Industrial Strength Marketing

Mastering Modern B2B Sales: Building High-Performing Teams with McKinsey Experts Jennifer Stanley and Candice Lun Plotkin

• James Soto • Season 4 • Episode 40

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In this episode, Jennifer Stanley and Candace Lun Plotkin from McKinsey & Company share insights on the future of B2B sales and assembling winning teams. Industrial sales are evolving, requiring companies to adapt their selling and marketing strategies. James Soto explores topics like hybrid, inside, and digital sales roles, customer intimacy, agility, and technology's role in driving growth.

Learn how manufacturing sellers and marketers can adapt to improve decision-making and drive growth in uncertain times.

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About the Show:

The Industrial Strength Marketing Show is a top manufacturing podcast that explores the personalities, cutting-edge strategies, tools, and technologies transforming the industrial and manufacturing sectors. Each episode, hosted by James Soto, covers marketing, sales, business development, and integrating martech and AI into industrial B2B strategies. Tune in to gain actionable insights to help you stay ahead in the industry.

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Candace Lun Plotkin:

You have to take some of your best talent and be very clear about you know. Are you 100% in this win room, are you 50% in this win room and are you really able to deliver against that? This needs to be a core part of your job. It doesn't have to be your job forever, but you really need to have that focus and that clarity that this is what you're doing now and not be distracted by many of the other day-to-day things that you might have on your plate. And then the other piece around best talent, right? I always say that the best litmus test for this is, if I can't afford to take this person off what they're already doing, then that is the person I want in the win room. I don't want somebody who's just available. I want the most high demand person who has way too much to do. I want to free them up from the way too much to do and I want them to focus here.

James Soto:

Welcome to Industrial Strength Marketing. I'm your host, james Soto, and today we have a treat for you, the Industrial strength marketing audience. We are joined for an encore visit by Jennifer Stanley and our new good friend, candice Lund-Plotkin, from McKinsey and Company. They're here to share their expertise on the future of B2B sales and we're going to dive into how to assemble winning teams for success. There's a boatload of content. There's a lot of studies referenced and you're going to learn a lot. So, jennifer and Candice, thank you for being here with us today.

Candace Lun Plotkin:

Thank you for having us.

James Soto:

Oh, it's so really nice to have you, so I thought it would be great if you all can introduce yourself. And, candice, since it's your first time here, would you mind telling our audience a little bit about yourself and where you're focused?

Candace Lun Plotkin:

Of course. So my name is Candice Loon-Plotkin and I'm a partner in McKinsey's marketing and sales practice and our Boston office. I've been with McKinsey gosh 25 years or so and during that course of time, have worked with five or hundred sales forces. I do most of my work really at the intersection of go to market models, omni channel, and I also do a lot of digital business building, so e-commerce, customer engagement platforms and the like.

James Soto:

So you're a busy person and you have a little background in industrial and focus there too Correct, so that's, that's very good to hear.

Candace Lun Plotkin:

Yes, of course, Some of our I think our most interesting problems and solutions are actually presented by industrial companies. And industrial companies are particularly interesting because they tend to be very open to learning from other industries as well.

James Soto:

Yeah, and there's a lot of change happening there too, so, jennifer, you're back.

Jennifer Stanley:

Yes, it's great to see you again, james, thank you so much for having me and allowing me to bring my dear friend, candice. You'll hear a few things in common. I'm also a partner in the marketing and sales practice, as you know, also based in Boston, although for not as many years as Candice. I actually started in Atlanta, which Candice used to work in as well, and I basically just followed in her footsteps up to Boston so 20-ish years as well, working in B2B sales, a lot in industrial. I find it pretty exciting. I think I mentioned this to you before, james, but when I started at McKinsey, I thought I wanted to do consumer marketing and sales, and I did that for a hot second and then realized, right, the action was all in industrial. So it's good to be able to chat about that today.

James Soto:

Well, you have a very sympathetic crowd. We work with icons of industry, those aspiring to be, and we're very focused on companies who are manufacturing the future and there's a lot happening and the acceleration of marketing and selling. It's amazing. In our industry, I feel, it's like the golden age. So getting to these insights is so important and really thank you so much for being here.

James Soto:

So last time we spoke a lot about what was changing due to COVID and how people are looking at the changing buying dynamics and expectations, and that was coming from great content, from your B2B Pulse content, and then we'll be diving in a lot more to your B2B Sales content here. And it started with omnichannel everywhere every time and I love that rule of thirds where we were talking about, you know, we saw very clearly we're looking at, you know, this hybrid, this in-person and this self-service model. So if you want to go back to the Industrial Stake Marketing Show and see the first of the encore before the encore interview, go there and for today, we really are going to direct you to a lot of content. So we're going to repeat this a few times. So, the future of B2B sales there's a great article that came out last year, the Big Reframe which led me to reading the future of B2B sales, which we'll talk about today building the right team and talent to drive growth in an uncertain environment Sound familiar, and so there's so much going on and there's just so much coming from this content, including the B2B sales, a multiplier effect, and you're going to hear a lot from multiple studies.

James Soto:

So I don't want you to fear. We're going to give you lots of resources and links in the show notes, so you're going to know where to go, and Jennifer and Candice have been very kind to be offering to like point people in the right direction. So let's get into it. Y'all ready?

Jennifer Stanley:

Absolutely.

James Soto:

Okay. So my first question the B2B sales landscape has seen a lot of change and I know we get a lot of content about it, but I think we need to be more in a world of what do we know that's concrete. So could you share any concrete examples of how the hybrid inside and digital sales roles have evolved and what's kind of the attribution to that? What do we need? What are those attributes that are needed for success in each position?

Jennifer Stanley:

Well, maybe I'll kick us off and then hand to Candice, because I think in particular, if you get into the world of e-commerce and digital business builds, there really is some unique opportunities and an exciting moment in time for sales talent. But maybe just start with a few broad brushes.

Jennifer Stanley:

And I'll also reassure your audience that a lot of the data and the sources you just mentioned, james, they're all interrelated. Right? We're all kind of coming from this perspective that the selling world today and B2B, and in particular, for those of us who are focused in industrial sales and marketing, I think it's one of the most exciting places, frankly, to be in terms of a function in a company, because so much is evolving, there's so much innovation taking place and, from a talent perspective, when we look across the rise of the hybrid roles or the digital seller roles and the impact that being successful, selling remotely for a lot of companies where the name of the game was you were in the field, on the road, five days a week or four days a week, four weeks out of the month, companies proved that you didn't necessarily have to do that to be successful. And customers also stood up and said we don't need you or even want you in many cases to behave that way to be successful. And customers also stood up and said we don't need you or even want you in many cases to behave that way to be successful. So, from a hiring and a development perspective, you kind of step back and go well if the role has changed and customers' expectations and preferences are different.

Jennifer Stanley:

Maybe profiles of what successful salespeople look like have changed as well, and I think our answer to that and I don't think I know our answer to that is a resounding yes. And so what that means quite practically for companies is the profile you think is the one that is successful for you may not actually, if that's worked for you for the past five or 10 years, might not actually be the best profile for you going forward. And, in particular, I would encourage companies to look at intrinsics as opposed to past experience, because we're finding over and over again that individuals who are curious, quick learners, willing to adapt in different environments feel just as ease on a digital podcast and on remote channels as they do meeting customers in person tend to have more success in today's omni-channel environment than those who may have a very kind of fixed notion of what it means to be a successful seller. So focusing a bit more on intrinsics than you know background of experience would be one thing I think is important.

Jennifer Stanley:

A second thing we're seeing companies do and for industrial companies I think this is actually quite potentially an exciting avenue to pursue and that is going outside your industry for great talent. I was working with a medical technology company recently and they were saying that a lot of their salespeople just kind of keep coming from the same firms so competitors, trading places and I said well, have you ever thought about like going and recruiting from a semiconductor company or from an advanced manufacturer, like a lot of your members are? Because if I promise you, if they can sell those types of complex pieces of equipment, they can sell complex medical technology. And that idea of oh, we can go look for salespeople out of our industry hadn't really occurred or landed in a meaningful way, and we're seeing a lot more of that right now.

James Soto:

Amazing these profiles, and we talk a lot about DNA. What's the DNA of the modern sales organization? And I think a lot of these questions are being asked, and thank you for offering up that context, candice, as well. I think this is, you know, what's your take on the overall context of you know what you've been seeing, along with Jennifer.

Candace Lun Plotkin:

Yeah, I think there's, you know, really a couple things that I would highlight. I think one is you know, it has firmly landed that you need to go customer back and really understand their needs. Know so that they can access expertise in a very quick way and they can very transparently move from one channel to another. Right, so they can go on self-serve and there's good content, it's clear what they need to do, but if they need to talk to somebody, there is a quick way to do that and you don't have to wait three days to schedule it and then you know. The other piece is customer need back. There is all of that, but there is also the what is the right cost to serve so we can have the most profitable models? And so at the intersection of those is really where the industrial clients are saying how do I solve this problem? How do I get the right salesperson to the customer at the right time, with the right content and in the right medium or channel?

James Soto:

Right place, in the right context, in the right time.

Candace Lun Plotkin:

Exactly and, you know, do they have the right content, content including expertise, and so those pieces are really important. The other piece I would add, picking up on Jennifer's thread when she was talking about what skill sets am I recruiting for? Collaboration and problem solving are more and more important Because, if you think about my customers want to access many different channels. They're going to do that at different points in time. Every time, as a customer, I access or interact with you, I want whoever or however I'm interacting with to know what happened before, so I don't have to retell my story. So they have to know content.

Candace Lun Plotkin:

And then, anywhere you're interacting, you need to be able to have a good transition or a handoff, which means, as a salesperson, I need to be able to have a good transition or a handoff, which means, as a salesperson, I need to be able to collaborate with the digital sales folks, with the inside sales folks, with any sort of digital platform, and I need to be able to, if I'm really knocking the ball out of the park, if I am a high level salesperson, I need to be able to be the orchestrator in the middle of that moment across the board, and then I need to come to the customer at the time that they need me Right. So these moments that matter in the journey are even more critical. Your best salespeople can pick out those moments and execute on them.

James Soto:

Yeah, and there's so much information out there and we've, we've, we've, we've seen insights about helping people with the amount of information they need. You know, it's funny that you say this. There's a. The thing that we have to we really think about is how do you guide someone's experience? And we're in, actually, as sellers and marketers. We're in the services business. We are out here to be of service and you know, one of the things we say is it's not handoffs or it's introductions, you know it's helping, you know selling how someone wants to buy.

James Soto:

And because these expectations have changed, we have to all come together and that really requires something that you've talked about, which is creating this one team that works together. And I think that's a really big thing that we've seen in the marketplace, because a lot of manufacturers are. One of the things we've heard a lot is hey, we're thinking about getting BDRs, which you haven't seen so much, because you know a lot of them sell through channel, through distribution, but they're realizing they're asking these questions essentially at the same time, because they're really questioning the status quo. Have you seen that in your experience with you know, manufacturers in terms of that question, in terms of, like that organizational construct and bringing in the you know, a software based sales model, is that? Is that something that's popping up?

Jennifer Stanley:

Every manufacturer I work with almost inevitably wants to hear what are the SaaS companies and the hyperscalers doing? Because they're assuming, and they're making an assumption which holds true, I would say, a majority of the time, but not all of the time.

Jennifer Stanley:

Right that the more exciting innovations in sales and marketing are happening in that space, and it is true there are exciting innovations happening. But you know there are plenty of industrial companies. I would consider you all tech firms too, right If you think about like on the backs of what you're doing with data, with analytics, with the Internet of Things and the service that goes along with, particularly in the equipment world and you know and after market and those after market services. So I actually think there can be quite a bit gleaned within industrial as well in terms of some best practices. And there are two that I'll highlight that I've seen recently with industrial companies and James, you mentioned one of them, interestingly enough which is this notion of there is no such thing as a handoff. They call them what you're calling introductions, they're calling facilitations or they're calling to Candice's earlier description orchestration.

Jennifer Stanley:

So they don't want to leave anyone with the notion that you abrogate responsibility for a customer just because you are bringing someone else into their journey to solve a problem. Everyone remains responsible in that kind of overall collaboration, collaboration construct. That would be number one. Number two the other thing that I'm seeing kind of this like challenging of norms is the assumption that to have customer intimacy, everything has to be in person. I'm not arguing that there is a there is a world where we never break bread with humans again and where the importance of the face-to-face interaction goes away. But the notion that the only way you can create intimacy is face-to-face, I think, is also something that has been proven to be not true. There are plenty of ways that you can get to know customers as people, as humans, their preferences, their latent needs, and to find creative ways to connect on digital mediums.

Jennifer Stanley:

So I think, for those two reasons, there are actually quite a number of exciting innovations that break the mold of what we're used to in industrial sales.

James Soto:

I agree. It's funny we met I think you were in your place in Tennessee the last time.

Candace Lun Plotkin:

Okay, still.

James Soto:

Still at my place in Tennessee, but Morgan in Boston. You know, so, you know, I think you know. Manufacturers, you know, believe that, believe in that customer intimacy. They are dead set. You know, for a large percentage to the fact that if you look at the top manufacturing technology companies it's capital equipment there's significant interdependency for the application engineering of these decisions they're making and maintaining that intimacy.

James Soto:

You still see major shows like IMTS we're actually in full disclosure, a strategic partner of theirs, in full disclosure, a strategic partner of theirs and when what we have seen is just when they had their event last year, it was amazing, the interaction, engagement, it was like a relief to everyone. But there's still that intimacy question and so how do we balance that? You know, when we look at the intimacy of virtual settings, you know becoming more prevalent, how are folks wrestling with these new environments, engaging there? Settings, you know becoming more prevalent, how are folks wrestling with these new environments, engaging there? And you know, what strategies are you really seeing for folks to kind of navigate that to? You know, get to those successful interactions and maintaining that intimacy. I know you're saying we should do it, but the how, as you look at like the fear of, but the how, as you look at like the fear of change, is that exceeding the benefit of that opportunity?

Jennifer Stanley:

Let me give you one practical example I saw, and then kick it over to Candice and I'll stay quiet for a bit. But you mentioned events, james, and for sure we've seen the similar excitement. You pick the subsector if they've had some kind of trade experience in the last 18 months. Folks have come out in droves. Well, a couple of companies have used the opportunity to introduce virtual reality opportunities in person so that when they go home for the other 360-ish days of the year when you're not in person at the trade event, you actually have already experienced their VR situations and their equipment. So some companies will actually send, like the Oculus headset out to folks so that they can experience equipment in a digital platform. But if you've already tried it out in person and you've had that initial interaction, then taking that interaction back into the remote and the digital space becomes quite a natural extension of that initial moment of intimacy in person that you had while still using, you know, quite exciting technology throughout that entire process.

James Soto:

And we're getting to hear wow that you all have been talking about too. They expect the wow moment, candice.

Candace Lun Plotkin:

You know, a couple thoughts here. One is I'm seeing two ends of things right and it's all focused on this personalization and intimacy right. One end is really working hard to make the in-person experiences more extraordinary, more memorable and an opportunity to both share what your company has to offer but also to really get to know people. So that's one thing. So, for example, we're seeing you know as opposed to you know, just interacting at a trade show, for example, but very specific invitations to individuals, right that companies want to get to know better and the experience might be quite personalized. It could be going together with a bunch of folks that really enjoy golf to a top golf event.

Candace Lun Plotkin:

Yeah it may be a very special eating experience that is either very local and unique it doesn't have to be fancy but very kind of locally oriented, something special that you can get in that area and not somewhere else. And we're seeing a lot of opportunities where you manage the transitions Right. So let's ride together to go to this event. It gives us time to chat in the car and it's a wonderful way just to get to know what is this person like, what makes them tick, what are they inspired by. So that's kind of one end of things that are very, you know, kind of more unique experiences in person.

Candace Lun Plotkin:

I think we're also seeing a lot more personalization and really hyper personalization by industrial companies and other B2B companies in digital interactions. So it's everything from basic things like let me help you customize a homepage so that it shows you exactly what you want to see when you come to my portal, as well as making sure that the email interactions are very specific and refer to other experiences or contact that we've had, right, and, you know, putting a learning engine in place so that you're not just continuing to send out more generic emails, right. So those are just a couple examples, but I want to highlight, because we're seeing both ends of it how do you make more digital interactions more personal? And then how do you actually make in-person interactions also more personal and unique?

James Soto:

Yeah, there's this new profile of salesperson, there's this experience we're looking at, there's these expectations of personalization, and then there's this how do I describe what you said? You're like Willy Wonka and you're giving someone a tour of the chocolate factory, right, and you want to have a, not just see the factory, but you want to have an experience and you want to find it enjoyable and, you know, interesting, educational, and you know we believe in entertaining. Those three words are so important now for B2B and sales and marketing as well. You know where do you see the role of? You know the change of the golf game. You know, as, as there've been much chatter about, you know what is the new normal for, like, how we not make it weird, but how do we like really connect with people? I know those are all these little, these little transition moments, but someone's I'm just geeking out. What, what? Okay, how do I do transition moments? It's like in the golf cart.

Candace Lun Plotkin:

Well, you know, one thing to note is, I think, as the workforce has become much more diverse, amen.

James Soto:

Amen.

Candace Lun Plotkin:

Continue to have folks that love to play golf, and that is still a very relevant activity. You probably don't want to play golf with me because the only kind of golf I play is mini, but I think you know there is a much higher bar on problem solving what is the best way to engage? Not everyone is going to be excited about playing golf or going to a basketball game or a football game. All of those things are still in the mix and many people will enjoy them, but there's, I think, a higher bar on thoughtfulness to say how do I create an experience with great content? And so when you were saying entertaining, I would actually say it's not so much entertaining, it's engaging, Because you're bringing content, you're bringing yourself and you're sharing a bit about yourself as you do this and also trying to understand what makes a good experience for the people that you may be interacting with, and so I think what that also often means is more smaller custom events versus something big or the same thing we did last year.

James Soto:

Yeah, there's a sense of empathy implied in that and that you have to be predictive, you know, in terms of understanding how one it's a decision making unit or a business or an individual how they you know how they want to interact with you and you've got to be somewhat predictive. And then you've got to be prescriptive with your approach and then you really find how do you like, personalize that? That's a big ask for our now integrated organizations, our salespeople and the marketers that are enabling them and collaborating with them. So, as we look at your research here, switch a gear quickly and anyone could take this question.

James Soto:

The agility and insights have you know research, agility and insights have been identified as pillars for outperformance. So we're doing all of these things and we're hinting at the research, agility and insights here. Could you, as a kind of from a point of what you're hearing from sales leaders, like, how, from sales leaders, how are sales leaders, how are they going to guide their teams in this adaptation, to adapting to these different deal stages Because they're looking at it that way as well and how they can bring these insights that they need to do some of these things and get that within the customer's reach?

Jennifer Stanley:

Maybe I'll start with the thought about this is where marketers have a really important role to play, because the way that the insights are built and are crafted and are delivered to the sales force, I think, determines to a large degree how agile in turn they will be able to be. And so what I mean by that is three things. One are the insights prescriptive? When I get them, does it tell me, Jennifer, make this shift in how you are approaching a proposal that you have and kind of the early stage of response to the customers? Are they prescriptive in the sense of to a sales leader? Here's where you need more capacity, not today, but six months from now. You may want to beef up your hybrid or your digital teams because of customers in remote locations and we're predicting more demand from there. But some notion of like the prescription with the insights. Second, the hyper personalization that Candice mentioned of the insights is important for sellers as well. So how do you take the notion of very, very specific, often persona-led insights about a customer and then deliver them to me if I'm like a key account representative as an example in a way that I can consume it? So the insight is not just hyper-personalized about the customer, but it's hyper-personalized to me as well. So for me, Jennifer, it's easier for me to consume it if you just stick it in CRM and leave me to my own devices to check in For another salesperson.

Jennifer Stanley:

It might be that you need some kind of forced interaction in order to deliver those insights.

Jennifer Stanley:

So that would be the second thing, and then the third piece is I think we need to be willing to break a lot more orthodoxies, and so the better the insights are, the more you can do things like dynamic territory reassignment, and so I have a client that I work with who now reallocates territories every quarter, sometimes every couple of months, because they're in a fast part of their business anyway is in fast moving goods, and the theory of the case is use it or lose it. We're not waiting until the end of the year to figure out if you're engaging with the customer lists and the prospects you're given. If you're not, we're going to free those up to somebody else, and because we can work remotely, you're not tied to a specific geography anymore. So having insights about where that demand is flowing and who's using the information internally or not, allows sales leaders to really rethink territory management in a way that I think many people might still find uncomfortable, but actually it could prove pretty beneficial.

James Soto:

Wow, and so many organizations put an exorbitant amount of resources in the folks they're trying to get to perform versus redirecting to you know to where the market conditions, maybe the demand matches the best service or delivery in terms of sales. That is so you just scared a lot of people with that.

Jennifer Stanley:

I'm hoping to inspire people, James, maybe not scare you. I'll let you know it's possible. Come on, it's an uncertain times we're in, right.

James Soto:

Well, it's not a Monday, so we're at least not here recording Monday. So, on that note, we're talking a lot about technology. We're talking a lot about data, and obviously using them as buzzwords is one thing, but you know, technology and analytics play a real pivotal role in gaining a competitive edge. So how can sales organizations move beyond the basics and the status quo and like maximize, you know, all the potential of all of this acquired technology data so they can drive growth and improve decision making. Candice, what's your take on that?

Candace Lun Plotkin:

both and improve decision-making. Candice, what's your take on that? Yeah, one of the most innovative things that we're seeing is for companies to create these cross-functional pods, and so it might be anywhere between six and 10 people. It takes a page out of software and development and what we often use when we're doing digital business building, but within this pod you'll have folks that are great at analytics, you'll have folks who are great at sales, folks that are great at marketing, folks from finance, folks from legal, and you'll actually pull together these teams, and what we're finding is if you give that team a clear mandate that says here's a set of customers or a sector or some defined set, what I kind of call like a playground to play in and some direction around, for example, you're charged with going to acquire some new customers in this particular space, and then you can unleash the analytics that then inform what they go do. This pod needs to have some clear direction, but they also need space to go generate the insights and then go and execute, learn from it and go to the next thing, and so we're seeing a lot of that work really well.

Candace Lun Plotkin:

You often see this in the digital marketing space. We're seeing it more and more where you marry that with sales. So we're actually going to go do some sales calls with people and there are very interesting things that you learn. They could be very tactical things like if Jennifer is the salesperson and we actually arm her and show her how to do this live demo right remotely, and if we actually send her with an IT person who can actually show her how to do this, she'll pick it up really quickly, versus we just send Jennifer an email saying, hey, use this demo in your next sales pitch. Tactical things like that you can learn from, and then you can also learn from other, more strategic insights. So, for example, in this particular sector there's a lot of M&A activity. Right, in this context, here are the types of things or the types of conversations or questions that your customers might have. So let's arm you with something very specific to go and talk to them about, in addition to whatever you were going to bring.

James Soto:

Well, that's great for enablement. So there's a feedback loop, exactly. So you're talking about this pod structure. Yeah, and this is a cross-functional pod where multiple people from multiple functional business units are there, correct? Yes, and you know this gets into that cross-functional win rooms as the new standard that you all wrote about and the big reframe. So everybody check that out if you're watching or listening in, and what it says is a win room brings together a cross-functional team comprising people and sales from a combination of marketing, product delivery, finance and technology and any other functions needed, all working together at a structured cadence to focus on closing deals. That sounds understandable. How do you think from a standpoint? You know our audience are very much siloed. That sounds great in principle, where you know what would be the guidance that you would give to someone really looking at how to create that pod, that wind room team. Where have you seen it? What's maybe an example that comes to mind?

Candace Lun Plotkin:

So there are so many examples and we get very excited about this because this really works. Let me talk first about what makes it work, and I can give you an example. What makes it work are the following things and, jennifer, you should jump in here also you need to have a very senior leader who is the sponsor and who's going to break down any barriers that might come in the way. You can't run this in kind of the normal sales process, because that can also be quite slow, right? Oh, you have to wait until you get this approval and you have to do this, and by the time you've done that, everyone's exhausted and they're not going to follow up because they have their day job. So that's one thing.

Candace Lun Plotkin:

Second thing is you have to take some of your best talent and be very clear about you know, are you 100% in this win room, are you 50% in this win room and are you really able to deliver against that? This needs to be a core part of your job. It doesn't have to be your job forever, but you really need to have that focus and that clarity that this is what you're doing now and not be distracted by many of the other day-to-day things that you might have on your plate and then the other piece around best talent, right? I always say that the best litmus test for this is, if I can't afford to take this person off what they're already doing, then that is the person I want in the win room. I don't want somebody who's just available. I want the most high demand person who has way too much to do. I want to free them up from the way too much to do and I want them to focus here. And it's counterintuitive because you often will staff these with somebody who's free.

James Soto:

I've taken so much heat on this, so I'm the senior sponsor. I've taken one of my best talented person that's in very high demand, and so we're an omni-channel market agency focused on the manufacturing sector and the biggest challenge organizations.

James Soto:

It's like the cobbler wearing the worst pair of shoes, and I know manufacturers can relate to this as our own marketing and our own sales, because you have this mandate in a lot of these organizations around being billable, unbillable. So I said this is just not working. Like, how can like us as fantastic strategic marketers? You know plan design, execute, measure. You know how this can't be that difficult. So I created a growth team where they wake up every single day. This is what they're thinking about. We've integrated sales marketing. We've got analysts and influencers. We've got analysts and influencers and it's really this team that says, hey, every day you're waking up thinking about the full, from the first touch point all the way through the introductions to the team and I did all those things and people thought I was crazy and we don't really took a turn.

James Soto:

We took a lot of heat for it because we pull out high demand people to kind of take a senior role in these things. It's crazy. So you've just validated my thesis, and a lot of pain to this point now, no, but it's working fantastic Well you're not alone, right I?

Jennifer Stanley:

mean a lot of executives that we see go through this same journey. Right, they take the heat for doing exactly what you just described, and often it has to be a senior enough executive who has that kind of strategic vision and also, frankly, the authority within a company to be able to make it happen. I would say, on a smaller scale, if you are someone in a silo who is excited to do this, reaching out to a senior, someone who could be, or you would want to be, a senior sponsor with your idea, here's what my growth team would do. Here's what impact would look like, here's what I need to make it happen. And kind of enrolling from the bottom up I've also seen be quite successful. And then, by the way, practically just folks may wonder well, how do you actually get this to happen on an everyday basis?

Jennifer Stanley:

Rethinking the incentive scheme is also quite important. The reason you get silos is because people are incentivized to maximize their silos. Well, what if, all of a sudden, you're not incentivized to maximize your silos? Or the surest way to a faster, promotable career track is to work outside the silo? So giving people incentives around things could be like number of competitive takeaways, like you might spend six months just focused on the number, so that your growth team or your win room is going after kind of that playground of competitive takeaways without really thinking about what's commissionable in our old structure not commissionable. But if you have the impact we're asking you to go have, then there's some other bonus that's out there for you. So I do think there is there's an opportunity here, and this is where HR has a role to play, as HR and finance have a role to play as well. How can we get creative to force people to come out of their silos, because there's some other exciting set of carrots that are out there.

James Soto:

The incentive, the reframing and the re rethinking of incentives seems very, very much apropos for where we are at this moment and it's interesting that you bring that up. I would expect you guys to be putting out something just on this topic alone. I think it's fascinating.

Jennifer Stanley:

Candice has. She truly is one of our top compensation and incentive experts for sales. Yeah, Candice.

James Soto:

On that note, talent is at the heart of every successful sales organization and so, as we look at this innovation, whether it's hiring practices, training approaches, what can these leaders adopt to support this new way hybrid inside digital sales reps, and what role does that not just the practice, but this continuous learning, because it's going to need a lot going to play in really nurturing this center of excellence.

Candace Lun Plotkin:

So, james, I think there's two things to add here, I think one, the accountability for impact is a really big one, and then the other one is transparency. Because if you take your team and, by the way, thank you for sharing your example Now I didn't have to share one of mine the wonderful thing and the critical thing is to make sure there's transparency. Because if you take your team and you're hiding somewhere like quote hiding somewhere and then you're going to share your results all at the end you're probably going to cherry pick your best results. I think that's human nature. But if you're very transparent, that says we're running in sprints, we signed up to do this, here's how it worked, here's the parts that really worked, these work less well, this experiment, and so we're going to tweak and we're going to change and then go do this.

Candace Lun Plotkin:

We hit our targets, we didn't hit our targets right. So there has to be some patience, I think, from the leadership for the moments where you may not hit, but also the guidance for how do you adjust and adapt and get there. So that's kind of one thing, and I think you had asked kind of a you start small, because it can be a shock to the system. If you want to say I'm going to go and redo all the competent incentives so that people collaborate, that's a hard thing to say yes to it is an easier thing to say.

Candace Lun Plotkin:

I take a ring fence set of people with a very specific task and an impact that they need to achieve. I'm going to rejigger, for this small group of people, their competent incentives. I'm going to rejigger for this small group of people, their confidence incentives. I'm going to work out and build the process by which they work together across their different roles, and then I'm going to make sure that I invest enough to learn as we go and to change course when I need to, and I'm going to be really clear about communicating what's happening to people and to the leadership. And so that is an easier ask. And then I think you can prove the model as you go. People will then be raising their hand saying wait, I want to do that because they see the example of the impact and they see the relative speed, combined with patience, from management and leadership, with running the model.

James Soto:

Yeah, there's gosh. We could just talk on this one subject for a very, very long time. This reminds me of an interview that I had with I don't know if you've heard of John Miller. He's the chief marketing officer of Demandbase, an account-based marketing platform. He's the chief marketing officer of Demandbase, an account-based marketing platform, and we just recorded with him last week and he said some very, very interesting things. He really sees and I think he may have been inspired actually by some of the reading he may have done on you, but what he looked at is they're rethinking account-based marketing model and they're saying we really need to look at this decision-making unit and really look at the predictive data and their predictive AI that they're really starting to pioneer there.

James Soto:

And you know, one of the things that he said is that he really sees that you just can't have. You can't have along these lines. You have to be playing on the same team. You can't be keeping two different scorecards and traditionally, marketing and sales have kept two different scorecards and how ridiculous is that? We're all going for the same goal. Literally, we want to defend our goal, but we also want to score goals and it's to win the game and this is going to be a pretty you know. What do you think you know as we. You know, what do you think, jennifer, what do you think the future has been hinting at? What does it look like to you now as you look through? You know, building these great. You know getting this great talent, developing this great talent, meeting the customer on their terms. And as we look at that like, what do you see as the future of what these organizations will look like?

Jennifer Stanley:

Yeah sure. I'm going to share two words in response to what you were just describing. That came out of your conversation with John Data democratization. And the reason I say that I think this is super important to the future of where we're headed is because how much energy is put into in companies keeping data siloed or secret from different parts of the organization.

Jennifer Stanley:

If you're all working toward the same goal of having success with your customers, retaining the target customers and being as profitable as you can be, helping your customers be as profitable as they can be that if that truly is the objective goal, then marketing, sales, product engineering, finance right, all of those functions should be able to see the same data about what we are achieving with the customer or not achieving with the customer, and yet systems are set up to keep people from seeing that.

Jennifer Stanley:

So one of the biggest innovations I'm seeing and this is where I feel like someone has to say the phrase generative AI, where the promise of generative AI, I think, relies to a large degree on how democratized you're willing to make your data in an organization, because otherwise, how can you generate new insights about the decision makers or influencers at a customer that give you better content to have conversations with them, if those sets of algorithms can't see all of the data and you can't receive all of the insights that are being generated from a more democratized set of data?

Jennifer Stanley:

So I think one of the big you know, another big orthodoxy that we will likely see upended, probably pretty quickly, I mean, I hate to put the crystal ball out there, but I'm seeing it enough, or at least the discussion enough in many companies about sharing more data more transparently in the service of the customer. I think we might see something break open there, and that's also an element of agility. Right, how quickly can you get information, share information, see information and then do something exciting with it? It sounds super basic, but it's actually not that easy, given the way the systems are set up.

James Soto:

It's really intuitive. The intent has always been to have the center of business on your customer and their needs and wants, and profit shall be that reward for that satisfied customer and to do that at every phase of their journey as you are serviced and delivering on your products and solutions. You should be doing that. We had a very interesting interview with the VP of product at HubSpot, the marketing hub, nicholas Holland, and he said it related to CRM. He's like if marketing and sales are not at the CRM table, you're doing it wrong. Oh, absolutely so.

James Soto:

I think ultimately, you have to look at this entire enterprise, because marketing as a core function serves so many other areas. At the executive level, at the business unit level, you support HR, you support recruitment, r&d, the product development lifecycle, and in so many manufacturing businesses I'm talking billion-dollar businesses there's not even a CMO and so it's not a core, distinguished function of the business. And that's actually one of the reasons why I created Industrial, because it was a pain point in the market, and so they've been transitioning from the state of the tradition, which is still there, to to to, you know, trending digital and meeting that digital buyer on buying group, you know to being these digital pacesetters and and so it's, it's, it's an interesting how we all have to get together, navigate where these folks are on these journeys. So you know, as you, as you look at the uncertain future in your mind, candice, and what we're seeing in terms of trends, you know how do we kind of get the talent, get the roles. You know, like, how do we kind of wrap this up in your mind?

Candace Lun Plotkin:

Well, so, james, a couple of things and really picking up on the last pieces of the discussion. I think, Jennifer, if you remember, this was like 2012, where we would march around the office saying marketing and sales need to be best friends.

Jennifer Stanley:

We wrote an article on that too, candice, we did. Those were the days, she's not wrong.

Candace Lun Plotkin:

We did actually march around the office and say that the good thing about this, though, is, you know, I think what we're going to see over time is a breaking open of the front end of the funnel and the back end of the funnel, right? So now, we still very much operate in this. There's a marketing funnel and there's a sales funnel, and wouldn't it be nice if you could share the data across and if people work together? Right, james? You earlier said I don't like the idea of a handoff. Right, I don't like something thrown over the wall.

Candace Lun Plotkin:

This is exactly what we're talking about, and I think, in this new world, you're going to be thinking about talent across the entire marketing and sales funnel. I think you're going to be looking at capabilities that actually blur and blend across kind of traditional marketing duties to traditional sales duties. You mentioned yourself the rise of the BDR, right? If you're seeing more companies in the industrial space recruiting this role, that role sits in between marketing and sales, and so I think, as you look at your talent, you're looking for talent that's more fluid across the two funnels, so it's really one funnel. And then I think you're also looking, when you talk about this thread of personalization and omni-channel the greater need to be helping orchestrate across the channel, helping to guide the customers where you would like them to go, based on what you think they need, and then continuing to learn and get sharper and sharper at that.

James Soto:

Yeah, it's almost as if we need to stop the thinking in this binary way about the sales funnel and understand that we're now overlapping the talent, the capabilities, the orchestration, these fluid, flexible, elastic, you know talent, you know roles that we have, at the same time overlapping the customer and the customer's experience. Because it's only logical that this all comes together, because all the core ingredients are there and they're now as a matter of how do we start to break open? If we're going to break open the front and end of the funnel, I just want to talk to a lot of folks like well then, let's get the closed loop analytics. You know a closed loop organization, but you know, but no one can be closed off in it, so you know.

Jennifer Stanley:

On, that continuous loop or a completed loop.

James Soto:

Oh, my goodness, so exciting times, right, we will never get bored in this sense. So on that note, I wanted to you know thank you, jennifer and Candice, for sharing your amazing insights. There's so much more we can go into into the future of B2B sales. But before we wrap up, because there's so much great content, where and what you know can our audience point themselves to and find your current research, all these exciting things we discussed, things that are on the horizon and everything they'd want to know about the services McKinsey offers.

Jennifer Stanley:

One easy way you can find both me and Candice on almost every social media platform and we have links to a lot of these articles. So, for example, james, the one on the future of B2B sales building the right team and talent to drive growth in an uncertain environment If you just typed in, or you could go look at me on LinkedIn, you would see the link to that. Or you just type in like McKinsey B2B sales talent it's our latest article from June. It pops up. That might be the easiest way to think about it. You can also go to our McKinsey Company website. Under our Growth, marketing and Sales Practice, we have a whole section our insights. Everything is there. It's usually tracked by date and you will see a split between B2B and B2C, so you can go to the B2B area as well.

James Soto:

Fantastic.

Jennifer Stanley:

Multiple paths to the same content and, of course, you can always feel free to reach out to me or Candice directly.

James Soto:

Yeah, and Candice, what's your favorite piece that you'd want to direct? You know your favorite thing you've worked on you'd like to direct someone to.

Candace Lun Plotkin:

I think it's probably our most recent article on B2B Pulse right, which is, you know, it's called the multiplier effect and it really shows how winning B2B companies, what levers they're pulling to drive, you know, I would say, outsized growth versus their peers. That would be, I think, the most relevant and the one that summarizes a lot of this conversation that we're having today.

James Soto:

OK, april of this year. So if you were working with a small cap $1 billion manufacturing company, they're kind of on the trending digital phase of their evolution. Final question what's the one thing that you would, of all the things they have to do related to sales, what's the one thing you would suggest they do? Candice, put you up on the spot.

Candace Lun Plotkin:

I would talk to customers and I would map their journeys and understand where the bottlenecks are and then I would choose the highest priority, highest value ones to go and solve.

James Soto:

Good one, Jennifer. That's a tough one.

Jennifer Stanley:

It is tough. I'm going to go in a little bit of a different direction, but maybe it builds actually, because you have that insight. Then what Hybrid capacity? I would be putting my dollars behind hybrid sales capacity bias toward remote digital sales, because you get a lot more leverage out of them. So, assuming that this small cap, a billion dollar-esque company, is on a rapid growth or wants to be on a rapid growth trajectory, you'll get there faster with more capacity. That looks like that type of talent that we've been discussing today.

James Soto:

So talk to your customers and ramp up that hybrid capacity. Well, thank you again, Jennifer and Candice, for being on the show. It has been wonderful having you.

Jennifer Stanley:

Thank you, James. We were delighted to be here.

James Soto:

Okay. So, on that note, it's just been such an enlightening discussion. I know our audience will find your expertise and immensely valuable, and to our audience will find your expertise immensely valuable and to our listeners. I just hope that you heard just one thing, one golden nugget that inspires you to take that first step to move your business forward.

James Soto:

We talked a lot about this new profile of the salesperson, the experience. We need to look at the personalization. How do we break through, how do we manage through these transitions that happen in this personalization? How do we break through, how do we manage through these transitions that happen in this buying journey? How do we democratize this data so we can use insights, and how can we really look to the future for how these new tools are going to come up and help us along the way? There is just so much happening. So, on that note, I just want to thank you for showing up here and joining us yet again for this encore. Please subscribe to Industrial Strength Marketing on your preferred podcast platform and make sure to follow us on LinkedIn. You can always check us out on YouTube and for more insights, content and highlights, visit us at industrialstrengthmarketingcom. So next time I'm James Soto reminding you to make marketing the strength of your business. So take care, here we go.

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