly suggest it because it’s just, there are roundtables there are magazines with articles like there’s literally so much in Rev genius that that’s out there that you would take hours to consume, but you should just dive in.
Pranav Chimulkar: I personally spend a lot of time arranging this leading up and connecting with people, I think the most amount of LinkedIn requests that I receive, have a title of the member at Rev genius. It’s so easy, it becomes so easy. And all of these guys are so accessible. I think, the higher you go in your career, I think it becomes difficult to find people to seek advice from or get mentorship from right at the venue at the start of the career, there are so many people about you to go and reach out to and get your questions solved, get your query solved, ask some questions and things like that. But when you’re possibly a director, or a VP or a CMO, the number of people that are in that position or above become, like lesser and lesser, and also at the same time, the time for every person in that kind of a role is very limited that they can offer. So having a community like this, where you can actually reach out to people, like your own peers, or people who’ve been there and done that.
Nick Bennett: I think it’s super helpful. Right? Exactly. And that’s the thing, too, I’ve actually never had a mentor in my life up until about six months ago, maybe seven months ago. And I’ve been trying to do this all on my own. And like, I didn’t even know what a mentor really did. And now that I have actually a few people that that have helped me a lot, specifically these last couple of months. And like, on top of that just everyone in the community has been, like, incredibly helpful. And it’s just there are roundtables to learn about different things like for me, there are so many topics within marketing that, like, I want to learn about that, like, you know, I don’t know anything about SEO, or PPC, but like, there’s other experts that are out there. And like just being able to sit and listen to them in like what they define important is valuable.
Pranav Chimulkar: Absolutely, I think it’s equally important that you consume content and learn from the community, but also very important that you give back. Right? Whatever, you know, a lot of people say that I’m not really good at this. And I am not an expert at like you said PPC or SEO, but possibly somewhere down the line. It’s all relative, right? You might be knowing better than a bunch of people out there. So when it comes to field marketing, I think you’re one of the few people who are active on LinkedIn that pop up on my feed. And I think being a thought leader in marketing, is very important that you put out your words of wisdom, and give back to the community. I think you recently wrote an article on rev genius. What was that all about?
Nick Bennett: Yeah, so it was actually on sales and marketing alignment. And so I put that out there because it’s something that I’ve seen done really poorly. And I’ve also seen it done really well. And like I just want it’s a topic that has been talked about forever. But I think people try to just brush it under the rug and like you know, it’s Yes, sales and marketing line and we get it but do you really get it like I think it’s a topic that should constantly be talked about. And so I wrote the article for rev genius is like the amount of feedback that I got from Marketing Leaders and sales leaders. I had people messaging me saying, This is 100% spot-on, like, couldn’t agree more with you. That was all like I couldn’t like it was amazing. It was an amazing feeling to know that I did so well with it. And I’m looking to start to create some more articles around other pieces on film marketing, specifically around like zoom fatigue with everything going on right now. But Yeah, it was a really good feeling to know that I hit it right on the bull’s eye.
Pranav Chimulkar: I think that article did pretty well. I’ve been reading a few comments, but then for those who have not read that article or for those who who are uninitiated about rev genius as a community. We drop with the links, possibly in the comments after the podcast is over so that people can have a look. But then maybe if you could just like give me a roundup of that article in like three points one of the three important takeaways that anybody should know from that article about sales and marketing alignment.
Nick Bennett: Yeah, I think the first piece is developing goals together, you know, the ultimate goal is revenue, what are you going to do to get their marketing sales you can to work jointly to develop those goals and not like, not only develop those goals but develop what those actual numbers look like. The second piece, I think, is just making sure that you’re you can speak sales language, like, you know, marketing could be doing their thing. But if you can’t truly speak sales language and like what matters most to them, then you’re just going to kind of get lost in the noise of everything else. And then I think, lastly, it’s just making sure that communication is there, like, you need to have communication constantly, not just like, Okay, I’m going to talk to my peers once every two weeks, once every three weeks, like you, should be talking like daily with some of like, your counterpart on the sales side, and then vice versa, if not daily, or at least once or twice a week. If you’re doing those three things, it will help. But I mean, as I said, I’ve seen this a bunch, and I’ve only seen a few companies that 100% nail this, like on the head.
Pranav Chimulkar: Right? I think it’s disastrous, if what the functions are the lines, right? I mean, scenes, people could be targeting one set of clients and accounts and marketing would be possibly doing something else halt all altogether and could be like a disaster for the company. Right?
Nick Bennett: Exactly. Well, it’s the marketing teams that develop an ABM plan without any input from sales. They just kind of say, Okay, these are going to be our key accounts. But are they really sales is top accounts, like, maybe not, but like, why wouldn’t they have input from sales like, it comes back to alignment, I’m gonna, I will all preach that to any single person that asked me.
Pranav Chimulkar: Right. I’d like to talk about the next topic that you just mentioned, and possibly you’re going to be writing about this? Genius, again, is like resume fatigue. Right? All of us have been working from home since the pandemic hit. And I think it’s, I don’t know, is it? Is it harder? Is it easier to work from home? What is it like?
Nick Bennett: So honestly, I’ve been working from home in the last seven years. So for me, it’s easy, like I actually prefer working from home, I can get more work done. I can, I’ve done really, I’ve put measures in place, as I go for walks twice a day so that I don’t burn out from just looking at a screen all day. Like, I have things that have helped me over the years that really like play a big piece of it. But I know there are people that’ve never worked from home before. And like it’s not for everyone. And you have to have like, you have to have the strictness to be able to stay with it. Because if not, you’re just going to be like doing other things while you’re trying to work, you’re never going to get anything done. But honestly, even when the offices reopen again, I’ll probably stay from home. But it’ll be nice to have a place to go if I ever need to.
Pranav Chimulkar: I think it’s important like you said that you relax once in a while, stop looking at the screen. Maybe take a walk or go for a baseball match in your backyard that is simply picked up cycling and that is like a very good breakaway for me whenever I get up. And then of course then this also brings me to the point that it’s it has been so much easier for us to reach out to anybody that we wanted to right if you want to. Like possibly, like do a face to face meeting with someone who’s not in your territory today. Everybody’s very open to this taking a video call with you like just ask for a zoom. And they’re like, Yeah, why not? And that that shows right? I mean, do this podcast and a lot of people were very open to seeing that. Okay, let’s do it. People have been more open to being on video, generally.
Nick Bennett: Yeah, absolutely. I’m with you. It’s, I mean, I’ve reached out to people just to try to like have a conversation. They’re like, you want to hop on a video call real quick. I’m like, Okay, sure. It’s so much, it’s way more convenient to then having a fly places and like, I think it’s gonna change the way more of these executives like that on planes all the time. Like, we’ve proven that we can do it through video, like why spend all this money on that.
Pranav Chimulkar: And you don’t have to live out of a suitcase anymore.
Nick Bennett: Exactly. And you can eat healthier.
Pranav Chimulkar: And you also like the other advantage is that you also save a lot of time that you would possibly waste in traffic or things like that. You get to spend more time with your family, with your loved ones and how does that affect your morale while working?
Nick Bennett: Yeah Absolutely, and I mean, it plays a huge piece of it because my daughter is actually she’s two years old, she’s home every single day. And, we have someone that watches her, but she’s just in the other room, she’s actually napping right now. And it’s just nice to be able to go out and do the other room and break up the day and say, Hi, and my wife gets home in the afternoon, and then being able to go for a walk with them and just kind of take some time to decompress. But one thing that’s always been super important to me is from 5 pm to 7 pm, I shut it off, I shut off my email, I shut off basically any technology. And that’s the time that I’m present with my family like I have dinner with them. And like, I just kind of asked them about their day. And like, all that other stuff can wait. And then I usually log back on after my daughter’s asleep. But if you can do that, I think it’s important.
Pranav Chimulkar: Awesome, awesome. Like, I’d like to say one last thing before we bring this condition to the end. And I think that point is creating more content. A lot of people are shy of creating content, whether it is in text, whether it is a video. I’m not biased towards video, but the show is also called Mad Over Videos. A lot of people are shy of doing that. But the best marketers would tell you that, hey, there’s nothing better than creating a video right? I want to ask you, why is Nick Bennett mad over videos?
Nick Bennett: Absolutely. It’s your chance to personalize and to connect with the other person. I mean, it’s, I need to personally do more videos myself, I do a bit but it’s like you said it’s so key. And the best marketers out there are the ones utilizing it to the best of their ability. And it just allows you to take the personalization to the next level.
Pranav Chimulkar: Absolutely. This has been a great conversation. And I thank you so much from the bottom of my heart to like, take out the time to do this. I think I’m gonna be doing a lot more of these sessions. And I would like you to also point me to a few more people that you think should be on the show. And yeah, I think we’ll have a lot of people from Rev Genius as well.
Nick Bennett: Right. Exactly. Yeah, no, this was fantastic. Thank you so much. I definitely have some, some amazing marketers that I can send your way.
Pranav Chimulkar: Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much. And I’m going to catch up with you very soon.
Nick Bennett: Definitely. Thank you