Frenemies - Where Sales and Marketing Talk: Recent Episodes
Julia Hartwig & Ahmed Albayrak
Welcome to Frenemies - the podcast where Sales and Marketing talk. Julia Hartwig and Ahmet Albayrak believe that the B2B system is broken and that Sales and Marketing don't have to be Frenemies. That's why they sit down once a week to uncover this love hate relationship between Sales and Marketing while talking about their viewpoints, trends, and challenges each of them experience in their area.
We are close to the end of the year 2023 - time to get sh*t done! In this episode Julia talks about the facts and hacks to increase your productivity by improving your focus, prioritization, and consistency.
The topics discussed in this episode:
- What factors influence an individual's productivity?
- How do you improve your ability to focus?
- What are the best techniques to prioritize tasks?
- How do I keep my productivity at an even pace?
Burnout - we all have heard the term, but what does it actually mean and how do you spot it? On this episode Julia Hartwig is joined by Sally Clarke, a burnout expert, author, and keynote speaker. Together they dive into the first signs of a burnout, the symptoms, and the actions you should take when you are spotting the first signs.
Find Sally Clarke on LinkedIn
Find Sally's books here
Account-based Marketing or ABM - everybody talks about, but should everybody invest in ABM? On this episode of Frenemies the Demand Generation and ABM expert Casper Rouchmann joins Julia to give his insights on when you should invest in ABM, how to get started, and what you need to know.
The topics discussed in this episode:
- Defining the resources and personalization you can allocate to ABM
- The 3 types of ABM
- ICP mapping and account segments
- Why ABM is a long game
- How much personalization is needed to get started
- The ideal frequency of ABM campaigns
- The right metrics to measure ABM
- How to scale ABM activities
- Are ABM and ABS the same?
Check out SparkForce - Full-service, channel-agnostic digital marketing solutions
Check out the Marketing Corner podcast
Meetings - we all have them, and most likely way too many again. On this episode Julia Hartwig gives her insights on how to ensure that meetings are productive, efficient, and run just as long as needed. She goes through the 3 types of meetings (Recurring meetings, purpose meetings and brainstorms) and shares the guidelines she uses so that every participant gets the most out of meetings.
By now Julia Hartwig has recorded 25 episodes of Frenemies and interviewed 6 industry experts on the alignment between Sales and Marketing. On this episode Julia sums up what she has learned about Sales and Marketing alignment, why it is so important and the 4 building blocks of a strong alignment. She also talks about what she has personally learned in the first 25 episodes and gives an outlook on what is coming up on this season of Frenemies.
The topics discussed in this episode:
- Why Sales & Marketing alignment is important
- Spending budgets more effectively
- Team & employee motivation
- Achieving business goals
- The 4 building blocks of Sales & Marketing alignment
- Communication
- Understanding
- Standardization
- Planning
- What Julia has personally learned through Frenemies
You want to give feedback, have topic suggestions or would like to be a guest on Frenemies? Let us know at info@frenemies.nu
Stakeholder management - just a buzzword or a skill?
In episode 25 of Frenemies Julia Hartwig gives insights on how to excel at stakeholder management to progress in your role and career. Stakeholder management is a skill that is often underrated and yet extremely important in any kind of job, but even more so in B2B Sales and Marketing. Julia covers how to think of your day-to-day tasks and projects in a more strategic way by outlining all stakeholders and how to engage and manage relevant stakeholders effectively.
The topics discussed in this episode:
- How stakeholder management can help you progress in your career
- Exercise on how to view your stakeholder more strategically
- Engaging stakeholders effectively
- How to hold stakeholders accountable
- Managing stakeholder and their expectations
- Why evaluating project and stakeholder groups is important
- The skills you learn by focusing on stakeholder management
Sales and Marketing alignment is a passion topic for Laura Erdem, Sales leader at Dreamdata. That is why she joins Julia Hartwig for this episode to talk all about alignment. Where do you get started? Why should Sales care about alignment? How do you notice friction points? And most importantly: how do you prevent misalignment between Sales and Marketing?
The topics discussed in this episode:
- What are the building blocks of a strong alignment at Dreamdata
- Why Sales leaders should care about Marketing
- How Sales and Marketing can compromise to test initiatives
- What marketers should do to gather insights from Sales
- What sellers should do to increase the lead quality
Follow Laura Erdem on LinkedIn here
Q4 just a few weeks away! Considering the general trends in the B2B industry this year Q4 is set to be a difficult one - budgets have been cut, the sales cycles are long, and the targets are high. On this episode of Frenemies Julia introduces a variety of initiatives for Marketing, Sales, Product, and Customer Success that actually create impact and can help you drive revenue in Q4 - and the upcoming year.
The topics discussed in this episode:
- Fact check - The key stats for 2023
- Why Q4 is tricky: Spray & pray vs. doubling down
- Initiatives to start aligning your Sales and Marketing
- Sales initiatives for Q4: The power of prospecting and technology
- Marketing initiatives for Q4 : Customer marketing, intent data, and lots of research
- Product initiatives for Q4: Enabling scalability
- Customer success initiatives for Q4: The sales to customer success handover
Too long; didn't listen edition: You didn't have time to listen to the full paid media deep dive? Listen to the key insights of Julia's paid media talk with Deivis Rupslaukis and learn how you choose paid media platforms, the difference between demand capture and demand creation, and most importantly: paid media tips any marketer should know.
Paid Media - the magic trick of B2B Marketing or just a standard tool to generate leads? In this episode of Frenemies Julia sits down with the Paid Media expert Deivis Rupslaukis to discuss how to create and execute a paid media strategy that generates revenue. Deivis is the founder of the paid media agency DERU Digital and has more than 7 years experience in digital marketing.
The topics discussed in this episode:
- The metrics you need to know to get started with paid media
- Creating a paid media strategy that drives revenue
- Choosing the right platform: where to invest and why
- Lead generation vs. Demand generation: how to prove the impact to leadership
- Paid media tips more people should know
- How to optimize your Google Ads setup
- Aligning paid media with Sales
Follow Deivis on LinkedIn
Sign up to the Weekly Paid Ads Highlights
The current market is an employers' market making the fight for the perfect B2B leadership role even more competitive. That's why Julia Hartwig is joined by the brilliant Jillian Als on this episode. Jillian is a skilled B2B Marketing leader with more than 15 years of experience, passionate about Sales and Marketing alignment, and currently looking for new opportunities. She shares her insights and advice for finding the perfect job, how to spot red flags, who to meet in the interview process, and why staying true to yourself is so important.
The topics discussed in this episode:
- How to get in contact with the right people
- How to navigate networking opportunities
- Case tasks in the application process
- Requirements and criteria for a job
- Stakeholders you need to meet in the application process
- The important questions you need to ask
- How to spot red flags and address them
- Personality tests: useful or a waste of time?
- Why it's important to stay true to yourself
Creating teams that sell - that is the goal of any B2B company. But how do you get there? To uncover this, Julia Hartwig is joined by Martin Nyvang Mariussen, Partner at Kvadrant Consulting and Co-author of the book "Teams that Sell", in this episode of Frenemies.
The topics covered in this episode:
- B2B teams depend more on collaboration now than ever before
- Should Sales be an individual discipline or a team sport?
- The shift that needs to happen in targets and bonus setups to accommodate a team mentality
- Should Marketing get a bonus as well?
- How competitive personality types can collaborate
- Building trust to create teams that work together
- Creating a team that sells as a Sales Manager
- Difficulties SaaS companies face in scaling Sales and Marketing
- Why Marketing and Sales need to center around the buyer
- What makes teams high performing
Find the book "Teams that Sell" here
In episode 19 of Frenemies Julia Hartwig is joined by Sara Leander-Pehrson, the CEO of Prezentor with more than 20 years of sales experience. Together Julia and Sara uncover why the CFO matters in B2B Sales and Marketing and reveal the results of the Sellers' readiness survey 2023 with more than 300 B2B sellers. They discuss what challenges sellers faced with in the buying process, effective methods to sell to the CFO and give insights on what CFOs actually need based on 15 interviews with CFOs.
Topics discussed in this episode:
- Why should sellers cater to their buyer's CFO?
- Sellers' challenges in selling to the CFO
- How Marketing can support Sales in reaching CFOs
- Sales materials CFOs need
- Is ROI everything CFOs care about?
Here you find all insights on why the CFO matters such as:
- Sellers' Survival Guide to 2023
- Key research insights
- Sellers' readiness survey 2023
- Understanding the CFO
- How to create a business case
In this episode Ahmet and Julia are joined by Marc Denier, the Co-founder of StageSet to talk startup. Together the three discuss how it is to found a startup in a difficult economy, how to prioritize between Sales, Marketing, and Product as well as how to land your first customer.
Topics discussed in this episode:
- Balancing responsibilities as a startup leader
- Making brainstorms productive
- Differentiating between good ideas and impactful ideas
- How to build targets as a newly founded startup
- Why startups need to prioritize documenting
- What does the tech stack at a startup look like
Pricing - in today's B2B world buyers care about prices. So does the price have the power to make it or break it? It certainly does. That's why Julia Hartwig and Ahmet Albayrak talk pricing in this episode. How should you create a pricing strategy and how do you communicate price with buyers? This and many more are discussed in this episode on Frenemies - where Sales and Marketing sit down and talk together.
In this episode of Frenemies Julia is joined by Jillian Als, the VP of Marketing at Tricent. The two discuss how Marketing leaders can approach and ensure a close alignment between Sales and Marketing in B2B SaaS companies. They talk about their challenges they had working with Sales, the main benefits of a close alignment, and how their relationship with the Sales department has changed over the course of their careers.
The topics discussed in this episode:
- Why alignment needs to come top-down and bottom-up
- Chemistry as crucial element for collaboration
- Why KPIs are the foundation for alignment
- An effective meeting structure that enables alignment
- Should SDRs be part of Sales or Marketing?
- The challenges of working together with Sales
Follow Jillian on LinkedIn for more insights: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillianals/
Currently, every department in B2B companies is under immense pressure. And more often than not pressure leads to activities that don't drive value. That's why Ahmet and Julia in this episode talk about the Sales and Marketing activities they have done in their career, which they aren't proud of. What are the things they have done even though they knew they don't move the needle? Let's confess together and learn how to prevent focusing on activities that don't create value.
The topics discussed in this episode:
- Marketers being tempted to present numbers that look better than they are in reality
- Why sellers think it's easier to lie if they don't know the answer
- How missing sales training can lead to mistakes
- The difference between click-baiting and quality content
- Why you can't get tired of creating content
- How content and our consumption thereof has changed
- Booking meetings to book meetings
- Focusing on lead generation vs. demand generation
- Sending terrible emails is quick and dirty
- How false is false advertising?
Brand awareness - every B2B is currently trying to build and increase their brand awareness, but why is it so important? In this episode Julia and Ahmet take a deep dive into the psychological impact brands have on our decision-making, and how B2B companies can use this to build their brand and create demand in the market.
The topics discussed in this episode:
- The power of brands
- Branding vs. Brand awareness - What is the difference
- The brand psychology and its impact on our decision-making
- Why B2B companies are so far behind on branding
- How B2B buyers make purchase decisions
- Does every B2B company need a brand?
- Why branding and content are intertwined
- Our favorite B2B brands that get it right
Sign up for the B2B Saas Growth Day on May 25th
Sources:
- When B2B brands influence the decision-making of buyers
- What B2B needs to know about their buyers
Listen to Shoot the SHFT for more content on how to turn your brand into a long-term asset
Everyone is talking about it, everyone has tested it, and everyone has implemented it - AI. In this episode Ahmet and Julia discuss the AI-based tools they use to get more efficient in their everyday work in B2B Sales and Marketing. They take a deep dive into the use cases for the different tools and tasks.
The 4 use cases discussed in this episode are:
- Research
- Content creation
- Design
- Other (Graphs, Coding & Sound)
Here is a full list of the tools mentioned in the podcast:
- Research
- Chat GPT 4
- AgentGPT
- AutoGPT
- Camel AGI
- Superpower ChatGPT
-
Stability.ai
-
Content Creation
-
Copy.ai
- Writesonic
- Writer.com
- Autoblogging.ai
- Supermeme.ai
- Tome
- Lavender
-
Smartwriter.ai
-
Design
-
Lumen5
- Canva
- Midjourney
- DALL-E 2
- Blue Willow
- Runway
-
Uizard
-
Other
-
Notion (Project management)
- Chart GPT (Graphs)
- Taskade (Task management)
- Descript (Video editing)
- Wellsaidlabs (Text to speech)
- Github Copilot (Coding)
- Adobe Sound (Sound editing)
Go get your dream job! In this episode Julia and Ahmet share their best tips and tricks to land your dream job in Sales and Marketing. This episode is especially useful for newcomers who are looking to land their first job in the B2B industry, but also has lots of tips for everyone else that wants to go on a successful job hunt.
Topics discussed in this episode:
- The power of networking
- How to choose your career path in Marketing
- The skills you need to start in Marketing
- Why applying is the same as selling
- How to make your application stand out
- How to reach out to the hiring manager
- How to handle the first interview
- What questions to bring to the interview
Check out Glassdoor to see if a company is a fit for you: https://www.glassdoor.com/
Playbooks, by now they're a buzzword, and yet too many B2B companies fail at creating, maintaining, and implementing playbooks that Sales and Marketing need. In this episode Ahmet and Julia dive deeper into what kind of playbooks are needed, why they're important, and what needs to be in them.
Topics discussed in the episode:
- Do playbooks reduce creativity?
- Sales onboarding with vs without playbooks
- What is Demand Generation Playbook
- How playbooks help new employees
- What needs to be in an effective Sales playbook
- Why the CRM is an important part of a playbook
- Do we need standardized outreach cadences?
- Standardization vs. Creativity
- Why Marketing needs a playbook as well
- Why it's more fun to work in Sales and Marketing
The tech stack is much talked about and in this episode Julia and Ahmet take a deep dive into the tools and solutions Sales and Marketing need. This is an episode full of name dropping, recommendation, and useful tips on the most important sales and marketing tools that make a difference in the day-to-day work of busy marketers and sellers.
Topics discussed in this episode:
- Who has the biggest tech stack - Sales vs Marketing
- What team adopts technology more
- CRM and Marketing automation tools
- The tools needed to analyze, track, and optimize
- LinkedIn tools and post scheduling
- AI: what are the tools actually worth the cost
- Project management tools - when is it time to invest in them
- Analytics and dashboarding
- Do you need sales content management
- Are sales intelligence tools actually worth the cost?
You want to keep up with the newest tools on the market and stay ahead of the game? We can recommend Poduct Hunt to do exactly that: https://www.producthunt.com/
As both Julia and Ahmet started new jobs four months ago they are talking onboarding and training in this episode focusing on what training Sales and Marketing need to perform at their best.
Topics they discuss in this episode:
- What does Marketing need to know to be fully onboarded?
- What does the perfect Sales onboarding look like?
- How onboarding differs between startups and enterprises
- Why we love playbooks
- How do you stay up to date in Sales?
- How do you keep up with market trends?
This episode is a personal one: Ahmet and Julia take a tour back memory lane and talk about their first work experiences, how they ended up pursuing careers in Sales and Marketing, and how they ended up doing a podcast. Most importantly, in this episode they discuss what they truly love about Sales and Marketing.
We need Sales - all of us can agree on that in the B2B industry. But we also hate Sales. That's why Julia and Ahmet talk about the root of the Frenemies relationship between Sales and Marketing starting with everything they hate about Sales.
While Julia has a lot of experience being a prospect and working with the Sales department, Ahmet gives an inside view on what Sales is currently lacking, and why people can hate Sales.
Topics they discuss in this episode:
- Why Sales isn't a team sport
- Does Sales have to be pushy?
- Is the Sales quota what makes everything so difficult?
- How sellers always find a shortcut
We love marketing, but we also hate marketing. That's why Julia and Ahmet talk about the root of the Frenemies relationship between Sales and Marketing starting with everything they hate about marketing.
Naturally, Ahmet has a lot of experience collaborating or not collaborating with the Marketing department. Julia uncovers what she hates about marketing as an experienced marketer.
Topics they discuss in this episode:
- Is Marketing just a bunch of ideas and no follow-through?
- The downside of Marketing being so visible
- How Marketing can approach Sales to collaborate well
- Why Marketing emails suck and how to fix that
- Why Marketers are excellent data analysts
- What Sellers need from Marketing
- Why every departments thinks they have the toughest job
This week there is no episode of Frenemies, because we are using our reach to raise awareness to support Turkey in this situation.
Your help and your donation is needed to support the affected people and areas who lost their homes, their family members, and their livelihood.
Here is the list of organizations that are safe and need any donation:
- AFAD: https://www.afad.gov.tr/depremkampanyasi2
- UOSSM: https://www.uossm.org/donate
- Ahbap Foundation: https://bagis.ahbap.org/bagis
- OXFAM: https://www.oxfam.org.uk/
- AKUT: https://www.akut.org.tr/en/donation
We thank you for your support and time,
Ahmet and Julia
We're playing buzzword bingo - covering the most important buzzwords in the world of B2B Sales and Marketing. Naturally, Julia and Ahmet drift off from talking buzzwords to talking about the challenges in Marketing and Sales and the collaboration between the two departments.
Questions discussed in the episode are:
- What is high quality content?
- How should a prospect be qualified?
- Do eBook downloads matter?
- Why is the ICP so important?
- Is Growth Marketing a thing?
And the biggest question of all: who will win the buzzword bingo?
In this episode of Frenemies Julia and Ahmet talk about what nobody really wants to talk about: their fuckups. What did they fail at in 2022, did they learn anything from their fuckups, and can you turn fuckups into wins?
The fuckups they cover in this episode:
- A Sales gift gone wrong
- Job interviews
- The long list of Marketing fuckups
- Non-functioning demo buttons
- Prioritizing quantity over quality
- Products trying to be the best at everything
- Underrating outreach methods
- Overcomplicating things
- Implementing a demand generation approach
- Perfection vs. Activation: where's the balance
In this episode of Frenemies Ahmet and Julia talk about the Start of the calendar year versus the end of the calendar year. Each of these time periods has its own challenges and they talk about how Sales and Marketing experience these periods, which one is easier for each department, what trends they typically see going on, and what people should be aware of.
They also cover the following questions:
- What Sales and Marketing have in common at the start of the year
- Why the end of the year often leads to low-impact initiatives
- Why companies tend to over-sell their product
- Are Sales and Marketing just making wrong claims?
- Why sellers give discounts at the end of the year
- Why the Sales system is broken
In this episode Julia and Ahmet dive deeper into uncovering the love hate relationship between Sales and Marketing. They discuss where the fractions come from, and why Sales and Marketing aren't BFFs (yet).
Questions they discuss in this episode:
- Why do Sales and Marketing have different targets?
- Can Sales and Marketing actually listen to each other?
- How can Sales proof the success of outreach initiatives?
- What can Marketing do to support Sales in the outreach process?
- Will OpenAI kill Marketing?
What is all of this even about?! In their first episode of Frenemies Julia and Ahmet talk about the basics: what is Sales and what is Marketing? To spice things up, each of them created their own definitions of Sales and Marketing to uncover the prejudices each of them has of the other area.
Other questions they discuss include:
- Is Marketing all about buzzwords?
- Does Marketing forget they're talking to people?
- What content does actually work?
- Will OpenAI take Marketer's jobs?
- Why is the Sales system broken?
- Does LinkedIn have ads?
- Where does brand start and where does it stop?
- How do SDRs stay sane?