Category: Jo.e Pulse

Hi Joe,

I’ve been asked to evaluate new solutions that could replace one of our tools.

This is the first time I’m having input into the assessment and purchase of new software, and I’m not really sure how I should approach this.

I have two specific questions:

• How can I identify the most effective tool for my company?
• What qualities should I look for to guide the decision?

 
Thanks,

Evaluating Evan.

Evan, it’s good that you’re thinking critically about this.

The amount of martech solutions is increasing by the day, so it’s becoming more of a challenge to cut through the noise and advocate for the best tech.

 

“It’s almost a rite of passage
for people in MOPs to get burned by a tool.”

 

It’s almost a rite of passage for people in MOPs to get burned by a tool, whether:

❌ they were oversold on its capabilities
❌ the solution didn’t gel with their stack, or
❌ it just wasn’t the right fit for the problem or goal at hand.

I’ve participated in evaluations where solutions seemed promising — useful functionalities, relevant integrations, good price point — only to not quite deliver on their purpose.

Frustrating as it is to wait out a contract, these experiences make clear how important it is to be intentional with your tool purchases and how sometimes, this is a difficult thing to get right.

 

Guide your evaluation:

 
👉 Know your agenda: What problems are you trying to solve or efficiency gains are you trying to achieve?

Whether you want to improve a particular process, consolidate multiple tools into one, or make it easier to scale, see if you can accomplish this during the trial or demo phase or determine whether it’s possible or not to do so.

This is a big clue as to how suitable a tool is.

 
👉 Keep focused on your primary issue: You might spot something interesting about a tool that isn’t why you wanted it in the first place.

That observation can lead you to solve a different problem or open a new opportunity, but keep in mind the capability or issue that’s driven you to enter the process.

 
👉 Understand its total value: How well does a tool address the breadth of issues and functionality gaps in your company?

You might find a solution that does exactly what you need it to without broader utility or an adequate tool for your intended use case that fits optimally with other aspects of your business.

Both are valid motives for choosing a tool; consult with the stakeholders in your company who’ll use or sign off on the tool to determine which would bring more value.

 
👉 Integration: As a standalone product, is the solution you’re looking at best in class at what it’s designed to do?

Is it an established market leader or gaining positive momentum? Does it integrate well with your CRM, CMS, and marketing automation platform? These are positive signs that a solution has longevity and that it’s compatible with your stack.

Look for online reviews, Gartner Magic Quadrant placements, and partner/vendor certification with your core pieces of tech.

 
👉 Research the solution provider: It’s worth doing your homework on the solution provider just as much as the tool itself.

Take into account the deployment options, customer support, and training that the vendor offers, along with any third-party reviews and feedback from your network.

 
For more reading on this topic, check out our piece ‘Is It Worth It? The Hidden Cost of New Martech Tools.’

You’ve got this,

Joe Pulse

Hi Jo,

I’m due to begin my first role in marketing automation with a new company, and I’m wondering what I can do to get off to a good start.

I’m interested in the technical and data-driven elements of marketing. But I’m coming from a role focused more on campaign content.

This will be my first time getting truly hands-on with a marketing automation platform.

What things should I prioritize learning? How can I make a good impression on my new team?

Thanks,

New Naomi.

Naomi, congratulations on your new opportunity!

It’s natural that you want to shine and show your new colleagues that you’re someone they can count on. That said, don’t feel pressured to get a handle on all the complexities of your tools and the detailed dynamics of your industry and company just yet.

 

“Marketing automation platforms have a steep learning curve, and the MOPs space constantly changes.”

 

Marketing automation platforms have a steep learning curve, and the MOPs space constantly changes. When I first started in marketing automation, I found there to be no shortage of new things to learn. including the:

➡️ technicalities of the platform
➡️ priorities of the business and
➡️ ways that my new teams work together.

Confidence and fluency in these things are what you’ll develop over time as you get comfortable in the role.

For now, it’s best to focus on understanding the:

✅ essence of marketing automation
✅ fundamentals of your platform, and
✅ things your teams need from MOPs to work effectively.

 
Here are some steps I recommend you take as you settle into your new job:

 

Think user-centric:

Platforms are all about the user experience.

If someone is reading your content, you have one shot at engaging them further — what does this page or email need to convey to encourage them to download that whitepaper or click through?

Reflect on the principles of demand gen and inbound marketing. They underlie all the capacities a platform has to bring a campaign to life.

 

Resources:

Check out your platform’s support documentation, learning hub (e.g. Marketo Engage Tutorials, HubSpot Academy), and community forums.

These resources will help you to become self-sufficient, answer questions, and explore the different features of each platform. And, you can also develop a network by participating in user groups and discussions.

By interacting with people over time, you’ll increasingly establish yourself and learn more about the broader direction of the MOPs space.

 

Talk to people:

What do various people in your teams like or dislike about your marketing automation platform? What challenges are they experiencing? Talking about these things is a good way to start forming relationships, and it helps to focus your learning of the platform.

If you can discover how to solve problems that people are having, you’ll quickly establish rapport and expertise.

 

Make small improvements:

Your new team might want you to do things by the book or optimize established processes where you can.

Always be receptive to what your manager asks, but suggest potential areas for improvement along the way. Read our post ‘How Do I Get Management To Listen To Me?‘ for more ideas.

Whether you identify some tweaks to a page that could bring more conversions or introduce new visualizations that make data more digestible, it’s good to subtly show how you can improve things and make peoples’ lives easier.

You’ve got this,

Jo Pulse.

Hi Joe,

I’m having trouble getting respect from my marketing leadership.

Working in marketing ops means I understand the processes between Marketing and Sales, what’s working well and what isn’t, but I don’t think my boss values my insights.

My role involves lots of procedural responsibilities like building emails and handing leads over, which I think creates the perception that my contributions aren’t important to the big-picture strategy.

How do I get my boss to listen to me? How do I make them see that my work adds value?

Thanks,

Ignored Isabel.

Isabel, I know this is tough.

Getting your boss to really appreciate the value you provide in MOPs can feel like pushing a boulder up a hill.

After years of progressing my career in MOPs and working with senior leadership figures, I’ve seen a real blind spot from management towards the complexities of marketing operations.

That said, the disconnect goes both ways.

A mistake I often made earlier in my career was to assume that everyone in a company speaks the same language. What comes fluently to us in MOPs can sound downright alien to people in other fields. For instance:

➡️ Data flows
➡️ Systems maintenance
➡️ Martech infrastructure

It’s rarely apparent to leadership at face value how these components help the company to work productively and achieve revenue targets. Add those things together — poor understanding of MOPs, communication that doesn’t touch the bottom line — and you get a lack of respect.

 

“A story of your value in MOPs
that makes your impact on the business clear.”

 

You’re doing great work that’s worthy of recognition. What’s missing is a story of your value in MOPs that makes your impact on the business clear.

Here’s some advice that can help you gain a seat at the table:

 

Unpack the strategy

Automating a ton of processes doesn’t mean your job is simple.

Every email you build or webinar you host comes after weeks of planning to make sure your campaigns run smoothly and reach the right audiences.

This is how you characterize your role to people who think you’re here to take orders; less plumbing, more architecture.

 

Know the room

You’re at a crossroads between technical know-how and commercial priorities.

Your CTO and IT team might relate to the grittier aspects of your work, but for Marketing and Sales, it’s all about how you’re planning and budgeting for successful campaigns and generating leads.

For responsibilities like vendor relations and data governance, you’ll need to surface how doing those things well helps your company be productive and profitable.

 

Unify your data sources

Reporting and analytics aren’t just ‘nice to haves’ — they’re the best instruments for painting the picture of your impact.

Give your tech stack some TLC and join together all the reporting elements that show how you’re performing against KPIs.

 

Share the right numbers

The most compelling move you can make with data is to leave behind the everyday operational challenges — the amount of tickets you’re handling, processes you’re running — and look at revenue.

👉 How many MQLs converted to SQLs?
👉 How many of those turned into closed deals?
👉 What dollar value are they converting?

Those data points prove your contributions to business growth, so own them.

 

“Persistence
goes the distance.”

 

Getting management to listen means changing their perspective of your value. It might not happen overnight, but persistence goes the distance.

Read our post How Do I Show My Boss My Value? for more advice.

You’ve got this,

Joe Pulse.

Hi Jo,

My company wants to start doing attribution, so I’ve been asked to put together a plan.

Here’s the problem: I have no idea how to do this right.

I’m uncertain about the practicalities my plan should account for or what results to expect.

What kind of commitment is attribution really?

How do I create and carry out a plan that works?

Thanks,

Attribution Amy

Amy, it’s good that you’re thinking critically about this.

Years back, when my marketing team first took on attribution, we were very excited by all the models and ways of understanding how people engage with campaigns.

My expectation

I was under the impression it was a plug-and-play type deal. Three months down the line, it’ll spit out numbers that tell you exactly where to spend, hands-free.

The reality

Three months in, I had nowhere near a confident grasp of how to use different models and data setups, nor was I making any decisions to optimize spend.

My sales and marketing teams were frustrated — the results we thought were coming were nowhere in sight—and so was I.

 

“I learned something important from that experience:
attribution isn’t magic.”

 

I learned something important from that experience: attribution isn’t magic.

To really work for your business, it’s a gradual process that takes:

✅ long-term refinement
✅ consistent methodology, and
✅ clear communication between Marketing and Sales.

That understanding is your plan’s guiding star.

 

8 attribution tips:

👉 Use a dedicated vendor: Unless your entire job is attribution, there aren’t enough hours in the day to build this effectively on your own. There’s no native ability in CRMs to pivot campaign memberships against opportunities, which is how you start to calculate ROI.

👉 Establish common terminology: Marketing and sales need shared definitions of what it means to source, touch, and influence leads, the same classification of sources vs mediums, and a mutual understanding of how your CRM accounts for revenue and opportunities. This helps to keep your data clean and for Sales to set accurate goals.

👉 Clear data collection: Use UTMs wherever you can, and be consistent with tagging traffic coming into your website.

👉 Get your tools in sync: Many attribution platforms use Salesforce campaign objects. To keep accurate data flowing, check that these are synced correctly with the relevant marketing automation platform (MAP) programs.

👉 Get your processes in order: Make sure that Sales is using opportunities in Salesforce and regularly reporting pipeline and revenue in there. You’ll need these updates to sync to Marketo or your MAP of choice.

👉 Figure out spend: You might think organic traffic is free — but how much are you paying someone to update and optimize the website? Agree with your boss on how to factor in less obvious expenses. Even estimates are useful for arriving at accurate ROI calculations.

👉 Budget for time: Your platform might take 6-12 months to launch. And if it’s a 2nd or 3rd gen platform that offers website cookie tracking, implement that collection right away if you think you’ll need it in the future.

👉 Small goals = achievable goals: Set goals as part of a gradual roadmap that incorporates more robust models only as you get more comfortable with attribution. Small wins that you actually achieve are better than grand plans gone off the rails.

Attribution is a complex business. You want to go far, not fast.

You’ve got this,
Jo.

Hi Jo,

I’m new to Marketing Operations, and it feels like a wide-open field.

On a given day, I’m planning and budgeting for email campaigns, learning how new integrations work, and working with different teams on issues far and wide.

Sales needs leads scoring, Marketing wants to know where to spend ads, and IT and Data Science need input on the processes for managing our systems and data.

It’s a lot.

I appreciate the challenge and variation of my job, but that same nature makes it difficult to figure out if I’m in the right place or how I might progress. How can I succeed in Marketing Operations? How do I know if I’m on a path with a bright future?

Yours,
Unsure in Utah

Unsure in Utah, you’ve come to the right place.

My journey to marketing operations wasn’t planned. I became the Marketo person for my team while working in demand gen. This was long before MOPs was a carved-out role.

 

“You’re at the crossroads of
many different corners of the company.”

 

I got to grips with how the tool works, how to handle and maintain data, and how to run reports — but that didn’t quite prepare me for the real, full-time deal in MOPs.

You’re at the crossroads of many different corners of the company. The good news is you get to choose where you walk.

 

Determine what excites you

Ask yourself: Of all the things that I’m doing, what really excites me?

If it’s the tactical side of planning and analyzing campaigns, Campaign Management might be for you.

Digital runs on a parallel track, but it takes similar skills with creativity and data, one if you’re equal parts art and science.

Read our post “When Is It Time For a Career Change in Marketing Operations?” for more on this subject.

 

Everything is a learning opportunity.

Here’s the beauty in MOPs: Everything is a learning opportunity.

You’re around different people with unique perspectives, there are new and interesting problems to solve, and new tools and technology, like AI, give you more time/resources/insights to experiment.

There’s always a need for your skills, so if you take the reins and specialize, you’ll go far and fast at once.

 

Positive signs you’re in the right place in MOPs

Wherever you are right now, here are some positive signs that you’re in the right place in MOPs:

👉 You’re being challenged — and you like it.

👉 You’ve got a problem-solving mindset, and you’re learning and growing from putting it to use.

👉 You’ve got access to senior figures, managing upwards and making your opinions heard. This is a tell that your company takes its investment in MOPs (and in you) seriously.

👉 You’re passionate (or at least curious about) your industry and space, what you’re selling, and who you’re selling to.

 

“You’re not an order-taker.
You’re a strategist. A doer.
An expert.”

 

That’s quite a bit to think about, Unsure in Utah.

For now, I’ll leave you with this. You are not an order-taker. You’re a strategist. A doer. An expert.

That’s your future in MOPs.

You’ve got this,
Jo Pulse

Hi Joe,

The sales team at my company is struggling to close, and it’s become clear that the leads they’re receiving aren’t correctly qualified.

Upon taking a closer look, it seems there is a significant lack of alignment between Marketing and MOPs, especially when it comes to managing leads as they progress through our funnel.

Any advice on how our teams can get back on the same page – and help our Sales team close more deals?

Thanks,

Alignment Anna

Hi Anna, thanks for writing in.

This is a challenging issue.

The unfortunate news is that it’s a common issue.

The good news is that it’s one that can definitely be remedied with a few tactical moves.

 

“Good communication is
critical to this solution.”

 

I should start by saying: good communication is critical to this solution. Without regular discourse and updates from all sides, alignment between teams is nearly impossible.

With that out of the way, I do have some more practical tips that will improve collaboration between MOPs and Marketing, ensuring they are fully calibrated when it comes to managing your buyer’s journey.

 

1. Plan and document lead progression metrics.

Leads are constantly coming into your database from several different ingestion points, such as

👉 landing pages
👉 paid advertisements
👉 events, and more.

As these leads are collected and segmented, it’s important to put relevant metrics in place that clearly demonstrate the requirements that must be met in order to progress a lead through your system.

For example, these metrics should specifically indicate when a site visitor is converted into a lead, then a marketing-qualified lead (MQL), sales-qualified lead (SQL), sales accepted lead (SAL), and so on, until they eventually become a customer.

Once your teams understand – and agree on – what these metrics are, I encourage you to create a well-defined, metrics-based map of the buyer’s journey that everyone can refer back to.

 

Well-defined buyer’s journey
=
sustained alignment.

 

Having accessible, detailed documentation like this is a reliable way to sustain alignment and eliminate future confusion. It ensures that your MOPs, Marketing, Sales, and even Demand Gen teams know the exact metrics and qualifications that push leads through funnel thresholds – leading to efficient collaboration and more effective campaigns.

Constantly testing these metrics for accuracy is important, too, as it ensures the desires of your Marketing team are aligned with how your audience is interacting with your content.

 

2. Clearly define buyer personas.

It is also important that everyone is on the same page about the categorization of leads as they relate to the type of buyers you want to target. For example, is your company looking to target C-level executives, lower-level managers, or something in between?

The answer to this question must be consistent for every team. Clear buyer personas allow Marketing to create more relevant content, nurture campaigns, and personalized messages that should be delivered at the right time in the buyer’s journey.

And while MOPs doesn’t create the actual content, the team is responsible for managing your lead database. This responsibility includes scoring and qualifying leads based on relevant metrics and characteristics that should be informed by those your buyer personas.

Some examples of these metrics include the number of:

➡️ CTAs a lead has clicked within marketing emails over the past several months.
➡️ service- or product-specific webpages visited.
➡️ interactions they’ve had with sales personnel.

 

3. Leverage tracking for timely content

Once your company’s buyer personas and lead progression metrics are well understood by all teams, the next step is to implement solid processes that track leads throughout the buyer’s journey.

Where is the lead in your sales funnel? Are they at the top of the funnel at the awareness level, in the middle of the funnel past problem identification, or near the end of the funnel and ready to purchase?

These are questions that your MOPs team can answer through the use of good tracking and filtering in your MAP.

This will allow personalized content send-outs, such as nurture campaigns, to be meticulously timed, reaching leads at critical points in their journey.

 

Bringing it all together

Your MOPs and Marketing teams can work together to create the best buyer’s journey possible by:

1️ Documenting proper lead progression metrics for all teams to see.
2️ Clearly defining buyer personas that inform these metrics and steer content creation.
3️ Implementing good tracking processes to enable timely content send-outs.

Ultimately, following these steps will improve your organization’s conversion rates and reduce headaches for your Sales team.

For more advice on aligning sales and marketing, download ‘The Roadmap to B2B Marketing Success.’

You’ve got this,

Joe

Hi Jo,

My sales and marketing teams aren’t working well together.

People from both teams aren’t really talking to each other or sharing information that could help them both to succeed.

As a result, we work in an environment where:

❌ processes are slow
❌ communication is tense, and
❌ Marketing and Sales don’t understand one another.

How can I make my teams collaborate like partners? How can we bridge the gaps between us?

Thanks,
Out of Sync Sally.

Sally, it’s good that you’re asking how to fix things.

When disconnect is the norm, it’s impossible for teams to work effectively together.

In a past workplace, my Marketing team would publish whitepapers and run events as a separate machine from Sales. Likewise, Sales turned down the majority of our leads without giving any feedback.

You’d have no idea we shared the same goal: Drive revenue for the business.

We were completely misaligned, and worse still, nobody felt they could speak up. That was ‘the way things were done,’ with little hope for dialogue or change.

Three key elements were missing:

✅ Strong purpose.
✅ Shared understanding.
✅ Active listening.

Now that I’ve moved on to manage teams, I realize just how essential these components are to bring people in the workplace together.

Here are some tips for creating an environment where teamwork actually makes the dream work:

1. Have someone representing each team attend the other team’s meetings and presentations.

Having a representative to share feedback and updates, to show interest in helping and understanding each other — will help both teams to work more considerately.

2. Encourage transparency around data, goals, and knowledge.

If Sales shares where they need help fulfilling quotas, Marketing can help them size up the impact of campaigns. Which Marketing webinars are valuable to particular prospects? Who can Sales pursue based on event attendance? How can Sales and Marketing line their activities up?

3. Invite teams to share their updates on a monthly basis.

Common dashboards that visualize key performance metrics, project presentations from people in various different roles—these initiatives help everyone to demonstrate how their work connects to the bottom line.

4. Consolidate your teams on one project management tool

This will get your teams on the same page. It’s a visual tool to show how each person’s activities contribute towards a shared outcome.

5. Create open channels for people to share their successes or ask for help.

The mindset you want to promote is: “How can we celebrate or solve this together?”

6. Ask people what they see their purpose as, and accept honest answers.

If someone doesn’t know their purpose in the company, encourage them to think about the bigger picture and show them the true impact of their contribution. Whether it’s press coverage from Marcomms or products from Merchandising, quality work in every role plays a part in the company’s growth.

7. Get people moving around and talking to each other.

Hotdesking, catch-up calls, open invites to knowledge-sharing and brainstorming sessions; all of these help sociability and belonging as a team.

Ultimately, people want colleagues and leaders they can trust. Make clear that Marketing and Sales are on the same side, and that you’re here to help and encourage them to perform at their best.

You’ve got this,
Jo Pulse.

P.S. If you’re looking for a take on sales and marketing alignment through the scope of data analysis, read this Tough Talks Made Easy.

Hey Joe,

My company recently invested in Salesforce and we’ve been using it for a few months.

Our sales team has been receiving ongoing training for the platform, but I’m not getting much guidance on the marketing ops side.

I’m concerned that when the time comes for me to use certain parts of Salesforce (or other platforms, I’m less familiar with), I’ll be lost.

How can I bolster my technical toolbelt and stay prepared?

Thanks,
Eager Ed

Ed, I applaud your proactivity. Keeping your technical skills polished and up to date is very important in the marketing ops world!

 

“It’s rare to be a pro at
Marketo and Salesforce.”

 

Many MOPs members are proficient with marketing automation platforms like Marketo. Still, they won’t know as much as they should about CRMs like Salesforce. In fact, it’s rare to find someone who is a Marketo expert as well as a Salesforce admin.

This can be a problem because MOPs members must know how to navigate Salesforce to access lead modules, campaign data, and several other integrations to keep information across MOPs and Sales Ops clear and synchronized.

Let’s talk about some things you can do to improve your proficiency with less familiar tools:

 

1. Complete certification courses 🎓

Tell your boss you want to build your technical toolbelt and inquire about services you can use to train yourself independently on different platforms. For example:

👉 Many companies have training programs that allow their employees to acquire a Marketo certification.

👉 Hubspot also has a free certification course – as long as you can access a Hubspot instance.

👉 Salesforce has a free online learning platform called Trailhead that you can use as well.

 

2. Explore external resources 🧭

If you want to supplement these certification courses, or you want to hone in on a specific area of a tool, there are plenty of high-quality external resources available out there if you look carefully.

Healthy, active communities of users can be found online and are very helpful when it comes to learning about different platforms.

You can turn to sites like Reddit or official user forums managed by the platform owners themselves – such as Marketing Nation by Marketo or the Salesforce Developer Community forums.

Youtube is also home to many experienced users who create screen share tutorials, walking you through processes step-by-step.

 

3. Attend conferences and workshops 🧠

There are plenty of workshops and conference events (both in-person and online) that major platform companies like Salesforce, Hubspot, and Adobe will host throughout the year.

Attending these events is a great way to pick up technical skills, as well as build relationships with other MOPs and Sales Ops people who can offer guidance.

Many companies will pay for their employees to attend these events to expand their technical knowledge and bring back information for other team members to learn from.

 

4. Connect with your sales team 🤝🏽

If you still need help when it comes to using Salesforce at your company, try reaching out to one of your Sales Operators.

Ask if they can briefly walk you through a certain integration or process – this can go a long way in strengthening your understanding of the platform.

When you go down this route, however, be sure to come prepared. I recommend doing as much independent research as you can (through the above methods), so you can approach your Sales Operator with high-quality, concise questions.

🔥 Pro tip: Record the session with your Sales Ops team for internal reference purposes. Sales Operators are busy, so having that recording will allow you to independently review it after a one-time walkthrough. This will be helpful not only for your own reference but to train other members of your MOPs team who need to learn the same process.

Over time, this can develop into a useful collection of internal training resources for MOPs if anyone needs a walkthrough of Salesforce features in the future.

 

“Remember to stay curious
and stay engaged.”

 

It’s great to see you taking ownership of your professional development. Remember to stay curious, stay engaged, and don’t be afraid to ask questions.

With these tools and resources at your disposal, you’ll be well on your way to mastering new platforms and adding value to your company. Keep up the good work!

You’ve got this,
Joe.

Hi Joe,

My campaign fell flat, and I’m struggling to figure out why.

We based this email around a great asset: a whitepaper with advice and analysis that seemed valuable to our audience.

Everything went according to plan. Our team was all on the same page about the content, and we sent it out right on schedule. So far, so good.

Our numbers—email opens, CTA clicks, whitepaper downloads—are all roughly on-target, but they haven’t added up to any new leads or conversions.

What am I missing here? How can I understand why this campaign failed? How can I prevent this from happening again?

Thanks,

Disappointed in Dallas.

Hi, Disappointed, I understand how you feel.

A few months back, we launched a campaign targeting a new market for the first time. Everything seemed to come together—images, content, our offer to the audience—and I really thought we were onto something.

The response? Crickets.

It was a tough pill to swallow, but in every “failure” there’s an opportunity to learn.

We tested, tweaked, and tried again—we figured out what messages struck a chord with our audience, and now we’re making real headway in the market. You can’t undo past missteps, but you can take the lessons forward and do better. So let’s start now.

 

Which metrics equal success?

First of all, it’s good that you know what metrics equal success for this campaign. Success is relative to your goals, after all.

That said, numbers like clicks and opens don’t tell you much in a silo.

As a starting point: compare your metrics, and your results, to the campaigns you’ve run in the past.

Think about what’s changed between your more successful campaigns and this one.

Your team was all on the same page about content, but was it the right message for the right audience? Did it miss the mark as far as cultural sensitivities go? Was it personalized enough?

 

Ask the tough questions

There are many potential factors at play here.

• Sending the email out on schedule is good news for your processes, but did you choose the right time and day of the week?
• Was email really the most effective channel for the people you wanted to reach?
• Did any small errors or placeholder names sneak into the final text?

Size up the content and the numbers with past campaigns, which will help you crack the case.

A/B testing

Then, you move from diagnosing problems to making improvements. Every part of your email is fair game for A/B testing, be it the subject line, content, time and date, imagery, or CTA.

Test alternatives constantly, and you’ll build up a strong understanding of what really resonates with your audience.

One of our best-ever campaign responses came from targeting execs with an email right after the Masters Tournament on a Sunday evening.

Why?

We had a distinct segment (execs—the kind who’re into golf), we had a good idea of what was on their minds (checking emails before the week ahead), and we caught them at the right time.

You get to know what makes your audience tick from testing campaigns continuously, and that refines your experiments from shots in the dark into calculated risks.

 

QA testing

The other kind of testing you want to do is QA.

Get an extra pair of eyes or two on every campaign, checking your content for mistakes and cultural issues lost in translation.

Sure, it’s no one’s favorite job, but it’s the backbone of quality.

Any measure that side-steps “Hello [Name]” misfires is one to bring on board.

And even before then, getting feedback on your campaign ideas from around the company can help you gauge whether your approach is sound at the root.

 

Refine your process

With all the parts involved in getting a campaign off the ground, the process is everything.

Think of the steps you took that worked well in the past, whether sending a certain number of reminders for an event or staggering the timelines for approvals and translations in a particular period.

Use those tried-and-true processes as a foundation for your campaigns, and keep layering on top of new ideas and tweaks from your testing.

You might stumble and get frustrated, but don’t worry — you’ll find out what works along the way.

Just remember: “failure” gives you a chance to do better. If you need any help, contact us

You’ve got this,
Joe.

Hey Joe,

I’m about to start a new role as a sales development rep – and if all goes well, there’s a good chance I can move into an account executive position down the road.

What specific tools in my company’s tech stack will be most relevant to me as I embark on this journey?

I want the whole picture now, so I can prepare myself and start off on the right foot.

Thanks,

Revitalized Renata

Hi Renata, thank you for the question, and congratulations on your new role as an SDR!

Gaining a holistic view of the tech at your disposal is essential in sales and will certainly set you up for success over the long term.

So how can we identify and prioritize the tools that are most relevant to you?

 

The 4 sales tech pillars

I like to break down the Sales tech stack into 4 major pillars. Let’s get into them:

1. CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

This is one of the more obvious, but important, aspects of your company’s tech stack.

Whether it’s Salesforce, HubSpot, or anything else, chances are your company will have a dedicated CRM.

Ideally, your CRM will contain information on leads, contacts, and sales opportunities informed by activity, contract history, and so on.

A well-managed and comprehensive CRM is a must-have for effective Sales and Marketing reporting.

 

2. Sales Engagement Platform

Next is to figure out what Sales Engagement Platform your company uses. A few examples include Salesloft and Outreach.

These tools allow you to be as efficient and effective as possible, particularly when it comes to setting up your outreach cadence.

As an SDR, you will also be using this tool often for prospecting, forecasting, reporting, and so on.

 

3. Sales Intel Platform

This tool will be highly relevant to your role as an SDR.

The sales intel platform could be something like LinkedIn Sales Navigator or ZoomInfo.

This tool provides valuable information on leads and opportunities so you can pursue relevant prospects and build relationships.

 

4. Contact Information Platform

The fourth and final pillar of the Sales tech stack is a contact information platform like ZoomInfo.

This will provide phone numbers, emails, and LinkedIn profiles of clients, prospects, and other important contacts.

 

Many tools have overlap

It’s important to understand that many of these platforms will have overlapping use cases and functionalities.

For example, ZoomInfo offers certain modules that provide “intent” information on contacts, classifying them as potential prospects or sales opportunities based on their search history, activity, and so on.

Then, you might have LinkedIn Sales Navigator, which can provide similar benefits, such as alerting you when a growing company has just raised funding or had a change in leadership.

In short: Not only do you need to identify the tools that are relevant to your role, but you also need to understand how they can work together optimally. Read our post ‘How Do I Evaluate New Pieces of Technology‘ for more information.

 

Your role in all of this

As an SDR, you exist at the top of the sales funnel. You’ll fill the pipeline with leads and get the conversation going, which means you’ll likely be using your company’s sales engagement and sales intel platforms more than anyone else.

Conversely, as an account executive, you will be spending most of your time in the CRM as you strive to develop relationships and ultimately close deals.

But these rules aren’t set in stone!

Many account executives, especially ones who do their own prospecting, may be utilizing your sales engagement and intel platforms as well. This is where it depends on your company’s structure, size, and interpretation of the account executive’s responsibilities. Read our post ‘How Can Sales Succeed With Limited Resources?‘ for more on this.

The important part is to work with leadership to make sure the responsibilities of your role are clearly defined.

Then you can start putting relevant pieces of the tech stack together to fulfill those responsibilities and reach your goals.

You’ve got this,
Joe.