Avoid the Blame Game with Chris Boehlke and Isaac Ware

Trinity Nguyen:

Hey, everyone. And welcome to another episode of The First 100 days, a show for revenue practitioners by revenue practitioners, exploring how to build an aligned revenue engine, one practical tip at a time. I'm Trinity Nguyen.

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Christian Kletzl:

And I'm Christian Kletzl. This season, we are talking about building revenue alignment by asking high-performing teams how they got it done.

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Trinity Nguyen:

And joining us today, we have the hard-hitting team from Bear Fox Marketing. Chris Boehlke, who is vice president of business development, and Isaac Ware who ran marketing. So, Chris and Isaac, I'd love to kind of get to know you in the context of how you guys started working together.

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Isaac Ware:

We both worked at Bear Fox Marketing, a digital marketing agency focused on Paid Media, SEO. I had been there for probably two years and had gone through a couple sales guys that couldn't make things work in the past, and then Chris hopped in. After a couple years of dealing with that, the agency took off. We worked really closely together. I was director of Paid Media and just kind of strategy overall. And Chris hopped in as one of our first, real long-term sales guys. So, yeah, I'll pass it over to him.

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Chris Boehlke:

I come from a fitness background, so I actually was in the fitness industry. And I'll give you a little bit of background because it's relevant. I started my own website at one point. And in that process, I realized it was super hard. It was challenging. Marketing was not easy. There was so many different things out there that would guide you one way and then you'd learn something that would guide you another way. And it was challenging, to say the least. So, it didn't work for me, but it led me into marketing, got me excited about it. And I [inaudible 00:01:47] industry started working at Bear Fox and coming in from different sales environments where it was high volume, this was more lower volume, higher quality, looking for the right fit. The one thing I noticed right away was the self generated leads, the inbound leads the company was producing was something that I didn't really expect.

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Chris Boehlke:

So, it was more of a... I could say it was kind of a privilege in a sense, right? Getting leads that I didn't have to earn myself. So, initially, it was just rainbows and butterflies for me getting these leads. But then as I got to know Isaac more, he really wanted to know about the quality and really cared about improving that, which through that evolution, month after month after month, we built a stronger relationship and we really were able to develop a stronger pipeline of leads and be more efficient with our marketing spend, which is the ultimate goal.

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Trinity Nguyen:

Maybe just for the context of the audience listening in, can you tell us what Bear Fox Marketing is about?

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Chris Boehlke:

So, Bear Fox, we're a full service agency. We work with clients in E-commerce and lead generation. I take a lot of pride in the fact that we look for the right type of clients, so we don't just take somebody on because they have money to spend. So, in the process of marketing, we're trying to find our ideal client. And then within that onboarding, as far as getting to know them, trying to qualify them. If they're not a good fit, we point them in the direction of a freelancer, give them as much insight as we can, and try and help them out. But we're only looking to take on clients that really, based on the budget that we need, are going to be able to see the results that they're going to expect to continue on. But some of the channels we specialize in are SEO, Google ads, Facebook, social media, email marketing, that sort of thing.

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Trinity Nguyen:

And that's great. Thank you for giving me the context. I was going to say that you guys work so well together. I don't want to kind of give the ending away so quickly, but you guys work so well together in terms of generating a pipeline, but also building relationship. And Christian, just for your context, Chris was, Isaac, one of his references before he joined User Gems. So, it was really cool.

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Christian Kletzl:

So, he had something good to say about Isaac, I guess. So, he wouldn't be here.

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Trinity Nguyen:

How was it before Chris joined and what were the difference?

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Isaac Ware:

It was a whole rollercoaster. When I joined, it was really early on, the two owners, a project manager, me. So, everybody wore a ton of hats and one of the owners, Glen, was handling, I believe, all of the sales activities. So, owner was doing all the selling, had to do that. So, throughout the years, kind of, I think Chris, correct me if I'm wrong, I think you joined about two years into Bear Fox, I believe.

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Chris Boehlke:

About two and a half years ago. So, I think it was about halfway. Yeah, right around there.

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Isaac Ware:

So, during that time, we tried anything from more junior sales people, to people that had tons of experience. And nothing ended up sticking really. I mean, it always ended up going back to Glen, the owner, to sell. So, it was always really challenging trying to find somebody that would actually fit that role. So, the sales process evolved a ton over that time. I mean, we tried different things with pricing and deals and how to position the product, everything like that. But it was really difficult without being able to keep a single salesperson in that role. So, got to experience the whole range of experience to no experience, but also at the same time, having none of it work until Chris joined.

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Trinity Nguyen:

So, Chris, if you can kind of remember when you first joined the organization, what was it like? How did you start figuring things out and kind of put the sales motion of process in place?

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Chris Boehlke:

I mean, the one thing that drew me to Bear Fox was the staff. I got to know everybody in the onboarding process and there was a really good culture and it was just a really strong culture where the team really supported each other, there was a lot of autonomy, people worked, and they trusted each other, which I really liked. And when I first came on, the one thing that I would say I was fortunate to come from another industry where I had the ability to develop a lot of systems and processes and I'm a ultra organized, process-driven individual. So, I came on and I kind of said, okay, this is what the current processes are, which were good, but how can I streamline things so that I can be most efficient? And for me, it was more taking pride in I'm getting generated leads. I don't want to miss these shots, right.

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Chris Boehlke:

So, if I don't close a deal, what did I not do? And I put that on myself to say, what can I do better? Listening to phone calls, listening to myself after the call was over, and really trying to fine tune the process. I was by myself at that point, which was good and bad. The good was it was kind of on me to get these sales. So, I think that was a big thing, was taking everything they had developed. And like Isaac said, there was a lot of work done before I came on, which was great. And I came into a situation where the leads were coming in very consistently. We had a really good first call, second call, all the way through to the close. And I just took kind of the pressure on myself to say, how can I improve this process for myself?

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Chris Boehlke:

And then I had the vision of... And this was Glen, our CEO kind of allowing me to develop systems for new people when they come on and new processes. So, I went through our CRM, all of our processes, and just tried to streamline things and it started working. So, I think I got a first sale within the first month and then it just started clicking from there. And that became more fun and more exciting. And taking on a beast of its own, I guess you could say. It's growing.

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Isaac Ware:

I think one of the most impressive parts of kind of watching you develop that too, was seeing you accomplish all of that without having a ton of tools. We were, I mean, really kind of bootstrapping that, no investor money or anything like that. So, everything was cash flow positive all the time. So, some of these expensive tools weren't at his disposal. So, just I mean, the spreadsheets he built out were ridiculous. But being able to predict down within a couple percent of every single month, we get this many leads, this many are going to close and it was cool seeing that process kind of unfold.

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Trinity Nguyen:

Wow. That's incredible. And especially Chris, you mentioned that the inbound leads has kept coming in. So, they converted really well. So, it seems like really rosy. But I'm going to put you on a spot because business is not always rosy. We all know we've been around the blocks a few times. And also, from the agency world, the relationship that you guys had from between marketing and sales, more interesting, it's different than how a lot of SaaS companies are where marketing can pass leads over and then sales take it from there. And then they can work with sales engineering, and then go to CS after that. But agency is essentially market... Like Isaac was your sales engineer, so to speak, during the sales process. And then once the sales close and Isaac's team becomes the customer success since they delivered the project, right? So, can you guys talk a little bit more about that?

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Isaac Ware:

I'll talk to the negative piece about it a little bit at first, and then I'll go to positive side of it. I think one of the tougher pieces is sometimes as the person that's actually going to be executing on the account, you'll have like a gut feeling or you won't really like the account or something like that. And you have to almost separate what you're going to have to do with that account later versus the actual deal closing. Because we always wanted to make sure we're working with the right people, but at the same time, certain accounts just are not nearly as fun to work on as other ones. So, there's almost this deep down desire to not necessarily have this deal close in some ways. So, I think that was one of the more negative challenges. I think it's a lot easier with software because everybody's pain points are segmented out. ADR have their own, AEs have their own. And then CSMs get to deal with whatever happens backwards for the most part. But on the marketing side of things, it was being on the front end and the back end of things definitely made you realize what you were going to be getting yourself into and things like that.

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Christian Kletzl:

Which I think is perfect. This was actually the question on my mind, specifically when Chris said some of these leads, they could have closed, but actually they weren't the right customer. And I feel like if I were running marketing and were producing these leads, I'd be frustrated if [inaudible 00:09:18] suddenly says, "Nope, Nope, didn't want to deal with them." But since you are on the receiving end, then I would assume that, okay, actually kind of it's actually aligned with you in, okay, if there are leads that are not the right fit, please do not close them because I need to deal with them again. And I feel like this is, for me, I'm always thinking about the alignment. When you hand off from sales to customer success, sales is like, okay, now they're off of me and they're now CSM's problem. And I think in this scenario, at least you don't have that.

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Isaac Ware:

It is great. I like that kind of first relationship with sales because you get to feel sales' pain and the other side of the pain too. Makes you respect both positions significantly.

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Christian Kletzl:

This is good. We need to somehow make sure that, if there's a pain, that marketing and sales feel it similarly to customer success.

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Isaac Ware:

We just have a job swap day. AEs move over to CSMs, CSMs start selling.

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Trinity Nguyen:

We already volunteer. Us in marketing's going to be doing cold calling. As I remember, we talked about this in Cancun and Derek is still after me. It's like Trinity, when are you going to pick up the phone and cold call? Like, I'm going to do this. Give me some time. I'm going to do this.

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Isaac Ware:

And I like how we incorporate that already. I mean, having marketing sit in on the AE check-ins is great because I think feeling each other's pains is probably one of the best ways to improve your own performance. At least if you have some level of empathy.

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Trinity Nguyen:

And how about, from your experience, from your point of view, Chris?

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Chris Boehlke:

Yeah. I mean, I guess I can talk about some of the pain points we had were... I mean, I can think of one off top of my head is when we started... A good problem, but a problem, we started closing too many deals and we saw a lot of stress and a lot of overload from our account coordinators, our project managers, our tech team, because we were closing clients at a pretty quick pace. And I think without knowing it, and Isaac can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there was a little bit of almost... It was almost like a deal would close and it wasn't that exciting when it should have been. They were, oh, oh, cool. Another deal closed. Well, maybe let's find some things that might not be the best about their website that's not great.

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Chris Boehlke:

So, rather than just being excited we got deals, it was almost like let's find out why this might not be a good deal. And I think through communication, that was quickly resolved. It was more making sure we were aligned and the goal of the company was to grow. So, we need those new clients and we need to make sure that we're growing our team accordingly. And that was a small blip, but I do remember that was a little bit of an issue, a little bit of hiccup you could say. The problem's come in all shapes and sizes, but every problem there's opportunity and every opportunity there's a problem, right? So, it's all on how you look at it. I think the biggest thing is communication. And too often, when I've seen a relationship deteriorate, it's because there's not good clear lines of communication.

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Chris Boehlke:

And that's one thing that I know me and Isaac did well, is running the sales department, him running the marketing department, we had really good communication. I felt okay reaching out to him and saying, "Hey, these last 10 leads have been kind of poor quality." And he would just come right back and say, "Awesome, can you..." And we'd work through some situations to try and improve quality. He wasn't getting his feelings hurt. And I think we were fortunate in that situation because we were very aligned and we could have honest communication, and it really worked. It helped us scale quickly.

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Christian Kletzl:

Is it just hard to hurt Isaac's feelings or is there something that's a process to make sure, because I think ultimately that's a challenge that every sales and marketing team runs into.

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Isaac Ware:

I think the issue with previous salespeople that I worked with, every single time they got a lead, I knew that it was going to be some excuse around our pricing or some excuse as to why the deal wasn't going to close. So, I think if somebody's always making excuses, kind of pushing it back on marketing, nobody ever... I mean, we always talked about extreme ownership at Bear Fox. And if nobody's willing to take ownership of their piece in it, everybody always gets on the defensive as to why it should have worked and it's the other person's fault. So, with Chris, I mean, it was... I think a huge piece of it was just trust because I never thought he was going to blame things on me and I was never going to blame things on him. So, almost reversed where the faults were taking place. And I think by the time I was probably the last few months at Bear Fox, I was probably the one to complain about lead quality more than Chris was. Because I almost felt bad for him when bad leads would come through. So, I felt terrible about it. I would go into his office and start complaining about the lead quality. It was I think a really backward situation in the best possible way, probably, by the end.

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Trinity Nguyen:

What are some things specifically? And maybe it's hard to think about it because it comes naturally to you guys. But what are some things that you can kind of show like this is how I am who I am, this is how I work so that the other person understand you better and trust you?

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Isaac Ware:

I would say one of the biggest things I noticed, I think the first few weeks when you start a new role are probably the most important for almost determining who's your buddies at the system. Like, everybody's obviously your friend at some level, but I think early on, as somebody existing at the company, so at Bear Fox, if somebody comes into the company for Chris, I would say one of the biggest things is spending more time... It comes down to do things that aren't scalable, but with people. Spend a lot more time helping them out, spend a lot of time answering questions, being open, everything like that. And I think that was a huge thing when I was at Bear Fox when Rob joined, one of our other sales guys there, he knew he could come to me with a question 15 times a day and I wouldn't be annoyed by it. So, I think it's just those early interactions kind of build that foundation of trust of, okay, I can trust this person. They're not annoyed with me. I think it comes down to just normal social interaction, normal social anxiety of is this person annoyed by me and just making sure that's very clearly not the case.

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Christian Kletzl:

The one thing I tell everyone, you cannot annoy me with too many questions or too many messages. It's rather I'm annoyed if you don't annoy me and it was important. And I think it comes down to knowing how to communicate and work with another person.

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Trinity Nguyen:

Let's see. I think we kind of address a lot of the topics. So, I think in terms of the tips you guys already shared, make sure the other person, you have trust with each other. Is there anything else, any other angles that you think that someone in the revenue roles would benefit from hearing or yourself two years ago that I haven't asked?

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Isaac Ware:

I would say I think one of the biggest differences Chris brought to the table was he was obsessed with learning about my role basically. So, he wanted to learn how to do digital marketing, how to run Google ads, how to run Facebook. Whenever we were talking about stuff, he would take notes on after four years of the agency, you come up, you have scripts that you're always repeating. And just like how you talk about things, how you explain things. And he would take notes on how to explain a certain thing and he would use that and kind of add it to his vocab. And I think I became a better marketer once I started hopping on calls with him and kind of seeing what people's pain points were, actually listening to the customer before they closed. Because I think the relationship with sales is a lot different than relationship with the end product or end service.

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Isaac Ware:

I think it's a lot more delicate after the close too, because that's the point where all the expectations that they've built up with sales come into play after the fact. So, I mean with User Gems, all those expectations are set with AEs and if that's not executed on our side of things, then the relationship could get really toxic. Same with agencies. They have these really high expectations. Chris's job is to sell how great our team is. And if we don't live up to that, then things get really ugly. So, just learning each other's roles, sitting in, spending time with us, we use Gong a bunch. I know with Joss on our team, Rev ops spends a lot of time actually in the calls now. I think it's really important.

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Trinity Nguyen:

I love the part where you said at the leadership level. Like, if you put in the effort, you set the right culture, especially on the whole having alignment with all the teams, you set from the top and it will trickle down and kind of hat's how you kind of show your team this is how you should do the business with your partners. And that will kind of cascades down as well. And I think that's a step one in building alignment with other teams. And consistently showing that. That is really cool. That's true. Usually a lot of time, misalignment, outside of the whole tax stack and process and incentives, is the top that don't talk to each other. Which is kind of go back to the very first point that you guys talked about in beginning of this conversation.

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Christian Kletzl:

It's also the work, I guess, from the management to make sure that two, in a sense, different departments are aligned. I'm specifically thinking, in this case, the part from sales to... In our sense, customer success, but in your case sales to actually back to marketing because they need to do the job and that I align these two departments and make sure they work together for this handoff. Because I think it's a handoff that generates a lot.

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Trinity Nguyen:

So, like Isaac's saying, let's experience the pain together, swap roll for a day. And I don't know if Christian want to do that.

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Christian Kletzl:

I like the thought of it. I like the thought of it. I don't know if I like-

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Trinity Nguyen:

But you don't want to put the pipeline.

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Christian Kletzl:

Yeah. I don't know if I like the reality of it.

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Trinity Nguyen:

Thanks for joining us on this episode of The First 100 Days. Be sure to hit that follow button as we get more revenue teams to share their stories.

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