Marketing Strategy Talk w/ Yanni Kalajakis, Global Sales & Marketing Veteran @ Skyline Consulting Services

Transcript

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  Ian

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  Ian

  First off, Yanni, thank you so much for chatting with me today. We’ve talked a few times in the past and I always leave with a treasure trove of insights I try to apply to my marketing and sales efforts. I’m excited that we get to share these insights and lessons with the Marketing Strategy community!

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  Glad to be here! I’ve been a big fan of the site for a while and I’m excited to contribute in any way I can.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  So you bring a wide range of experience with you ranging from large multi-national corporations to startups. Take us back to the beginning and talk about the moment you knew that you wanted to be in business and specifically, marketing.

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  It goes back to the late 80s, I was working at Sun Microsystems in operations and production planning, producing systems for the government because they had to be specialty made with extra security and so forth and my division was in charge of this process. But I quickly found out that I hated the planning aspect because I was only interacting with the manufacturers. It wasn’t really what I wanted to do and didn’t capture my interest. It so happened, I was added to a project for a different group in another area that was customer facing.  We were making custom products, so this group represented the customer which required a good amount of interaction and relationship building.

  And suddenly, the doors were open— I loved the interaction. Soon I was saying to my boss “I want to be in that role.” So, I started lobbying the manager of that group to get me in there once there was an opportunity. Eventually, he tapped me on the shoulder and said, “This is yours.” My old boss told me, “Hey, I don’t want to lose you. What is it? Can I give you more money?” And I basically told him, “You don’t understand. I would take a pay cut to go to that group and interact with customers on a daily basis. It’s my ticket out of operations. I want to be in marketing and sales,” and that’s how it all started.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  You said you have interaction with customers. What type of ‘interactions’ did this new role entail?

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  You were basically the customer liaison to the corporation. And these were very specific high-end clients. People are like Xerox Corporation, AT&T and GE. These people will buy 10s of millions worth of equipment from Sun every year. So, these accounts got special attention. Computer Vision was also a large client who was very big in the 80s. They were basically the originators of computer-aided design basically all graphics and design out of Boston.

  Anyway, so, I represented the customer and would fight for the customer. No matter which groups within Sun, I will be the customer advocate. So that was kind of the interaction.  Very high level which involved getting the buy-in from executives across multiple departments. It was a great job and I loved every second of it.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  That must have been a very political landscape. It’s never easy to influence multiple executives, product teams, and operations to buy into what your customers want.

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  Yeah, absolutely.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Any tricks to aligning an executive team that you found came in handy?

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  The way I did it– The challenge with a job like that is, you don’t control the people that you need help from. So, how do you get these people that have the regular job to do to make your request their priority, right? So, the way you do that, you have to emphasize the importance of the customer.

  On the other hand, you have to do something for them. Essentially, what can I do to create some extra cycles from you to help me in my project because it’s urgent. Do I need to talk to somebody? Do I need to talk to your boss to make sure he relieves you of some other tasks in order to do that? Can I buy you lunch? Let me have you meet the customer so you can hear directly from them and I’ll arrange a con call. That was pretty successful. I would say 90% of the time I was successful in getting people to do what I needed done for my customers.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  That piece right there is one of the main skills I see young hires struggle with— how to influence other people in an organization to get what they need done. I think it’s something that needs training, but it’s interesting to hear how experienced execs manage that, especially in a large corporation. It’s a skillset that isn’t taught anywhere and very much on the job training.

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  It is, but you know sometimes it’s simply personality, you have to be outgoing. You have to be able to strike a conversation with just anybody. You can’t be a shy person because you won’t come across as authoritative enough or knowledgeable enough. You have to be convincing.

  To be convincing, you have to be open-minded, number one, and number two you have to be an extrovert because you deal with a lot of people. It’s multiple personalities that you have to deal with and you have to adjust your approach to match the personality of the person that you’re seeking help from.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  That’s so important! People want to help people they like, and most people like themselves, a lot.

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  (laughing) Yes, absolutely. You want to build rapport, not only with your customers but with everybody else in the organization. You’re not going to be everybody’s best buddy, but you’ll be someone with influence and respect.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Let’s shift gears here towards the customer experience. There’s a revolution currently underway from brands all over the world re-positioning their strategic roadmap around the customer’s wants and needs. Would you say this describes your previous work at Sun?

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  Yes, pretty close. Enhancing the customer experience so the customer continues to want to do business with you. I’ll give you an example that was given to us by the worldwide VP of sales. He had a customer that was before signing. He was working for Sperry Univac, right? Those companies don’t exist anymore so they were all pioneers in the computer industry in the 70s and 80s.

  They had a customer base where, basically, the equipment that was delivered to them kept breaking down, and they couldn’t find a fix. And the VP of sales, he was a sales rep at the time, would call the customer every morning at 08:00, and he would say, “I haven’t fixed your problem yet, but I just want to let you know that I haven’t forgotten about you and we are working on it.” The next morning, he did the same thing for four weeks straight until the problem was fixed.  Every day. And the customer stayed loyal because he knew there was effort being put into taking care of them and they weren’t just in a queue somewhere. That was a big issue, the customer knew it was a big issue and he knew it needed time to get fixed, but you can’t rely on customer service to call them and “sorry, we’re working on it and will call you when it’s ready.”

  The sales rep was smart. He kept calling the customer and saying “No, I’m not going to lose you as a customer. I’m going to stay with you, any complains that you have, I want to listen, you can curse with me, you can throw shit at me, but I’m going to call you every day and tell you I’m working on it.” So, that’s kind of dedication it takes sometimes to turnaround a bad situation and morph it into an amazing customer experience that customers will never forget.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  That’s an amazing story. And I’m sure that customer will never forget that interaction for the rest of their career! So many of these companies today are trying to create lasting loyalty through Net Promoter Programs and Customer Experience programs, but sometimes the most important part that should be integrated is a human to human touch with meaningful interactions.

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  Yes! Unfortunately, everybody’s first instinct is to try and automate the process these days as well.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Yes, completely agree.

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  There’s nothing wrong with automation. Unfortunately, there can’t be the same treatment or service levels for everybody. You have to segment your customer base—all customers are valuable, but not all customers hold the same value. Of course, you appreciate every customer, but there are some customers that need more love than others and higher service levels.

  And you must take a different approach with them. It depends on if they tend to be more ‘older school’ customers, they’re not going to be accepting using technology to be communicated with. Other people might say, “Don’t call me, just text me or email me or put it on the web somewhere,” something like that.

  The key will be trying to understand what’s the best way to capture your key customers. Obviously, that model doesn’t scale up for every customer. There’s going to be a number of customers that need special hand-holding and special care.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Especially for B2B, we see that a lot. The Pareto effect is most certainly in play here where sometimes the top 20% of your clients account for 80% of your revenue.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Exactly.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Yeah, it’s interesting. I think another thing that comes up repeatedly over the last couple of years is, especially with SaaS, people are finding ‘what is old is new again’. Sure automation where relevant is a great way to scale, but you still need to map the accounts and identify your different level of stakeholders like the economic buyers, the functional buyers and make sure they stay happy. Sometimes it takes a call every day for four weeks to make sure that happens, right?

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  Yes. If I’m an important customer and I need some information, I don’t want to log in my portal and try and find the status of my trouble ticket. If I’m that 20% of the customers, I want you to be calling me and giving me a status. You’re talking about the executive level right now.

  I’m going to call the C level executive and tell them, “Hey, log into the portal, scroll down through that and look at this is the status.” No, I’ll log into the portal and I call the customer and read out all the important information they need to understand relevant to the ticket and current status for a fix.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  That is so true especially today in the automation age.

  Ok, so you moved into this customer facing role where you were the customer advocate, how did you eventually roll into your Global VP of Marketing and Sales role at Sun?

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  From that original customer facing role, I then moved into channel marketing. So we were able to basically create programs that will entice the channels to buy more of our products. Then I ran industry marketing for the financial services vertical. In this role, you worked with a sales organization to create programs specifically to the industry because technology is technology, so rather than talking speeds and feeds to the customers if you’re in a specific industry, if you’re a bank, right, you want to know how my solution’s going to solve your banking problem.

  If the software that the bank needs does not run on a Sun System, why would they buy a Sun System? So, you have to make sure you have the software, according to your platform and optimizing your platform so you can show the customer the differentiator. Basically, what we did from an industry market is we change the conversation with the customer to that of technical, to that out of specific business solutions to their industry. How do the other customers in the same industry (financial services), in this case, banking, insurance, capital markets—how did they use our technology and what kind of ISB that we had that were relevant to them. So that’s the industry marketing role.

  From there, I moved on to Global Financial Services and we did the same thing at the global level. So I got to travel the world versus the US. Then from there I was tapped on the shoulder by another industry, telecommunications and got promoted to a director. They wanted me to go into telecom and do what I had done for financial services. One day my boss who ran the telecom group, became a VP of all industries, and he promoted me to a senior director and then things moved on.

  Next, I was promoted to the VP of worldwide sales and decided to organize all sales according to the industry—but it created all these additional industries. Before we had basically, financial services, telecommunication, government which basically bought most of the equipment. So we decided we expand and create 10 total industries. One of them was transportation, logistics and travel. I was handed that role at that time because of my successes in the industry.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  We’ve just covered a lot of ground! Let’s take a step back and unpack that a bit. So, you started off going from the customer role to channel. What type of marketing would you say differentiates channel marketing vs. industry?

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  Well, a channel is basically a re-seller. The re-seller creates multiple markets and makes you scale better and faster. So my strategy was to have my direct sales force cover the 20% of my customers and the other 80% of my customers would be covered by the channel.

  Marketing wise, we gave the channels big discounts which their own sales force would then take those discounts and sell them into their client base. This would include very small customers, which could never afford to buy the products directly from Sun. Honestly, the biggest difference however is, on the channel side, it’s more of a technology sale which is transactional while on the industry it’s more of a business solution sale.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Ok, so selling a tech widget on a transactional basis on the channel side and a solution sale on the industry side.

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  Yes.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Which would you enjoy most?

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  The technical industry for sure.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Why is that?

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  Because I’m not a technical guy. I know I’m a near six on technology, sure, I could bullshit my way through and sound like I know what I’m talking about. But I could never have a conversation about speeds and feeds because of the large technological barrier. But I could certainly have a business conversation and I knew how to position the technology as a business solution versus so many megahertz or how many gigs of memory and all that stuff.

  I knew the fundamentals, the bill on materials, but I don’t know, what happens, how the software works at the core level, at the chip level and all that. We had very smart engineers to deal with that and I didn’t need to know that.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  You mentioned earlier that, it takes an extrovert to navigate the political waters of an organization. Especially on the industry side, I have to think your extroversion and skills in developing a relationship, both internally and externally, also played a huge factor in the solution sale.

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  Absolutely. Because on one level, I had to address the press and the analyst community and you had to be very careful with what you said to them. They’re going to twist your words and write what they want. Then you had to talk to conferences of a 1,000 people. You have to be confident to be out there and deliver your message that connects with people and keeps their attention. I actually found it easier to talk to a conference room of a 1,000 people than it is to talk to 10 people.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  I believe it!

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  When you have 1,000 people in the audience, remember all those people are eager but they’re not going to ask you questions in a big audience generally. But when you’re in a room with 10, 20 people, they’re much more comfortable putting you on the spot.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  So, onto your next role— you went through a few domestic industry roles then you went global. What would you say is the biggest difference in marketing to a domestic audience vs. a global audience?

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  Well, culture. Culture is important because the programs I worked in the US didn’t work in a global market. But it depends on which market. If you lumped together US, Canada, Australia, and the UK, English speaking countries, those programs with slight tweaks will work, but when you try to change US program into China or Latin America or Eastern Europe or France or Spain, it’s very different and those same programs that worked before, will fail, quite miserably in these markets.

  You have to understand the local ways of doing business. Some of the messages don’t relate to them or don’t even translate in extreme cases. For example, a cool expression or common idiom in the US, won’t translate or make any sense over there.

  So, one of the big mistakes US companies make is relying on the US marketing teams to do their international marketing. You need local resources that are experts in the market to help you create the message.

  If you think you’re going to create the global message from the US, it will most likely be way too generic. You won’t sell as much as you expected and most likely abandon the campaign when sometimes, all you needed was a local resource to change the tide.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  That’s a great insight. I think even today most companies try to operate all their marketing from a singular team and this is a great reminder to integrate expertise regardless of whether or not it exists on the current team. Ok, so how would you structure a campaign to limit your risk initially globally if it’s a ‘different’ approach than what your team is used to?

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  We would do test marketing. We’ll take a small area like in this case for Asia, we will use Singapore because it’s a very controlled environment, very tech friendly. It’s like trying to do a Beta in Disneyland—to contain things, but even the Singaporeans are unique. They’re mostly Chinese and other Asians and they’re surrounded by all these countries like Malaysia and Thailand, Philippines and so forth.

  First of all, when we developed the program with the locals I would say, “Here’s what I have. We have this industry solution that we’re going to target for say, in this case, there was transportation service that we’ll go after the ministry of transportation in Singapore,” So how should the message be framed? What kind of partners do we need to have that are relevant and local?

  Telling them, “Hey, we have this solution running on our system, but the ISP is in the US and has no presence in Singapore.” So, what good is that? We had to have local partners that we’ll be able to deliver the solution within the geographic territory. So you had to find local partners.

  Sometimes before you could launch the program, you had to recruit the partners get them up to speed with training and marketing collateral, then roll out the program, because, from an industry perspective, you always made it a solution that is optimized on your platform. It was the hardware, it was the software and the professional services all wrapped together as the solution delivered the customer. We install it, we troubleshoot it, and you manage it afterward.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Did you have teams that would manage each individual piece of that solution and you just controlled the program and message or was it on you and your team to be involved in each piece?

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  Our primary job was to drive demand for the solution, within that particular vertical market. Once we did that it was then passed to the sales organization where they equipped them with product knowledge and made sure they bought the software. Then professional services supported it, but we maintained the relationship with the customer throughout the cycle.

  So, we’re just still the customer advocates at that role. If they had an issue with sales, they would contact us. Sometimes, we would have to go in and do additional presentations and meetings to convince the customer that this is the right solution to move forward with to solve their specific business pain.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Now the age-old question that companies still struggle with today, how did you maintain alignment with your sales team as marketers?

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  Yeah, that’s the biggest challenge. Marketing is from Mars and Sales is from Venus, right?

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  Ian

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  Ian

  (laughs) That’d be an all-time best seller- you should write it!

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  (laughs) Marketing people think salespeople are all on the golf course every day and salespeople think that marketers do useless stuff that never help drive sales. “You never give me a program that works, all you do is give me a corporate hat and push leads to me thinking they’re going to work and I’m telling you, “They’re shit,” right? That’s what happens in the real world. We managed by our approach in assigning goals.

  So, for instance, we didn’t do any programs that sales had not bought into it. For example, one of my employees wanted to roll out a program in China. I would tell that person you have to go get the VP of marketing for China and the country manager for China, which is the salesperson and get their buy-in. Then, during their quarterly performance review, 60% of their grade comes from the country manager.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Wow!

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  A lot of the performance grade would not be up to me. If a country managing did not think you added any value, you fail. This forced alignment knowing that their performance was based on 60% of what the country managers said. That way they were forced to create programs that the local sales organization had already accepted.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  That’s a pretty aggressive structure with 50 to 60% of their performance grade based on the sales manager.

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  Well, first of all, that was how I graded my group, I’m not saying this is how everybody else was conducting reviews. I just didn’t want to grade my people on frequent flyer miles, I wanted to grade them on sale consistency or growth.

  Some of my reports would say “well I went to China 5 times.” Yeah well, did you even meet with your country manager? Another thing that marketing struggles with on the alignment side is contacting a customer without the sales rep knowing they’re in contact with their customers. If you’re a sales rep and you’re assigned that account, you suddenly have all these other people going behind your back and contacting your customers telling them things you’re not aware of.

  Sales needs to declare “that’s my account.” Anything that you say to that customer impacts my pocket, my revenue. So, if you don’t coordinate with the sales rep, they have no use for you

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Just looking at it from the other side and defending all of the marketers out there, how did you make sure sales’ performance was up to snuff and followed up on the leads marketing provided them?

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  I’ll tell you what I managed the Asian Pacific marketing folks, they were better integrated with sales— more than Europe and Latin America. Of course, sometimes they would get frustrated, but you cannot force salespeople to follow-up with leads.

  Our marketing goal was to make sure that lead was a hot lead, it wasn’t just, an awareness type lead that had no interest in purchasing. You wanted them to send a lead that was willing to listen to the salesperson and you were able to create a systematized handoff so if the sales rep called them they would say, “we would like to have a meeting.” Basically, we didn’t want the sales rep to have to go in and explain to the customer who Sun Microsystems is, what kind of products we produce. That’s marketing’s job.

  The salesperson’s job is to sell. The marketing is kind of like the marines. They have to go in and then make sure everything is smooth for the salesperson to walk in and secure the area (close the deal). So, the customer needs to be informed about the value of the company, awareness of the company’s products, other success stories from other customers. Did they know about the product that’s the right fit for them and to the solution specific to their industry?

  All these questions need to be answered so the salesperson can come in and sell. The salesperson will bring his expertise and a sales engineer, so the prospect can ask technical questions to evaluate the solution, do competitive positioning, etc. Yes, it might even mean taking the customer or prospect out to dinner to close the deal, but that’s all part of the job!

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Real salespeople don’t need a steak dinner to close right?

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  (laughter) I completely agree! It’s really the combination of the steak dinner WITH the round of golf where the magic happens!

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  Ian

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  Ian

  (laughter) I think maybe I should have gone into sales…

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  But in all seriousness, it’s about establishing the relationship. Good sales reps know it, the customers know it too. You have to develop a relationship with the customer because people buy from people they like. You can have the best technology at the cheapest cost, and if I don’t like you as a person, I’m not going to buy from you.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  That’s so true.

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  It’s still all about relationships.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Yes, absolutely. So back to marketing, what would you say would be your most successful campaign at Sun that you remember?

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  One more plug for sales while we’re on the topic. We had this great sales campaign that comes to mind—remember the big flu epidemic SARS in Asia?

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Yes, of course.

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  Yanni

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  The country manager in China, I really liked him, his name was Daniel. Nobody wanted to see each other, you couldn’t visit customers because everyone thought that would catch something. So, he renamed SARS, as Sales Acceleration Reward System. He’d put an extra incentive for the salespeople if they’re able to increase sales during the SARS crisis. It was very successful because people became very creative about contacting their customer, started doing a lot of video conferencing and stuff like that. That was pretty clever.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Wow that is clever!

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  Yeah, and that was a program that originated from sales, not from marketing. Marketing supported it, right, but originally it was from sales.

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  Yanni

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  From a marketing perspective, it was when we launched Java. People had no idea what Java was. This was like ‘97, and Java basically became the programming language of the Internet, but people had no idea what it was. So, rather than making it a technical term—the logo of Java was a cup of coffee, really cool and approachable.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  I still remember that original launch!

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  I have a funny story about the Java launch. Sun ran a campaign at a conference in Latin America, specifically Brazil. The local marketing team made a video, which corporate did not see because they would have shut it down immediately. So the conference kicks off and the video starts playing. And there are two very attractive ladies on screen. Keep in mind, this was not approved video and these were different times, etc. This would never fly today!

  Anyways, the shtick was basically this: they had to take a piece of clothing off every time they made a mistake. So they ask some question like, “What is a mouse?” “It’s a tiny little animal that runs around.” The answer was obviously wrong at a tech conference. So she’s basically missed all the questions until she was down to her bikini. The next wrong answer would make the crowd of mostly men, very happy…let’s just say that. Then they asked her the question, “What is Java?” And then she proceeded to begin this hyper-technical answer that not even the most advanced engineers on the planet would respond with, basically the perfect answer. The audience starts booing— that was hilarious, but anyway.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Wow #MeToo!

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  Yeah exactly, you could never do this today…different climate back then.

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  Yanni

  But Sun had a great rollout for Java in general. The beautiful part was we had a lot of ISPs signed up, so it wasn’t just an application, it was an application but it was supported by the ISP, and they had a systematic campaign in educating the customer as well around what Java was and how to use it. Ever since ‘98, people had no idea how Java and the internet would enable e-commerce. They had no idea. People said, “Why would I buy clothes over the internet? I want to go to the store and touch it and feel it.”

  We did a very, very successful campaign. Everything from communicating benefits to the public to designing the logos, the colors. We did a lot of trade shows and we had a big show of our own where actors and staff are demonstrating the capabilities of Java from a business perspective. It was a huge success as you may know today.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  And Java is still relevant today.  

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  Yeah, every webpage has Java in it.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Exactly, it’s amazing.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  What would you say the biggest marketing lesson was for you at Sun that you took away to other ventures and startups that you started?

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  Yeah, and then the key thing is to make sure you talk to sales. Don’t develop marketing programs without sales help and input.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  I figured this might be your answer, but I wanted you to say it again. I hate to say it, but some marketers have a bit of arrogance to them. It’s tough to hear a salesperson say, “that’s not a good idea. Maybe you should instead think about it this way.” I completely agree with you that this is one of the most important things you can do as a marketer because when you consult with sales and align your efforts, everybody wins.

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  Yanni

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  You got it.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Ok, now we enter the lightning round! What’s your favorite marketing book of all-time?

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  Probably Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore. You’re familiar with the book?

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Of course, a classic! Innovators, early adopters, etc. 

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  Yanni

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  Yeah. Well, basically life is a bell-shaped curve, and especially in the technology world where you have the very early adopters like the geeks. This crowd gets you on the map and help you along, but until you get to the middle part of the bell curve, you’re not going to move until that market segment moves.

  When early and late majority move, they move in mass. Look at ATMs. People at the beginning wouldn’t use ATMs, but once they got mass implemented, everybody adopted them. Another example, look at online banking. People were very reluctant to adopt online banking when the innovators had offerings. But once the large banks adopted, the early and late majorities followed.

  The chasm is between the early adopters and the mature market and marketing is the tool to basically accelerate the time to adoption and to close that chasm. Your goal is to make the chasm as small as possible, because at the end of the day if you don’t capture the market, you’re not going to be a big player. You’re going to be a niche player. If that’s your goal, that’s okay, but if you want to really be a big company or a billion plus dollar company, you have to close the chasm and the faster you accomplish this, the better off you’ll be.

  Marketing’s role is to make sure they understand where the customer segment is and try to position the product properly. That’s why I think industry marketing was important because he was able to accelerate the adoption because now you’re talking, not technology but business solutions.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Yes. And when you’re talking crossing the chasm, one example that immediately comes to mind is Dollar Shave Club.

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  Yanni

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  Yes, they’re great!

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  In case anyone doesn’t know who they are , they’re a B2C brand and their founder, Michael Dubin, came across a bulk order of razors and had to figure out how to sell these.  He had a background in brand and advertising and decided to make a viral video to establish his brand, sell razors and cross that chasm all in one video!

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  Yanni

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  I watched it on YouTube. It’s hilarious. Hysterical. I loved it.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  That’s one of the more impressive “chasm crossings” I’ve seen of late.

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  Yanni

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  Yes. The challenge for smaller companies that try to reach that big 67% is they don’t have enough resources. They’re at this phase in their lifecycle where, as an innovative company with new technology, it’s is easier to convince early adopters because it’s all tech talk. They don’t have the resources to capture the early or late majorities. So that’s why I recommend you often need to leverage the channel because you don’t have to hire major resources to spread your reach. You just need to find a knowledgeable channel partner and you’re on your way to crossing the chasm.

  A lot of companies are very greedy. They don’t like the channel because they think, “Why do I need to give so much margin?” Because guess what? If you don’t do that, then you have to put up the resources yourself and guess what? It’s going to cost you to build an audience and you may die trying!

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  Ian

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  Ian

  And I think that’s really hitting the nail on the head. A lot of these companies think that just because they build this amazing product, they’ll succeed. And they have it completely backwards. Anyone can build a product. The hard part is marketing and sales! They should be focusing on their go-to-market more than anything. And this is where a lot of companies go wrong.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  You got it. They don’t see the big picture—I’d rather spend less and get 10% of a very big pie instead of 60% of a very small pie.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Right. Pursue the channel and scale if you can.

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  Yanni

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  The channel makes you scale faster than you could possibly do it yourself.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  It’s cheaper too.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Next question! What would you say is your favorite brand right now from a marketing standpoint?

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  Yanni

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  Apple and Nike are still doing great marketing.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Why is that?

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  Because they understand the consumer. I think, Jobs probably one of the most brilliant marketers ever as far as I’m concerned. He delivered a product to a consumer and moved from brand recognition to brand insistence. I insist I want an iPod. I don’t care if every other phone out there has better features. I don’t care how long the battery lasts or how sharp the screen is…Jobs made the consumer insist on Apple products regardless of the specs and that is something very few marketers accomplish in their careers.

  Then take for example Nike. The balls it takes to back the controversy-laden Colin Kaepernick is a brave move for a brand. It could have backfired so terribly, but they stayed the course, didn’t back down and stood with Colin. There were hundreds of videos on youtube of Nike customers burning their Nikes as a result of the campaign, but Nike didn’t back down. And what they actually ended up with was a rock solid moral stance and a massive amount of brand awareness that translated directly into increased sales—even with the shoe burning videos!

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  Ian

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  Ian

  It’s one of the more iconic campaigns in recent memory. And Nike can pull it off because they’re Nike.

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  Exactly. But it was a very bold and calculated move. They may have lost some customers, but they gained a lot more than they lost. That was not an easy decision by Nike.

  Apple, the same thing. They make a good quality product and they really understand their customers. There are a lot of companies that don’t truly understand their customers.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  I couldn’t agree more with your choices. These companies are masters at aligning a market around their company’s mission. They embody their morals, their aspiration, everything that their audience represents as an individual. Two great choices.

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  Yanni

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  There are very many good companies out there but to me, Apple and Nike by far.

  If you look at the enterprise level or technology level, it’s different. I hate Google and I hate Facebook because of their operating practices. Basically, instead of being the customer, you’re the product. And I don’t respect that.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Google’s mission is don’t be evil or it was.

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  Yes, they took that down though. They don’t use that anymore.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  They don’t?

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  No.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Well that makes sense!

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  Ian

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  Ian

  So finishing up here, I want to know, where do you see marketing going in the next 10 years? Which trends are going to hold?

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  Yanni

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  I think the fundamental business relationships with marketing and B2B are not going to change. Despite how much technology’s going to change, the need for a personal relationship and a handshake will still need to be made for that 20% of your customers that we talked about.

  From a technology perspective, I think it’s going to move very fast. We’ll see a lot of voice search, a lot of video, a lot of AI and VR implemented, GDPR will be a lot more prevalent. The biggest challenge we’re going to have is with Blockchain technology. Consumers are going to own their data. Kind of like having your own Black Box, like code, so nobody could use your name, your email, your phone number because of Blockchain technology, they won’t be allowed to use it unless you gave them explicit permission to use it, most likely at a cost to them.
  Company’s budgets are going to change. they will have to pay more for data, but they’re going to have better data because the people that obtain will want to give it up.

  So, they’re going to have to change your tactics from a spray and pray approach to hyper-targeted. It will be a paradigm shift in the way we market and acquire data.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  I’m so happy you said that. I also feel this is also going to be inevitable. The US will wake up, institute privacy laws and whoever figures out how to put control in the hands of the consumer first will make a ton of money.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Yanni, we’ve covered a lot of ground and I’ve learned a lot. Thank you for taking time out of your busy day to chat with us at Marketing Strategy. It’s been insightful and a learning experience for me as usual. I hope you enjoyed yourself!

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  Yanni

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  Yanni

  Of course! It was my pleasure and I had a great time.

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  Ian

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  Ian

  Thanks again and that wraps up our interview with Yanni Kalajakis, Founder of Skyline Consulting Services. The pleasure is all mine and I hope to chat with you again soon, cheers!