Maren Larson and Hailie Warren: Fix Positioning Before Running a Single Ad

0:00 · Introduction to Maren Larson and Hailie Warren

Jordan Lally:0:17
Welcome back to the High Ticket AI systems podcast. Everyone, please welcome the lovely duo, Mrs. Haley and Marn. Hayley Marn, welcome to the show. How you girls doing?

Maren Larson:0:26
Thanks for having us.

Hailie:0:28
Yeah, this will be fun.

Jordan Lally:0:29
Yes sir, yes sir. It's our yes, ma'am, it's our pleasure.

Maren Larson:0:31
Yeah.

Jordan Lally:0:33
that being said, Marin, can you give the audience some context as to your role in the company and essentially what your company does and who you guys serve best at a higher level?

0:45 · Marrying marketing strategy with business planning

Maren Larson:0:45
Yeah, so the high-level version is I had broken off after being in corporate America for over five, six years and started my own fractional CMO organization. Fast forward a couple of years, I meet someone in strategic planning. He happened to have a variety of marketing needs himself, and then also was running into a variety of customers who were.

Doing a great job of strategic planning, but the piece of their strategic plan that was business growth was always kind of a big question mark. And so fast forward even further, I end up under the Well Spent Consulting brand. So we are a consulting company. but really that's by way of marrying marketing strategy with strategic planning. so we're really meant to be an extension of that strategic business growth strategy, not just a silo that executes on pretty things. and so the fractional leadership side of the marketing piece is within that well-spent consulting arm, but we also have a complementary arm within the marketing division of well-spent consulting that's designed to be an outsourced marketing department. We don't call ourselves a marketing agency because traditionally agencies are meant for very large brands, very focused on advertising and campaigns. We, however, are meant to really service as an extension of a business. as truly a marketing department or central services for bringing their marketing dreams to life.

Jordan Lally:2:16
Thank you so much for the contact. I cannot wait to dive in more on how that might work and how might I look how might that look from a client perspective. But Haley, want to pass the mic to you. What would you say the the role is for you?

2:28 · Defining the creative director role in brand positioning

Hailie:2:28
Yeah, so I plug in. I do serve also as a fractional CMO as well, but another huge lane that I really spend most of my time in is the creative director space. So I anything in terms of strategic positioning, white space strategy, helping put together the strategic messaging architecture, the the how the brand looks and feels and behaves as a human, how it shows up through visuals and through creative, that's the space in the lane that I occupy most and that really makes Marn and I very much a yin and yang duo where she is sort of setting the direction and then I am doing the whimsy figure out how it looks and feels and and make it feel l like a human.

Jordan Lally:3:15
Where do you feel like most brands or most companies get wrong on the creative side? I know off camera here we were talking about companies view like creative direction or creative director as like a nice to have, not a need to have. Why do you think that's the stigma in our space?

Hailie:3:32
Wow, how long do we have? Marn and I discussed this on

Jordan Lally:3:34
Ha ha ha ha.

Maren Larson:3:34
Yeah.

Hailie:3:36
a very, very consistent basis. To answer your question in like a 10,000 foot view, I think that the thing that is most critical that so many people believe is a nice to have is that positioning paired with strategic messaging. And the thing that is woven through all of your tactics, all of your strategy is really what is that. narrative, what is the story you're telling? And how is it communicated in a way that is digestible and understandable, but even if not as important, maybe even more importantly, how is it done in a memorable way? And so it really comes down to it's a science and an art to figure out how are we going to get in front of the right audience with the right message and resonate with them, make them feel seen and then drive them To move or to act on something. And so the messaging piece, I think a lot of people think as long as we're doing the right tactics, we're gonna be good. But if the messaging flops, if the messaging sucks, we always joke like just literally throw your money out the window and you'll you'll save yourself a whole afternoon of campaign building for nothing.

Jordan Lally:4:48
I love when you said like the message has to like resonate with the audience or like make you feel some type of way on a visceral, sure, a visceral sense. Whenever I'm consuming content or consuming ads, if it makes me laugh or makes me smile, like think differently, I will definitely explore more about that specific brand because it was memorable. That was the key word you use. It was memorable. Marn, I wanna ask in we we we have a bunch of time. So What was the pivotal moment for you where it's like, you know, corporate's fun, it pays the bills, but it's like I kinda wanna branch off on my own. Like

Hailie:5:22
Mm-hmm.

Jordan Lally:5:22
what was that like strict strike through line for

5:25 · Leaving corporate healthcare to help middle-market companies

Maren Larson:5:25
Yeah, you know, I think one thing that I never took for granted in corporate environment and I was in healthcare specifically was just how many resources we had at our fingertips in any given moment. We had truly an entire marketing department of probably about a hundred people. I I mean, I'm bad at estimation, but I'm pretty sure that it was it was it was a substantial

Hailie:5:44
Yeah.

Maren Larson:5:45
team. And, you know, that's an expense line item in corporate America, but we also had a Agency of record that we worked with. So truly anything that I wanted to do, market research, you know, a deep dive on consumer behavior, like literally anything I wanted to do to help inform our strategy, I had access to. And I never took that for granted. And I knew what I had because I came from a nonprofit world where I was trying to get as much done as possible with nothing or very little or go fundraise for that in order to make that happen. and so I knew that there was kind of this sweet space in between of like you have nothing or you have it all. And the businesses in between are plentiful. And so I wanted to take the things that I had learned in both environments and really apply that to those businesses in the in between and also get people out of a space where they felt like, we now need marketing, but we're gonna hire one person.

And there was no way to solve for that and get people out of the like, you're asking someone to come in and serve as every single role within a marketing department in one person, which they're just going to end up executing on a to-do list. So that was really the motivation for me of like, I want to give executive level leadership, bring the right partners to the table to get it done, which is then how we became this outsourced marketing department behind the fractional leaders. But the The true motivation of it was I can make an impact so much faster if I'm driving a speedboat versus the Titanic of an enterprise system. So that's kind of the short version of what we tried to solve with well spent marketing in the ecosystem of well spent consulting itself.

Jordan Lally:7:31
Yeah, success low speed, right?

Maren Larson:7:32
Yep, exactly.

Hailie:7:34
Mm-hmm.

Jordan Lally:7:34
you alluded to this earlier, Marn, that you don't consider yourself a marketing agency because when you think

Maren Larson:7:41
Mm-hmm.

Jordan Lally:7:41
about that and like what that really means, you guys are vastly different. But from like a tactical day to day sense, how does your team come in as an extension of the organization? Like if you can paint that picture, paint that difference for the audience.

7:56 · Replacing the single unicorn marketer with a central department

Maren Larson:7:56
Yeah, a lot of times when I meet with prospective customers or existing clients, I remind them that marketing does not equal advertising. And often they feel really lost because that is what they feel like their option is of like, well, I need to either hire one person internally or I need to go hire an agency, but agencies are very driven by advertising. Not that that's the entire thing that they're doing, but it is often something that they are primarily focused on or want to attract customers who need that. And so The way that we position ourselves is we're meant to be the replacement for hiring one individual person because that's what your overhead has bandwidth for. Of like, you want to hire one person because you can't afford the entire marketing department. But I'm also trying to eliminate the whole like, please, I make this correlation, if you will. You're a healthcare system. You want to add a surgical department. You're not hiring.

A single surgeon to do surgery. You are hiring a brain specialist. You are hiring a heart surgeon. You are hiring a orthopedic surgeon. You're not asking a single surgeon to be all of the things. The marketing department's no different. Asking someone to do SEO and then pivot to email marketing strategy or AI search or whatever it is, those are all very specialized things.

And I do believe that a business who can't afford an entire marketing department can still benefit from one if we give them a central services mindset. And that's really what we're designed to be.

Jordan Lally:9:36
Do you think most businesses, prospective clients you speak with, there's a ma major disconnect with what you just said? They think, the pardon equals one person.

Maren Larson:9:44
Yes, very much so. and actually the founder of Wellspent Consulting, who back backstory, I ended up marrying him. So now we're not only under the same brand, but we're married.

Hailie:9:56
Mm-hmm.

Maren Larson:9:57
but he the reason that he was very much an advocate as a strategic planner for this whole marketing arm was because he was the former CFO and COO.

Of a very large organization, and he tried to hire a unicorn. He tried to find a single person to come in and do marketing for their business and learned the hard way that that is not possible. And even if you do find someone who's incredibly talented to come do it, you might be hiring a strategist who then you're asking to be an executor of all of the things and they don't want to do that. Or you're finding an executor.

Who doesn't have time to get into strategy? And so you're ultimately like missing a huge opportunity to really hit the nail on the head when it comes to what you're trying to accomplish. So he had done it wrong. And so it's actually easier for him to sell because he's like, I've already tried to do this. And now this department is really meant to solve for the actual problem that you're seeking.

Jordan Lally:10:59
With being said, can you give us a recent example of what the strategy was and then Haley we can definitely pivot into what the creative aspect

Hailie:11:06
Mm-hmm.

Jordan Lally:11:07
was and kind of what you did to make the the brand feel good and like look good and like actually get results that the company was looking for? Is that cool?

11:14 · Transforming a 60-year-old B2B clean air brand

Maren Larson:11:14
Yeah, I definitely want to tee up Haley to talk about a huge project that she just did. We did a a big we we call it on the record. is basically our case study, and we make it more fun. We we joke that, you know, the the height of magazine sales was when we were growing up. And so we wanted it to feel like an online version of cosmopolitan or sports illustrated, something that you were visually excited to kind of digest. And so that's what on the record is. And the most recent on the record episode.

Episode or publication that we put out featured some very deep work that Haley went into with arguably a very boring client. and we love them very much. We love them they they because because

Hailie:11:55
We do. We love him. So boring.

Maren Larson:11:58
but the other thing is that this is also a founder who bought this company and had also made the mistake of thinking he could hire one person. So he went by the time he got to us through one of our referral partners.

He was like, I already know that this is what I need. So I bring in Haley and said they have a positioning problem. Like ultimately, this guy has a great resource. He sees the vision of this company that he just bought that has been in business for what three, four decades, something like that, Haley. So, like,

Hailie:12:29
Yeah, sixty years.

Maren Larson:12:30
yeah, long time. And he sees that, like, we're just selling this wrong. We're talking about this in the wrong way. And Haley went. elbow deep in this experience and ultimately

Hailie:12:43
We crushed it like so so major, like out of the park.

Jordan Lally:12:50
Not the company name, but like what was the industry, what was the vertical?

Hailie:12:54
So the the product was it was a technology for clean air. And so it was a it was a B2B company and it was this add on, if you will, one of a kind technology that that does cleans the air in a different way than all of its competitors. So truly it's differentiated.

And arguably it's the it's the best solution as well with decades and decades of case studies and proven success across everything. I joke with Marin when I first, you know, did the deep dive with the client. I came back to her and I was like, I just stepped out of my time capsule. I this and and let's let me first just give a Quick, the the president of this company purchased this company, saw the potential. Kudos to this guy. He is, he saw it and he he knew what he had. So by no means was this ancient artifact that I had been given his doing.

Maren Larson:14:06
Is responsibility. Yeah.

Hailie:14:07
But when I tell you like the documents, what what we do is we go through and we do a full deep dive assessment. Like, We're talking like when Marn sa says elbows deep, we go through every asset. We do a full audit of every single platform and website. We we go through who is their audience. We we dig into every we interview stakeholders, both customers, internal, external, all of it. We we full like I could be a private investigator for how much I creep this in

Maren Larson:14:39
Truly. Yeah.

Hailie:14:43
every corner of this company. Okay. And I Came back tomorrow and was like, they write a dinosaur to work. They all have flip phones, and everything is a scanned document that I have to try to like like zoom in and read because it's that ancient. And we took it and we just fully revamped. And it is like a a true science of first understanding who's the audience. And well, obviously, first understanding the technology and like what is the actual product, what's the goal, but then really digging into who is the audience and what.

Why do they care? And why, why would they choose us? And through that, we really have this whole this whole specific process that we follow to build out a messaging architecture that is not just what sounds good. Like, don't get me wrong, I am one hell of a jingle writer, but it's not about just sounding cool or sounding snappy. It's truly What do they care about? What's their pain point? What are they looking for? And how do we say it so quickly in a way that puts us in our own lane to own one specific space that nobody else does? And that is a very tall order because once you layer in all of those needs, you can quickly cheapen the message or you can quickly make it more confusing. So we really built out the A a very, very strong positioning statement, totally changed their position, totally changed when we get into the conversation when selling this product, the timing of it, revamped, did a little brand refinement, revamped everything and transformed this company in a matter of what was it, eight weeks.

Maren Larson:16:33
Mm-hmm.

Jordan Lally:16:34
Eight weeks.

Maren Larson:16:35
Yep.

Hailie:16:36
Yeah.

Jordan Lally:16:39
I I lower your heads out when it comes to like messaging and ensuring that we own one specific category. For all of the I don't want to be disrespectful to the audience or anyone out there, but the people that would love to work with every business under the sun when they try to create messaging or marketing material for every business under the sun, you realize that you really it it it the it's meant for no one. So

Maren Larson:17:03
Mm-hmm.

Jordan Lally:17:04
from your experience, I guess the advice that you give to these these folks.

Why is it so important to like really dialed in messaging and speak to one avatar or one specific sliver of the of the total pie?

17:17 · How to build a white space strategy for unique market positioning

Hailie:17:17
It's it's so critical for for a couple of reasons. And what we what this is, like what our actual process is, is a developing the white space strategy. So you've got whatever the product is. And we actually did this with a recent cracker company as well that was a very specific type of wheat, right? So as you're looking at whatever the products may be.

You're gonna say, who are the competitors? You're gonna do this full competitor analysis. And is there anyone within that, within that group that is owning and crushing a certain space? So for example, this one cracker might be owning the digestion angle or the it's the perfect snack pairing or whatever it may be. You wanna do a full assessment to make sure if someone's already owning something, if you come in.

With too similar of a message, and they already are winning in SEO and they're already winning in awareness, you're literally helping them with their message. Just

Jordan Lally:18:22
Ha ha ha.

Hailie:18:23
co-signing and they're gonna, they're more, they they're going to rank higher in so many ways that you're just helping them. So the key is you need to find where are we differentiated? What's the lane that nobody owns right now that genuinely makes sense? And this is a combination of the competitor analysis.

Then looking at your audience and going, who is our target audience and where can we make sure those lines intersect? Now, how do we get the messaging to say, hey, audience, I know how you talk, I know where you're at, I know what you care about, I know your life circumstance. And here's why we're in the one lane that no one else can claim. And you you push as hard as you can in that one lane. That is gonna get you to from A to Z the fastest.

And it's the path of least resistance because you're not competing against space. You're not trying to steal a piece of their pie. You're you're baking your own, you're you're not even baking a pie. You know, you're in your own complete lane. And so that's what we did with them. And we really figured out that they are differentiated enough that it it it comes to light pretty quickly when you really start to peel back the layers. It's not like you're just picking something. Once you start to really assess everything, it always sort of pulls together and this is what makes the most sense. So

Jordan Lally:19:40
No, for sure.

Well, to piggyback off what you said, like from a marketing message persp perspective, one of my first mentors when I was like eighteen, nineteen, he said, guys, if you want to like be different or sound different, look at what everybody else is doing and just don't do that. And like he was a sales guy giving this advice, but it very, very applicable in

Maren Larson:19:57
Yep.

Jordan Lally:19:58
marketing. so thank thanks for the insights there. I wanna dive into your guys' client acquisition process when working with the company and what like

Maren Larson:20:12
Well, I think that that's why our vast industry expertise is so interesting because it's really easy to, if you have a marketer who has been in healthcare for five years, six years, 10 years, you go seek another healthcare system. Well, but then you all have the same playbook and you're very used to like this is what we do now, like this is this is what we do. It is a lot easier to bring the, this is the new lane.

If you've never been in that lane. So the way that I went about real estate development positioning or creative or PR pitching, whatever it is, is different than everyone else in the industry. If I'm bringing a lens from a completely different space, from a crap from a cracker space. Like, why can't we do this?

You know, it kind of gives you an automatic edge when it's like, no, I haven't done this before, and that's the best part. And so I think that we've really said we are completely comfortable with being industry agnostic because it makes us more creative and thoughtful about like, why can't this work for this space if we take this a completely different direction than the rest of the hairball that is what's going on in this industry? And so we've said that rather than an industry-specific.

Niche in terms of client acquisition, we focus more on does this client fit our philosophy as it relates to we're building trust for long-term success versus transactional, like just repeat, like rinse and repeat type of marketing, because that's not who we're for. It's not a we immediately get in and start executing. We are actually going to tell you please do not do that. In fact, don't do anything. until we've actually had the opportunity to do that deep dive to say, this is the actual diagnosis of what's going on. And here are our priorities based on that.

Jordan Lally:22:17
When you walk into a doctor's office, they never say, Okay, nice to meet you. Here's the problem. Like here's here's what here's what

Maren Larson:22:22
Yeah, exactly.

Jordan Lally:22:23
a full like assessment method.

Hailie:22:24
Yeah, just try this med.

Maren Larson:22:26
Yeah, huh we'll do this.

Jordan Lally:22:27
Exactly, exactly.

When you guys are working with clients and we think about like the engagement, do you feel like with what you guys do and how extensive it is, I feel like this can't be like a month to month thing, like a six month, twelve month kind of engagement. Is that typically what you guys at least set proper expectations on behalf of clients? Because when you what in my opinion, when you're when you want to run a full strategy, there's gonna be some optimization points along the way. And that might a few, two, three months maybe to actually dial in. do you guys f find that to be true as well?

23:03 · Structuring marketing discovery and execution options

Maren Larson:23:03
Very much so. and Haley, I want you to weigh in too. But that's why most of our clients, as much as we possibly can, we start with the marketing discovery. The marketing discovery is meant to be that intensive time frame, and it somewhat varies in terms of what that time frame is, depending on where you're at in your business, what industry you're in, how much how much deep dive does it require? Are you starting from scratch or are you rebuilding a business that's been around for 60 years?

But that discovery is meant to really get us under the hood and then we can truly diagnose what's going on. That initial investment, we just standardize at $5,000. Like we, this is the skin in the game. This is what it's gonna take for us to really dive in and find out what's going on. Once we've done that, we then prescribe like this is what you need to do. And we give you a couple of options. One, you can do it alone. You if you have the internal support to get it done and Run with it. We have clients who have decided to do that and they've been very happy. And we continue to check in with them about quarterly to reset that strategy. Because to your point, even if you're independently executing on it, it still needs to be revisited because things change, things evolve, may maybe something, maybe a new tool is available, whatever it is. We are consistently revisiting this with the client, even if they are executing on it internally. The second option is you can do it with us.

Of like you own this lane and we own these things and we work on it together and then we're continuing to evolve. And the third option is please, dear God, just do it for us. You know, like can you please just plug in and execute on this from start to finish? And we are typically, I don't, I don't know that we've ever accepted anything less than a year agreement because we know that it takes time. And the other thing I would tell you is that we typically don't have people drop off either, which is we're trying to figure out how to scale. also of like, okay, how do we make the make sure that we're continuing to do right by the clients that have like really seen the success with us long term while also making sure that we make room for what comes next. but yeah, that's really your three options is you can do it alone and we check in, you do it with us, or we we execute on it for you and it's at least a year long agreement.

Hailie:25:12
And one thing to call out too about that is to Marin's earlier point, you know, I come from I've worked at several agencies. I come from that background. And so many agencies, like we said, they come to you, they sort of have this menu and they go, okay, they talk to the one point of contact to get ready for they get all of the information from one person and then they go to their little menu and they say, Okay, let's put all this together. Here's the proposal, here's how long it's gonna take, yes or no. With the marketing discovery.

That allows us to fully say, like I explained, we did with the other with our clean air client, we can fully, fully, fully get into the weeds, get under the hood and and tell them and give them full guidance on here's what we would do truly if we were to rebuild this foundation. And once that foundation is built, the options that they have to move forward, it's not about like, okay, now we're just gonna throw all these tactics.

What we're building after that discovery is this 30, 60, 90 day plan to get them into a full functioning system. But what is the biggest difference maker, the biggest unlock is within that marketing discovery and our recommendation and the 3060-90 day plan, it's really developed, it really has workflows and systems to make sure that we are upholding.

This foundational strategy based off of the audience, based off of the strategic messaging, based off of all of that. So then all they really have to do is have the right people maintaining and evolving and refining that strategy instead of just this constant, what Marin always calls like the whack-a-mole or the the appeasement marketing or the just quick haphazard, quick instant gratification. This builds them. the full vision that they then have to just sustain. And we teach them how, whether that's setting them up with AI workflows, whether that's with helping, like Marin said, walk alongside them and show them along the way and train their team, or taking it on completely for them and serving as almost like their their in-house full team. So I think that's a huge difference maker too of we're giving them systems and workflows. all rooted in the foundational strategy that so many people don't take the time to uncover and map out.

Jordan Lally:27:41
The one thing that I love about the upfront diagnostics that you guys do or diagnosis that you guys do is you actually charge for it. a mentor,

Maren Larson:27:47
Mm-hmm.

Jordan Lally:27:48
Cole Gordon, if you know that name, the more you pay, the more you pay attention. So if you're gonna do a deep dive into their business and come up with a 30,

Maren Larson:27:53
Mm-hmm.

Jordan Lally:27:57
60, 90 day plan and it was free, they're gonna say thanks and probably not even look at it. You know what I mean? But because because you

Maren Larson:28:02
Seriously. Yes.

Jordan Lally:28:03
know you charge for that, like, okay, obviously I'm invested just as much as you guys. What does this plan actually look like?

With that being said, I want to talk about the difference between a marketing department and marketing leadership.

Maren Larson:28:16
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jordan Lally:28:18
At a very high level, if you can. What was the difference between?

28:23 · Strategists vs executors in marketing leadership

Maren Larson:28:23
Yeah. So throughout my career, I have very much identified that there are strategists and there are executors. And you can have a flavor of both. I will tell you that I have probably sat in or executed on about every single aspect of a cross-function functional marketing team. I have shot the video, I have done the social, I have done the like literally everything, which makes me a better strategist. But my brain is much better as a strategist.

And so the nice thing is, is like that's what your leader should be doing. We have clients who already have an internal leader who is an absolute rock star, and we just give them the executors with that outsourced marketing department to make their vision come to life. And sometimes there are people who will have a couple of internal resources or an agency of record who is their execution team, and they just need the strategists to be able to translate what's going on at the chief leadership table to those executors.

And that's really the difference, but they rarely are the same person.

Jordan Lally:29:27
When you guys are if we were to work with with you on the done it for you, you guys take care of everything, is that completely done for you? Like you guys are the strategy, you guys take care of the creatives, the whole marketing plan and like actually execute? That's actually pretty bad. Okay, cool. So let's start with everything. Got it.

Maren Larson:29:40
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

So our our marketing department is really truly meant to be the cross-functional team that either Haley or I or both of us turn to to get the work done. So it's everything from marketing operations of like they're building the workflow. They are building out the CRM, doing the tagging, doing the drip campaign management, to email marketing,

Hailie:30:03
Designing the creative.

Maren Larson:30:04
graphic design, social media, SEO, AI search.

Hailie:30:10
Mm-hmm.

Maren Larson:30:10
literally everything that you could possibly need. The only thing that we don't do in house is stuff that we lean on partners for, but we have our go to people so that we're just as nimble as if they were working inside our team all the time.

Jordan Lally:30:23
You wouldn't answer that, Annie.

Hailie:30:26
I was just gonna also mention the one piece that I think makes the the whole option to bring us on as your full-time, your full-time sort of outsourced marketing, one thing that really resonates with the clients that we work with is that $5,000 discovery. That initial set that we do, if you opt in to work with us for a full year, we credit you back that $5,000.

Jordan Lally:30:55
That's

Maren Larson:30:55
True down payment. Sure down payment on working on it.

Jordan Lally:30:55
smart, right? Yeah.

Hailie:30:56
So it's essentially like, let's make sure that we're a good fit. Let's make sure

Maren Larson:31:00
Okay.

Hailie:31:00
that that you can see the strategic foundation that we're building and understand why we're going to do it the way we're gonna do it. This is this is us telling you, no, this is worth your investment. It's not a money grab. It's not a this is a bunch of shiny bells and whistles to make it look like you got a huge document. This is us really setting that foundation of now you have your full roadmap.

Jordan Lally:31:25
One thing that I try to say earlier, but you know, words, they just escape my brain sometimes, is you guys are industry agnostic. So if you take a piece of marketing material or a marketing message in this example from this industry way over here and apply it to this industry where it's never ever been done before, that could be like a rocket ship to that specific company. Because it's so unique and so novel to the audience, to the consumers, it can it can really take off. That I I wanted to add that in.

Second thing that I want to say here is whenever you are looking at a company and you identify, okay, here's the problem, back of my mind, here's the solution. And I know it's industry agnostic, but like maybe like characteristic traits or repeatable problems that you guys see where it's like, okay, I know for sure we can absolutely help this company. If that kind of makes sense.

Maren Larson:32:16
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I would say I can start, and then I think Haley will have her own thoughts too is just when someone hasn't paid attention to what they're saying. I think that the reality that sometimes people miss is that you are marketing your business and building a brand, whether you do it on purpose or not. And how you show up online in person, As a salesperson, all of that is communicating something. And like I said earlier, marketing does not equal advertising, but marketing does equal communication. Like you are communicating visually and through your potentially empty words a lot to your target audience, whether you're doing it on purpose or not. And so what I love is a owner or a leader who is saying, I want to stop executing or start executing to begin with at all and take the time to do it thoughtfully, not just seeing it as like, we're not marketing unless there's a billboard or there's something that I see on social media, someone who's willing to say, I want to take the time to do this right and to do it in the right places and with the right framework.

33:41 · Building sales enablement kits to align sales and marketing

Hailie:33:41
Yeah, I would say for me, one of the most notable ones where it was like we're we're missing the mark or we're missing an opportunity here was much more a behind the scenes. It was working with the sales team. And it's that age old debate of like who really handles the materials and the approach and the style of in which the sales team is doing their job. And we with this client that we had mentioned earlier.

We dug into their sales process and going through just like we do everything else, we've we determined who's the target audience and engineers was one of the big groups that they sell to. And so then we dug in further and said, what is their process? And at what point are they even considering us to include into their project? And what we found was we were entering that conversation at the wrong time. For one. For two, We were talking so product heavy in the details, but also kind of just explaining the what is to be expected within the product, but really just like hammering home the key details of the product versus what the actual result or outcome would be when the product is installed and the people are breathing the air. Like, what does what's the win that they then get to put that feather in their hat? And so we not only Flipped the messaging to be way more outcome focused versus technical. And we said, you need to get in that conversation faster. And then we packaged it all in a way rather than one, another mistake made in sales, just like in marketing. I just need this one unicorn to this one awesome salesperson, not sustainable, not smart. So we said, let's build a system with all of these pieces. And we put together this sales enablement kit.

Where every month we send a pitch kit to the sales team that has an asset that's very interesting, the spoken language, the hook, all of the pieces that they may need, the notes of when you're talking to the engineers, here's what they care about. Everything like a a sales for dummies package, if you will, for anyone. But this Evens the playing field across the whole sales team. It keeps everything very consistent. It's telling them when to get into the conversation. It's supporting them with resources to keep the conversation going. We built all of this, and it's very simple when you really sit down and think about it. And Marn and I were just discussing this earlier, joking, not once in the eight weeks that we developed all of this and and implemented all of this. Did a single ad go out? Did a single social

Maren Larson:36:28
Or social post.

Hailie:36:30
post go out for this brand?

But the conversations he went and had with his channel partners about how he can support the sales teams gave him such incredible results and got him such so many steps ahead of the game versus what any viral post would have ever done. So sometimes it's even just knowing where to pull your energy and resources and strategy mind into versus what not to waste your time on.

Jordan Lally:36:58
I'm holding myself back, not like jumping for joy, because what you are saying is I fucking love that shit. It is so important

Hailie:37:05
Ha ha ha.

Jordan Lally:37:06
for operations to relay what the actual wins are from the consumer's

Maren Larson:37:10
Yeah.

Jordan Lally:37:11
point of view. Relay that to the sales team so they can talk more about that on the actual sales call. Sales team needs to relay that message to the marketing team and make more awareness about that one thing. Messaging congruency is vitally important in organization. Like I thank you for saying that.

Maren Larson:37:25
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Louder for the people in the back.

Jordan Lally:37:30
exact.

Hailie:37:30
Yes.

Jordan Lally:37:32
I want to ask this one question too, specifically Lee. what's more important marketing your sales?

Hailie:37:38
They're not different.

Jordan Lally:37:40
Thank you, yes.

Hailie:37:42
Trick question. They're not different.

They're the same thing. And it's so funny because if it if you can be good at sales, you're a marketer. If you can be a great marketer, you're in sales. Like it is the same thing. Same thing.

Jordan Lally:37:56
Great answer. Great answer.

Where can the folks listening find you guys? On direct social media or website?

38:03 · Where to find Maren Larson and Hailie Warren online

Maren Larson:38:03
Yeah, so we have wellspentconsulting.com. that, like I said, is kind of the umbrella that we exist under. and then also on Instagram, Wellspent Consulting, and then LinkedIn, you can follow Haley or I there or also on Instagram, my handle. so we didn't get into this, but I'm a quasi-retired influencer. Midwestern style is my personal handle. And then Haley is damn she's clever.

And she's also as fun to follow.

Hailie:38:32
Ha ha.

Maren Larson:38:33
so I'm usually sharing outfits and marketing advice. And Haley is doing the same, but she's thrifting all of hers, so hers are more fun and whimsical.

Jordan Lally:38:42
I love it. I love it. We'll make

Hailie:38:43
Backs.

Jordan Lally:38:43
sure to put the put all the links in in the show notes in description and whatnot. Ladies, thank you so much for joining us. I got a ton of nuggets. I'm sure the audience did as well. we'll have to invite you on in twelve months to see how things are going. but

Maren Larson:38:55
Yeah, we'd love to.

Jordan Lally:38:56
yeah, yeah. Thank you both again for joining us.

Maren Larson:38:58
Thanks, Jordan.

Hailie:38:59
Thank you.