\n<\/p>\n
\u201cOur solution offers exponential revenue growth opportunities and our customers say it\u2019s super easy to set-up with most any middleware. You\u2019ll be fully operational within a day.\u201d <\/p>\n
We know this sounds familiar to those of us on a marketing operations team (MOPs) that\u2019s been tasked with evaluating a martech purchase.<\/p>\n
\u201cBusiness lingo might resonate with people making or influencing decisions who are not dealing with technical\/operations questions,\u201d said Helen Abramova, a marketing technology lead and 3X Marketo Champion, \u201cHowever, if you talk directly to the marketing ops people who run the systems and processes, the conversation must change.\u201d<\/p>\n
Abramova and Kelly Jo Horton, principal engineer for the marketing operations and technology team at ROOM, offered the following list of words and phrases that are sure to make any MOPs professional tune out.<\/p>\n
Abramova makes clear it\u2019s not because the marketing operations team doesn\u2019t understand these terms, but because we understand all too well how marketing technology gets rolled out and how it impacts our business. (We are the drivers of digital transformation, after all).<\/p>\n
\u201c[Marketing technologists] are aware that behind the pompous language, there might be buggy products, irresponsive support, technical limitations, custom everything, required development, high efforts and low impact,\u201d said Abramova, \u201cWhat looks like a small beautiful arrow on the chart might require painful implementation and troubleshooting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Horton and Sara McNamara, senior marketing operations manager for Cloudera, both say martech sales reps should omit any descriptions claiming their product integrates easily with other platforms or solutions.<\/p>\n
\u201cIntegrates easily<\/em>, easy set-up<\/em>, deep analytics<\/em> \u2014 these are all red flags,\u201d said McNamara, \u201cWhen you work in martech you know that nothing integrates easily, very little is super easy to set up, and that, in order to get deep analytics, you have to have things like custom algorithms and super clean data.\u201d She said sales reps need to be real with MOPs teams about the effort it will take to get the technology up and running and focus on the payoff once it\u2019s done. <\/p>\n Other promises to avoid in conversations with MOPs, according to Horton: \u201cWe can give you access today and you\u2019ll be fully functional tomorrow,\u201d or \u201cWe don\u2019t have a native integration, but our other customers say it\u2019s easy to set up with [insert name of any middleware here],\u201d and \u201cYou can definitely do that with a little JavaScript.\u201d <\/p>\n While phrases like \u201cintegration is super easy\u201d will not be easily believed, Abramova, Horton and McNamara all made clear that MOPs pros indeed want to know whether or not the product includes native integration with marketing automation platforms or CRMs already in use. <\/p>\n \u201cIf your tool doesn\u2019t integrate with my existing stack, we are already adding a lot of build cost around this project,\u201d said McNamara, \u201cVendors should be transparent about integration because even when they manage to sell a product that is a poor fit, they often get claw-back, non-renewal and poor reviews among the MOPs community.\u201d<\/p>\n MOPs leaders also want details on configuration \u2014 specifically, does a martech tool include a self-serve configuration model or does it require services to configure?<\/p>\n \u201cThe answer to this question will give me an idea of how much control we will have over the configuration of the tool and how long it will take to configure and roll-out,\u201d said Horton, \u201cIf I have to ask services and support for help every time I want to make a small configuration change, this is a bottleneck.\u201d <\/p>\n In the end, Abramova said all MOPs pros want to know is how the product\/platform\/service performs.<\/p>\n \u201cName the product category (or the closest one if it doesn\u2019t fit anywhere), then explain very specifically how you are different from your competitors,\u201d said Abramova.<\/p>\n MOPs are also very interested in how data is structured and what the major data flows are. Also, if there is any PII (personally identifiable information) involved or compliance\/data security requirements.<\/p>\n Implementation, too. We want to know the average time it will take to implement the tool, if it includes customized field mapping features or requires API access.<\/p>\n McNamara is a big believer that hiding the cost of the solution is never a good idea. <\/p>\n \u201cWhenever a rep tries to avoid a price conversation, I know that they\u2019re not confident that their product is good enough to justify the high cost that comes with it,\u201d said McNamara, \u201cI can feel a large six-figure deal coming from a mile away!\u201d<\/p>\n Sending integration documents before a sales meeting, as well as links to developer and end-user documentation if any exist, also helps us prepare, says Horton.<\/p>\n McNamara said one of the best martech reps she\u2019s worked with was a woman who could speak directly to the technology that she was selling because she had done her homework and knew the offering up and down. That\u2019s what a MOPs pro wants from these exchanges.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that not enough martech vendors allow or support their reps to be trained deeply enough to be able to riff about their own product,\u201d said McNamara. \u201cI don\u2019t usually get routed to a dev team, but I do often hear \u2018let me invite a solutions engineer\u2019 or \u2018let me get back to you\u2019 so they can ask those folks for answers.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, sometimes these kinds of meetings take place at trade show booths, and that\u2019s when marketing ops has one thing in mind: a demo.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the most bizarre things I come across is that sales reps do not want to show their platform\u2019s UI at their conference booth,\u201d said Abramova, \u201cWhat I hear is that it\u2019s a great tool to drive revenue growth, but when I interrupt as politely as possible, I am only offered to schedule a demo. I am standing right here, in front of a screen and willing to see the product \u2014 but no.\u201d <\/p>\n Like many of us, Abramova finds it much easier to understand the concept and key features when she sees the UI. But instead of taking advantage of the moment and showing her the technology, sales reps often ask to schedule a pre-demo call so that they can understand business needs \u2014 creating an unnecessary step in the process that takes up more time and calendar space. We don\u2019t like that.<\/p>\nWhat we want to hear<\/h2>\n
Forget the script <\/h2>\n
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