Podcast: What is Your Data Telling You? (Or Not?)

EVP of Sales and Business Development Chris DuBach and EVP of Marketing and Research Strategies Mark Gaskill talked about data, data security, danger zones, research, sales and marketing collaborations, emotional connections and more during a Bullhorns & Bullseyes Podcast with hosts Tom Nixon and Curtis Hays.

Highlights of the podcast include the hosts’ reference to the OODA loop, which stands for observe, orient, decide and act. Mark, Chris and the hosts go on to discuss its application in decision-making with respect to marketing and advertising, and Mark adds an “M” for “measure” to the acronym.

The discussion included the dangers of assuming certain things about clients’ needs, as well as the solutions to them, without backing it all up with verifiable data. Mark notes that data helps to simplify decision-making because the decisions would be based on objective facts rather than varying and fluctuating opinions.

Taking opinions out of the equation by using data and strategic approaches allows for more insightful measurements of the results, he says. Afterward, you can take that data and assign an emotional aspect to it to be able to reach audiences, he adds.

“We’re not communicating with five people or 10 people,” he says, in reference to a hypothetical marketing campaign. “We’re communicating with 50,000 people. (Now) you start to think, ‘Well, yeah, one message is good across the board to all 50,000, but if I can have five messages that resonate with 5,000-, 10,000-group subsets, then I’m going to be much more successful in that.’”

Chris adds that businesses should be especially cautious about making decisions based on outdated information.

“Research is a powerful tool that we feel like gets missed a lot as an opportunity,” Chris says. “Going back to 101, what does your end user, your consumer, your student, whatever that may be, what is it they really want? And have you really ever asked them? Or has it been decades of assumptions that have led you to where you are?”

Another highlight of the podcast is a discussion about the importance of aligning the goals of the sales and marketing teams, which historically have been disconnected throughout the industry. 

Online transactional sales can be easy to measure; after you run an ad, viewers go to an e-commerce site and either buy the product or don’t buy the product, Mark says. However, creating lasting solutions for clients can require a long-term plan, so it’s important for both teams to be on the same track and look at the same big picture in order to meet the end goal.

“When you’re talking about more solution-selling or kind of bigger investment type of sales, those are longer lead times, and that takes a real kind of personal nurturing that goes along with it,” Mark says. “And I think that’s where marketers kind of missed the point on that. It’s more difficult to capture. There are tools, though, that you can start to implement to be able to integrate those two together.

“It all goes down to your sales forces of the world. How many touches did marketing have? How many touches does sales have, right? And at what point are we moving the client through the funnel? I think those are some of the key things that are often lost.”

Chris notes that although he leads business development efforts and Mark leads marketing efforts for Phoenix Innovate, they agreed on Day One that they were going to work “shoulder to shoulder” all the time.

“We both saw the value – understanding that if we work together, we’re going to have better opportunities for sales and marketing is going to have better information,” Chris says.

These are only a few of the highlights of the podcast. To hear additional insights from Chris and Mark, listen to the full interview here.