Making the Shift from Sales to Product Marketing with Sunayana Vatassery

00:04 Welcome to Marketing for Marketers, a series where we interview the brightest minds in marketing to unpack the strategies that actually generate pipeline. The guest today, if I don't put to the name is Sunaina Vattaseri, a former strategic sales leader who transitioned into product marketing. She's held roles across multiple enterprise sales, go to market before switching things up and focusing on messaging, positioning and enablement at scale. Today we're diving into what it really takes to transition from sales to product marketing.

00:32 and the lessons that come from living on both sides of the GTM motion. When I'm reading that both sides, I'm thinking the Star Wars dark side being sales and the good side being marketing. Welcome. I'm really excited to talk about this journey. So we have another series called Revenue Career Ladder, where we talk about your journey from the first ever job you've had to your current job. So I'm very, very familiar in talking to people about their career journeys. But before we jump in, how are you?

00:59 I'm doing well. Thank you so much, Jamie. Excited to be here today and share my story and hopefully it helps others that are considering this similar career path as myself. So yeah, just looking forward to having a conversation with you. think it's becoming more common based on the conversations that I've had with a lot of professionals in the other series. The majority of people who start in sales didn't necessarily graduate or go into college or university thinking, I want to be in sales.

01:28 profession that's the career that I want to do. That's quite rare. It's more typical that it's one of the easiest jobs to get because there's so many of them and the turnover is quite high, which means there's pretty much always a sales job of varying different types available. So people end up going into sales and you know, good money. They learn loads of good stuff. And then they think, right, I actually, I'm going to do the thing that I thought I was going to do. I'm going to move across, change tack, change course.

01:53 And to something that I enjoy. So it's actually quite common that people start in sales and end up moving to another sort of role. Maybe not marketing because there's always been that weird like sales versus marketing. Sales hate marketing, marketing hate sales. So I think that's less common. So I'm excited for the conversation. I guess the first question is what led you to even consider, what was the reason why you thought I want to go from strategic sales into product marketing?

02:23 Yeah. So I'd been a seller for 15 years, knew how to do a bit of what I love about sales, which you mentioned it's an easy route to go down. don't think it's easy. think it's actually easy to get into. It is one of the most difficult positions in my opinion, but

02:40 I had 15 years of experience, I loved every minute of it, and I never wanted to leave sales. That was never my intention. But what I realized after having a family, becoming a mom of two very little children, is that my focus and attention really does need to be on these little humans that I'm raising, and I couldn't be on the road as much as I would have loved to be. So that was one of my biggest pushes to get into it. But the jump to product marketing was actually interesting for me because

03:09 I had been considering it for a long time, probably five years prior to me actually making this switch. And I had talked to a lot of people in the industry trying to figure out like, what is this transition like? And at the time I realized I only want to do that with a CMO I feel like is one of the best in the industry. Cause then I can learn the right way to get into this product marketing niche. So.

03:30 The interesting story that I have to share on this topic in particular is that my partner in crime, my husband, Raj, always wanted to be a doctor. That was his one passion. He ended up actually shadowing a surgeon and he had taken the MCAT. He did well. He was pretty set to go to med school. He made a drastic switch. He decided to become a PhD and pursue the PhD route versus becoming a doctor. And I remember asking him, you know,

03:56 Wow, you wanted to be a doctor for so long. What made you make this switch? And he said, you know what, being a doctor is great. You get to help people on an individual basis. But I just feel like being a PhD chemist or a scientist in general, it's going to give me this ability to help millions or billions of people. And this is what I'm really passionate about. I want to come up with a breakthrough that's going to help a multitude of people, not just one. And that inspired me. And I thought about that a lot in my journey.

04:25 because that's kind of how I envision moving from sales to product marketing. There's an art and a craft to sales. People say an art and a science and that's absolutely correct. But what's been amazing for me is making that transition to a grander scale. So now I get to use the skills I have in sales, but I get to put that to use to a whole slew of sales reps in enablement or put that messaging out there for all of our prospects and customers alike. So.

04:55 His transition actually inspired me to make the same transition in a different way, but hopefully making just as much of an impact. in my head, I'm trying to turn. So his decision, if we think about it from the customer journey funnel, right? He moved up the funnel. He wanted to be more top of funnel, like more, way more people before they went into the next stage down, which is I need to go to hospital. he, yeah, so he was going more top of funnel and you did the same thing rather than being sales.

05:24 speaking with the leads that marketing given you, wanted to speak to all of the prospects that may become leads. that's interesting. The particular moment then, the penny drop moment, was that the, like you said, that was the kids, was it? For me, it was the kids and it was other personal things that had happened in our lives that just made me realize that.

05:43 Life is short. If this is something I want to pursue, I should do it now. And that was kind of my impetus. In fact, I had one of the best sales quarters ever in my life and I switched over to product marketing. And I remember my boss at the time being like, are you sure you want to do this? All of the regional managers at the time too were like, no, no, you're going to come back to sales. There's no way you're going to stick with marketing. You're going to come back to sales. And I was like, no, I want to do this. And this is something I really do want to do. That's what we would call sods law in the UK. Yeah. Which is basically.

06:12 You have a really good quarter when you're planning on leaving, which is just the way things go. So you were traveling sales because I heard you say you were on the- I had global accounts, so I was traveling quite a bit. And what was it that you were selling? Well, I've sold a lot of stuff. So I've been in tech sales for most of my career. So I was at LaunchDarkly when I made the transition to product marketing. So there it was a feature flag management system.

06:37 that we were selling to different developers, engineering folks and so on and so forth. But prior to that, I was at Elastic selling their products, selling all different things, but all in tech. basically software sales. then. So when you made the switch, what skills have been most useful, let's say in that transition? I think obviously product marketers, work heavily with product teams, work heavily with customers, speaking with customers.

07:04 Ultimately, if you're coming from sales, you have been on the phone a lot chatting with customers firsthand, understanding their problems. So I'd imagine there's quite a lot of advantages from flipping from speaking to customers all day, every day, to then going into writing or positioning products for said customer. That's right. Yeah. There's a lot of skills, but the one skill, if I were to narrow it down,

07:29 that I've taken away from my time in sales is the cues, the cues people give you that are not spoken. So it's their body language. It's the way they react to something. That is what I picked up on sales very quickly, because it's really a psychological thing when you're selling. The minute I picked up on that, I was like, this is important. And I've taken that into my marketing career, is picking up on the unspoken truths that people are not telling you.

07:56 And then one of the powers I started to hone in on in this is like asking deliberate questions to get to the real problem that's happening within either the person's life or industry or organization that they work for. So that's the piece that I picked up and took with me into marketing and product marketing, along with the sales experience too. do you pick up on the unspoken stuff, the body language without seeing people? Cause you don't always like.

08:23 You don't, as much as you speak to customers or you use data or you speak to products, you don't necessarily see the person you're trying to sell to or to write for like you would have in sale. But I did see a lot of people. I don't know maybe that, but there are cues you can pick up on when someone is talking about something, if there's any sort of shift in eye movement, if there's any sort of

08:48 even on a Zoom call, you can tell. So there were little nuances that I would pick up on that I'm like, oh, there's something here. Let me dive into that a little deeper. Let me ask more pointed questions or maybe get to the real crux of what was happening. I can give an example as well if you like, but it's an in-person example. It was at one of our conferences that we had at a previous company. And I will never forget this person who...

09:11 came with his colleague and was talking to a bunch of salespeople and then came over to me. One of the salespeople actually brought them over to me and at the time I had just transitioned over to product marketing and this person started talking to me about our competitor over and over again and this was our conference so I was just really curious. I was like, oh, this is strange. Why are you bringing this competitor up constantly? And very provocatively, like pushing buttons, like, oh, well, I think they do this better. I think that's so.

09:39 In talking to this person a little bit more and really understanding, I asked a lot of questions to figure out what's happening. Throughout the course of the evening, what came to light for me was that this person had executives from a different company that had just come in to this organization. I don't really want to say names, but the organization. And those executives had used our product prior. And they had set it up in a way that actually is not feasible for the organization that this person was at.

10:08 And he was correct to call that out, but he was afraid. And ultimately what was happening in the background was that he was sponsored, his company had sponsored his green card for him and his family, and he was afraid to speak up because he might not be in the US. That's what we, that was a real problem. That was a real issue for him. That was a personal issue for him. And we ended up talking, we ended up building out a plan, and I really took the time to understand what was happening for him and

10:36 figured out, well, you here's a way we can talk to your executives and we can build this product out in a way that you need that's going to be beneficial for your organization. But getting to that point was like questioning, getting to know him, understanding his dynamic, why he was asking these questions. So yeah, I always remember that conversation. How would you say you approach things differently to someone who's only ever been in marketing? So if you're sat next to an equivalent role.

11:05 from any other company, how would you approach things differently having been in sales for 15 years? Yeah, I can kind of talk about it in a different way. We're selling, at Launcher, I sold a product that did this as well, but the company I'm with right now, we're about resilience and building resilience in systems. And where I'm going with this is that what's interesting is that a lot of people test everything out in pre-production environments, hoping to replicate what's going to happen in production is rarely the case. It never happens that way.

11:33 So something always goes wrong in production. I feel like I've had this experience now in the front lines that I can really bring that into this marketing field. So traditional marketers or product marketers from what I've seen so far in my very, short career in product marketing, I moved into a head of marketing role is they do a ton of research. It's a lot of research. So whether that be listening to calls, whether that be actually researching tons of research. And I think what's been advantageous for me is understanding

12:03 the customers and understanding how they work in this specific area, that it's really helped me elevate my career probably a little quicker than most. And is there anything that is what was like the biggest surprise navigating that shift, like unexpected things? So obviously moving from sales to marketing, that's fairly daunting. There's going to be a lot of unknowns. There's going to be a lot of Jesus of have I done the right thing? And to all many of those moments. And then to all of the peers who said, you'll be back.

12:32 Was there anything that surprised you about the role itself? Maybe something you weren't aware of with marketing roles or the way in which the people perceive the move? What was the most like surprising thing? couple of surprising things for me were how much effort and time marketing takes to create collateral to do these podcasts that you're doing right now.

12:57 To all of the work behind the scenes of the folks putting all this information out there, nobody in sales really sees that. So oftentimes as a salesperson, I would think, well, how hard is that to do? Boy, is it way harder than you imagined. And it's not necessarily the content, it's getting the approvals. It's going through this process. It's very process oriented and driven. Sales is not, it is as well, but in a very different way. sales, you're the CEO of your own territory and what you're doing. In marketing.

13:24 It's all about collaboration. You have to find a way to talk to engineers, to product leaders. You have to figure out a way to talk to salespeople to get them comfortable enough to bring you on a call with a prospect or a customer. So it's a lot more planning and strategic planning than I think I would have ever thought about. I would agree with that sort of misconception that there's always that age old thing where people, when you say marketing, they're like, oh, you know, you color in for a living. Like you just create images.

13:53 You just do social, right? That's probably the most common like individual channel people think we manage. Like for an episode of revenue career ladder, the other podcast I was talking about, um, on the stream, that's 35 to 40 subtasks to get one episode from start to finish. A-books that we have in 45 to 50 subtasks to get it from start to finish. And no one understands, like you said, the strategy, the Excel spreadsheets, the formulas.

14:21 ICP segmentation, all of this stuff that we're thinking about and looking after, they just see the visuals and the web and the social and the videos, these conversations. pitch decks. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's good to know actually. That's nice to hear from someone who's moved into marketing from sales that it's different to how you thought it might be. That's quite nice to hear actually. So a big part of product marketing, which you touched on is enablement. So how did your time in sales help?

14:51 the way you approach enabling rep. I love enablement. Let me start with that. So every role since I moved into product marketing, they've put me in enablement and I kind of see it because I am a salesperson at heart and I think we all are in one way or another, but that's, I can relate to them. understand that. So enablement has, it's interesting. I feel like the way I've been in sales probably gives me a little bit more confidence in what I'm saying when I'm trying to enable reps or essays or.

15:20 revenue leaders or whoever, because I'm thinking about things in a very different way. I'm looking at it like, okay, this is what I'm going to predict. This is what's going to happen. Or this is how the customer usually reacts to something like this or a prospect, or depending on what type of strategy you're using. So that's how I come to enablement. And to be completely honest, I think salespeople trust my judgment on that because I've been in the industry so long and I've done it for so long that I get it. I know there's a lot happening with AI and all of the new tech coming, but that's not going to change.

15:49 the dynamics of people. You still have to read people, you still have to understand what they're thinking, what they want. so all of those things I feel like have really helped me become a better enabler. I hope I'm answering your question fully. Yeah. I think it's a bit of a superpower, like having to enable the very person you used to be sort of thing. I think that's a superpower. It's like in a movie when they don't know you can speak a language and they're obviously listening to you speaking a foreign language going, oh, interesting. That's what you think about me. But it's kind of a hidden superpower.

16:19 Okay then, let's talk a little bit about messaging. How do you translate sales insights into effective positioning or content? Sales insights and effective content is, the translating part isn't as difficult. I'm not doing tons and tons of research, but I am researching and I am figuring out different industries and figuring that out. So depending on where we're messaging, so you mentioned top of funnel, if it's middle of funnel or bottom of the funnel, I think the messaging is slightly different.

16:47 And it depends on the ICPs as well. So what I focus on when I first arrive at an organization is to figure out where are they in their messaging. If it's developers only, which is a lot of the times when I'm working at startups, a lot of them are just going for ICPs. Like their ICP is maybe the Fortune 500 companies, but they're only working with developers. That's when I take that and I translate that into more of an executive speak. So that's what I kind of focused on. So when I'm enabling or when I'm

17:15 Creating this type of content, it is looking at how reps have been talking to their prospects and customers. It's understanding the case studies of all of our customers. And when I get a chance, I always do this, but I ask reps, can I sit on your call? Because I love to be interactive with them. I love to understand how are they pitching something. And if they're open to me actually speaking, then I absolutely will ask questions and dive in as well. But all of that shapes how I message stuff.

17:43 for the field and for our customers and prospects. there any particular tools or workflows that you use to automate any of that? So I'm thinking we're looking at building out AI agents that digest call transcripts and then turn that into things that we can use or the reps could use. So I'm thinking, are there any things that you've seen or you've built out where you're digesting call transcripts and that's feeding into the research or feeding into like a continuous feedback loop of

18:12 These are the common words used. This is the common language. This is the common tone. Yeah, we're actually using an interesting, I really like this tool actually. It's not Gong and now I'm obviously forgetting what it's called. StatsFi is what it's called. It's very similar to Gong, but what I like about StatsFi is they have an AI component to it. And so that's been super helpful. I'll, I'll, you know, instead of looking in reading or listening to every single phone call that erupts having, I'll

18:39 put in keywords like this is what I'm looking for. I'm looking for reliability. I'm looking for resilience. I'm looking for these key keywords. Tell me what calls I should listen to. Then I go and I listen to those calls and then I can hear more about how they're using that. What's the phrasing they're using. So that's been really helpful. I do build, I'm a huge proponent of using tooling in general that is standalone on its own. So it's not necessarily AI native, but they've incorporated a portion of AI into

19:09 So I'll give you examples like Descript is a great one for video editing. That's an awesome one to use in general, but there's a ton of those types of tooling that I feel a little more comfortable with like Canva, Figma. These are all tools that existed pre-AI and I, for my team and for what we're doing here at my company, I would rather we use more standardized tooling that's incorporated AI versus AI native. And not that we don't use AI native, we use a few, but that's my main part of my workflow.

19:38 Yeah, it's even sort of talking about it. I've written down a agent idea there where I'm thinking, right, I'm going to build an AI agent to digest the call transcripts and then create a word cloud on a monthly basis to show to the most common problems or the most common features, solutions, capabilities that they're looking for. think that could be quite an interesting agent. Okay then, so how do you test what resonates best? The testing has to be done.

20:07 I listen to a lot of calls. figure out what's happening in the environments or sit on sales calls too, or talk to customers. I actually did end up talking to a couple of customers prior to building out our executive pitch at my current company. And I really test it with.

20:20 Some of my friendlies for folks that I know that I've worked with in the, that's, that's usually my go-to. So I'll test it with the people I've worked with before at different organizations when I was a seller and I'll be like, what do you think? Is this something that resonates with you? And then the other thing I do is one of the nightmares that I always faced as a salesperson is multiple, like a bazillion slides in a slide deck. So I really try to go the complete opposite route. I have a very condensed, very minimal slide deck, but very pointed. So every slide has a story. Every slide has a purpose.

20:50 And it maybe it's only five slides and that's okay. But we're trying to get something out of this deck. And that's what I really think about is like, what would I want as a seller? That's what I'm going to produce. So I do test it out quite a bit. I test it out with the folks that I've sold to previously. I test it out. I have reps tested out. So go test out this exact pitch deck we just put together. Tell me, give me feedback on this. Tell me how we can iterate. And I really look at these decks as evergreen. You're constantly changing them. You're constantly making them better. It shouldn't be like a.

21:18 want and done kind of situation at all. you used any tools like winter for message testing? I have not, no, but I want to. Yeah. No, I want to as well. It's just slightly expensive. So I always try when there's an opportunity to ask someone if they've used it, I tend to ask the question to see what the feedback is, but it looks good anyway. Just slightly expensive. You basically submit. Sorry, I use Chat Sheet BT for so much. I don't know if you do as well. And I think once you learn how to prompt it.

21:45 It's

22:10 RevOps and CS and all that other stuff as well. But you've sat on both sides of the typical Rev for new engine. How do you think marketing and sales can better align? So the thing I've realized is the best sales years I had is when I partnered closely with marketing. So I really leveraged them like a partner. In sales, you have actual partners, right? You have different vendors that you work with. You have a partner ecosystem that you tap into. You have resellers that you work with. Marketing is one of those. For me as a seller, I would always

22:40 work closely with them. It was very important for me. I want to make sure whatever I'm putting out there content wise, or if I'm going to customize something, I want to make sure that it has the right branding or I want to make sure it's done the right way. But now that I'm a leader in marketing, it's interesting. I'm very, very close to my BPS sales. I want to make sure like everything I'm putting out is this resonating with your team. Do we need to change something? So we're really lock and step in what we're doing and that kind of

23:04 flows down. I can see that my team now is interacting more with salespeople. They're getting time with them more. They're talking to them more. And that's really important. I do see a world where marketing and sales might just roll into one leader. There may not be a CMO. They may not be a CRO, might just be a chief growth officer. And then you're both reporting into that same chain. And so it behooves all of us to work closer and closer together to achieve what the company outcomes are. Yeah, I think a lot of it comes down to company

23:34 structure from top down, So we're fortunate for the marketing and sales sort of reporting to CRO, which means that you have one structure or side of the business that you're both chasing the revenue number. Sales are very much the inbound, which they then close. That's how they hit their targets. So any reciprocated work or feedback or effort is going to help them in the long run. The structure is very, very key. If you have a CMO and a CRO or different sort of completely different structures and sides of the business, naturally you're going to have that.

24:03 big gap in the middle, that canyon in the middle. More legacy companies struggle with this because sales traditionally has been its own thing and marketing was seen as a waste of money, expensive. You didn't need it. Just jump on the phone and do some BD. Thankfully, it's getting more common nowadays that it's one revenue team and straight love marketing because they're getting leads. Can you share an example of a recent or a previous launch or go to market and sort of motion that you were most proud of or?

24:32 just sticks out in your mind? Yeah, it was actually at my previous organization worked for a company that was the leader in search, but they're an open source company. it was challenging because it was really hard. Okay. How are we a leader when everyone uses us under the covers?

24:50 The thing I'm most proud about at my previous organization was they had a whole generative AI motion that they were putting together. And the struggle was how do we educate people on making that move to gen AI, but how do we do that in a way that they're going to understand? Through really working meticulously with our solutions architects and

25:08 customers alike and sales and kind of everybody. I put together a really, really interesting maturity model. And that maturity model is what's been helping so many of our, salespeople at that organization now sell more, explain how search works, like from the fundamentals, from keyword to Symantec, moving into generative AI and AI search. Why is that important? How do you know you're ready? Like really putting together an awesome model for them to follow. And then.

25:37 proof point for them as well. So just really putting all those pieces together for them. That was probably one of the biggest wins I had. I loved hearing from salespeople who directly ping me, and this is a global organization, so there's people all over the world and they directly ping me being like, oh my God, I used your maturity model and it helped me with XY deal and I was able to actually increase my ARR. And so that was cool. That was really cool to see that. mentioned that you since moved from

26:04 product marketing into head of marketing. what was the, aside from the obvious progression or promotion or whatever, what was the core reason for going from product marketing into generalist head of marketing? Yeah, it was a very good move for me career wise. I actually loved my previous company and I had no intention of leaving. And then I got approached about this role and I was really interested. Well, it was great for my career. So I will just call that out right away.

26:31 From somebody who only had maybe two or three years of product marketing experience, it was a pretty big move and a pretty big shift. So I really couldn't say no to it. But the company and the organization I'm at with right now was interesting to me. Very similar to a startup I started way long, it was my very first startup where they were just too early to the market. I felt like that's the same.

26:49 thing that was happening where I am now. They were too early in the market, but now they're here at the right time, right place. It's almost like the synergy is perfect. And so I was like, this is my opportunity. I got to take this one. This is amazing. So I do head marketing here now. I'm trying to change the tune a little bit. I like to run it like a sales team. I'm being cognizant of the fact that it is a marketing team. So we all are, you know, it's a startup marketing. So we're all wearing many hats. We're all working a lot to achieve these things, but yeah.

27:17 That's been the best part about this role and this move for me. do you have, I take it you still do a fair amount of product marketing anyway, but you have dedicated product marketers in your team? We have a very small and mighty team. So I do have a content person on my team that does a lot of product marketing, but yes, I'm trying to step into that role a little bit more now. But we have a really good, strong team. That was the other part that sold me on this company. It's like, they had this amazing team already. They just needed somebody to lead them.

27:46 And so I really wanted to come in and I didn't want to change anything that was working. What I wanted to do was just help every up level a little bit more in the messaging and how we're going to market. for anyone thinking about moving from sales into marketing and product marketing specifically, what advice would you give them? Have patience. The paychecks are very different from sales. Be cognizant of that. You will get your money. It's going to sound good or bad, but it sounds bad.

28:14 I think it is a little bit of a shock for a lot of salespeople because they're used to a certain threshold of income, you know, because it's usually 50-50 or 60-40, however they do that, but there's base and there's commission with them. So it is different. You might have to take a step back financially, but you learn so much more about the company. You learn so much more about how your executives think. It's such an amazing opportunity to learn.

28:36 So give yourself the grace to learn to make mistakes. It's okay. And understand that you'll figure out really quickly if you absolutely love this field or if you don't. And for me, I just ended up absolutely loving it way more than I thought I would. So I'm glad I made that switch and I hope others do too. You have a superpower of being in sales. So that's a great, great thing to carry with you. I don't know. I think when I see people moving from sales to marketing or from CS, cause that's, know, CS is still sales.

29:06 Um, I'm always conscious that when they get into marketing and like you've already touched on the reality is very, very different to what you think. It'd be like, Oh yeah, marketing would be great because I guess all this creative stuff and like these cool visuals and videos. And then when they're faced with probably more strategic planning, at least not necessarily strategic tasks, cause sales is still very strategic, but in terms of like the strategic planning.

29:33 that drives the funnel that sales then sort of play party to. I always do. I'm always conscious of will they enjoy it as much as they thought they would. But it's one of those things where I think if you just, just dive deep into, into the data and the insights that you can get from the creatives that you do, that's, that's probably one of the, one of the key things. Last question to wrap things up then. So are there any, if someone is thinking about making that move or is very recently made a move from sales to marketing or product marketing specifically.

29:59 Are there any skills or mindset shifts that they should start developing working on sooner rather than later? Yeah. The collaboration piece is really important. Sales, kind of are renegades. You do work with people, but you really kind of do things. You get to dictate more. Um, I almost feel like you can dictate what product marketing can put out and stuff like that, but it's a total shift. You're at the mercy of a lot of salespeople. You have to work with all of the different, um,

30:29 all of the different personalities within your organization. And I think one of the things I learned really quickly with product marketing is I didn't realize how many product marketers are introverted and it kind of makes sense now, but salespeople for the most part, I don't want to speak on everybody. I'm an extrovert. Most are extroverts. That is a huge shift in itself. You're not, you're not talking to customers every day. It's a very different thing. So you have to be okay with being in the background a little bit, being on the sidelines, but you know, being the coach versus being the player, but yeah.

30:59 That's what I would tell people. And I always tell my teams this too, but bring whatever you've learned from your previous organization to the role that you have. Never forget any of that. Bring it with you. You have no idea the power you can bring from having experience in an area that maybe other people don't know about. And that could be profoundly game changer. Like it could be the game changer for the organization. So never forget your previous skills. that's a very, very good piece of advice. think whenever I've moved jobs in the past, and it's probably the same for most people.

31:29 They assume that they're going to have to learn everything from scratch again and they're not going to know anything about the new job. And then when you actually get into the new job and you start looking at the processes, the output, the stuff that you're responsible for, you're like, I actually know quite a lot of this. And more often than not, you're able to bring stuff that you've learned skills to the team and they're like, oh my God, how did you do that? Can you show me how you did it? So definitely that's a very, very good piece of advice. What one more question I think we've I've been doing little digs here and there for two.

31:58 sales. So let's do a question in fairness. Looking back, what do you wish more marketers like myself understood about the day-to-day reality of being in sales and how in terms of that alignment, we could empathize more with sales? That's a great question. That a good sales rep never shuts off the sale. Like your brain never shuts off. You're always selling and it's a really hard thing.

32:24 to shut off. You're always in the selling mode. You're always thinking that way. And you are getting more nos than yeses. You are constantly on the front lines getting people hang up on you. If you're calling a lot, people refuse to cancel on you all the time. You have to be resilient. You have to be okay with rejection. Definitely have empathy for these folks because everything is changing so much.

32:46 on the front lines, the way we sell is changing, the way we engage with people, even on marketing, look how much marketing is changing. It's doing the same for salespeople and it is a very hard job to understand human behavior because it's so unpredictable. So just realize that if a salesperson is a little crabby or something, it's really not you. It's probably that they just had a horrible meeting or something just did not happen right. So there's a lot and they're constantly under pressure. So that's definitely something to think about.

33:15 I think it's despite the fact that I've had a little banter with sales, whatever, I used to sit right next to our head of sales in previous company. So I was next to him whilst he was on the front line listening to the calls, watching the demos sort of live whilst I was working on my colouring in and my creatives. Kind of like a little bonus tip for any marketers. If you can spend time next to sales in the same room, or you can just spend time with them virtually once a week chatting about pipeline and the challenges and stuff.

33:44 definitely do it or obviously listen to calls because that will give you far more appreciation for what sales do, the challenges they face in as much as they could do the same for the challenges that marketers face. I think that's been great. It's not often that you get to ask someone about the reasons why they made a shift or a change. It's always nice to talk about someone who's actually done it so that if people are thinking, I think I want to change, I'm a bit anxious, a bit scared about making a change.

34:12 does really, help. we appreciate you jumping on with us. course. Thank you. And I loved being on the show. Great to meet you, Jamie. Likewise, but for those listening, we will catch you in the next episode.