004 | The Power of Sales-Marketing Alignment with Kyle Lacy | Studio CMO - a podcast by Golden Spiral, Shaping Technology Marketing

The Episode in 60 Seconds

Kyle Lacy, CMO of Lessonly, joins us via Zoom from Indianapolis, Ind. to talk marketing/sales alignment, customer experience, leadership during COVID-19, and golden llamas.

Kyle brings over 12 years of experience in marketing strategy and digital operations and is obsessed with how technology influences and changes human behavior. Additionally, Kyle has written three books: Twitter Marketing for Dummies, Branding Yourself, and Social CRM for Dummies.

This interview delves into:

• The importance of storytelling in marketing and branding
• A unified approach to sales and marketing
• Differentiating your company in some way outside of your product’s features
• The power of customer experience
• Lessonly’s approach to COVID-19 challenges
• The mentality of a successful CMO

Our Guest

Kyle Lacy leads marketing for Lessonly, a training and enablement software company based in Indianapolis, Ind. Kyle's team touches everything you can imagine when it comes to marketing, including demand generation, content marketing, branding, design, messaging, go-to-market development, and thought leadership. He drives growth at Lessonly using the knowledge he has gained while working at a venture capital firm, the largest software company in the world, and the fastest-growing email marketing company.

Kyle has authored three books that have been published in five languages and seven countries. The books include Twitter Marketing for Dummies, Branding Yourself, and Social CRM for Dummies.

Kyle has spent the last seven years traveling the world speaking at marketing and technology industry events and has been recognized as as one of Indiana’s Forty-under-40 by the Indianapolis Business Journal, Anderson University's Young Alumni of the Year, and TechPoint's Young Professional of the Year. 

Show Notes

Check out Lessonly CEO Max Yoder’s book Do Better Work. Lessonly sends this book to prospects throughout the entire sales cycle.

Your best stories come from your customers. They are your best salespeople.

Companies either approach the sales funnel with the power of customer experience or a feature push. Where do you stand?

A Unified Approach to Sales and Marketing

The traditional sales funnel has radically transformed over the last five years. We’ve seen this self-service sales framework begin to develop in marketing where people are doing a lot of research independent from any sales conversations.

Kyle Lacy’s marketing team transitioned from being only top of funnel to being full funnel, touching 100% of everything happening at the company.

“The team felt renewed. They were more positive. They felt challenged in a good way. And then because of that, because they had the feeling that they were accomplishing something, we started to see success.” - Kyle Lacy

As its sales and marketing teams grew, Lessonly then focused on organization and process development to adjust alignment.

The True Value of Brand Experience in B2B Tech

If you don’t differentiate in some other way outside of features, you’ll just be another demo. Try telling a story that’s a little bit different, a bit more human.

A few things Lessonly has done to humanize the sales cycle:

• Sent prospects Donors Choose gift cards to give to a classroom in need in their city, so kids can do better work, too 
• Developed a 13-page coloring book to help working parents entertain their kids during quarantine
• Sent employees, prospects, and customers golden llamas (spray painted by Kyle, himself!) modeled after Lessonly’s mascot, Ollie Llama.

Lessonly receives most of its customer feedback from a weekly personal and leadership development newsletter sent by Lessonly CEO Max Yoder.

Kyle on sending prospects Golden Llamas…

“We don’t talk about Lessonly at all as a product, but it’s a first touch for us. It works extremely well because it’s different, and it has nothing to do with our product.” - Kyle Lacy

Here’s an unboxing of Lessonly’s Golden Llama by Sendoso.

Lessonly has also launched a word search, a board game called Llama Land for their software users, and a Lego Llama.

(And if you haven't seen Ludacris freestyle the children's book, Llama Llama Red Pajama, check it out.)

Kyle Lacy's Mentality as A Successful CMO

What’s the essential mentality for a Chief Marketing Officer to be successful? Timeframes.

“Marketing directors think in quarters. Chief Marketing Officers should think in years when it comes to strategy development.” - Kyle Lacy

Make your customer the hero. To achieve that, avoid a constant focus on feature development and growth.

Instead of focusing on the top of the funnel, CMOs and marketing leaders should focus on two things:

1. Owning a revenue number (and a seat at board meetings)
2. Influencing 100% of company decisions that are related to money

Lessonly's Approach to Leadership During the COVID-19 Crisis

When attempting to make decisions on an unknown, you must over-communicate with your team and over-index on empathy.

What Kyle’s team has been doing to maintain company culture during quarantine:

• Daily stand-ups
• Spontaneous happy hours
• 24-hour zoom room
• Online games
• Individual check-ins

Great Articles on Sales-Marketing Alignment

The Missing Piece of Sales-Marketing Alignment

8 Strategies for Internal Communications Alignment

How to Master Sales and Marketing Alignment

How to Align Sales and Marketing with Revenue Goals

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