126 | Bridging sales, psychology, and MarTech efficacy

Jon: Welcome again to another episode of the Tech Marketing Podcast. You're joined by myself, Jon, in the studio, in our virtual studio here. Where we're going to bring you the latest advances really in everything B2B technology. We've been talking a lot about channel recently, but we're going to take a different path on today's podcast into more of the demand gen side.

And I'm very pleased to be joined by Ksenia Ruffel from IDeaS, part of SAS actually who's head of marketing for EMEA. So Ksenia we've actually met each other. Offline through some other means, but I've been really eager to get you on the podcast. Welcome to the tech marketing podcast.

Ksenia Ruffell: Thank you, Jon.

Thanks for having me.

Jon: Your background, you started as a lab assistant and lab analysis and psychology. Like how, what was your journey into marketing?

Like, how did you. end up falling into the role you're in today?

It's a great question. So after school, I wanted to pursue a career in medicine. So I went to a medical college and studied biochemistry to become an assistant laboratory analysis. And then straight after that, in a kind of somewhat related field, I went on to study psychology.

And it was management psychology. So it was all very, and I was fascinated by the learning, I love learning generally. It's kind of part of me. I never stopped learning. And at the same time, as I started working I started studying medicine, I started working in a marketing agency. And I think that's how, that's where it all really started 20 odd years ago.

Jon: Like you just fell in, like marketing chose you in some ways, you just fell into a marketing agency. What was your first role in marketing?

Yeah, so I work for an experiential marketing agency. It was a very small one, small, intimate agency. We knew all our clients very well. And I came into work to be an account manager for several accounts and I studied while I worked, so I was lucky enough to do both, and earn some money while I studied.

And. And I enjoyed both. And while I enjoyed studying medicine, I enjoyed working in marketing and learning about, different aspects of it. I find myself more drawn to that side, to more kind of business side, I would say, because I think the field of medicine is very different from the business world.

And I felt I was more ambitious and I think that's probably one of the reasons that I was more drawn to that. To that side of it,

Jon: I, so I was very similar. I studied what's goodness. What did I say? I studied business at university as well, business and chemistry. So it's similar to you. And I think this gives us a bit of an advantage to most other marketeers, right?

Especially in today's world where we're talking. Around, I'm going to use kind of big terms like brand to demand. Like, what does that really mean? Well, at its core level, it means you've got to demonstrate value and understand the psychology of why someone wants to give you their details.

Like what with your background psychology, did that influence any of the decisions you've made in marketing along the way? Like how have you what background has that given you?

Ksenia Ruffell: Yeah, and actually reflecting I never thought about it that way until someone asked me exactly that question and I studied the branch of the psychology.

I studied was management psychology And so it was fascinating because i've already at that point i've decided i'm going to pursue a career in business and even though I never practiced psychology from A psychologist side I applied the main You principles of that management psychology to, to my own style, to my own leadership style.

And so those principles of leadership, team working, conflict management, change, and development, I applied it to myself and my own style. And I found that really helps me in the business world.

Jon Busby: One of the most interesting things I loved about studying those elements back at university. If I remember those days was like understanding people's motivations and then how you're able to tailor that into a campaign or into what they achieve, what they want to achieve.

And I think today, and I had one of my other previous podcast guests mentioned this, B2B. Buyers are in some ways buying anything from your organization is almost more emotional than it is B2C because, it puts your job on the line. It puts your reputation on the line. So I think it's, I think actually having that background in psychology prepares us.

Better than the most other marketeers. So, yeah, I would completely agree with that. And as a fellow chemist, of course, I'm always going to like anyone that's worked in a lab because no one else understands the challenge of how you, how exact you need to be when it comes to things.

And I think that brings us neatly really onto the next topic here, which is around Martech like this. I'm intrigued. About some of your thoughts here, like you've worked having worked in marketing and specifically in marketing technology for things like the hospitality industry and broader than that in SAS, like, how do you think it's evolved over the last decade?

Like, how do you think MarTech has changed?

Ksenia Ruffell: Oh very big question and oh my goodness, having been in the business now for, well, in the B2B marketing for. Almost 20 years, not quite, almost 20 years last almost 10 of which with the same company with ideas and SAS I feel that MarTech landscape changed so much.

So from. Actually, in the last decade, I think the last decade probably saw the most of that change. And thanks to COVID, so silver linings of COVID, right?

Jon: What would you say has changed so much? Like from my perspective, I was seeing such a high, and actually, I, this is literally something I spoke about last week, which is you see this huge, um, amount of investment and tools that are deployed which is, I think it's changed the way that we approach marketing, but I'm actually, I'm going to be quite controversial here.

I don't know if it's made an effect, the same effect to our effectiveness of marketing. So if I say that again, like we've seen a massive investment over the last 10 years in MarTech tools, but I don't think as marketeers we're necessarily seeing the same percentage or even close to the same percentage going up.

So I feel like actually there's a gap here. Like, I don't know whether you've got a view on that, but it's something that's been going through my head for the last two weeks, actually.

Ksenia Ruffell: Okay. Well, I might actually have to disagree with you in terms of effectiveness. And where we were like for MarTech tools, as far as MarTech tools are concerned, for example, a decade ago, many companies, many B2B companies would be proud to say, Oh, they've got a CRM system and a mark, marketing automation.

And that was plenty. That was enough. Today, look at that landscape today, where we have software for everything. Actually, if you try to count how many pieces of MarTech we have, I probably lost count because there's something coming on, every month or every quarter.

And you've got a software for your employee advocacy. You've got a software for your attribution, which if you remember in those days, attribution was that. That big sexy word like AI is today, right? The fancy word that everyone wanted to get on and do it And you know, there's software for gifting so it's definitely changed and I think in terms of the marketeers, B2B marketeers, to me that software changed it for the better because we are no longer just all fluffy marketers doing maybe some brochures and trade show stands because that's what, I think that's what marketing was always perceived as.

We actually, we can show. How we contribute to the business and to the business results and to the bottom line All that software allowed us to track everything that we do or not everything maybe in an ideal world so And by tracking we can see what works what doesn't work and what's the ROI that we are actually No longer an expense line We're a revenue generating department.

Jon: I'm glad you disagree with me on that, but you have hit on something, which I think many of our listeners, in fact, I'm even just intrigued to know, cause I think I've always seen it as the Holy grail of B2B, which is how can you track improved marketing attribution or ROI? Cause I think that becomes, that's why they have that effectiveness.

Graph is so flat. Is it such a difficult thing to track? Like, have you been able to show that difference in over the last few years?

Ksenia Ruffell: Definitely since, and I mentioned, I worked in this company now for almost 10 years, we've come a long way. in that last 10 years from more of a gut feel approach to, to, to marketing, to, to your campaigns, events, et cetera, the effectiveness of all the marketing activities.

So much more solid data driven approach. And that's thanks to attribution, which is, it's not just thanks to MarTech. As a lot of it is also human element. It's internal education, it's processes and a lot more people getting on board with that attribution, because actually if you implement it well and communicate it well then it turns out a lot more people actually want to know what's working, what's not and how are the marketing dollars how far do they go?

And what we should be doing more of an and less of.

Jon: I guess though what I find, I actually, okay. There's lots to unpack here. So firstly, you mentioned process and people as part of it. And I'm really glad you mentioned that. Cause that's part of the, part of my, this sounds really strange coming from a technologist, but I think we often forget that technology is really only a third.

Of the success of many of these programs, like when you mentioned people around it you went into enablement, like, where do you think most organizations are going wrong when it comes to their people and enabling them to, to use that data?

Enabling them to use the data or enabling them to actually have that data.

Jon: Well, yeah, both. I think, you've got to have the data before you know how to use it. Like how, where they go, where are we going wrong?

Ksenia Ruffell: It's moving from those vanity metrics or, your opens and clicks to metrics that matter to the company and to the growth, to your business objectives.

That's exactly that. And it's, we have certainly, metrics, certain marketing metrics, but they have to translate into those sales metrics and business metrics. And it's marrying. All of them, but it's how, what we do here. You know at the top of the fun starting at the top of the funnel How does it all translate to the bottom line for the company?

Yep. So it's implementing those metrics and changing people's perception and Educating everyone. I think that was really critical in our company Especially to get the marketing and sales aligned and you know again certain buzzword From I can't remember how many years ago now, you know all about sales and marketing alignment I think it's a bit like marketing attribution.

That was you know, big theme for one year. I think we've moved on now But part of that sales and marketing alignment was exactly that. You Actually alignment on the metrics and on the value that marketing brings to the business and everyone understand what we actually do.

And so once sales understands what role we play they no longer, there is no longer that, Oh, this is us, this is them. It's us together driving the results for the company.

Jon: I actually had a stat the other day that only 15 percent of teams. In B2B are aligned between marketing and sales, which blew my mind.

Now, I'm sure you can probably go and just find many stats. Some of them may be worse. Some of them may be better, essentially what we're saying is 85 percent of marketing and sales teams are not aligned. Which is crazy. So only 15 percent are 85 percent aren't like it, like why you say this is it's like a buzzword.

I remember learning about sales and marketing alignment 20 years ago. And yet we're still talking about it. So as a demand generation leader, what would you. What would you, how would you recommend you build that bridge with the sales team?

Ksenia Ruffell: I have to give a lot of credit to my to my leadership, to, to my company leadership, to the sales and marketing leaders, because they really worked consciously together to bridge that gap and to align the teams and to work towards certain.

That's like common goals, basically. So, so a lot of credit goes to them. And I think in all organization that comes has to come from the top.

Jon: It's always, I think it's always going to be a journey, right? And thinking back to some of the dashboards that we were talking about in our prep call, you mentioned this trustworthy element.

Like how did you help to build that trust between marketing and sales?

Ksenia Ruffell: Communication. So it's communication. Of what you are going to achieve, then achieving it, showing the results, proving that you've done what you said you would do.

Jon: But yeah let's continue this thread of sales and marketing alignment.

And one of the things that we were talking about in the prep call was just how you, I think you renamed a dashboard trustworthy just to illustrate that it's, there needs to be trust between the two teams here. Is that right? Did you really rename something to help build trust?

And how did that come about?

Ksenia Ruffell: As a company analytics is something that is, is very important to us because we are an analytics company. And I think building your own set of analytics for yourself. It was probably the most difficult thing, right? Because you have a lot more vested interest in it and I would say that since we hired our first analytics, Person into the marketing department things have started improving dramatically So that for anyone who doesn't have the analytics yet on board

Jon: Such a common story.

Ksenia Ruffell: Yeah, finally,

you know a person dedicated To tracking things that matter it is a role not to be underestimated so and then actually helping people also to Just oh, let's just track everything that we can because we can you know We've got software and let's just track as much as we can.

It's actually saying You Hang on a second, let's just take a step back, and Let's take the bigger picture and helping people and the different functions track what is meaningful To them to the success of their roles and their departments, but also in their interactions with other areas of the business and how Like, as I keep saying, how it ultimately translate into dollar signs for the company.

Because my role is very much focused on new business, on helping drive new business. So, so that's something, very important. It's contributing to those sales pipelines. It's consistently delivering that, that value. Never taking the food off the gas.

Jon: I like to define it in B2B as relentless.

Cause it just, it does feel that way from time to time, doesn't it?

Cause you're exactly right. Like you're never taking your foot off the pedal. It's yeah it's, but let's move on. Let's move away from data for a moment into kind of some of the human elements. You know what, as all of this stuff, let's look, look out on the next horizon as, and we've talked around the role of MarTech, how that's exploded and we've, how actually that has made us more effective or that's a point that we're gonna I love to continue to debate. What skills do you think are going to be crucial for marketers in the future?

Ksenia Ruffell: Soft skills, for sure. They never went away because we still work with people.

Jon: Like I have a slightly different way of. Of thinking about that, we've talked a lot about making data driven decisions. Like where do you think the gap is between what the skills marketers need and that data driven element? Like what's the bit missing in the middle?

Ksenia Ruffell: To me, it always has been communication.

It's good to know something and to have data or tools at your disposal, but it's also passing that on

Jon: to others. Are you seeing anything, That's you just think could be completely game changing to, to another marketeer, whether they're in demand gen or whether they're in brand or whether we're going to still be using those terms in a few years time.

But what's really exciting you today?

Ksenia Ruffell: Are we going to talk about AI? It does excite me. It's something, it was interesting because I was actually on maternity leave when. AI really came as a big, came out as a big thing and you've you're father yourself, you know how it is, you are in a totally different world when you are in that, first year of your child being born.

So you're totally oblivious to everything else in the world. The business world kind of ceases to exist. And so, then I emerged out of the world of. Of children of a new child. And I saw AI and I was like, oh, ai. I've heard of it before, but it's big now. .

Jon: Yeah. And it really was overnight having, if you were outta work for that year, that seminal year of what are we talking like, late 20?

Ksenia Ruffell: It was 23, right? Beginning of 23 when it really kicked off. Like that was a big game changer for many of us. And we are in this. We are in a little bit of a precarious position, like a nexus point, as I was saying before, where a lot of these elements are changing around us. And you've got to know which ones you should pay attention to and which ones you shouldn't.

And so if you've done all of that training, like which, which are the elements where you're excited to include AI, where you can see a future for including AI in your business and maybe which ones you're not.

I think just even your kind of mundane things Even if it's whether it's writing an email and sometimes, you have an email you've got your thoughts and you're sitting there thinking Okay a couple of hours gone by and you're still considering whether you're using the right tone the right words Whereas now, you know I sometimes I go and I use AI for that and say, okay, help me finish this off.

Boom. I don't, I no longer have to spend two hours on that, putting a presentation plan together, something like that. Planning an event. Yep. So AI, I'm using AI for all of those things and they are small, but they can take some can take an hour. Some can take two hours and it's all those hours saved in the day that you no longer have to just think about it.

Obviously marketing copy. That's a big one. I know people don't

Jon: tell our copywriters, but no we obviously as an agency, we have teams, we're seeing when it's used alongside a copywriter, he knows how to prompt it. We're seeing like a 50%, like an up to 50 percent reduction in time.

Like sometimes it's not like across the board. I'm, I can't say I'm going to reduce my fees by 50 percent and we're obviously passing the most of those savings onto our clients or all of the savings in many cases, but it is make a, makes a big difference. Doesn't it? How quickly you can iterate on it.

Do you, but do you worry it's going to create like a sea of same scenario where everything ends up looking similar.

Ksenia Ruffell: I think it, and again, it depends on the individuals using it. I would say if you have to apply common sense, right? You don't just you don't just take it you use it to help you But you don't use it to do everything for you and instead of you I think it's just to a point you can use it to give it a leg up but then the rest, you still got to do your job, you still got your own brain and Not you wouldn't be very wise to just leave ai You To do everything for you and using the wrong tone of voice or use suddenly everyone wonders Why your emails all sound so robotic and what actually happened to Jon or xeni?

Jon: Yeah, I actually did have a moment the other day where I did use some ai to help me finish off an email and Then I went back to the email a few days later and I was like, I don't remember writing this and the truth is It's because I didn't so that it can drive you absolutely crazy Like what's one thing that I Going to theorize about before I close this out here is, I am seeing, are you seeing the deliverables that you ask for from an agency or from other organizations changing because of AI?

Ksenia Ruffell: Like we, you just mentioned marketing copy are you seeing some of those deliverables potentially just, are we going to have to reinvent ourselves as marketeers about what we're, what we deliver to market?

I can't say I've seen a positive example. So for example, I'll give an example of translation, something that is long contended in the company because we are an international company. So translations is a big part of our regional strategy. And seeing some translation agencies use AI unwisely, I would say, and Without context.

Yeah. Without context. Which makes a big difference when it comes to And it just You can tell. You can tell. Yep. That they do it. And I think Again, it's you can use it, but you have to use it wisely So, you know if you're an agency use it to a point, but then always apply your own

Jon: I think we, we tend to use the word responsibly, which mean, which we know that has some flex based on what your core values are.

I guess, but the biggest thing that I see is that, and this is obviously coming from an agency standpoint into a client like yourself is that we, there's going to become a world where we stop delivering a piece of copy and we start delivering the prompt that generates that piece of copy. And I don't know when that's world's going to happen, but that's when I look at some of the deliverables, I think we are in a world where that's going to start to change.

And instead of copywriters, you have prompt engineers. And instead of photo shoots, you have Gen AI, vegan Gen AI models as they're now called. It's actually a real thing. Like when you, when we're calling them vegan it doesn't mean they don't eat meat, it just means they don't eat copyrighted material.

So it's it's a really, it's moving at such pace. I'm super excited about it. I just don't know which way to turn. Yeah. So it's difficult. So bring us to an end here, like looking back on your journey from being in lab analysis through to marketing and hospitality tech. Like what would you say?

What's the most important lesson you would share to any aspiring marketers or those considering a potential career pivot like yourself?

Ksenia Ruffell: I would say that if you've chosen a career in marketing, Huge congratulations to you. It means that you're a person who likes to think outside of the box and this career can take you absolutely anywhere.

Jon: I couldn't agree more. And actually through speaking to many marketers of many levels, actually on this podcast, actually, we've done over a hundred episodes now, I would say. The fundamentals, even though we've talked about new tech marketing, the impact of marketing technology, we've even of course talked about AI, the fundamentals never change.

And something like psychology, as we talked about right at the beginning, gives you a great foundation and really what matters to people most when you're planning those three, five, seven P's, depending on which year you went to university to study marketing as well.

So thank you very much Ksenia for joining me on the podcast.

It's been a real pleasure having such a passionate. Marketing and demand generation leader on to talk around your journey with regards to data and sales enablement. But it's been a, it's been a real pleasure.

Ksenia Ruffell: Thank you very much for having me, Jon. I really enjoyed it.