LEADERS IN B2B MARKETING
LEADERS IN B2B MARKETING brings you peer-level insights into how senior marketing leaders make high-stakes calls under real commercial pressure.
We speak to VPs of Marketing, CMOs, and other B2B marketing leaders who share what actually happens behind the scenes: defending marketing spend as growth pressure gives way to profitability, deciding where AI actually earns its place beyond the pilot, and holding a clear position in a market where every competitor sounds the same.
If you lead B2B marketing at a growing company and want perspectives you can put to work immediately, this show is for you.
LEADERS IN B2B MARKETING
Ep. 6 - How Recharge's Head of Demand Generation Successfully Drives Pipeline - with Rodolfo Yiu
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To win over some of Recharge's biggest prospects, Rodolfo Yiu's team bought their products, tried them, and sent back an honest review. No pitch attached.
In this episode of LEADERS IN B2B MARKETING, host Sammy Gebele sits down with Rodolfo Yiu, Demand Generation & Growth Marketing Leader, to unpack how he and his team kept Recharge's pipeline healthy and full.
You'll learn:
1. How Rodolfo drives demand at the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel
2. How Recharge distributes its demand gen investment in paid search as a market leader
3. Why Rodolfo still regularly listens in on his team's sales calls
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Get in touch with Rodolfo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rodolfoyiu/
Rodolfo's book recommendation:
The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture by Scott Belsky | https://www.amazon.com/dp/0735218072
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Sammy Gebele and SAWOO offer a B2B community-building service that establishes you as a thought leader in your industry and helps you build genuine, human-to-human relationships with your dream clients.
Get in touch with Sammy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sammygebele/
More episodes and insights: leadersinmarketing.io
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Conversation originally aired on February 2, 2023, when Rodolfo Yiu was Head of Demand Generation at Recharge. At time of re-airing, he is Senior Director of Marketing at Doppel.
Welcome to Leaders and B2P Marketing. I'm Tammy, your host and founder of the community. In this show, I speak to team modes and deep feeds of marketing about the best practices and hard-won insights. Beyond the podcast, our community is all about connecting B2B marketing leaders like you to learn and grow together. Tell us your biggest challenge and we'll personally introduce you to a peer who's lift good. This will help you find your own way forward. And the best part? Membership is free. Visit leadersinb2bmarketing.com to sign up. And now let's get started with the show. Today Rodolfo Yu joins us. He's head of demand generation at ReCharge. Rodolfo, welcome to our show. Thank you for having me. Awesome. The pleasure, pleasure is all mine, Rodolfo. Tell me about your company Recharge. What are you doing?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so Recharge is a subscription solutions for D2C brands. So we offer solutions that plug into Shopify very easily and a lot of other integrations to launch subscription programs. So think about like subscribe and save, uh, letting your customers skip or even cancel your subscriptions, making sure subscription program is your revenue drivers for your D2C brands.
SPEAKER_00Ah, nice. So you're the ones making sure that that process runs smoothly and the companies get their money easily.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. If you think about like direct to consumer brands, right? Like maybe 10, 8 years ago, um, there is first wave that they actually build everything in-house, right? And now we have a lot more brands that can do that because of technology, and we are one of those technology to power one of the most innovative or the popular D2C brands. Um, so that companies do not need that much in-house development resources. Um, and so like people might say that direct to consumer is a is a divergence to Amazon, right? Because Amazon have all the technological powers. Um, and so that's what we offer to a lot of like smaller brands.
SPEAKER_00Nice fighting against the big one. I like it. Um, and what is YouTube at your company?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I do demand generations at a broad stroke. That means I support the sales team um for any brands that want to go through the sales cycle. Um, and so that it's my job to make sure our sales team have enough pipeline to close any quarter.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's that's a tough one, I think. Um so high high pressure on you to generate enough nice leads, otherwise, you get the feedback from sales, no?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean it's it's definitely a team effort, right? I think um my goal is very clear, and so does everyone else. And so I think everyone in the go-to-market teams understand what is the job need to be done. Um and my job is directly tied to pipeline, and sales job is directly tied to revenue, right? Um, so we have a nice, nice alignment there.
SPEAKER_00That's good. Um, can you give me a proxy for the size and growth of your company?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so we are with just over 400 people. Um we uh um eight years since launch. Um and so we are growing very nicely. What geographical markets are you serving? Yeah, so we we serve globally um because anyone Shopify supports the geo market, we also support. Um, but primarily we focus on English speaking countries. Um, so think about North America, UK, and Australia are prime geo's. Um, and a lot of brands are started there. And so that's uh where we focus. Um, in terms of um industries that, like I said, is anyone that is D2C brands, um company size is basically from your mom and pop shops where you start in a garage wanting to launch a special programs all the way up to like 100 million revenue for like any brands or more. Um, and so we have like a pretty broad um ICP of our customers.
SPEAKER_00And within those bigger companies, who's the one or who's the persona that you want to target that you want to convince to try you out?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so if you think about like any direct to consumer brands that have like more than 100 people, then they will start to specialize, right? So the titles, the ICP that we target are like e-commerce, um, directors or managers, sometimes product managers, right? Because they also own the web experience or the buying experience as a product. Um, and then we all sometimes we also target um what we call developers um because they are actually building the subscription programs on their tech stack, right? Because it's not just a WordPress site or structure store anymore. There's a lot of um headless or any other APIs that they want to plug into.
SPEAKER_00Can you disclose anything about average ARR for your companies that you target, for the main ones at least?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I can give you I can give you a range. So I think at least we'll start at our middle tier start with $6,000. So like at a minimum, you go through a sales cycle, that will be $6,000 all the way to like six figures, even meet six figures, seven figures. Um, and so that's kind of the the range that we um sell to.
SPEAKER_00Very good. That's a broad range. Um, how do you as a head of demand generation um determine where to invest uh your efforts and money?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so my team definitely focused on the high end, right? So if you think about the Shopify ecosystems, um, we focus on the Shopify pus, right? Um the pus merchants are basically the higher what we call GMV, as in like higher gross merchandising volume. Um, and they are more inclined to start any programs like subscription programs to drive top line revenue. Um, and so that's where my team focused. Um, so to to kind of an ice right to say is like my team owns three particular channels. So like one is advertising, we manage all the pay. The second one is the organic inbound portions of like everyone knows our brand and kind of come into website and convert. And then the third pillar that we look at is like ABM. So, like, how do we target um the biggest subscription brands in the world um so that they are familiar and could use could pilot with recharge?
SPEAKER_00Um and and what do you use as a main um driver to determine where to invest? Is it like cack to LTV or do you use a different measure?
SPEAKER_01Uh we when you say measure measure the impact of the demanding programs?
SPEAKER_00I mean, yeah, measure the impact that helps you then determine on where to focus more or where to add to something basically. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I would say um we use an efficiency. So we used to use just like the top line pipeline value. So like where we can generate the most pipeline channel where we will invest. Um as we kind of swift into like the um recession climate, um, we kind of focus on efficiency. Um, and so uh a metric that I also use is kind of like the program to pipeline ratios, as in like how much you spend on program versus your return. Um, we don't focus, we don't use like CAC to LTOV per se, um, just because we have like a sales cycle. Um, and a lot of there are a lot of nuances on like how do we calculate in an e-commerce or we don't use that in our business.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so um pipeline basically means um the the weighted average uh depending on the the when you look at the the sales funnel, you depending on the stage, you have a value, like a percentage on on probability of how if they want to close or if they could close with a and um I would I would assume an assumption on on the the ARR that they would assume for that deal, and then you calculate basically the weighted um expected value. Did I understand that correctly as uh as an absolute non-specialist in this field?
SPEAKER_01No, I I think in principle you are right. I think some companies do that weighted approach depending on where the probability of close in the sales cycle. Um, and sometimes we only use that for forecasting, um, like sales forecasting on how much I'm gonna close in every quarter, right? Um, in our in our definitions, pipeline is basically means that um the BDR has qualified these accounts and is willing to evaluate us, has a potential to buy. At the same time, AE is willing to upset this opportunity to take it all the way to close. And so there's a handoff between the BDR and the sales, basically a handshake to say, hey, this qualifies and I'm gonna try to close as much as I can. Um, and so that's a balance of like how do you think about like that conversion rate, right? Um, and so that you have in 3D, you also have like that probability to close so that you want to make sure like every sales rep has enough pipeline to close every quarter, right? So you probably think if my rep today in this quarter have a hundred thousand, um a million quarter, uh a million to close this quarter, you'll probably want to feed them like two million in pipeline um so that they actually can attain um for any quarter or year.
SPEAKER_00Ah, very good. So you intrinsically have like a kind of probability that you assume in this case it would be 50% closing if you say that they should have two million in pipeline to be able to close one million. Um, so you have an assumption um basically.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I the business does, I think every business is unique, but like we do have an assumption on if I pass this bar of qualifications, like what is the rough probability to close down the road?
SPEAKER_00And um, I mean, that's uh depending on how tough the AEs are, but that may be a tough bar to jump over. Um, did you based on this um metric change anything in recent times? Um, where you say, okay, um, the feedback was so good uh we didn't expect it, and we pushed more for a program, or oh, that program didn't work as good, even though we thought it was working good, because AEs gave us feedback that the the leads were not as good.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I think the AE care less about where the pipeline is come from, like as in like which program generated the lead and then that, right? As long as the pipeline is a pipeline, like they will they will upset me because otherwise they can't they can't attain for the quarter, right? Yeah um from my like investment decisions, like I had to try to get a better understanding of that. Um, and so it is entirely up to the BDR job to kind of qualify, regardless where the life is from, right? Um, so like the lead can be from pay search or organic or like from a webinar or like from an event. Like the BDL needs to follow through and kind of identify where their needs are um so that they can do a proper discovery and then they will pass it to AE to qualify to make sure like everything matches up to what we can sell essentially.
SPEAKER_00Very good. And you mentioned paid search is one of your three pillars besides inbound and ABM that you basically focus on. Um so how important is paid search for you in creating demand?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I would say it's definitely important. It's one of the channels that we cannot miss. Um, I think it has, I think when you think about search, no matter it's organic or pay, it's all come down to intent, right? Um, why does that people type in that query in Google, right? They must be looking for some information. Um, and then it's kind of our marketing job to kind of predict the psychology behind the search intent to give the users what they want or what they're looking for, right? And obviously there's nuances between like, hey, the pay result versus the organic results, and that's basically Google's cash cow, right? Um, but in our stage, in our maturity, like we have to protect our brand because like competitors will beat on our brand. Uh, we have to make sure um people with the right intent saying shop to five subscriptions, like they definitely see recharge as one of the top players in in the search results, right? And so it is important, but there's definitely an efficiency, um efficiency of three behind that because it is a lot of money that the company would invest in. Um, and so that's kind of my team's job to making sure that happens for the business.
SPEAKER_00So if you look at 100% of your investment, how much uh do you invest in paid search? If you know it by heart, roughly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I would say about 40 to 50 percent are going into paid search for my budget. Um there's probably a bet on, hey, if I only to protect my brand and bringing on my brand, like how much I can minimize on the brand because you might argue they will convert anyway, they know recharge, versus on non-brand campaigns, what can I try to convert, even though they may not search for recharge, right? Yeah, um, and so it is one of the most direct channels that people are looking for solutions, right? Um, and it is important that like we kind of at least whenever people have that search intent, like we show up.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So how much do you invest in in protecting your own brand and how much do you invest into other search terms where people have the right intent, but maybe not look for your company yet?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I would say uh uh 70, 30, sometimes I would say between 60 to 80 percent is probably my experience is, um, depending on how depending on the business.
SPEAKER_00Um so so just to clarify, 60 to 80 percent into protecting your brand or into other such. Okay, uh understood. Into the brand.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, okay. And because like the um depending on the size, right? Um, and sometimes you could uh because every charge right now we are basically the number one in our category, um, a lot of up-and-coming um solutions will try to get mind shares from us, right? Um, and so there's many different variants of our brand that they can try to bid. Like even people would like say have just just have a typo, um, and they will try to bid for that. And Google sometimes is able to catch it, sometimes it's not. Um, and so we have to cover all bases on that front.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's crazy if you think about it. Um, they uh people look for your company, they want your solution, and you still have to pay to be top of search. Crazy.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's why Google makes so much money.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's crazy. Um, and and so basically you're investing heavily when when when we talk about search, you're not investing like at um at bottom of funnel, you're more investing at at the the the whole building and protecting your brand, which I find really interesting. How important is then paid compared to, for example, the the non-paid so search optimization, um so to say, how important is that and also um creating the right sentiment in the market for for your brand and for your company?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I would look at our demand general marketing as a portfolio of investments, yeah. Right. Yeah. So thinking about like top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel as a broad stroke. And I would say research is more on the bottom of the funnel because of the size of the investment and the significance of brand um in people converting in their journey to buy.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_00Actually, of course, yeah. If they look for you, they probably want to buy something from you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and they probably understand roughly what we do, maybe not every single feature, but they know we offer solutions, uh subscriptions. Yeah, makes sense. Um and when we think about like market sentiment, which is like a lot more broad, right? If I think about like an orbit in a planet in a galaxy systems, right, the sun is closer, and that's like where with kind of like the bottle of noise, that's where I would say like the pay search. When we think about like the broader, broader orbit, um that's more like the market sentiment, right? So that could be the events that we attend, where we show up, and where we have speaking engagements, right? Um, there's a lot of like e-commercials that we can go to, um, or like there could be um Facebook market, a Facebook um group that has a lot of shopify plus discussions that we might or may not be in, right? And so that kind of forms the sentiments on the market. Um, and so we do have a lot of other programs or within the company, not just my team, to kind of influence that, to making sure we provide value to our merchants. And I think that's most important, right? Um, because every solution is trying to solve a pain point of the merchant, right? How do we make sure that we're actually doing that job very competently and really can help that day-to-day job and trying to drive that top line? Um, at the same time, like we are having you're protecting, like, we're actually the innovators in the space, we are the market leaders. Um, and so those are much more fluid in in some way when we think about like market sentiment.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, understood. So um how do you change the um I like the universe in your favor, so to say. How do you change the market sentiment? What levers do you use? If as as we understood now, paid is mainly used for uh the bottom of the funnel. So when you already almost almost made your decision, what do you use for the for the outside of this um nucleus?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so we have a few levers that I can think of. Um one is social media, so both organic and and pay, right? So on pay, sometimes we even say, for example, we launch a new product, right? Um we could use pay social to kind of amplify um the message um in complementary to organic social that we're already doing. Um the other levels we have in the company is like we what we call like the partnership team. Um, so because a lot of e-commerce stores use a development agencies um for their advertising or for their development, um, they also can influence or recharge on like how they can be helpful if you want to set up a subscription program. Um and obviously there's like Shopify. Shopify is a big influencer, right? Um, if Shopify recommends us, that is huge, which is happening, right? Um, and so there are other things in the business um that can change market sentiments, and there are many other teams that have uh in charge of those areas um to making sure recharge is kind of top of mind or like one of the top considerations when brands want to launch subscription programs.
SPEAKER_00And um within your reach, within your own team, what are you responsible for? Is it social, basically, of the three topics that you mentioned?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I would say pay social is one of the primary levels that I can generate because uh my team focuses on delivering demand in a relatively short time period, right? Like within the quarter, how do we do that for the sales team? Um, and I do contribute on the broader efforts in a company on how do we think about like long-term growth, right? Um, because we are building a brand that can sustain for a long period of time, right? And that's what merchants want to know that you're not just random startup that will just might be go not in the business in one or two years, right? Yeah, um, and so there's uh we definitely want to help merchants for the very long time.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and maybe in this case it helps to be the market leader in your field or be a very big company compared to other startups, especially now. Yeah. Um and so um can you walk us a little bit um more hands-on through your your uh paid social playbook? So which channel are you mainly using and what what worked really well for you, just so that someone who listens to another head of demand innovation could say, ah, that's really interesting. I could use this playbook and just try it out for my company.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so um primarily we use um Facebook and LinkedIn today, um, because with the help of technology, we are able to isolate our personals and accounts um to target on these two social media platforms. Um and so that's important because one, you have confidence in your audience on who you are able to target, right? Not just like any store, essentially. Um the second piece that I would say is like you have to have convictions. On what types of messaging pillar that you want to use. So for us, we probably have, let's just say, three pillars. One is more on top of the funnel on what type of content that our personers will consume. And so we create, we partner with a content marketing team to create like the state of subscriptions, which is an annual report that kind of dissect what vertical and how subscriptions is helping in the current economy. So that's one high-level or top-of-the-fund message. Then we have like the second pillar, which is like the middle one. You can think about like more product level messaging, right? How specific features can help you address specific endpoints, right? And how can I amplify that message? So, as an example, is we have um something called the bundles. So, as in like you can add three items in a bundle and then you can have a discount for your subscriptions, right? Um, and that actually goes into like a lot of details when you are in the job of like e-commerce. And that's how we also kind of then you can clearly say that that messaging only click to certain personas, right? Because otherwise people would not click your ad. Right. And then the third one is more like on very direct response, like the demo, talk to sales, like schedule and meaning, that type of uh thing. And those are more likely a retargeting play. Um, because for those offers, what we call offers to work, to people to take an action on, like you have to know you have to have a very high conviction that those people already know what you do and know the two pillars earlier, familiar at the minimum, and maybe even have to come to a website to actually take an action, right? And so those are the kind of the three pillars um that we structure or have a framework on a paid social campaign. And it makes sense, right? Because if I do not know recharge today over the course of two, three months, you probably have seen all these three ads and kind of understand what recharge have done. Sorry, and then you will then convert, and that's kind of what we are trying to do.
SPEAKER_00And in terms of um, if you only look at the the the pay channel, let's pick one, let's pick. I don't know if it's different for Facebook or LinkedIn, but let's just pick LinkedIn as an example. And you would distribute 100% of your LinkedIn spending. How much do you make top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel?
SPEAKER_01So I would say uh approximately like 40, 40, 20. Um because you it's like an orbit, right? Like you want to make sure like your span cover enough coverage on your orbit on like where you are where people are in the funnel, and you're trying to each pill and trying to push people in the middle, right? Um, and so that's kind of how we think about that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, interesting. You're not exactly replicating a funnel, then it's more like 40-40, and then you make it more now.
SPEAKER_01Um yeah, and and and there's definitely a non-nuances into like the the creative, the messaging, um, the personas, and how do we think about efficiency on those things? Um and and so if we if we just look at like linearly, like people do not buy linearly today, right? People kind of go back and forth. It might be the right timing, it might not. I may have a new team member join in six months. The new team member is relatively new, they don't understand the the e-commerce space, and so that's like people do not buy linearly. And so, like, I always use this galaxy example of like describe what we're trying to do.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's I mean that that's super tough, I I would guess at least, because there's no direct attribution. You cannot say I spent like 500 US dollars for this one lead and that converted then to X percent uh to a customer because that you have so many different touch points, and and and how do you work with this ambiguity or the the lack of of exact data in your job?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I I definitely think that is the hardest element of any demand gen marketer, not just me. I always I always put it this way if if everything is a um mathematical model, right? Everyone will be able to do their jobs very easily, right? Because people understand LT we do CAG, people know what is a threshold that they could spend on, right? But I think the the magic to their job is you have to know your customers and you have to have high convictions on what programs might work. Um and so we would like to think everything as a science, but in our world, a lot of them is art, right? And when I when I'm telling my team, it's like what information you have to inform your decisions so that you have high conviction, right? And I'm not saying that you will be right for every single decision, but at least you are able to defend your decisions with your convictions, right? With your own thesis, with your own thinking. Um, and so that's important in kind of our line to work. Um, and especially tough now because like we every every company is in high screen scrutiny and it's very tight on their budget and tight on their belt, right? So you even have to have more convictions to like why we decided to do this is to help merchants, right? Help add value to our ICP, and that's the same across every business, I would say.
SPEAKER_00And um, I mean you said it before, but I still want to ask this one question. Um don't they don't your your your sales people feel a difference in terms of where the the lead is coming from? Of course, if it's like bottom bottom of funnel and they directly look for uh buy recharge, yeah. I mean, that's a simple close. But if if you look at um, for example, social compared to to paid, um and that is more like and both are middle or top of funnel, is paid better than social, or do you say, well, um you have to play in on both feeds anyway? You invest a little bit more in paid, I understood. But um I mean I guess what I want to find out is um is there a shift coming over time now, or do you think, or do you feel like in the last year everything stayed the same and you basically um steer the ship in the same direction when it comes to these different channels?
SPEAKER_01I would say, in principle, my besides more strutiny or like high convictions on like the budget side, my my philosophy doesn't change, right? I still need to invest on um short-term and long-term growth for the business. Yes, I would agree. If every single lead is a very high intent, talk to sales from converted, and I want to buy tomorrow, that's great, right? I everyone's jobs will be super easy, but it doesn't happen like that, right? Um and people does take time to evaluate, right? Even though I capture a lead right now, we kind of qualify, they don't qualify, right? At least we have that conversations to kind of educate on what we can offer. It might not be this brand that person is working for, right? We often see people go to a different, bigger brand and then talk to us again just because like we actually can solve their problems. Or people actually say recharge is not right for me. Right now, I pick another vendor, but six months or 12 months down in a row, my subscription programs really skyrocketed, and I really want mature vendors, and then they will come back to us. Um, and so I think I think there are many, that's why I'm saying like the the buying journey is not as linear because like people know what software they can buy. And people actually are very sophisticated in buying technology now, right? I'm a marketer, but I'm also buying technology for my teams and for my business in terms of automating marketing, right? Um yeah, so I I would say it's try to move away from um linear looking on where this lead like Han came from versus holistically like how we think about like uh Australia on go to market.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I I would guess then it's really important to have a good like um line of communication with your sales counterpart and with the head of marketing, because otherwise, I mean you can have the best gut feeling in the world. If if uh if you you don't align on what you think is the right thing, it's gonna be difficult the job that you're doing. Um, so how do you style this this problem at at your company? Because you cannot show with clear data exactly uh what the outcome is. Uh you you have a mix, as you said. And um it depends on also some kind of interpretation. Um yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I think ultimately from a leadership level, right? Every every business every business leader cares about like the outcome, right? I think the outcome to me is like the pipeline, how it helps the revenue go, right? And so I think that doesn't change. The narrative around how we get there can change, right? And as a marketer, it's kind of my job to make sure I have the right data, um, and then to tell the right story, right? Um, the story of showing the real outcome, the impact that we are driving for the business, at the same time, the efforts that my team is driving to deliver that, right? Um there are quarters that like we might have high efforts, the output is lower than we expected, which is fine, right? We try something. There's sometimes the output is way higher, like we source a much bigger deal, right? Than an average like 6K deal, right? And that is a signal, right? It's not like, hey, we have to invest very heavily because of this mega deal come along, right? And so it kind of goes both ways. And I think the leaders in our business understand the nuances. Um, and and I think depending on your market, your personality, the maturity of your solutions and your category in the market, um, all these changes and how you build your demand chain programs. Um, so that all comes into uh it definitely takes time for everyone to be on the same page. And once you are, um then you it's like how do you show your effort to incrementally getting better and better?
SPEAKER_00Um but but you also um you also do something to understand the other side better, the other side being the sales people, um, because in our pre-interview, you told me that you even listened into to calls, and you take you personally take the time and and pick pick some calls and and well just see how this whole conversation is going. Can you first of all tell us why why you're doing that and um and then what you're looking for in these calls?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I listen to gone calls quite regularly to some of the big deals that we have in a sales cycle. Um, one is really understand how the AEs carry the conversations um and understand what value we can deliver um to our merchants, right? Um, and so those are the rationales on why I took those calls. Um, and in the call, what I'm looking for is kind of how merchants react to our solutions uh in conversation, right? And and that's how uh in the early days, like how we think about like market sentiments and those direct words or quotes from merchants are the best example of like reflections of like market sentiments, right? Um at the same time, you can also like over time, like you can observe like people, like the people change on how they talk about our brands, and that's also like an effect of like how we think about like top of all the funnel programs, right? Um, and then the third thing that I would look for, uh I personally would learn from Dosecore, it's kind of like will our product messaging work over time, right? Um, because our product features launch every every month, right? People care different things at different times. Like two years ago, the reason they buy recharge is definitely different to why they buy recharge today, right? Just because the speed of innovation in Sancho Money, and I also need to keep up with not only the product, but also like how sales is talking about brand. And so those are the few things that I particularly look for. Um, and when you talk about like alignment with sales, right? Um sales leaders care a lot more about like the bigger deals in a quarter, right? Um, and if you can understand what they focus on and what they care most in a quarter, and that's kind of build much better rapport or like relationship with the with the leadership team. Um and be at the same time, like those are important for our business as a whole, right? Because that could make or break the quarter for them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I understand. Some deals just move the needle compared to others, yeah. Um so how how much time do you invest into listening to course a week or a month?
SPEAKER_01I would say maybe like one or two hours a week. Um sometimes I also use that as like a good check of like how the entire process is working, right? Um, particularly to me, it's like the BDR qualifying, right? Um, I want to make sure like the lead that I'm passing through is like of high quality, but at the same time, I want to make sure like the BDRs are doing their jobs and qualifying the right way so that we don't too setting the bar too high or setting the bar too low for the process that we define. Right.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I like it a lot. It's like in sports when you don't only look at your own position, but you look at the the whole goal of the team and also look at how the other players are doing and maybe give your feedback there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, totally. It's definitely a team sport. I can't do everything. Um, and I I trust my teammates to do their own job. Um, and then when it's when there's a hand off or overlapping areas, like I know my experience can help to inform some of the motions or programs there. And so that's where that's how we collaborate as a company and uh and in my near teams as well.
SPEAKER_00I didn't ask you the question in the beginning. How big is the team that you're leading?
SPEAKER_01Uh I'm leading three people right now, um, and then uh uh three other agencies in in my team.
SPEAKER_00Okay, very good. Um and you also mentioned, like we just talked about it, there are some deals that move the needle. Um and um you told me that you just started an ABM program at your company. Um how do you how did you get started? Like how do you put it off from basically there is none to now we want to um like push it, push it off and get first results uh in a decent amount of time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I think when we think about like ABM programs, like we know basically we we know there are accounts in in the market that we're in, we want to go after. And those accounts are basically pioneers in the D2C space. Um and oftentimes like they have very, very high um GMV volume. Um, and so the question then is how, right? Knowing that they could benefit some of solutions, our solution may or may not mature enough to do that. How do we generate that conversation? Um, and so that's kind of the genesis of the ABM programs. Um, and to kick it off, we kind of think about hey, what is the return if we were to start a program like that? Right? What is the expected ACV that we can get if we have a systematic way to generate those? And so that's the first thing that we think about. And the second thing that we think about is like how do we staff it, right? Um the AEs will always do their jobs because their incentives aligned. What is lacking to kind of push over some of these conversations along um and making sure like there are is progress um in the biggest accounts that we have. And so that is like what we identify on doing that. Um, and so what we did in the end was to hire an ABM um lead um to kind of create different ports, as in like AE, BDLs, and the ABM managers to focus on these accounts on like what are the next steps, what do they care about, how can we get a conversation? Um as an example, is we are in the luxuries of um our merchant sells physical products, right? And one of the tactics we use on these ABM products is to buy their products and give them their product review, right? It's as simple as that, right? Because we know you are selling skincare products, right? Uh face moisturizers. I buy, I buy your face moisture, I try it, how do I like it? I give it to my wife, take a picture, right? Like all these things are what the owners of the Tsu brands love. And so this is one of the tactics, and we're having fun with it, right? And so you can think about that. It's uh it's it's how do we get attentions and conversations about because ultimately I um it sounds like a broken record. It's how do we deliver value to our merchants? Uh, and that is what we kind of basis all our programs on.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and how do you get this first conversation going, build the first relationship? Yeah, that sounds that sounds really interesting. Never heard that one before, but that's cool. Get your wife to try the skin products. Hopefully, she likes it, otherwise, it's a bad video.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So if you would start um as a head of demand generation at another company for and you have no team and they have nothing there. Um and I know this is uh hypothetical, but um, I mean, some comp I I look at it from a company leader's point of view, if you look uh to hire a head of demand generation. So basically, what would you look into that kind of persona and what do you have to equip this persona with so that uh he or she can be successful? Um and and because I know that uh maybe in the United States it's quite common to have a head of demand generation, but in Europe at least, the companies I talk to, many have have, of course, a head of marketing, yeah, but not a specific persona for only demand generation focus. Um, so what advice would you give a head of marketing or a CEO if they think okay, that could be a good fit for us? Um, who do you look for? And um and what do you have to do to make that person successful?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I think I think to start with, I would think about like the ethos of marketing. Right. Um, because within marketing, there are many different flavors, right? And the marketing to every business could be different, right? Um and so the question the first question is like should demand gen live in marketing because of the type of the scope of work, right? Um and then the second question then is do we have the right people in place? And when we think about right people, is I think about like horizontal and vertical. Vertical is in like how the better can the expertise can be in terms of demand gen and or the product knowledge of the industry, and then when it's uh the T-shape and the broad, is uh how quickly can they adapt or learn any other skill set that may not have they may not have right away when you hire them, right? Um, so those are the two things that I would start thinking. Um depending on this the the maturity of the company and like the product market fee, as an example, the skill set that you need for a demand jail market or first everyone in in your series A is going to be very different to your Series C and D, because the actual work to be done is quite different, right? Um in Series A, oftentimes you're getting your channel started to kind of see to experiment whether that works or not, you have to be a little bit cautious, right? On Series D and C and D, it's like you are much sizable revenue, you have much more playground to work with or coverage to work with on what you can do from a programming standpoint. Um, and so those are the things that I would consider, um, and that's what that's what's unique, and that's kind of exciting at the same time because to me, it's like no none of the business is unique, and the way that you approach demand gen or marketing, it's also unique, right? And so, like, how do we make the best decisions for the business? Uh it's most interested to me. Interesting to me.
SPEAKER_00And and why did you become um or go into go into demand generation? What do you like most about that one?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I I think it's two things. One is I I know the result, like the impact. That I can generate for the business. And there are a lot of interesting problems that I can solve, right? Just exactly what I just said earlier. And I think the second piece is I like the intersections of business, technology, and marketing. If you think about the work of DemandGen right now, a lot of them are using technology in and especially in SaaS, like we are always using the latest technology in the business to kind of automate ourselves out of the job, essentially, sometimes.
SPEAKER_00Perfect. Very nice. So Rodolfo, we are already at the end of our interview, and I have five rapid fire questions lined up for you. Are you ready?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. Let's go for it.
SPEAKER_00So you have a stressful job, it seems. What do you do to keep body and mind fit and sharp?
SPEAKER_01Read. I think reading is how I keep my mind sharp. Because I always wanted a different perspective on everything, literally. Literally everything from like my work to psychology to personal relationship. Right. And so I think reading it helps my mind fit.
SPEAKER_00And um do you what book are you reading right now?
SPEAKER_01Um I'm actually reading right now a book called Messy Middle, um, which is from um a person called Scott. He is actually the founder of a company called Behance, which got acquired by Adobe. Um, and so it talks about the messy middle of working in a technology company, how we can bring products to market, what should we care? Um, and so that is actually a very like I always find myself in those situations, and sometimes it just kind of clicked to me of like I can easily see someone's perspective in this, and there's no right or wrong answer.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, that's nice. We put it into the show notes. Um, seems to be an interesting book. Do you sometimes listen to podcasts?
SPEAKER_01Yes, I do. Um, I listen to quite a lot of podcasts, actually.
SPEAKER_00So uh what are your favorite ones?
SPEAKER_01Um, one of my favorite now is called Greeks um by Jobin, who's a um who's from kind of pluckens. Um he interviewed a lot of executive insass to kind of go through the journey um and career, but personally and professionally, so that I find it very interesting to learn about um other people's trailing in business.
SPEAKER_00You put it into the show notes. And um, who should be our next goal be to be faster podcast guest and why?
SPEAKER_01Um I she didn't know me, I nominate her, but I would say Sarah, who's the VP of marketing in a company called Cine7. Um I was just talking to her yesterday, and I just found her super sharp, very inspiring, demanding marketer, um, and very similar uh profile to me.
SPEAKER_00Perfect. I tried to get her on the show. And now you can directly address our audience. Is there anything we can help you with, Rodolfo?
SPEAKER_01Um, I I would love to uh right now, I like I said, I have a two-year-old right now, um, and I think I'm just kind of get over the curve of um parenting. Um, so I definitely looking for um more network to see if I can find some advice and gig. So definitely feel free to add me on LinkedIn. Uh I'm always happy to lend a hand. Um, anything can balance ideas with me on marketing or demand gents, I'll be happy to help.
SPEAKER_00Awesome. And how can people get in touch with you best? Is it LinkedIn?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, LinkedIn is best, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So look for uh Rodolfo um R-O-D-O-L-F-O and Y-I-U as the last name at Recharge, head of demand generation. You find him there, ping him, he's a nice approachable guy.
SPEAKER_01All right, thank you so much, Sammy. It was fun.
SPEAKER_00Thanks a lot for being on the show, Rodolfo.
SPEAKER_01Bye bye, thank you.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for listening to Leaders in B2B Marketing. To learn from and cope with fellow B2B marketing leaders, join our community. Tell us your biggest challenge, and we personally introduced you to appeal to Slift Tool. This will help you find your own way forward. And the best part membership is free. Visit leadersinb2bmarketing.com to sign up. See you soon.
