Goldenhour Live: Sagram Vajre

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Welcome back to Golden Hour Live and please welcome our new co-host Morgan

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Ingram and our next guest.

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So this morning, Sangram Vajray spoke on a panel about why the old marketing

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playbook no longer works.

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He taught us how to flip the funnel using ABM years ago during his time at

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Terminus, but now he's using a different approach.

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Please welcome Sangram.

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Yeah.

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Thank you so much.

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How are you?

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I am good and feels like the sun is actually from this side and not on the back

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.

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Change up.

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Gotta keep you on your toes.

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There you go.

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All right.

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So let's talk about the next generation of B2B marketing.

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Many of the people here and watching online have drawn inspiration from the

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GTM operating system that you've been evangelizing.

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So can you tell us more about the framework?

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Yeah, it is eight pillar framework.

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So I'm not going to go through each of the pillars, but I'll share a couple

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that

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might change the conversation and as people are listening into it.

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The one thing that we did is one of the pillars is brand and demand.

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A lot of people try to keep them in two different buckets and they say, well,

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we got a fun brand or demand.

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And what we have found out is that no, the company, we all have working

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companies.

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It doesn't work that way.

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You can't attribute every single dollar to every single thing.

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So we combine brand and demand into one pillar.

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So significantly changing the way you think about go to market.

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Now I'll give you one more.

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The other thing that we added was in a big way, leadership and management.

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Nobody talks about that in go to market.

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We everybody says, well, you marketing, you create leads sales, you close deals

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, customer success, you save customers.

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Have you ever thought about like retention as a word?

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If you said in your marriage, hey, I want to retain my marriage.

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You know, let's go work out.

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Yeah, heavy turns.

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You know, I don't want it to turn.

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You know, we don't say these words, but we say these words in sales and

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marketing all the time.

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And so now it's not about retention.

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It's about growing together.

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It is building together.

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So we're using words that are life giving that allows people to work as a team.

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So how should marketing teams be collaborating this moving forward?

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What does this actually look like?

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So first and foremost, there should not be, hopefully ever another sales and

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marketing

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meeting where we are looking for numbers and are fighting for it.

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None whatsoever, where should be is a go to market team.

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And what that does is that nobody's in their silo.

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If you bring a sales and marketing team together and say, Hey, you know, Morgan

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, you're doing sales, I'm doing marketing.

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I'm going to bring my point of view.

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You're going to bring your point of view.

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Yeah.

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And then what we're going to do is we're trying to defend.

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Instead, if you and I came together and said, we're going to have a go to

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market

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meeting now, it's no longer about sales and marketing.

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We're trying to build a business forward.

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We're learning about the business of marketing, business of sales, and we're

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drawing the forward.

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So the one thing I can give everybody to do is change the names because names

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matter.

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Names, words have the power of life and death.

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You got to use words that actually drew something and get people to take action

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,

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either positive or negative.

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So instead of silos, just call it go to market.

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So you start with changing the name, focus on go to market.

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How do you put this into practice next?

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So that first meeting, sales and marketing comes together.

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Ideally, what would that look like?

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The first meeting you do is you don't have a sales dashboard of how many leads,

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how many calls you did.

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You don't have a marketing dashboard of how many deal, how many leads you're

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priming.

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You actually have a business dashboard.

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That means you're asking upstream, what are my top five metrics as a business

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that we want to drive?

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And if you know your top five metrics, then you're saying our entire scores

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card should be in the, in the support and service of those five metrics.

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It makes people nervous.

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These people don't know what these business metrics are.

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And if you don't know, your history, your job is history.

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So the number one thing companies should do is bring the team together under

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the

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same umbrella of go to market.

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And number two, make the metrics that everybody's reporting on based on the

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business outcomes and business metrics.

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It will change the trajectory of the business.

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I love that.

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So I have a question.

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Yeah.

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If, if we're doing, I thought you would.

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If we're doing that as a marketer, how can I do first touch attribution and

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steal all the credit from the sales team to justify my job?

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Credit is for losers.

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That should be a shirt.

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That should be a shirt.

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I buy it by losers.

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That's the merch.

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You didn't think you'd be doing that today.

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Yeah, there you go.

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It is not that how many times have you seen the sales numbers go down and

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marketing get more budget.

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Have you ever seen that?

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As a marketer.

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Never happened in the history of the world.

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Like marketing budget goes down as soon as sales number goes down.

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And how many times when sales number goes up marketing?

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So the whole point is we're tied to the hip.

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We are in the service of the business.

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So if you're thinking about it that way, the attribution is a game.

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At least instead of playing the attribution game, let's play the game of

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business

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and actually drive the business forward.

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Yeah.

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I think that's that's that's really fascinating.

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And you know, you talked about brand demand.

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We were at terminus together and that's that's exactly what that function was.

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You created like the first SDR chronicles that was phenomenal.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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And it was like what you were doing.

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And then what I was creating that all came together.

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And we're starting to see obviously more people creating.

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We're doing this today.

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So as people are looking at from a marketing perspective and they're like,

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I don't I don't know what to do.

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The game of business, what are you talking about credits for losers?

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We're not all in our like I'm like, what is that?

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So what are you the most excited about right now?

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And what should marketers start learning?

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Yeah, to understand the game of business.

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Yeah, I think I think the hardest.

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This conference is a problem.

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All right, I'm going to tell you straight out.

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OK.

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I'm live with you.

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Thought you're really good.

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Now he's talking to you again.

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So I'm never going to be brought back.

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That's OK.

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This conference is a problem because they people over here are going to be so

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hyped up,

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but ready to go jump off the buildings and you know, without a parachute, right

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? Like that's what's going to happen because they're going to be feeling like,

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Oh, I can do this, but they can't do this without actually having the other

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teams

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part of it.

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So what people need to do is learn as a team.

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If you have a marketing sales, CS person actually coming to this conference

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together, they would be like, whoa.

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So I hope when people are listening and taking the recordings,

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they actually watch it together and learn together.

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That's what's not happening.

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Everybody's trying to do something on their own.

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That's not how business works.

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Do you feel like too many people are trying to play hero instead of being

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collaborative?

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Well, you know, Donna Miller, like we both follow and get he, he says something

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that that all this struck with me.

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Be the guide.

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Don't be the hero.

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Be the guide.

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Don't be the hero.

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And a lot of times we all are in the creator economy.

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You are going to try to be like, well, I am the creator.

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I am the influencer.

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I am the hero.

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But in the process, you end up just talking about yourself and then you lose

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again the side of the business.

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Now, if you want to build a business just around you, all the best, good for

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you.

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But if you're trying to build a real business and build like what you guys are

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doing, you're not building around one person around your beard, like, which is

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amazing, right?

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You are trying to build a whole business around this idea that people are to

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create

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brand and audience.

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So you need to, you need to go outside of that.

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And I think this is going to be tough for people.

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It's an ego at the end of the day.

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It's an ego conversation.

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Yeah.

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I think.

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Oh, sorry.

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No, no, you were all in.

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I can't stop you.

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I thought it's been.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah. He has to answer the call.

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So I was like, nobody has to.

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You got it.

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You'll be here.

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No, what I was going to say though is I think I think that this like creator

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thing that you're talking about, making it all about me.

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We see a lot where like we over index on vanity metrics, like, like

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we want engagement, right?

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But like when we're creating content that is all about me, even if personally,

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like that content is successful when it comes to those metrics, like we wonder why

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my

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content's doing great or some internal creators content is doing great, but it

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doesn't drive anything for the business.

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Yeah. Yeah.

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I think if you are building a real business, it all comes down to that.

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Depends upon what you want to do.

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If you're trying to build a half a million dollar business, you're trying to

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build a

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half a million dollar business for yourself around, you can do that.

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I think you should absolutely go do that.

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There's a lot of money to be made.

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We already know a lot of people do that.

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When you think about DG, right?

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I mean, he built a whole agency and he's building a great business around his

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personal brand, phenomenal.

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If you're trying to build a $50 million, $100 million business, that's a

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different ball game.

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Yeah.

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You can't bring build around one person.

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How does one person, the founder or the executive team decide what they want to

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build?

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What questions should they ask themselves?

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To understand what they actually want to build.

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Instead of the perceived notion, "Oh, I want to be 100 million," it's like that

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's maybe you don't want to do that.

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Yeah.

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Well, I think it's a lifestyle question.

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I'll tell you my personal story on this one, right?

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After Terminus Exet, we made enough where we're like, "All right, we had a

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great exit." Yeah.

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The classic challenge for me was either I go and start another, a product

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company,

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which I've done twice now, or actually go and do something that I absolutely

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love,

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which is creating new frameworks, changing the mindset of people, of trying to

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do new things, right?

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Building a community and creating that spot.

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That's what I love.

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That's what I actually did.

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If you really--

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Yeah.

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No, at Terminus, the product was a byproduct.

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Yeah.

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So that's what I'm doing right now.

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So I think at some point in your life, you're going to have that choice.

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What do you really want to do that brings you joy?

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Not because that makes you happy, but you're really good at it.

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Like, freaking good.

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And if you are that good at it, then you put it.

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In this case, with GTN partners, we decided I don't want to build a Sangrum

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here at LLC.

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Like, that's not what we're trying to build.

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We're building around a framework.

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So we talk about frameworks.

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We talk about how companies are getting benefited from the frame.

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We never talk about me, person, because I'm not trying to build a Sangrum brand

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.

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I'm using my brand to build GTN partners.

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You have that inflection point, and that's the question every founder needs to

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ask.

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Is it about the person, or is it about building a bigger business?

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Any advice for founders who maybe started off just building it around

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themselves and their own brand,

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and now want to shift to making it more about the consumer?

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It's very hard.

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Very hard.

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I mean, if you can even look at me just use Donald Miller as an example, like

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that business is about $10 million in business.

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So if you look at it, that's not bad.

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Like it's a $10 million, highly profitable business.

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So it probably works for him, but it's around him.

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If he stops sending email from Donald Miller, that business is over.

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Like, nobody's going to know anybody else outside of that.

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So that's the risk that you run into.

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So I believe that at some point you need to build a business that doesn't

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depend on you.

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That doesn't depend on your brand.

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And that's when you create legacy.

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So it's a question inevitably you have to answer at one point or the other.

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It may not be today, and you may stretch it for two or three years.

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The way I've seen other people do it is they build a completely new brand.

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They say, "I have my own brand, and I'm going to build another company.

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I'm going to start over differently, and I'm going to run it differently."

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And that's how they can still continue the revenue stream but build something

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else.

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Love it.

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Well, thank you so much for joining us today.

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I know I learned a lot, and anything else from you too?

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I feel like that was such a bar.

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If I asked another question, I'm like, "I don't know.

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I'm actually doing that."

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I thought you were that said, "Credulous for losers."

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You didn't want to talk after that.

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You just shut me down for the rest of the week.

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I don't have anything.

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I got to work on my t-shirt shop.

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Thanks for having me.

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Thank you.

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It's great to meet you.