#246: Fixing the Disconnect Between Marketing and Sales with Talya Heller

#246 Sales Alignment | Danielle welcomes Talya Heller, founder of Down to a T, a B2B consultancy helping marketers turn competitive positioning into high-impact sales assets. With experience in engineering, product management, and product marketing, Talya knows how to bridge the gap between what marketing builds and what sales actually uses.

Together they unpack:

• Why most sales decks and battle cards go unused and what to build instead
• How to enable your champion to sell internally with confidence
• Simple frameworks for mapping competitive positioning that teams will actually use

Talya also breaks down how she researches, builds, and delivers assets that align sales, marketing, and product, all rooted in buyer empathy.

Timestamps

• (00:00) - – Intro & Talya’s background
  
• (02:11) - – From engineering to B2B marketing
  
• (08:56) - – What is buyer enablement?
  
• (11:11) - – Why deals stall after vendor selection
  
• (13:26) - – The problem with sales decks
  
• (15:56) - – Why battle cards don’t work
  
• (18:11) - – Talya’s competitive positioning map
  
• (24:19) - – Grouping competitors by approach
  
• (26:49) - – Market maps for sales
  
• (28:49) - – Where to get the best insights
  
• (31:19) - – New formats for enablement
  
• (33:34) - – Why context matters
  
• (35:19) - – Empathy for your sales team
  
• (37:04) - – Closing thoughts on empathy
  
• (38:09) - – Where to find Talya online

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Dave Gerhardt [00:00:00]:
You're listening to B2B marketing with me, Dave Gerhardt.

Danielle Messler [00:00:17]:
I am super excited for our guest today, Talya Heller. You've probably seen her on LinkedIn. If you saw our list of 225 people to follow on LinkedIn that we put out this year, she was on there. She puts out great content around buyer enablement, positioning, messaging, all those important things. She runs an agency called Agency or is that solo person?

Talya Heller [00:00:41]:
That's solo person. Yes. Please don't call it an agency yet.

Danielle Messler [00:00:46]:
Yeah, okay. Solo biz called Down to a T where she does competitive. What would you call it, like competitive research, Competitive positioning. Competitive positioning. I love it.

Talya Heller [00:00:58]:
Yeah. And then I just revamped my offer recently and I basically kind of took the bestsellers from the first year and a half of doing that solo business. So it's competitive positioning and then I translate that into sales assets that are very targeted towards not necessarily the buyer, the champion itself, but the buying committee. So kind of once we get to the point where, okay, we got a good match, we got a good fit, how do we actually help that person sell our solution internally at their company? Because that's actually a huge challenge and most champions are. It's something that's kind of difficult to pull off.

Danielle Messler [00:01:37]:
Yeah, for sure. But you didn't always do this. So you started as an engineer.

Talya Heller [00:01:42]:
Yes, I'm an industrial engineer.

Danielle Messler [00:01:43]:
And then you did product marketing. Industrial engineering. Oh, so even cooler.

Talya Heller [00:01:48]:
So, so industrial engineer. And then I was in product and then I became a product marketer. So quite the journey. Yes.

Danielle Messler [00:01:56]:
But I feel like all those little pieces kind of connect and probably got you to this place where you understand the solutions, you understand the product marketing piece, and now you're in the marketing piece. So this is really cool. So tell me, just like give me the brief overview of the story and kind of what you learned and why. Like industrial marketing, then to product marketing, now B2B SaaS.

Talya Heller [00:02:16]:
Yes, yes, it is quite the journey. And you're right, like I think all these different chapters are super connected. All these roles were very cross functional and they. I was kind of with every role that I got into was I was building on top of what I learned, you know, in previous ones. So yes, an industrial engineer. So I went to. It was time to kind of pick my, like what do I want to. When I grew up.

Talya Heller [00:02:43]:
And I of course had no idea, but I was fairly analytical.

Danielle Messler [00:02:46]:
Still don't know.

Talya Heller [00:02:47]:
Still don't know. Yes, still looking. I went with industrial engineering because it's analytical, but also I don't know. I always felt like I was pretty collaborative, social person. I didn't see myself sitting in a lab all day and just working or coding, like, all by myself. I wanted that interaction with other people, other teams. So industrial engineering seemed like a good choreograph, like a good avenue to try and do that. And it's again, like, it's a degree that you can take in a million different directions.

Talya Heller [00:03:17]:
I took it into more program management. So I started at hp. I was a pmo. So super interesting place to kind of learn how a large organization works and what do, you know, like, different functions do and how they work together and the dependencies and all of that. A few years into that, they asked me if I wanted to lead the product development for, like, the software piece of the product that we're doing. And I felt, of course, extremely underqualified, but I said, sure. Because when someone gives you an opportunity like that, you don't run away. No.

Danielle Messler [00:03:52]:
You say yes, and then you figure it out later.

Talya Heller [00:03:54]:
Exactly. You say yes and you're. Yeah. And then you go home and you have a crisis.

Danielle Messler [00:03:59]:
Exactly. Then you're like, all right, now I have to figure out how to actually do this.

Talya Heller [00:04:03]:
Yeah. But, yeah, I mean. And like, that was obviously an amazing learning experience too, because again, like, I'm not a very technical. Like, not coming from a technical background, even though I'm an engineer, I'm an industrial engineer, it's not, you know, I'm not a really.

Danielle Messler [00:04:17]:
Software engineering.

Talya Heller [00:04:18]:
Yes, yes. Yes. I'm not. Yeah. I'm not one of those people. So that was kind of like an interesting challenge. I feel like the first six months, just to, like, get those teams to trust me. And then you're really, like, you really own the product.

Talya Heller [00:04:31]:
So you own the problems, you own the defects, you own everything. You own the cool pieces of. What are we going to prioritize, what are we going to ship that work with marketing. But you also own. Okay, we ran this in beta, and it's terrible. We have issues, we have to fix them. And you have to present top issues to VPRND three times a week. So both sides.

Danielle Messler [00:04:55]:
So you've worked with a lot of teams, trying to get them on the same page, trying to get something to production.

Talya Heller [00:05:01]:
Yeah. A lot of negotiation also, because. So it was at a multidisciplinary product, which means every single team at the company had something that they wanted to push to the big platform. Right. They have, like, everyone had an agenda. Right. Like, you have those teams who are working on this Cool thing. And that team is working on some super cool fluorescent pink ink that they want to ship as well.

Talya Heller [00:05:26]:
And you have to prioritize, like you have to kind of keep like this is actually what we need to do. This is cool. This is non negotiable, like this is important and the stability. So there's a lot to just handle and manage.

Danielle Messler [00:05:39]:
Sounds similar to marketing where you're like, CEO wants to go viral, sales wants this thing that doesn't exist, but they swear they can close a bunch of deals if it does. And then someone else wants you to write a blog post on this even though it doesn't make sense.

Talya Heller [00:05:54]:
Exactly. And like maybe do like a product video even though we have no positioning right now. Yeah, like exactly. Like everything's kind of like up in the air. And again, I will say, like, I think all these roles because they're so cross functional, they are very similar. But anyway, after about three years in product there, my husband and I decided wanted to move to the us so we moved to Austin. I got my MBA at Tuti and that was when I even heard about product marketing for the first time. I had no idea what it was, of course.

Talya Heller [00:06:25]:
Funny thing is that when I was still at HB from like year one, the marketing people would always come to me and say, oh, like you got to move and work. Your next role has to be marketing. And I thought that that was delusional. I did not see myself in marketing at all. Now I can probably tell you that I don't think I even understood really what it meant. But anyway, when I got to UT and I started to kind of hear or meet more and more people here and in the Austin tech community that at the time it was just startups like it was before all the big tech came here, but it was still like very.

Danielle Messler [00:07:01]:
So you were like, oh gee, Austin.

Talya Heller [00:07:03]:
Before it got, I mean, OG for like nine years ago. Yeah, still like not og.

Danielle Messler [00:07:09]:
Og I think anything like pre Covid, when everyone decided they were moving to Austin.

Talya Heller [00:07:14]:
Pre Covid, the skyline was different. I can be like one of those people who are saying, oh, the downtown skyline was like half the buildings that we have now. But yeah, so anyway, so that was when I kind of heard about product marketing for the first time and it just clicked. I was like, this is exactly what I want to do because it's still product, which I'm still into that part, but it's less of that constant negotiation between teams. And sometimes you kind of feel like you're like mommying everyone when you're in product.

Danielle Messler [00:07:45]:
So tell me about buyer enablement. I hear marketers hear that all the time. We hear sales enablement, we hear buyer. Well, maybe not buyer enablement. That's kind of a new thing that you're working on with the buying committees. What is it in like the simplest terms for marketers to understand? What does it cover?

Talya Heller [00:07:59]:
I think it's just honestly empathetic marketing. If I really have to like say it like in the fewest words as possible. And I think it can play out across the bar journey, right? So like it's the concept of help them, help potential buyers understand what you do. If you're for them, if you're a good fit for them, what they should be looking out for. This is kind of where the competitive positioning aspect comes into play. Because I think in many cases when companies work on their positioning, their messaging, they just kind of want to be like, we gotta sound cool, we gotta sound different. But they're not seeing it in the context of their ideal audience. So then.

Talya Heller [00:08:40]:
And if you ever bought software, you know what I'm talking about. Sometimes when you are trying to evaluate different options, it's really hard to understand. Before you talk to any of them and before you see a super detailed demo and get to ask your million questions, it's really hard to figure out is this thing even for me, I'm not sure I can do what I need to do with that. So I think first of all it's just like, yes, acknowledge that they are looking at other alternatives, whether it's status quo or doing it with a competitor or doing it with a completely, you know, like with a different set of different approach. Right. Sometimes like it's just like a different approach. So acknowledge that, address that head on. Help them understand what is it that you actually do and if you're really for them and what they're going to get.

Talya Heller [00:09:28]:
And then I think it really trickles down, right? So if you do that, but you don't do the other things, you probably produce some good content that kind of helps with that. But there is buying something software. And again, like if you work at a company and you need to buy something that's relatively expensive, you know, even after you select what you think is the vendor that you want to continue with and pick, then you have the job of getting that deal across the finish line internally, right? So like you have to justify it to your. Again, even if you're replacing a different software, you're still going to have to re justify that to your cfo. And maybe to your boss and maybe to a coo, and you got to talk to the CTO and make sure that they're on board, that it won't break stuff and that they can support what you need to get out of that. So, like, there's still so much work to do internally. And the reality is that many, many buyers, many champions, right? Like our champion. It's hard for them to do that.

Talya Heller [00:10:32]:
Like, not everyone has way in the organization and they can get everything kind of like across and approved and, and all of that.

Danielle Messler [00:10:40]:
It's a big risk too, because you're internally putting maybe not your full job on the line, but you have a certain amount of like political capital, let's say. And if you push for something and it turns out to be different than what you were thought you were buying or a big mess, I've done that before where I push something across the line. And then of course in the conversations with sales, it was, oh yeah, we can do that, we can do that. And I was like, okay, these are the most important things. And then we actually like sign the contract, make the first payment, and then using the product, getting set up and like half the things that we thought we were getting didn't work. And I was just like, shit.

Talya Heller [00:11:17]:
Yes, exactly.

Danielle Messler [00:11:18]:
Like, I just like pushed for this because I thought it would make it easier. And then I can tell you we did not renew and we were just very angry for the rest of the partnership.

Talya Heller [00:11:29]:
And I was kind of laughing along when you were saying that because I was in the exact same situation. And I think probably every single person who ever bought software was in this position. Right? I mean, I still sometimes in that position, even though I run like a one person business and I make purchasing decisions. And then six months later we're like, this is nothing like I thought I was gonna get. And now I'm stuck in this annual contract and it's upsetting. And I think this is also exactly why so many deals end with indecision, right? People are like, I think it's. By now, it's like a common knowledge thing already, but you're actually not losing most of your deals to a competitor, you actually losing them to doing nothing. And this is part of that.

Talya Heller [00:12:17]:
So that entire idea of creating some sales assets that are targeted to help the champion champion the solution internally. That idea like started years ago when I was still like in house, way before I started my business. And it was kind of like one of the first thing that we had to do. I started the company, it was like month two or something. Someone threw that idea. Well, we have a discovery deck, we have a sales deck. Sales don't use either of these. No one knows why.

Danielle Messler [00:12:51]:
Classic conundrum.

Talya Heller [00:12:54]:
I mean, side note, now, in retrospect, I can't blame them. And I think that's like part of the problem, right? Like, I think there's a really big gap between what marketing thinks or like how marketing things people actually buy and how they actually buy. And I think for marketers, if you've never bought something yourself, you're probably more at risk to have that blind spot. And once you were in the position of actually buying something, then you really have that empathy. Or like, if you've had a great buying experience, you can kind of think to that and be like, oh yeah, that was great. How can I bring some of that, like, what that amazing seller did into our sales team? And like, at least for like the parts that I can control as a marketer. And this was kind of how this was born. And it was just kind of like a different type of asset that's super buyer focused.

Talya Heller [00:13:53]:
It's not company focused, it's very, very buyer centric. We were selling to different use cases at the time. So of course each of them gets their own asset. You can't really mix and use kind of like a generic language. That would kind of be a catch all for all of them because all of these different use cases, they had different champions. Even though it was the same exact product, they had different KPIs, different things that they cared about and the value that they saw. Even though, again, same product, kind of like top three value prop points, like, it's like similar, but once you put that in their language, it just becomes so much stronger. And yeah, like, that was kind of the asset that sales adopted.

Talya Heller [00:14:36]:
Like almost immediately they started to use it, like even more than they should have. In a way that must have felt.

Danielle Messler [00:14:43]:
So good because, like, as you're saying a little earlier, I feel like we get this put on our plate as marketers a lot or even like, you know, we go out of our way to do it. I did this in a previous role where I was like, I'm going to listen to all the gong calls, all the sales calls. I'm going to get these pain points down. I'm going to make the best sales deck that has this like, great story with it and I'm going to make these battle cards so that, you know, our sales reps are all prepped. When we have a competitor come up, you know, I've got the status quo on there, so what they can set say. And again, it sat in a Google Drive. So why do you think that happens? Like, what are the. Maybe not even mistakes, but what do you think the disconnect between marketers creating those assets and sales actually using them is?

Talya Heller [00:15:28]:
It's such a great question. And like, don't even get me started on bottle cards. So I.

Danielle Messler [00:15:34]:
But like, we're told we're supposed to make them. It's like this, this great thing. It's like, help your sales team make the battle cards. And it feels really good because it's like a tangible thing you can get done well.

Talya Heller [00:15:44]:
But now, like, they also ask for them, right? Like, they ask for the battle card and then you make it and then they don't use it. And again, I will say that I'm a product marketer. I am a big believer in competitive intel nci. I kind of do that. You can work on anything in marketing without knowing the market. That's like the context that you have to have. But I say wholeheartedly, I hate battle cards. I think the format spicy more format is so.

Talya Heller [00:16:15]:
It's just so. I mean, I don't want to use language that my mom would disapprove in.

Danielle Messler [00:16:20]:
A big podcast, but do it, do it.

Talya Heller [00:16:23]:
It's just stupid. I don't know who came up with that. I even asked ChatGPT who came up with the bell card format. And ChatGPT was like, I don't know. And I think that proves that it's not a great concept because if it was, I'm sure someone would claim credit for it. But yeah, so I think battle cards are. And maybe like some other sales assets, right? Or like marketing assets for sales. What they are lacking is that again, like, I'm kind of like gonna go back to like that empathy piece, right? A battle card also, in theory, should not just be used by sales.

Talya Heller [00:17:00]:
It should be something that we kind of explain to our company what's happening in that My. As a product marketer, right? Like, I want to create something that the content marketer takes and says, oh, I get it. I know. Okay, so like if we have, you know, if I need to produce content, blogs or whatever, types of like informative content, like, I kind of know what to touch on whenever that competitor or that alternative approach or against status quo, I know what to harp on. I know how we win. So I know what to talk about. And then sales, of course, takes it. And they are supposed to figure out first of all who should they even expect to see in what situation, and then again, what levers they have to pull in each specific situation.

Talya Heller [00:17:49]:
And I want product to see that. And again, kind of see, okay, here's where we really shine in terms of future product capabilities. Do we want to drill down there or do we want to explore something new? And again, going back to the audience, even outbound business development, it's something that I want them to be able to take and say, okay, we can do this outreach campaign when we reach out to Closed Lost for that specific competitor. And that's the messaging. Like, we know what to ask them in that email and how to maybe get them to talk to us again. So it's really about giving all these other teams at the company something that they can take to their own functional work. Like the product marketer doesn't necessarily have to. It's not like you have to write all the blog posts about, you know, this versus status quo, or to write all these emails or to come up with all these things or to come up with like every single talk track.

Talya Heller [00:18:46]:
Because, you know, some companies have like, sales enablement and things like that, but the idea is to give them something that they can work with. And with battle cards, I think we just give them everything. Like, it's a format that just have, honestly, too much information. It's just.

Danielle Messler [00:19:00]:
Yeah, it's overwhelming. And say you give it to a salesperson, they walk into a call and the one competitor someone happens to mention isn't on there, they're never going to use it again. They're never going to look at it again because it's like, okay, this is useless. I needed it for this one thing and it had all this information, but not what I needed. So what is an asset that you create in place of a battle card or something that, you know, actually gets used and is valuable to all of these teams that you're talking about? And I know it's like marketer's favorite answer. It depends because there's different sizes of companies and teams and resources. But is there something that marketers listening, if they're resonating with this problem, they can be like, okay, what's the alternative?

Talya Heller [00:19:46]:
Yes, this is one of the few questions that I, I haven't answered that isn't. It depends.

Danielle Messler [00:19:52]:
I love it. All right, we got a spicy take and we have an actual answer. That's not a great episode.

Talya Heller [00:20:01]:
So again, I think some start by, I think, like, there's a few things that we can do. Funny enough, I actually have a session about it coming up in. I don't know when this episode is going to drop, but March 11th I'm going to make sure to also post the actual segment on my website, on my media section on the website. But PMM camp, it's a community for product marketers. So there's a day camp, it's like four speakers about some different topics in competitive and stuff like that. And I have a session about sales enablement. Right. Like about how do you arm your allies.

Talya Heller [00:20:36]:
The thing Survivor, fun fact. It was very fun to just work on the actual deck. But yeah, to your question. So I think first of all start with the tldr. Like start with the context. I do something, I call it competitive positioning mapping. And it's such a simple format and I think every team can take it and can really implement that.

Danielle Messler [00:20:58]:
Tell me more.

Talya Heller [00:20:59]:
So you basically map out the distinct capabilities of your products, your platform, your use case. I don't know, like in your situation. So distinct capabilities. Think about these as these are the reasons we win our icp. Like these are the reasons our ICP picks us, picks our product versus other options. So you kind of have that in the table and then on top you have, you kind of compare it to like status quo and then either specific competitors or competitive approaches.

Danielle Messler [00:21:32]:
Ooh, I like that. Competitive approaches, yeah.

Talya Heller [00:21:35]:
So I'll give you an example. Maybe it's going to be easier for folks to kind of wrap their heads around it. I was working with a company, with a SaaS company that was doing basically improving web like e commerce websites performance. Their solution was with improvement on the server side. So status quo can be do nothing. One alternative approach is use headless cms. So there's different ways you can do that, but that's an approach. And then of course we had some other vendors who were also providing server side optimization and then client side optimization.

Talya Heller [00:22:13]:
So you can kind of group that however you need to.

Danielle Messler [00:22:16]:
I like that because then it's like you're not breaking it down. Like so say like, all right, Headless cms, is this competitive, what did you call it? Competitive method, Competitive approach. And instead of like all right, we compete with Webflow and we compete with WordPress and we compete with Contentful or whatever it is. It's like, okay, this is the approach. And that I feel like gives them a better foundation. All right, sorry, continue.

Talya Heller [00:22:38]:
Yeah, and like sometimes it's an agency, right? Sometimes you compete with an agency. There's a million ways to implement headless cms, but let's just say that it doesn't matter if it's webflow or that agency or another agency.

Danielle Messler [00:22:51]:
I've done it with Airtable before and it was hell. Side note.

Talya Heller [00:22:59]:
I bet. And I think this is part of the trouble, right? We get so bogged down in the details and we kind of forget that we need to zoom out a little bit. Sometimes the details matter, but like, if it's a super direct competitor, but if it's like a. Just like a different way of solving that same problem, then it's okay to zoom out and just say, yes, this is that approach that we're competing with in that case, and that's it. And that's fine. But basically you kind of map so those distinct capabilities versus each of these approaches or competitors and you just kind of say what's possible and what's impossible in each of these. If something. So let's say, you know, if you get some distinct capability that is impossible with the approaches, that one gets like a green box because, like it's good, right? You can do that, they can't.

Talya Heller [00:23:53]:
And then when you do that for like the entire table and it's not like a big one, right, you don't want more than like four or five distinct capabilities down there. You probably don't even if you wanted to, you probably don't have more than that. And then you basically have levers. So whenever that competitor or that approach comes up, you know, you need to talk about these two capabilities. Whenever that comes up, you need to talk about that capability. So it just gives. It's kind of like a mental map. And of course for, you know, like, you want to translate each of these distinct capabilities to specific pains and benefit and features.

Talya Heller [00:24:33]:
These might be more relevant for other use cases. So if you're the content marketer, you can tie that and like you're working on a piece, you can tie that later to specific panes or to specific things, but you kind of start with that distinct capability that you want to put the spotlight on. So something like that. Another thing that I like to do again, like, I think people are like visual learners, right? So just kind of like create a market map for your sales team. And it's not like a complicated bubble thing, like super simple, just like use cases, again, competitors or competitive approaches. And like, should you even expect to see that player in that use case? Just like, hey, like, is that even going to happen? Or no, like just help them get the context. You can do the same for use case, you can do the same for tier, you can do it for industry like you can do it across different things but kind of depends on how your sales team is also organized that territories. Yeah, maybe it's like by geo, whatever it is.

Talya Heller [00:25:39]:
But just help them first of all again like we're still like at this zoom out. Help them understand who they're even likely to encounter in what situation. And I think like after you do that mapping then you can like drill down to the more details of okay, like here's a talk track for that situation, here's a talk track for other situations. It's not that the details don't matter, just focus on the ones that they actually need. So again like I don't think they need a SWOT analysis that for some reason all the battlecards have. I really don't think that they need that. I think they need to know who that company's ICP is and some talk tracks and like again like kind of like what levers they should pull but they don't need all that other stuff.

Danielle Messler [00:26:20]:
Yeah. And where are you finding this information? Are you like listening to sales calls, recordings, Are you sitting down with teams? Are you going back to product marketing? I'm imagining it's a combination but I would love just like a little bit more like insights of where you, you know, put on your Sherlock Holmes hat and go find.

Talya Heller [00:26:39]:
Yeah, so absolutely all the above. I think CRM data is actually really great source to find patterns and trends and things like that or like form hypothesis. And then of course like if you can win loss interviews, even if you don't do win loss at your company, just talk to a few customers even like just like one interviews and just like really get to the bottom of why people choose your product versus other ones. So there is the element of sales calls and things like that and like good old competitive research to know where these people, what they are actually considering what they're thinking, what they're saying in communities online and also yeah so like talking to and this is something that I'm a big believer on. I think there's a huge amount of untapped knowledge inside customer facing teams like inside your company that I think we for some reason tend to deprioritize when we're working on stuff.

Danielle Messler [00:27:34]:
I don't know why but like support and customer success.

Talya Heller [00:27:38]:
Support customer success, sales. So anyone who's interacting with customers basically or prospects and yes like you will ask them probably different questions when you sit down with them. Right. So maybe for with success or like with the implementation team, you're going to ask them how do you know an implementation is going to be a good one. What gives that away? Because they can tell when they're onboarding like new customers, they've been doing it long enough and they can tell if that's going to be like a good one or a bad one.

Danielle Messler [00:28:08]:
Yeah, yeah. They have that like spidey sense from the first call and they're just like, oh, this is going to be painful. Or like, wow, they do.

Talya Heller [00:28:15]:
And salespeople have the same spidey senses. Like they just ask them, how do you know you get on a call with even inbound lead, how do you know it's a good fit? What makes them a good fit? How do you know that they're likely to close? And you'll get different answers, but you'll get a ton of really great information there. But also to come back to your previous question about how do you even enable them? I think I would accept just giving them the context before dumping all the details on them. I think another thing that I think now is becoming way easier like with AI is just also experimenting with different formats. So you can take a battle card, like I'm not saying you should throw away everything you have, but you can put that into like NotebookLM and create like a 20 minute podcast about it and maybe that's easier for your sales team to listen to than to read a battle card. It's just like a different format of consuming the content that might stick with them better.

Danielle Messler [00:29:15]:
And then they'll use it and then you'll look awesome. And also help close deals.

Talya Heller [00:29:19]:
Exactly, exactly. And when you do want them to act on something and not just listen and have access to information also like make it crystal clear. Something that again, like we did at a company that I was at, we had dedicated Slack channel just for like three things. Every week we would send them three things. Let's say it was like a current campaign that we wanted them to push or that they could use in their outbound. And then a new piece of asset that we worked on that they can also use immediately. And something that isn't new but relevant, that they can still leverage now because it's relevant, it's timely, anything like that. And it was kind of like a chatter free Slack channel.

Talya Heller [00:30:02]:
So it's not like a bazillion messages and it's not like super long. It's just like three links to things and that's it. And just pick the thing that the most important thing that you want them to focus on and just give them that without like everything around it and it was awesome. They love that the idea of like a non. That there aren't a ton of like back and forth on this channel. Things don't get lost in the noise. It's just for that if someone has a follow up question, they like reply in the thread and it keeps it like super easy, super clean, super simple. And it was kind of like a Friday update that we would push every Friday at 10am and they knew that, they knew to expect that the timing worked because I don't know, that was the day they were setting up their cadences for next week.

Talya Heller [00:30:51]:
If you want to encourage action, be super, super, super clear about that. Like, don't bury that in a newsletter with a bunch of competitive information that half of it is just updates, like an FYI type of thing. That again may or may not be read and absorbed and be super direct when there's something relevant that they should be doing that should be helping them.

Danielle Messler [00:31:16]:
Yeah, I think something you said, super important. I literally jotted a note down in my notebook is like on just even context at every level. And I feel like this is something the best marketers, the best just executives also master in managing up is setting the context of like why they should even care in the first place is such an underrated skill. And like I, I do this all the time. I've actively worked on getting better at it because like I'll just be in my head and I'll just be like, oh, like I have all this stuff to launch this today, blah, blah, blah, blah. And like no context, no setup. Everyone's like, wait, what? Like I don't care. Like I don't know what you're talking about.

Danielle Messler [00:31:52]:
And I do this to my husband too. I'll just be like in my thoughts. And I was just like, yeah. So I made the reservation for Saturday and he's like, what? But in my head I was like, okay, like we have this event coming up, your dad's coming up. We wanted to make a reservation. You know, just like setting the context is something. It's like a superpower I think of, hey, here's what we're doing. Here's what we agreed on.

Danielle Messler [00:32:12]:
Here's what matters. Like you, you were saying, and trust me, you'll get so much less. Wait, what do you mean? We didn't, we didn't talk about this. We did this. Blah, blah, blah. Especially if you're working with like CEOs or VPs or anyone that's spending their days just switching between a million things. Like you'll become their favorite person.

Talya Heller [00:32:31]:
Exactly. And again, it goes back to that empathy. They have so much to worry about. And I know, like, there's this sales marketing tensions where sales think marketing is useless. Marketing things. Sales is like, I don't know. Anyway, again, like, another bad word that my mom would not approve of. But they're working so hard.

Talya Heller [00:32:55]:
Even the best salespeople just, like, think about it. First of all, their time is literally money. Like, their money.

Danielle Messler [00:33:01]:
And they spend half the day getting rejected.

Talya Heller [00:33:03]:
Yeah. They get rejected left and right. If they are not successful, they literally don't get paid. And even when they are successful, the thing like resets every quarter. Right. Like they have a new target to hit. Even if they had an amazing quarter, they start the day after from nothing. From zero.

Danielle Messler [00:33:26]:
Exactly.

Talya Heller [00:33:26]:
Their job is so hard. Is so, so, so hard. And I know they can be frustrating as marketers. Right. Like, it can be really frustrating to have sales ask you for a bunch of assets that, that you know that they're not going to use. But I think what we need to do a better job at is to challenge that. Right? So if that piece of asset is not being used, like, think about how you can change it so it will get used just like that Champions deck. Right? Like, sales decks were not used until then.

Talya Heller [00:34:00]:
That champion deck was a hit with Alucards. It's like, it's the same, right? Like, we all complain that no one reads them, no one looks at them. So let's change the format then. Like, let's give them something else instead of just doing the same thing over and over again and be frustrated that they're not taking it, they're not using it, they're not not using it to spite us. I know it feels like that sometimes.

Danielle Messler [00:34:25]:
If they're not using it, it means it's not helpful. And yeah. So I think the word of the episode is empathy. Having empathy for other marketers, salespeople. And there's so many great tips that you went over today. And I just want to thank you for taking the time to join us and share your wisdom and some super, like, tactical ways of actually going about and doing this too.

Talya Heller [00:34:48]:
Yeah.

Danielle Messler [00:34:48]:
Where can people find you? Obviously LinkedIn. You are on our top 25 people to follow list.

Talya Heller [00:34:56]:
Yeah. So. And I think empathy also for the buyers.

Danielle Messler [00:35:00]:
Yes.

Talya Heller [00:35:01]:
Think about them and about what they have to do and think about how all of us in sales and marketing and all of us, how we can make it easier for them to actually buy from us again. It's like a win, win Right. If we're making it easier for them, we're going to close faster, higher volume deals. It's going to be. It's going to be great. It's going to be great. We should all do that. Yeah.

Talya Heller [00:35:23]:
And yeah. So, yeah, people can find me on LinkedIn and then they can find me on my website. I do kind of. I try to be good about posting some resources there on a regular basis in media and stuff like that. So a lot of the things that we've talked about, like some of the more tactical advice and tactical tools are actually there so people can look around and hopefully find something that they can take to their roles to make things a little easier. So that's Down to a T that C O. And then slash resources or media.

Danielle Messler [00:35:56]:
Amazing. I love it. Well, thank you so much, Talya. We'll make sure we get those links in the episode description and we will chat with you soon.

Talya Heller [00:36:04]:
Yes, thank you for having me.

Dave Gerhardt [00:36:10]:
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