CMO Eric Herzog on The Art & Science of The Sales-Marketing Relationship – EP3

Hey everyone. Welcome to Marketing, art, and Science. I'm Lisa Martin, CMO advisor, show host and tech correspondent.

Today we have a great episode for you. We're gonna be learning about Infin at from its CMO, what it's doing to really become the standard in enterprise storage, leveraging its MarTech stack. My guest is, there's no one quite like him.

You see his Hawaiian shirt there. He's been known as Zin store for over 20 years. He's as charismatic, he's as creative and brilliant as is the Hawaiian shirts he's been wearing for business like today, for the last 20 years.

He has get this, uh, ma in Chinese history. Amazing. But really Eric is a product management guy that learned marketing.

He's not only that, he's a four-time, CROA multi-time award-winning CMO. He's our guest on the show today. Eric, it's great to have you.

Thank you so much for joining me. Great, Lisa. Well, thanks again for inviting me and, uh, can't wait.

Yeah. So guys, Eric and I are gonna be covering four topics in the next half an hour or so. We're gonna be talking about Eric.

We're gonna learn more about that background that I mentioned from the MA and Chinese history to being a product guy that learned marketing and chief revenue officer winning awards. We'll learn about infin out. Well then dig into its MarTech stack, what it's doing there, how it's really leveraging marketing technology, especially.

We're gonna pivot into the sales and marketing relationship, which Eric is great at. Given this background, we'll then talk about emerging tech. What's going on there at fin out, what does Eric see on the horizon?

Then we'll lead with our failure to fab segment where we learn a marketing failure that Eric and team were able to turn into a fabulous marketing success. Alright, Eric, with that said, tell our audience a little bit about you. You went from product management guy to marketing multi-time, CMO.

How'd you do that? Well, started as a product management guy in the storage space. I've been doing it since, uh, the mid eighties when most of the viewers probably weren't even born yet.

Uh, started in the storage industry back then. I've done everything in the storage industry, not just the product management side, the marketing side, VP of sales. I've even been an acting CFO for a year at a storage startup that raised money.

I've been a VP of HR three times and I've been the VP of manufacturing for storage system companies four times. So my, my breadth is really more GM E than it is specific to being a CMO. Uh, but I started as a product manager doing pricing forecasting, uh, feature specifications, you know, the technical expert for a storage system company back in 1986.

Um, and I was doing that. In fact, in most of the jobs I've done eight startups. So in eight of the seven of the eight startups, uh, I not only was doing the marketing function, but I was re the, you know, VP of product management and ran product management, uh, strategy, technical marketing, channel marketing, strategic marketing, digital marketing product, marketing channel when there was a channel.

Um, so I've done that for a long, a long, long time. Uh, and the background, even at the big companies, I've been at four, uh, fortune 500 storage companies and at all of them, um, I was the VP of product management and the CMO or the VP of product, for example, I was at EMC, I was senior VP of product management and product marketing. 5 billion of EMC's revenue at the time, back in the, uh, early 2010.

So 20 20 10 to 2014. So that's my background. Started on the product side and then moved into the marketing site.

And quite honestly, really did both jobs originally o only twice have I been a CMO only, actually only once, which is now even my last job where I was the, the, uh, CMO of the IBM storage division. I was also vice president of Global Channel Sales, so I had two jobs. So this is really the only time.

I'm just the CMO. Got it. And I love that the breadth of your background.

And I, I met you back in the EMC days. I wanna say it's over 10 years that I've known you and we've had the chance to collaborate on, on great projects. Let's talk a little bit about Infinidat.

You have, so you, you mentioned you've got really a general management kind of background across hr, finance, sales, marketing product. What drew you to Infinidat and talk a little bit about its, its mission to really become the standard and enterprise storage and how marketing is a facilitator. Sure.

So our focus is in the enterprise, uh, the bulk of our customers, the global Fortune 2000. We also do very, very well in the service provider space. We provide that solid storage infrastructure for them to do backup as a service, storage as a service database, as a service.

And of course, they're competing against Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. So we sell to these small and medium cloud providers. And then the rest are really the global Fortune 2000.

In fact, uh, of the Fortune 50, 25% of them are customers of Infinidat, even though, you know, we're a sub billion dollar company. So our focus is really delivering high-end features that are needed for 24 by seven operation. Very intense focus on cyber storage resiliency factory.

We've won 17 awards for our cyber storage technology. Fantastic. So then how does marketing fit into the overall corporate strategy, which is obviously to be highly competitive with those big guys?

Well, you know, we've got a small marketing budget, but we absolutely punch above our weight. Uh, we focus on having an integrated marketing approach. Uh, several companies, you know, marketing a is not part of the company.

They're off doing their thing and running advertising. They think it's cool when their ads on tv. We're all about delivering top of funnel, helping deal progression, what it take to get our partners fired up.

So for example, uh, next week I am doing a channel partner enablement. I did one this past Monday in a couple weeks. We're gonna do a global partner recruitment event.

We have a big launch coming in May. And so I'm the keynote speaker for our channel partner pre-briefing. So it's making sure that marketing is part of the entire mix of the, of the company.

We, you know, meet with sales every week. Um, sales leadership and I meet with the CRO and a bunch of his VPs every week. One-on-one, independent of that meeting, meet with product management every week.

So my approach, given my background of being a CRO before running product management before, is that it's a team. You know, the thing that some marketing people don't get business is a team sport. Yeah.

Business is a team sport. It's very much like, you know, American football. I know there's probably some viewers who are not from the US but it's American football.

You have the offense and defense, they have to work together. On the defensive side, there's multiple sub teams. On the offensive side, there's multiple sub teams.

And if they don't work together, you don't win the game. So, right. But sometimes marketeers, you know, if they got the fluff ad, that's great.

If they win some sort of thing from, you know, one of the big ad magazines, they think that's cool. That's not what salespeople care about. Salespeople care about, you know, the right amount of air cover, uh, they care about being able to drive them top of funnel leads and then helping them progress deals down through the funnel to a close.

And that doesn't happen all the time, but marketing's job is to help sales sell. And I tell my team that all the time. And because I used to be an athlete, I'm short fat old guy now, but I used to be an Olympic class wrestler and an all star baseball player on the high school side.

It is all about getting on the mat or getting on the field every single day. So our motto, one of my mottos I've used actually multiple times is raise the bar. Their number one thing is to beat what they did themselves.

Yeah. Swim faster, run farther, win more matches, throw the pole, vault the pole, go over the higher bar, throw that, you know, when you're throwing the javelin, throw it farther. And it doesn't matter what the coach says, what their family says, what the citizens say, what the fans say, they are there to win and they need to raise the bar every day.

And that's the, you know, way world class athletes behave. And I believe that since business is a team sport, you are out to win the Super Bowl. You're out to win the World Cup, you're out to win the World Series, you're out to win Olympic gold medal every damn day.

And if you don't run your company that way, you won't be successful. I love that. Speaking of raising the bar, last question in this intro section is a favorite customer story of Infin adss where you, you guys marketing and sales came together.

You raised the bar, you won the Super Bowl that, that Stanley Cup, for example, what's your favorite story that you really think shines in value on just what you said Infinidat is known for? Yeah, So we have, uh, well now a large customer at the time, they were a large prospect. Uh, they came in through one of our webinars on cyber storage resiliency.

Um, so when the account team, the account team had a first meeting on their own right, we have, uh, a sales development representative team. So they called in, they got a meeting set up. Then, um, the sales guy sent me an email after the sales guy.

So the sales development rep phone call, then a physical face-to-face with the sales team. Then they called me up and said, Hey, the guy's all over cyber. Can you present for a half an hour on cyber storage, resilience and recovery using infin at technology?

And I did. And in fact, last Friday I was at a $35 billion US customer. They're, they're actually in Sweden, but, um, they're 35 billion US dollars in revenue.

And I was presenting on some products that are gonna be announced on May 22nd. And the sales team asked me to come out. So that's sales and marketing working together, right?

They came to our webinar that we put on that then got transmission in the sales team with the sales development rep, who then was able to get a meeting, right? Et cetera. So that's what we do, and we do it with the channel all the time.

Last week I was, uh, the keynote speaker at our, uh, EMEA channel partner Summit. So it's all about working together in everything you do, whether it be on the digital marketing side, the channel marketing side, the product marketing side. For example, I've got two guys that do nothing but do competitive analysis of the other guys.

Why are we better? Why should we win? What's red, green, yellow?

If we're yellow, what do we have to make our screen if we're green? If someone else is yellow, why are they yellow? 'cause to me, yellow means they have it, but they're not as good as us.

So yes, they're, they are in Chinese history, which I used to teach at the University of California Davis. They're in Chinese history, but they're getting a B and in fitted at as an A student, the student, great. Why are they a B?

You're not gonna say they're not taking Chinese history. 'cause that would be a lie. So, you know, you have your feature list and we say they're in the Chinese history class too, but you know what, they're only a B student.

Infinidat is an A student. I love that. It's an A student.

Let's dig into our second topic now, which is the MarTech stack. I wanna, I wanna really probe on, 'cause you and I have talked before about the importance of the sales marketing relationship. You, you started to dig into that.

I wanna unpack that even more. Sure. Talk about the MarTech stock that you've deployed at Infinidat and how is it enabling opportunities that marketing is helping sales to win and close?

Sure. So we use a couple different things. We use Marketo obviously as our, our main package.

We use Six Sense. We have a deal with TechTarget who actually OEMs from someone else, some stuff that allows us to look at intent data, what they have installed, what size they are, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So we make sure that we leverage that stack A to create top of funnel, whether that be anything from sending an email out before the webinar or before we go to a trade show.

com so they can see what the marketing team has done. And then collaborating that way, um, using the Mar MarTech stack to create e either a top of funnel and b, you know, progression. com, that they're hot button.

That's fantastic. Talk a little bit about now leveraging MarTech to, to create the personas that you're going after and how, how influential I imagine quite is sales in the development of those personas. So actually we created the person personas together independent of the MarTech stack.

So what's the ideal customer profile? What type company, what are the job titles? Uh, they sent to me the list.

So my team and the sales directors got together, came up with, here's what it is. Then I expanded it and included not only decision makers, but a decision influencers, which they didn't have. I went up and down the totem pole.

When you're in large companies, of course when you're a small company at Herzog's Bar and Grill, it's Herzog. He makes the call, all right, at Lisa, the cigar store, Lisa makes the call. How'd you have one?

Us? We're global. When you're at a global Fortune 500, all kinds of people are involved.

So let's take something simple. We have an outstanding solution for the container world, okay? Kubernetes Red Hat, we've won awards for that.

Uh, in fact, a couple weeks ago at CubeCon in Europe, we presented in the Red Hat booth. They had us come in and do a, a guest session right in the booth that said, you've gotta translate that across everything. So that's in the data sheets, that's in the training we do with the channel partners.

That's in the materials we do for our sales teams. It's in our competitive analysis materials. We put it in on the website and we make sure that we wrap all this together in a common message that can be leveraged by the sales team.

And of course, we use the channel for about 80% of our revenue. So we wanna make sure the channel partners can sound like they work for Infinidat, even though they work for, you know, one of our partners. But they need to sound like we do and pair up the same message we do, and be consistent in message and voice and emphasis.

And we make sure that we do that not only with our own sales teams, but with our, our global channel partner community as well. Right? 'cause it sounds like you've built a great partner ecosystem there.

You mentioned about 80% of Infin Net's revenue coming from the channel, right? So the 80 20 rule, speaking of the 80 20 rule, how are you using data, data science, the MarTech stack to identify the top 20% of the content that contributes to 80% of the pipeline? So a, we're constantly looking at what's being downloaded, what's being used by the sales team, either the technology called High Spot, which is where the content repository is for the sales teams.

We can see what's being downloaded, what PowerPoints, what white papers, what solution briefs. Obviously on our website, we can see that from a a generic perspective, you know, from the end user side, but that also could be a partner, it could be an employee. Um, and then we also have a partner portal.

And so the partners registered to get in, they get the content. So we, we just won an award last week, Congratulations On Monday. Uh, and it was from Computer Reseller News now called CRN, the Channel Company.

And it was a channel award for our channel partner program. So what do we do? One, we did a press release, two, we added it to our awards deck.

And our awards deck gets used in all our, our channel presentations, but also in our customer presentations. We put it on social media. So we've, in social media, in fact, I social media today, we did the press release on Tuesday.

I have social media today and I've had 5,000 views on zin stores. You know, LinkedIn, just me. But Infinidat also did that.

It happens to be, we do every, um, other week a sales newsletter internal, okay, guess what? It's in the sales newsletter that we won this award. Here's the link to the press release.

And next Wednesday will be our monthly channel partner and service provider newsletter. And guess what, it's in there too with a link to it. So it's all about working together as a team.

And again, too much marketing I've seen is, oh, we got great ads. Okay, great. So does anyone care?

Oh, we won two awards. Did you tell anybody you won those awards? Did you do a press release?

Did you tell your channel? Did you tell your own sales guys for goodness? And they don't because it's, it is very functionally siloed.

Siloed. And that's even worse when it's a big company. Then on top of that, marketing is often viewed as its own functional silo in certain companies.

And that's not the way should be. I call it the trime triplets. Sales, marketing and product management needs to be joined at the hip.

Yeah. As if it was the trime triplets, um, walk. And if you don't walk together, you don't work together, you will not win.

It sounds to me like what you're describing is a truly like a world-class definition of integrated marketing that a lot of people try to do. But to your point there ends up being a lot of silos, especially in larger organizations. I love that everything you're, what you're delivering is a consistent voice internally, externally through the channel to customers.

Talk a little bit about how the MarTech stack drives that typical customer experience that seems to be very highly integrated and very scientific. Well, we make sure that we use the MarTech tech stack for everything that we do, right? It's integrated on the social side, it's integrated to our seminars, our webinars, our trade shows.

We're constantly notifying the field. We're constantly notifying the partners. We're notifying the installed base.

Of course through the end users. We sometimes integrate third party lists, uh, with Six Sense and the tech target tool that allows us to look at intent to buy who's got what. You know, again, mostly in the Fortune 2000.

So we target that. We know what the titles are. There's like 42 between decision makers decision.

Remember you have to look at multiple. So let's take easy one. You have a storage admin doesn't control a budget.

Then you have the storage manager and talking. Now like a global enterprise, you have a storage manager, you probably have a director of storage, okay? You then usually have a VP of infrastructure who has server storage and networking.

Then you may have a senior vp, maybe you don't and if not, you have at least the CIO. Okay? Mm-Hmm.

And because cybersecurity is such a big deal, how does the whole security infrastructures in, so the CISO and the director of security and the security admin, oh, and by the way, since storage works across all these applications, you're never gonna get a win on an Oracle or SAP Oracle unless the Oracle and SAP admins agree that it's the right performance or the right availability for the workloads that they need to deliver to the business. So you have this very complex sales cycle in the large enterprise. We make sure that we target that.

So if we know that there's an intent to buy at Lisa Martin, $50 billion cigar company, then we make sure we make sure we target the CIO where appropriate, the storage amware appropriate, the VMware admin, the container guy, whoever's appropriate based on what we're trying to position. We make sure we in, we leverage the MarTech stack to invite them to our webinar on why we're great for containers, Kubernetes and Red Hat, which we did like a month ago. We had, and we're a small company so we don't have the big budget of many other players that we compete with.

And we have 350 people registered globally. Nice. We did one on cybersecurity in February and we had 550 people register for that.

Nice. And that doesn't count our employees. So I always pull out Infinidat as I love to call us.

We're all fin add-ins. They always get pulled out of any numbers that we talked about. So these are mostly end users and we divide that into existing customers, prospects.

And then of course the channel divided into channel partners and then the distributors who usually sell to the channel part. So we have a very sophisticated, we had dividing all this stuff up and we leveraged them MarTech stack to help do all of that and target the right people with the right message at the right time. Ah, it's all about the right message with the right people at the right time.

Relevancy, personalization. I love that. And your vision is so crystal clear and so integrated.

Last question in the MarTech kind of in action section is walk me through a typical experience and how the MarTech stack is really facilitating me going from a prospect to an advocate. Sure. So we make sure we leverage the MarTech stack.

So it starts, they come in through the webinar or they come to a seminar. So A, we make sure that the sales developer, uh, now we also make sure we send them a nice thank you note after, so couple days after. So they saw it.

So first of all, they sign up, then they get a note, don't forget. Okay. Again, leveraging the MarTech stack, then they come see it, then we send them a thank you note that passes to the sales development rest.

We also may do other DI digital campaigns around cybersecurity. So we would make sure we target them and send them the white paper, whatever we're doing or the content syndication. So we make sure that we follow that up.

Okay. Then when we're moving into the funnel cycle, again, if we're gonna do, go to a trade show, so for, say give you an example, last year did a trade show in Germany and I did a presentation on cyber storage resilience for the service provider community. Okay.

That was the, that was the presentation I did at a trade show. So guess what any, and it happened to be in Germany. So anybody who was in the cyberspace, even if they weren't at a cloud provider, right?

They got a note, come see Eric Herzog present at the X, Y, Z cloud service writer program wherever it was in Germany at you know, two, well 1400 on, you know, March 22nd or whatever date it was. And see now there are people who signed up. There are people who showed up.

There are people who were already going to the show. So we made sure we leveraged that from a MarTech stack. So if someone was already in the funnel and they were near that trade show, we would've sent them a note about come see me present even though they were already in the funnel.

'cause we would've known through the MarTech stack. They already had originally come in because they saw a cybersecurity webinar three months ago or four months ago. So that we're talking about that topic made sense, right?

Or if we're doing content syndication around a cyber secure, white cybersecurity centric white paper. So we'd integrate that as well. So that's how we make sure that everything works together.

Everything is cross-functional. Everything designed to either drive top of funnel or try to help with deal progression. Deal progression.

It's all about that. We talked a lot about the science part of marketing with you, the strategic elements. Talk a little bit about now the artistry.

What, what does artistry and marketing mean to you and and what are some of the things that you've seen that you think, wow, that was beautiful. So when people think artistry, they think the graphic design and the cool looking logo or the cool looking ad. Yeah.

And I don't think of that at all. Yeah, okay. Marketing is a science and an art.

And I don't mean an art like graphic design and great video production. Sure. That's part of it.

Okay. But the art is understanding how can you take a technical message and turn it into business advantage. Yes.

Okay. That is an art. Yeah, it's a little bit of science, but it's an art.

So, you know, be, I've been doing this so long, I'm almost 70 years old. I've at least presented to a thousand CIOs, at least a thousand over the years. So I kind of know what matters.

And because I've been a CRO, I've also been in the field, uh, I've been a multi-time, computer reseller, news channel chief. So I'm out in the field and I was the VP of Global channels, uh, for the IBM storage division as well as the CMO. So I'm out with a channel.

So you, if you just sit in your Ivy Tower, you're gonna be a horrible marketing person. That's my rule of thumb. In fact, when I was at EMC and at IBM, you know, big companies, we actually tracked how much contact my team had.

So my marketing ops guy just ran it in a spreadsheet. So that was our marketing tool. Excel.

Yeah. And so I had it down by title. So anyone who was a manager, senior manager, director, had to be in the field with customers or partners for five days a quarter.

Not counting trade shows. Trade shows didn't count. So if we went to VM world or we had Cisco Live or some big trade show that did not count.

They needed to be in the field with the sales team. With customers or customers and partners. Or partners.

Only five days every quarter. Plus they still had to rotate and you know, everyone had to work the shows where appropriate. And I track that maniacally.

So yeah, they teach you about gathering all that data and that is all great, but if you don't get out there and talk to people, you're missing the art of marketing. Absolutely. You're just looking Absolutely at your Numbers.

And if you look at pure numbers, that's when you screw 'em. There's people who thought they're gonna win elections by looking at the numbers. Ooh.

And they lost the last three weeks. Why? Because they stopped going and talking to the people.

Yeah. You need to talk to your audience. You can't just talk at them.

Right. So if all you do is marketing stuff, the data sheets, the white papers, the this, the that. That's talking at them, talking with them, which includes at a trade show.

So, you know, I was a senior vp, A MC, the CMO at IBM, I've been a VP m marketing since 1988, I think was my first BP marketing job. I'm at a show, I'm not sitting there in the room. No, I'm working a pedestal.

'cause when you work a pedestal who comes up, customers and partners. Yeah. You work the pedestal.

Now that doesn't mean you don't have customer meetings as well. You've got the, you know, sealed room. Right.

And you bring customers in there, but you also work the pedestal. You work the front desk, you work and you, you know, I believe in leading by example. So I'm, I don't believe in ivory tower anything.

Right. Um, and that means if you're gonna have the art part of marketing in addition to the cool graphics, I've got great stuff 'cause I got this great person cool videos that is all great. But that is just sizzle.

Yes. That's a great, great. Probably one of the best definitions I've heard of marketing art ever.

I love how you think about it and the, the, the distinction between the science, the art, and the sizzle. And you need all of 'em in different mixtures. But to your point that artistry and, and what you were describing as the relationship based selling the relationship's, so incredibly important.

'cause most people gravitate towards that. What are you looking at kind of next in your MarTech stack in terms of emerging technologies? Obviously gen, ai, um, hot topic.

So The issue is how to use AI effectively. Yeah. Okay.

And even though I'm a big believer in Terminator and iRobot and I have legitimate concerns about it, no one thought there was gonna be the iPhone. Right. You know, this iPhone is more powerful than probably the first 10 generations of the mainframe in your hand.

Yeah. Crazy. If you saw someone in 1920 and told them, or even 1930, maybe in 1940 and said, by the way, in 1968 we're gonna have a man on them with they said no.

So I believe that the AI stuff can be very positive, but if it's not regulated and managed, you need be very careful using it. Uh, if you just let it do its own thing. And there's a, a very large public company that just laid off a whole bunch of people.

Marketing said they're gonna use gen AI for almost everything. I'm like thinking, are you guys on drugs? Illegal drugs, not good drugs that people need, but illegal drugs.

You're freaking nuts. Yeah, okay. If you don't have someone who knows the technology and is a technology company, by the way.

So I was just shocked. I saw too. Um, who understands the, so you can use the gen AI to gather the data.

What about patent violations? What about IP violations? 'cause AI doesn't care about any of that.

It doesn't notice that it's a service mark or a trademark. It doesn't notice that it's um, a registered mark. It doesn't notice that there's a patent filed against that thing.

It doesn't know any of that stuff. Yeah. Right.

So use of AI is a very positive thing and is definitely needs to be used. But if it is not managed properly, it will give you false data. So you need to protect yourself.

You can use the ai, but if you're not monitoring it carefully, next thing you're gonna be slammed with 12 lawsuits and guess what you're gonna lose. 'cause the AI really did steal someone's IP or violate something. Yes.

And it's your responsibility as someone doing marketing or selling or any other function a company. So AI is a valuable tool for market, but it needs to be carefully monitored to make sure that we're not doing the wrong thing. Um, absolutely.

A company and exposing it to lawsuits or other Right. Activities that could be potentially Catastrophic for business. Yeah.

Yes. Absolutely. Yeah.

Great vision on the kind of responsible use of, for ai. There's so much obviously work going on in that a lot to, to still flash out and understand. But your, your opinions and your passion for responsibility and purposeful use of AI is, is really clear.

Last question for you. Sure. And any and any of your past jobs and, and you have the breadth of, of many people with your own background.

But what was a marketing failure? Like an an initiative, a campaign or something, a deal that went awry that you came in as, uh, marketing chief and with a team were able to turn it into something that was just fantastic for the organization? A big win.

So this would be more about one of the companies. So I went to one of the companies, it's one of the Fortune 500. And the marketing was all messed up.

Nothing was working right? Everything was siloed just within marketing, let alone they weren't working with sales. Okay.

So one of the people just retired. And on this phone, I have eight texts from directors and VPs of sales. 'cause this was the other company and they invited me anyway 'cause the guy used to work for me who was retiring.

When are you coming back? We're not, we can't do anything like we used to do. You sure you don't want to come back, Hey, there's a senior level opening, you need to come back.

And that was not because I'm, you know, some sort of gold medal winner 27 times. It's because I get people to work together, make sure that marketing is supporting sales and product management and is not off doing their own thing so that they have a cool ad that doesn't help anyone sell anything or do anything for them. So this is more about not a specific deal, but this is more about an entire organization that was sideways and was not helping anybody.

And I was brought in essentially as Mr. Fix it. And my job was to fix it.

And the fact that, you know, I was on this uh, web webinar for the guy's retirement, uh, just two days ago and there's at least eight texts from VP level sales guy saying, when are you coming back? We miss you. We wish you were still here.

That's not a bad thing. But that was 'cause I put together a team. It's all about the team.

It doesn't matter what I do. It's about the team. And you know, as you pointed out, I've won several cmmo of the ear words when you read my LinkedIn post.

I don't say I did anything. I say this is a testament to my team at IBM, my team at EMC, my team at this company, my team at that company. 'cause it's a team sport.

So I only if you're the manager of a a baseball team or if you're the coach of a football team or coach of a soccer team, which of course the Europeans who are listening will, they'll say that's the real football. So whichever football it is, you have the coaches and the managers and you know what, they can do so much. But if they don't get them to work as a team and they're in, in American football, which I know best, there's all kinds of people in what we call the Hall of fame.

Right? Yeah. The best ever.

Right. And guess what? They never won the Super Bowl.

They never won a championship. They themselves were incredible, but the overall team was mediocre to crappy. And that's 'cause it's a team sport and marketing is the ultimate part of the team sport.

And it needs to be integrated to the rest of the team of the whole company. And I would say that that success was getting them to be a working together as a team. Yeah.

B working with the sales team and the product management team and not doing a bunch of fluffy stuff that didn't help anyone do anything. But they thought, oh, look how cool this looks. And I said one time, do I really give a fly an F?

Except I didn't say FI, you know, did the full word it used it. And I said, Why? How does this help anybody?

Yeah, that looks so cool and blah, blah, blah. I said, well you know what, I'm from California and we used to call that cool and b******g in the old days. Yep.

And then I said, by the way, this is not gray hair or white hair. This is southern California bleach blonde from all the surfing I do. Um, so I'm just telling you who cares.

Yeah. Yes. It needs to look good and professional, but this, this whole thing you put together, this is not gonna help the sales guy sell anything.

There's not anything the color other than it's a great looking graphic. Okay, cool. What sizzle trying to get across?

What's the message? How's that message help sales and drive revenue? What a great fail the fab story.

That is probably one of the most transformational stories I've heard. Eric has been such a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you for sharing your background with the audience, your care charisma, like I mentioned, your creativity, your brilliance, talking about the MarTech stack, that marketing sales alignment that you're able to do going from silos to integrated team.

Brilliant. We thank you so much. We're gonna have to have you back on the show.

Well great. Thank you very much as always, and love working with you. And thanks again for all the stuff you've done for Aita.

And of course obviously you've interviewed me when I was at other companies as well so Many times. Thank You very much for, for everything you've done and uh oh, it's my pleasure. Your current company has been helping and fit it out a lot.

So thank you very much. Yeah, the Futurum group, we wanna thank you the audience for watching and let you know that you can find this on demand anytime. And we're gonna be back shortly with our next episode.

Thanks for watching everyone. Take care.