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Produced by:
Jamie Willey
Founder of Bamboo Growve
about
Jamie Willey
With extensive experience in sales and business development, Jamie is responsible for driving growth and expanding business opportunities. He specialises in developing strategic partnerships, overseeing sales initiatives, and aligning sales and marketing efforts to increase client base and revenue. Jamie is passionate about building meaningful relationships with clients in positioning a company as a trusted partner in digital transformation.
How do you approach measuring the success of marketing efforts in relation to sales, and what's your strategy for generating high-quality leads?
I believe it's crucial to start with a well-aligned targeting strategy across sales and marketing before launching any campaigns. I operate with an A, B, and C tier targeting approach. Tier A is our short list of specific businesses and individuals I've strategically selected. Tier B is typically more sector-based, aligning with trends I've identified in our A-tier sectors. The C tier encompasses everything else - inbound leads, organic traffic, and referrals.
The key to generating high-quality leads lies in the pre-work phase. By setting clear targeting parameters, I ensure that every lead should, in theory, be high-quality. I focus on job titles, seniority, and roles - targeting C-suite executives like CTOs, CIOs, and CEOs, down to heads of departments.
Once I start our campaigns, it's all about continuous optimisation. I am constantly assessing, reviewing, and A/B testing our approach. Even if I see lower quality leads initially, the quality should steadily increase over time through this iterative process.
It's important to note that while the C tier is still valuable - you never know where the next big opportunity might come from - it should be lower on the priority list. The real potential for marketing and sales to demonstrate their worth lies in the more targeted approach of tiers A and B.
How do you approach marketing and sales as a unified function? Can you share examples of collaboration and discuss any integration challenges you've faced?
I like to break down our market strategies into simple terms - the who, what, why, where, and how. This framework helps us collaborate effectively throughout the customer cycle.
The 'who' involves validating our targeting strategies together. For the 'what', marketing plays a crucial role in refining our value proposition, creating content collateral, and thought leadership pieces. The 'where' is primarily owned by marketing, developing the channel strategy for the business. The 'how' is about collaboration in execution - for instance, if I want to organise a golf day with thought leadership content, I work closely with marketing to support and execute these events.
The 'why' is more of a sales function. It's about articulating the emotive reasons why someone should choose to work with us over other agencies. These reasons often transcend our value proposition and tap into deeper, more personal motivations.
As for challenges, ensuring true alignment between sales and marketing can be tricky. I've overcome this by having regular strategy sessions where both teams come together to discuss objectives, share insights, and align efforts. I've also implemented shared KPIs that encourage collaboration rather than siloed thinking.
Another challenge was data sharing. I addressed this by implementing a unified CRM system, ensuring both teams have access to and understand the same data points. This has greatly improved our ability to make data-driven decisions as a unified function.
What specific actions from marketing could help facilitate relationship building around the MQL process, in that pre-sales motion?
It's crucial to ensure regular communication between sales and marketing so that I understand where both of our pipelines sit. For instance, if I host a webinar, it's important for marketing to know who I'm talking to that's attending this event, and vice versa. This prevents us from doubling up on efforts or making ourselves look unprofessional.
If I notice a trend, say I'm getting a lot of traction with CTOs in a particular sector, I'll go to marketing and suggest I capitalise on this with a thought leadership piece, a webinar, or an event focused on this area. There's likely a reason I an gaining traction in this space, and I should leverage that momentum.
It's about ensuring that sales and marketing have open channels of communication with regular reviews of where our conversations are happening across the funnel. This insight should inform both marketing and sales activities.
The key is making sure everyone's clear on these touchpoints because the last thing I want is one client receiving multiple emails about different things in a week. This level of coordination allows us to present a unified front to our prospects, ensuring that every interaction adds value and moves the relationship forward.
How do you envision marketing supporting your high-value tasks, particularly in light of lean team structures?
I believe it's more about the automation capabilities that marketing can bring to the table. I should be looking to leverage technology to free up time that's currently spent on tasks like managing spreadsheets or setting up email campaigns.
However, I want to be clear - I never want to see sales fully automated. Where AI and automation can truly add value is in streamlining those back-end processes, which largely come through from marketing. The goal should be to use these technologies to free up more time for salespeople to be out there, building relationships, rather than being tied to our desks.
That said, I'm cautious about over-relying on AI. I think it's crucial to maintain the human element in sales, especially when it comes to nurturing key relationships or handling complex sales situations.
The key is finding the right balance. I should embrace technology where it can genuinely enhance our efficiency and effectiveness, but I must be careful not to lose the personal touch that's so crucial in building strong business relationships. Successful sales is about understanding nuanced human needs and motivations, and responding with empathy and insight. While AI can help us manage data and automate certain processes, it's our human ability to connect, understand, and adapt in real-time that truly drives sales success.
about
Bamboo
Bamboo operates at the intersection of brands and agencies. Our core belief is that people buy from people, and everything we do is to enable this. Our service model is made up of three parts;
- Fractional Chief Growth Officers for small to medium-sized agencies
- Consultants to brands helping business with requirements gathering and brief definition
- Networking events organiser, hosting an annual calendar of events where people can meet people
About 6sense
6sense is on a mission to revolutionise the way B2B organisations create revenue by predicting customers most likely to buy and recommending the best course of action to engage anonymous buying teams. 6sense Revenue AI is the only sales and marketing platform to unlock the ability to create, manage and convert high-quality pipeline to revenue. Customers report 2X increases in average contract value, 4X increases in win rate and 20-40% reduction in time to close deals. Know everything, do anything, with 6sense.