CMO Confessions Ep. 2: Engagio’s Heidi Bullock
Hi, and welcome again to CMO Confessions, our bi-weekly podcast at ON24 exploring what it really means to be a leader in today’s business world. I hope you all had an opportunity to listen to our first episode, featuring Matt Heinz, Founder and President of Heinz Marketing.
For our second episode of CMO Confessions, I had the good opportunity to talk to Heidi Bullock, Chief Marketing Officer at Engagio. Heidi has had a super-interesting journey to her position in the marketing world, where she started her career as a molecular biologist and worked her way up the marketing ladder within that industry before moving to Marketo. There, Heidi helped to shape the company’s marketing program during a few key formative years. Now, she’s heading Engagio’s marketing efforts.
In this episode — which you can find right here — we talk ideal customer profiles, why it’s important to prioritize accounts and, yet again, why it’s so important for marketing and sales departments to coordinate and work together. Plus, much more.
As always, we’ve included a transcript of our conversation for you to pursue as you see fit. If you’d like to reach out to Heidi, you can find her on Twitter at @HeidiBullock and LinkedIn at this link. And you most certainly should check out Engagio, which is doing some great work around engagement measurement in the account-based marketing space.
Without further ado, welcome to CMO Confessions. Let’s chat.
Transcript
Joe Hyland:
Hello, everyone. My name is Joe Hyland, Chief Marketing Officer here at ON24, and welcome to another edition of CMO Confessions. Today, I have Heidi Bullock, CMO of Engagio. Welcome, Heidi.
Heidi Bullock:
Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be on.
Joe Hyland:
Yeah, this is fun to do this. Okay, so since we said absolutely nothing is out of bounds, I’ll start with a question that perhaps you get a lot of, but maybe it will surprise you. How does a molecular biologist become a chief marketing officer?
Heidi Bullock:
Yeah, it’s a question. I’ve definitely had. It’s an interesting path. I was somebody that was pretty technical, but I had the ability to communicate really effectively to people who I’m not going to say we’re not technical, but just busy and didn’t have the time to care about the details. And I think just that ability to communicate to people in different styles worked well for me. And, also, being in marketing being technical and having a thoughtful process has been an advantage. So, it’s not as much of a stretch as you think.
Joe Hyland:
Yeah, that’s actually really interesting. I think a lot of marketers shy away from being technical or really getting to know the product. I don’t know if you have any thoughts or experiences with that.
Heidi Bullock:
Yeah, I see that, but I also feel like I see some marketers now almost trying to be so technical that they, you know, almost like it hinders them it’s like well, “I don’t have data; therefore, I can’t make a decision.” Well, nothing’s perfect. How can you make a good decision when you don’t have perfect data, which who has perfect data? Let’s be real. I do feel like I still see marketers that are like, “Oh, I don’t need to be in the product, or I don’t need to know those level of details.” And my feeling is you should be as close to the customers as possible. If you’re not doing that, to me, it’s a little bit weird every product that I’ve ever sold or marketed I’ve done my best to be in it as much as possible. Engagio I was in every day, Marketo I was in every day, and it really helps me relate to what a customer is not only looking at but facing.
Joe Hyland:
Yeah, I think you’re totally right. I mean, great marketing is always about them, and never about you, but if you can understand that the challenges, the plight like the day-to-day frustrations of whoever your marketing or selling to, I mean, you just have an enormous advantage because it’s about solving their problems, right?
Heidi Bullock:
Exactly. And I totally get that. We’re in MarTech, and so that’s a little bit different for us, but I’d even say when I was in the Life Sciences and sold software in that industry, I did my best to work with sample data sets and get in there as much as possible to and I really think it’s a benefit if people can do that.
Joe Hyland:
Okay, so you didn’t, maybe you did, I’ll ask, you didn’t have some grand plan in your career to rise up and become a CMO one day.
Heidi Bullock:
I knew that I wanted to always do a good job, and I think that I’m a fairly competitive person — I’ve always played competitive sports — so I knew that I probably wasn’t just going to sit on the beach and just be complacent. But I wouldn’t necessarily say at 24 I knew I was going to be a CMO. I just knew that. I was going to be passionate with whatever I did and do it the best that I could. So, that’s kind of always how I lived and here I am.
Joe Hyland:
That’s kinda good advice for life, right? I mean outside of one’s career. Just do what you’re passionate about like give it your all and, truthfully, good things happen.
Heidi Bullock:
That’s right, and I think also just being really realistic about what certain jobs are, that’s advice that was given to me a long time ago. Make a list and what are the things that are important to you, and I think sometimes, I’ll talk to people, I’m sure you hear this, like, “what does it take to be a c-level person?” And I think if people sometimes knew what it was they really wouldn’t to, they really wouldn’t want the job, right? And so, I think, it’s only important in life, is it, is it money? Because I’ll tell you like go be an investment banker do that instead.
Joe Hyland:
That’s true. And you’re right, I think there are components of getting to the top of any career path or any profession, perhaps, what you what you loved doing, it shifts, right? And there’s different responsibilities. we have a great finance department, but I loathe having a budget meeting. I just hate it, but it’s one of the responsibilities of the role, right? It’s not exciting, but you got to do it.
Heidi Bullock:
That’s right. Like, hiring too, that’s something that I see, and I think if people had any ideas sometimes how much hiring you have to do. It’s a good part of my day for sure.
Joe Hyland:
It’s true, particularly at a high-growth company. At my last company, which is in a completely different space, we were growing like crazy. I was about the 20th employee and when I left we were over 400, so there were weeks that half of my time was spent recruiting or interviewing which is, truthfully, it brings a different joy, but it’s not marketing.
Heidi Bullock:
Yeah, it isn’t. Well, marketing yourself.
Joe Hyland:
I guess, yeah, it’s true. Let’s talk about growth hacking. Super-fast growth companies and then balancing, ultimately, building something that’s built to last. You guys are in hyper-growth mode. You’re doing some really cool things over at Engagio. How do you view balancing the realities of the short-term growth pressure, because it’s there, versus building something that is in fact built to last?
Heidi Bullock:
Yeah, that’s a really good question. I think, for me, I wish I had a perfect answer. But I think, as much as we can, we try to not grow — if I could use the word — it’s almost artificial growth, where say maybe you add a bunch of numbers you bring in a bunch of customers, but if they all turn its sort of irrelevant. It doesn’t matter, and I’ve seen that movie before. We actually have spent a lot of time since I joined the company developing an ICP, we have a customer profile. There’s actually a segment of the market. We’ve really kind of figured out is not great to sell to even though to be honest with you. It’s made my job, and my sales partners job a lot harder. I think I could hit my pipeline goal much easier if I didn’t do that. But my feeling is if we have churn and other leaks in the boat, so what? It’s not going to help with that growth story.
So, I think having that right balance up front and that experience … You have to be pretty disciplined to do it because if we all can see the short pass to things it’s like, it’s almost like a crash diet like we all can live on some weird soup for a week, but it doesn’t work out and it’s kind of the same thing, I feel like I have to make hard choices, and it’s made my job may be tougher, but I think it’s the right thing for the business. So, the quick answer’s we have an ICP. We’re really focused on a certain segment of the market that we know is good for us and so far, it’s gone well, but we have big hills to climb. I’m not sitting back and feeling like I have nothing to do.
Joe Hyland:
Yeah, probably far from it. Yeah, for us, we were actually just talking about this in our board meeting a couple of weeks ago. We have what we call good DNA and bad DNA contracts and so not every win is a win. We’ve, and I won’t go into great detail on it, but we there’s a segment of the market that we sell into and they’re a little fickle and they don’t renew it at such a high rate. So, it’s really not worth it to sell-in there, right? And so that takes that discipline on the sales and marketing side because, you’re right, it’s easier for us to hit our targets if we kind of say, “Fuck it let’s just go after the whole Market,” but if the whole market doesn’t want our solution, that’s, at least long-term, that’s not good for us.
Heidi Bullock:
Yeah, and I have to say just for people that are in high-growth companies. I mean growth a huge part. That’s retention like huge. So, you can do great on the acquisition side, and if you’re not clever about how you retain and keep customers, it’s actually is a problem that magnifies itself. So, I think if you can have some of that discipline of front it’s really worth it.
Joe Hyland:
Yeah, I totally agree. It’s important. How do you view presale versus post-sale?
So, you have obviously an acquisition strategy that you work in partnership with your head of sales. Over at Engagio, what happens after someone signs? Do you stay involved?
Heidi Bullock:
Yeah, we do. It’s interesting since I have been — and I carry this experience from Marketo, I owned up cross-sell there, and I was involved; I wasn’t the owner of retention, but we viewed it as almost like several pillars were marketing was a piece of it — and I view it that way here too. Especially, again, because we’re selling in the marketers. So, I like to stay involved, as an example. We on-boarded a customer today. I was on the call. I wanted to make sure that they felt like they got what they needed and just tried to make it as efficient as possible. I can’t be on every call, but I really try to stay pretty involved.
Joe Hyland:
Yeah, that’s cool. I mean talk about staying close to the customer, right?
Heidi Bullock:
Right, I mean ideally. You know, I would love to do it as much as possible, but it’s tough. We have a lot that we’re in, but I think I’m definitely, for the larger customers, in the ones that they’re really critical for your business you probably want to do that.
Joe Hyland:
Yeah, not that this is the reason we would do it, or you would do it, but also if there’s an upsell cross-sell component right they like you’re investing in a new client that could foster itself into a much, much larger relationship.
Heidi Bullock:
Yeah, that’s right. That’s right.
Joe Hyland:
Do you want to talk more about your ICP? I mean, that’s kind of where you guys play in the market as well, right? Feel free to talk about how you use your own solution because I think people would really benefit from hearing about that.
Heidi Bullock:
Yeah. So, one of the first things we did — and I think people, and you kind of said this, that there’s a lot of noise — and I think for a lot of marketers they probably see stuff on LinkedIn and Twitter and everyone are just like, “Oh, this is like too much almost kind of that feeling like, “never mind, I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing.” And I would just tell people I joined Engagio, and we’re a small team we sat down, and we just looked at our closed-one deals, where we felt like we were having success and what are those companies have in common. We looked at certain technographics, we looked at demographics, we looked at a lot of different facets to cut to a place where we felt like, “Okay, this is a company that stays with us for the long term.” And we definitely saw a pattern with, as you were mentioning, a segment that seems to have a higher turn rate for us. I mean I can get into it, we really right now our focused-on people that have a Salesforce CRM. They’ve got some level of marketing automation in place. They probably, and this is harder, but there’s a certain type of marketing team that’s already in place. Like, if they’re heavy brand and have never done demand gen, maybe not the best fit for us.
So that’s just a small sliver, but we look at a lot of different facets, even geography comes into play, and then we’ve really focused there and one of the things that I’ve done just for people to think about. I have the ADR team, they report in to me, and we’ve actually caught them that way, so I have data that shows the segment that we’re trying to move away from, we haven’t sold the deal there, and I think it’s about 4 to 5 months, so it works, but you have to make sure the incentives are in place because people will get to their number, however, they can, right? So, you actually have to make sure that the comp lines up to it. And that’s something, I think, we’ve done that’s been helpful. That being said, to your earlier point, you gotta grow, there’s a lot we need to do, and you can’t have such a narrow ICP. It’s like, hey, we only sell to companies in Virginia that have 10 people that are vets. I mean that, so I mean he’s got to be realistic too.
Joe Hyland:
Yeah, it’s an interesting line to walk, though. Because when I got to ON24 I looked at our addressable market. So, I looked at our TAM and is pretty massive and so, on one hand, it was exciting. It was like 250,000 companies in North America that we could sell to and so my CEO is excited. He’s going, “It looks great. We’ve got 1,200 customers right now. Joe, there’s so much room for growth.” And I said, “Focus is a beautiful thing.” And you’re right if we go scattershot here, and we just get 1% of this addressable market, we’re set, will be public, we’ll be worth a billion dollars. But will also have so much waste. We won’t be efficient. And so, we went through the painstaking process — and for us, it was pretty painful, because we weren’t that disciplined in our addressable market — and we cut out a lot when we really defined the ICP by vertical and region. We got laser-focused. And we’ve had some stumbles along the way — we realized our first pass at the ICP kind of sucked. We were too rigid on verticals. We didn’t use enough data. So, have you guys had to adjust it or were you right the first time?
Heidi Bullock:
You know, I feel it right now. We’ve been right, but early in the process, right? So, I think we’re a younger company than you guys, so I mean I’m sure it will evolve over time. I mean that and being flexible the name of the game I think, so far, we’re right. It’s been good and nice to see. I think another kind of point that I want to highlight that you asked, like how we use our own product. One of the cool things with Engagio is we actually can see, of the companies were focused on where we have coverage awareness and engagement, so that’s kind of another nice thing is we can sort of see, “hey here’s an account!” Like, maybe you have a series of accounts that are in a vertical. What your sales team can start with those where you have the right people and they’re aware and engaged and that’s been a huge even just coming here, I didn’t really have to get trained on Engagio we did that right away.
So that was actually kind of a nice thing. And then, we’ve basically been tracking like we have the different groups of target accounts and we kind of track them through their different statuses, and that’s been a nice thing to do to and report out on. So good, but I also think an important piece of kind of defining even if you have tiers. One thing I think is good is to meet with the sales team and the marketing team and say, “You know these are accounts that are going to get the white glove treatment, we’re going to have a lot of investment, you’ll get a lot of our time, but the tier-3 accounts, you know they might not get as much.” It’s more of a scalable approach, and I think that’s another kind of take away if I could add that today for people, I think that’s been really helpful. I even do that on the customer side as well because not all your accounts are the same and shouldn’t be necessarily be treated that way.
And what’s nice is the marketing team can figure out from a resource and budget perspective what’s reasonable because we’re all going to get the rep that’s like, “Hey this accountant, Florida. Can you guys fly out and do the workshop?” And it’s like no, we can’t because they are a tier-3 account, right? And that’s a really valuable thing to do is just making sure that you have those entitlements if you are thinking of a target account-based approach.
Joe Hyland:
Yeah, I agree. I think about, and we can talk more about ABM, I think a lot of marketers still struggle with this relationship with sales and having alignment. There’s no better way to get alignment than to have an agreed upon set of customers that there will be added emphasis and focus. I’m assuming that’s how it works at Engagio, but you want to talk about the partnership with sales?
Heidi Bullock:
Yeah, let’s all face it. I think being a partner with sales is just — I mean, when you have that, there’s really kind of nothing better — it makes all of our lives and days much easier, and I think, to me, there’s like a few key things that I’ve seen that really help it. We have a good partnership because we do. We sit down we agree on accounts and we agree on the strategy and one of the key things though, that’d I highlight, is what’s nice is when we do use Engagio and it’s just the technology that kind of supports those interactions. It’s not. People can’t do it without it, but it just makes it more easily. It just scales. So, I can see, “Well, my refs did follow up on those accounts where we did that executive dinner,” and I can see that engagement and still can my sales team, so it’s not like yeah marketing sucks like what are they doing? They actually can see it and that to me has been just immensely beneficial. It’s like, I feel like it helps marketers definitely have that cred that I think everybody deserves, which is a good thing.
And so, I feel like everyone understands the need to coordinate, it’s just I think historically it’s been like very manual and hard, and you don’t want to hunt down the AVP in Atlanta and say like, “Hey Mark, you know how’s it going? Did we do XYZ?” And I feel like Engagio just makes that more seamless, and it’s less of a struggle to do it. But I’ll throw out another thing, I’m actually comped like a salesperson, and so I think not only having the technology and the, again, the goal of these accounts, but think about how you comp your marketing folks, because I think my sales teams like, “Hey, she’s in it with us, and I am, and I care just about you know getting those deals done as much as anybody.” So, that’s something I still don’t see as much and I it surprises me actually.
Joe Hyland:
Yeah, I think there’s a lot of — it’s scary — there’s a lot of marketers that don’t want to step up and take that on and if you really want to have a partnership with sales you have to have skin in the game same thing over here for better or worse. I’m comped on our bookings and pipeline. We, at ON24, I own our pipeline and we do it in concert, and in cooperation, of course, with our head of sales, but we felt like that was the best way for marketing to walk the walk. So, yeah, I think that’s important. I don’t think that many people do it, though.
Heidi Bullock:
Yeah, I don’t think that many people do. But even just making, even if it’s, like, a segment of your marketing team, like if you have a larger organization, maybe, I just think as much as you can do that as possible. I think really helps because again people do what they’re incentivized to do.
Joe Hyland:
Yeah, it’s interesting. I think a lot of people don’t want a lot of marketers don’t want to work with sales. Like, you’re supposed to say you want to work or sales, but sales can be messy. I was talking to a CMO of a Fortune 100, I won’t mention the name, and I was having this conversation. It was it was it was over drinks…
Heidi Bullock:
You should mention the name
Joe Hyland:
I just refuse to do it because what I’m gonna say isn’t very nice. What she said to me, but she said I was having this discussion, and she said sales is messy, I don’t want to be involved, I don’t want my bonus tied to it. And she had been at this company for a year and a half is a huge company. She said I have not had one conversation with a sales rep, and you just I don’t know maybe you can you can get away with that when you’re a twenty-billion-dollar company size. It’s about growth like you have to be tied at the hip with sales.
Heidi Bullock:
I think, I’d actually even say you should be tied at the hip with customer success, too. I like the idea of like a revenue team that’s kind of my future model of how I’m thinking about things, and I don’t know, I get it, sales is messy, but you know what life is messy right? It’s like. I don’t know. I just feel like if you don’t want messiness then I don’t know why you’re in a c-level job. Like it’s messy, it’s hard, and I think it’s how you … I think part of our job is being elegant and figuring out how to work with other teams. It’s like, not everyone’s like us, right? And actually, that’s what makes it exciting and fun. It’s like, you know what matters to sales, you know what matters to your partner team. I mean if we want messy let’s talk to IT that can be really good times. I feel like it’s really critical in our roles. We’re sort of the hub of customer input and data, and it’s our jobs to kind of make sure that we can get along and facilitate that with other teams. So, I like salespeople and I always have felt like their good partners, and we always, I feel, like the companies where I’ve seen winning occur really regularly as when marketing and sales are aligned. That’s my just what I’ve seen though.
Joe Hyland:
Yeah, I agree, and I like that you threw the CS team in there because in a SaaS model you’re nothing if there’s a huge hole the bottom of your glass and revenue is falling out the bottom. How you market, that’s why I asked the question earlier on are you involved post-sale. I mean, it’s wildly different marketing strategy, if you, if you are involved in the whole life, cycle, yeah.
Heidi Bullock:
I think it’s better it actually. I think, makes you a better marketer because you have to really think about the beginning to end. It’s like kind of going back to the diet analogy. It’s like yeah, you can have weird soup for a week, and it’s like you might lose some weight, but then you get [to] change it again, and I just think like thinking about like balance and doing the right thing from the beginning. It’s just it’s just better for the business.
Joe Hyland:
And you understand the customer more, let’s face it. It’s easy to spout a whole bunch of bullshit on the front, and they get someone excited, and then they buy the product and they realize, “man, they were full of shit.”
Heidi Bullock:
Exactly.
Joe Hyland:
Yeah, but if you’re involved the whole way. Like you can’t do that.
Heidi Bullock:
Right, and I think it helps a lot with your acquisition strategy to because you can actually see what was effective or, maybe, some of the things that you’re positioning that you’re like, “Oh, that was maybe a stretch.”
Joe Hyland:
It’s true because we all do that, right? But I mean if you…
Heidi Bullock:
Never!
Joe Hyland:
Yeah, never, of course. Why did I say that? That’s ridiculous. Well, let’s talk about
Heidi Bullock:
We all make perfect content all the time
Joe Hyland:
Perfect content and everything we say is absolutely true. There’s no there’s no future selling in there.
Heidi Bullock:
That’s right!
Joe Hyland:
I want to hear the difference — Marketo your experience at Marketo — and now at Engagio. Obviously, different company, but there’s a pretty strong Heritage from Marketo. You came from Marketo, John came from Marketo. I’d love to hear what the dynamics are like what the environment is like and some of the differences.
Heidi Bullock:
Yeah, I’d say I’d see the similarities that I think are really, really cool and, first and foremost, we just really care about marketers and making them successful. I think that’s what was you know why I love Marketo it’s just the passion around the marketer who, let’s face it, for a long period of time, when I first got into marketing, you know the top question I get is, “Hey are those hats ready? And it’s like, “What?” And that’s the number one way to annoy me to ask about like hats or t-shirts like just I don’t even I’m not involved. It’s not my thing. But I feel like the passion around marketing and making them successful in making them perceive to really as a really value-add department and critical for driving the business is really common with both companies and it’s exciting. I just feel like any way that we can help marketers is like, that’s what we’re here to do and that’s a great feeling so that’s a similarity.
I think a difference is just like obviously size. Like, Marketo was so much bigger. But I see a lot of similarities because even when I joined Marketo people are like why can’t you use an ESP? Why do you need marketing automation, and so it’s a little bit, still, educating the market in and helping people see it’s not extremes, clearly, but what benefits you can get from evolving your technology stack. I see a lot of similarities. See the people that are involved from an early stage just really care a lot, and that’s fun and exciting and the DNA at Marketo early days was amazing, and, yeah, I think the biggest difference I see is probably now, just its size. And I think when you’re a CMO or a leader in an organization where you have 25, 30 people is very different than when you have a team of, like, eight. It’s just different.
Joe Hyland:
Yeah, how big was Marketo when you when you arrived?
Heidi Bullock:
So, I got there in 2012 and so we were a few hundred people at the time. Yeah.
Joe Hyland:
Still relatively small I mean that’s not huge.
Heidi Bullock:
Yeah, still pretty small, right. And I think the interesting thing then was like the market itself was not many people have demand gen roles on teams. Like that, I remember, was a pretty novel thing. Where’s now everyone’s, like, of course, we have demand gen, and that’s kind of where we’re at with ABM. We’re starting to see there’s ABM leaders and people that are thinking along those lines. So, it’s kind of fun. It’s exciting. But I think Marketo how did a great job. I think building something that helped that really generally help marketing folks, and that’s just that’s awesome, and that’s again, I think, with Engagio, we’re just trying to take it to the next level and do our best to make marketers successful, whether you’re a senior level marketer, or you’re a marketing coordinator, and you’re like, “I have a lot of shit to do.” I’m gonna make this easier, right? We’ve all been there.
Joe Hyland:
So how do you set up the team at Engagio? So, obviously, you guys were significantly smaller when you spend you started. Talk to me about how you built the team and are continuing to build the team.
Heidi Bullock:
Yeah, so anyone can relate to when you add people it’s like the best feeling in the world next pizza or tacos, I guess. For me, I feel like that minute you get some of you can depend on and you have the help, it’s the best feeling in the world. So, I have our ADR organization reporting and to me and so that’s kind of one area. We have a marketing operations technology person. I think those roles are essential. And I think that’s something I’ve seen. I’m kind of like highlighting the areas I think that have changed, and I think, you know, I’m even thinking about Revenue Ops as we get bigger and somebody that probably thinks about you know technology for success, marketing, and sales that kind of has all those key folks reporting into them. That’s kind of what I’d like to do long-term. Again, because, I think, a lot of those technologies most people kind of depend on a few systems and having somebody that oversees all those, I think, matters.
I have somebody that does our strategic events and a lot of like high-level kind of ABM programs, and then I have a demand gen leader, and then we have somebody that does content, social and a graphics person. So, it’s, I mean, a lot of people probably think that’s pretty bare bones, and, again, like at Marketo, the team was closer to 25, if you didn’t count international teams — and it was organized by business units. We had an SMB team that was probably more transactional more demand gen and Enterprise team that did more account-based marketing, and then we had content, social and events. So, to me, when you’re anybody thinking about team building right now that the biggest thing, I think, is different is the person that does your operations and your tech stuff because those people are hard to find, and I think the expectations for them, in a lot of ways are kind of crazy. It’s like, “Oh you’re going to be a Marketo expert, and build a plan of record, oh, and, go fix the Salesforce that she would lead routing.” Not many people can do all those things, and so I think a lot of companies and a lot of CEOs that I see they’re like oh, why is why do you need all those things, or is the text that really that expensive and your, but yet they want all that perfection and so that to me is a struggle still.
Joe Hyland:
Yeah, you mentioned this at the start. Data at a few companies is clean. My wife, actually, works for LinkedIn and people at LinkedIn complain that their data is dirty, and if LinkedIn can’t have perfectly clean data when people tell them where they work, and what job they have, who can? But yeah, I think data is in some ways becoming sexy again, which is an absurd statement, but it’s so important particularly if you get a more and more focus with your marketing, or you don’t have the right contact information you’re screwed. I think those are becoming critical roles.
Heidi Bullock:
They are, and I think that it’s critical, but I think the piece that people don’t quite get it’s like, “Oh you don’t just buy you know marketing Automation, and you’re done?” It’s like, that’s the beginning, and I think it’s like who’s managing it? Who’s keeping all those systems clean? Reviewing your data? Making sure you think they’re ongoing deduping. I just think most people don’t have an understanding of that investment, and it’s hard when you’re a small company right are held to those standards that the level of investment is different, so that’s where you have to be Scrappy and I think pretty clever about it.
Joe Hyland:
Yeah, no, I agree and it’s not one and done right like it’s not like you it’s not binary. You don’t do it, and then move on to the next thing like that’s forever.
Heidi Bullock:
It’s like brushing your teeth. You gotta do it every day.
Joe Hyland:
That’s funny. That’s a great analogy. Data is like brushing your teeth, you heard it here. All right, so, to wrap up. What kind of advice do you have for younger marketers in their career or marketers? Who are looking to do Dynamic things?
Heidi Bullock:
That’s a great question. I think, for me, this is probably going to be a little bit different than maybe something other folks would say I really look for people that love to learn — they just have this hunger for learning and a willingness to get in there and try a lot of different things, and I can’t overemphasize humility. I think I like people that just, even I feel, like, in our rules, I don’t claim to know everything I feel like I’m learning every day, and I think as you get older you actually realize how much you don’t know if I think that excitement of learning is what makes us better.
Joe Hyland:
I know something is happening outside my office.
Heidi Bullock:
But I think that’s what I look for is just people that are smart, and they’re hungry they want to try that they have that humility. It’s not like, “Oh, I’m, I know it all because I’ve been in marketing for six months.” It’s like, “Oh gosh, not at all.” And I think the people that I’ve seen do the best are just the ones that continue to learn, and they just stay humble. I mean it’s not to say you can’t take credit for your accomplishments. I’m not saying that but it’s just the willingness to keep learning and getting better, and I think. Really worth that for me.
Joe Hyland:
Yeah, that’s great advice. That’s a great insight. I mean so much of what we do in our jobs is I think problem-solving, but that’s true in any job, and there’s no there’s no playbook that you can come in and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, right? Yeah, there might be a methodology which is different, but there’s no always right way to handle something so I think that’s a great point and let’s face it. No one wants to work with an asshole and humility is a great a great quality of life.
Heidi Bullock:
It is because I think when you when it comes down to it. I mean we all are on teams and the team just has to be crushing it, right? It’s not about me it’s not about you, it’s not about one person. It’s about, you know, how’s that team hitting our goals and making sure that we’re winning, and that’s, to me, I think if it just like that’s like a team sport. You could have a rocking forward on a soccer team or basketball team, but that’s not enough to win the tournament, right?
Joe Hyland:
Yeah, I was true. All right. I’m digging the analogies. Heidi, this was fantastic. I really enjoyed the discussion and thanks for the time.
Heidi Bullock:
Thank you. I appreciate it.