LUIZ MARTINS - HOW MEDDIC CAN ALIGN YOUR MARKETING & SALES TEAMS
This week’s guest on Marketing MEDDICC was Luiz Martins, current CMO at 6Connex, a leader in event technology that supports in-person, virtual, or hybrid events.
Luiz has had the best of both worlds when it comes to sales and marketing. He originally cut his teeth in ad agencies, working as an intern and as a “traffic cop” running around to make sure everyone was on the same page when it came to delivering for a client. It is no shock that in the future as a CMO, he wants the same complete alignment from his sales and marketing teams too.
Originally working as a marketing assistant, he would go on to work in sales for commission and would go on to spend over 12 years rising the sales ladder before helping deploy different sales teams all over the world for businesses. Despite spending a long time in sales, he would find his route back into marketing and has stayed on this side ever since, saying: “I love the creative component in marketing, I love storytelling and my whole background is about identifying personas - if you are doing your job right in marketing, you are ultimately selling.”
He looks at sales and marketing as possessing the same goal and objective, both going hand in hand for the different teams. “How is this moving the ball forward to the goal posts, how am I going to be very clear with my message and talk about the benefits we offer, what differentiates us from others?”, asks Luiz. “We have to tailor this conversation towards our audience - good sellers do the same thing, whether they change the speech or the way they deliver it.”
HOW TO GET MARKETING BUY-IN FROM SALES TEAMS
Luiz does note that he has been very lucky to work in organizations where both sales and marketing have worked with complete synergy. He can however identify for businesses what they need to do to begin working together with full effectiveness.
“The first thing is leadership, identify the influencers here,” says Luiz. “Sales can be doubtful of marketing activity, so get their input and feedback and with understanding comes alignment.”
Luiz added that when sales teams see marketing as a partner, they tend to come and help.
WORKING IN VIRTUAL EVENTS TECHNOLOGY DURING THE PANDEMIC
Luiz had the incredible experience of joining a live and virtual events technology provider just before the coronavirus pandemic hit. What he saw at 6Connex during this period is something most CMOs will never get the chance to witness.
“We saw tremendous growth - I have never experienced this in my life. “We had salespeople coming to me and saying “Luiz, we’re getting way too many leads!”
To steady the flow of demo requests and inquiries, the sales team even asked Luiz to extend the contact forms and make the process even more complex to hyper-qualify customers for the sales team.
“We knew it was going to elevate the entire business, but it did it at almost 11 or 12 fold,” Luiz noted. “We see that in the future there will be no difference between live and virtual events - events are going to evolve into real life components and virtual components.”
He did also mention that this market is now adjusting after a period of astronomical growth. “From a marketing point of view, we rose paid ads, we extended budgets, we wanted people to get to know us as we had more and more entrants into the market that came from the woodwork, more competition - we had been in the industry for 16 years so we wanted to push the brand aggressively and stepped-up investment.”
IMPLEMENTING MEDDIC INTO MARKETING
Luiz worked with the CEO at 6Connex to implement MEDDIC and has both the marketing and sales channels versed in the framework.
“We have a history of MEDDIC so we felt it would be great to have the entire team speaking the same language.”
When Luiz was asked what he sees now compared to when he implemented it almost a year ago, he was emphatic about the results.
“We see an alignment in the way we talk - marketing is about personas, and sales are asking who their Champion or Economic Buyer is. Marketing is talking with sales about these, so there is that alignment - the conversations just flow easier. We now talk in the same language - everyone has the same game plan in mind.”
6Connex is the leader in its market, constantly coming up with new products or features that are technical, complex, and can be plentiful in variations. MEDDIC has solved this pain of confusion for sales and marketing, helping them be in total synergy when it comes to the solution, product, or feature.
“When we plan a new product, GTM, or create a new function like True A.I. (6Connex are the only ones to do this technology), we don’t think linearly, we look at the MEDDIC process, the Metrics, the Economic Buyer for the solution. It drives incredible alignment.”
It is very clear to see that with Luiz’s incredibly intertwined background in sales and marketing, he has taken particular pleasure in seeing how MEDDIC can completely align marketing and sales to not only drive more success and revenue but lead to more creativity and conversations that spring ideas. MEDDIC and marketing can be a total game-changer when put together.
