Pod Insights Growth Think Tank The Top Marketing Challenges in Fast Growth Companies with Jacqui Chew at iFusion Consulting About this episode In this episode, I speak with Jacqui Chew, managing director of iFusion Consulting, about the marketing challenges of fast-growing companies. We discuss the identity crisis organizations face as they evolve, leading to a disconnect between their original value and current offerings. Jacqui highlights that unclear narratives often mask the real issue of differentiation in a competitive market. We explore the significance of voice-of-the-customer exercises to gain valuable insights and emotional drivers behind purchasing decisions. Additionally, we delve into the concept of a “rally cry” for strong messaging and discuss the role of AI in marketing while emphasizing the need for human creativity. This conversation offers strategies to help fast-growing companies navigate their unique marketing challenges.
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0:32 Speaker 01 Companies that are growing very quickly, either organically or inorganically, are experiencing, and they have an identity crisis because what they were 18 months ago is not necessarily what they are today. And so there's a disconnect between their value proposition 18 months ago and those customers that bought into that value proposition and the ones that are interested in talking with their sales force today.
1:01 Speaker 00 Welcome to Growth Think Tank. This is the one and only place where you will get insight from the founders and the CEOs of the fastest growing privately held companies. I am the host. My name is Gene Hemmott. I help leaders and their teams navigate the defining moments of their growth. Are you ready to grow? Today, we're going to talk about the top marketing challenges for fast growth companies. When you think about your own marketing and branding, do you feel like you have it dialed in? Do you feel like things are working the way you should? Or do you feel like you're leaving money on the table? And you feel like you really want to take it to the next level? Well, hopefully today's conversation with our special guest, Jackie Chu. Jackie is the Managing Director of iFusion Consulting.
1:42 Speaker 00 They do fractional CMO work for a lot of very complex sales, a lot of B2B work. And what you'll find in today's conversation is some real insight around the challenges that fast growth companies have with marketing. And these marketing challenges are really something that you want to make sure you understand. Go a little deeper with it and then check out Jackie's work. She's very prolific with what she does and very sharp. So my name is Gene. Jean Hemmott, I am a CEO coach. We do executive coaching. We do manager coaching and we do leadership development. That sounds like a lot, but what we really do is help companies continue to grow. When you are faced with new challenges, you want to make sure you're dialed in, you have the right alignment across your team, the right leadership.
2:28 Speaker 00 And what we've noticed, there's a lot of companies that are living in some blind spots and they just don't know what to do about it. So if you're listening to my voice here, really think about this. What would it be like to have a conversation with an experienced coach, been doing this for about 15 years? And really help you get insight around your business. And if you are listening to this right now, it's absolutely free. If you were not listening to this and you send me an email and you don't mention this, then it's going to cost money to have that conversation. But I want to serve my audience. And if you are listening to this, send me an email, [email protected] . We'll get on the phone, we'll talk about this. I promise not to sell you anything, but I promise to give you insight and wisdom about what's next. If you do want to work together, we'll discuss those down the road. But if you really are looking to do that, just go ahead and send me an email, [email protected] .
3:13 Speaker 00 Now here's the interview with Jackie. Hi Jackie, how are you?
3:17 Speaker 01 Great. Thanks for having me here, Jean.
3:19 Speaker 00 I'm excited to have you on the podcast. I've known about you for a long time. I've looked and admired your work. Before we jump into the tour today's topic, tell us about your company, iFusion Consulting.
3:31 Speaker 01 Sure. iFusion Consulting is a fractional CMO consultancy was established in 2006. It was arguably one of the first fractional CMO consultancies in the country and certainly in the Southeast. I am its managing director.
3:46 Speaker 00 When you look at marketing today, I mean, when they pull you in as a fractional, what is the top one or two challenges that they have that you guys address?
3:56 Speaker 01 I generally think that they have a lead generation problem. And most of the time though, once I'm in the account and in their business, what I find is that they have a narrative and purpose problem. And what that means is they are operating in an Environment wherein they are competing on feature functionality with ten, sometimes fifty other competitors in the market, many of which are much larger than they are. And with larger budgets, larger marketing budgets.
4:36 Speaker 01 And so they think that they're not spending the right way or optimizing their spend to generate the leads. The, the real problem is they're not differentiating themselves. They're not truly understanding the value that they're creating for their existing customers. And therefore not communicating that to net new prospects. So it's really a storytelling narrative architecture problem.
5:04 Speaker 00 Well, that kicks us off right into today's topic, which is a lot of the listeners here are Inc. five thousand level companies. It's a lot of our clients. And when I talk to them, they really have a different approach than most companies around growth. It's not typical marketing or lead generation at all. It's brute force sales. This happens quite often. And even when I bring it up, it would be easier if you guys had a much clearer marketing strategy and that supported sales. So if I just open this up into a big question, the top challenges of fast growth companies, and you may go back to what you've already said, what are some of those challenges we're going to explore today and unpack?
5:46 Speaker 01 Sure, absolutely. So the, the, the top challenges that I see, the three top challenges that I see are, one, companies that are growing very quickly, either organically or inorganically, are experiencing, and I, they have an identity crisis because what they were eighteen months ago is not necessarily what they are today. And so there's a disconnect between their value proposition eighteen months ago and those customers that bought into that value proposition and the ones that are interested and talking with their sales force today. So that's one problem. The second problem would be competing, uh, competing and
6:30 Speaker 01 Not differentiating, but competing with feature functionality. So most, most of the clients that I work with are in the technology sector. Most of them are in, uh, they have technologies or solutions that warrant complex sales cycles. Uh, they're enterprise type solutions. And so it's a complex sale, takes a very long time. And there is this tendency or, or, or this bias that lean into feature functionality. And in many cases, that doesn't resonate. Because at the end of the day, when there are, say, a shortlist of five or four companies.
7:12 Speaker 01 What the client sees and, and views is just a, a laundry list. And there's very little resonance. And so the, the company that gets awarded the R and P or the company that is chosen isn't necessarily the company with the most feature functionality. It's the company that truly understands and empathizes with the challenges that the client has or the prospect has and is able to solve for that and prioritize the messaging and the value proposition to those challenges. Three, there is also, so many of the companies I work with are founded by
7:56 Speaker 01 individuals who are subject matter experts in their industry. They could be technical founders or they could be subject matter experts. So I tend to work with companies in complex fields such as cybersecurity and compliance technology in fintech. And those individuals that found those kinds of companies tend to have highly technical backgrounds in the functional area that they operated in prior to founding the company. And so the third difficult transition to make is being able to translate the future functionality and technical value into business outcomes.
8:41 Speaker 00 I want to go back to the first ones as we unpack this. I have a pretty good understanding, but maybe you have a different even definition for value proposition. How do you know when you really have a value proposition that's dialed in and does resonate with your prospects?
8:55 Speaker 01 So marketing, the way iFusion practices it is a voice of the customer exercise. So part of what we do when we start working with a company is we interview existing customers.
9:11 Speaker 00 Hmm.
9:12 Speaker 01 We also interview employees. And finally, if the company is, has both a direct and indirect sales channel, we in- we interview partners as well. Because these three stakeholders yield, they are stakeholders and they yield value.
9:31 Speaker 00 Hmm.
9:32 Speaker 01 Value is being created by the company for these three stakeholders. Often, the sales messaging that is reflected on collateral and websites, et cetera, when we come into the picture, is a reflection of the founder's perception of what is value. Or the salesperson's perception of what is value. Which tends to have a recency bias. And just to de-dragonize that, it tends to have the feature functionality benefits of the last sales conversation that, that, that the sales team had.
10:09 Speaker 00 Jackie's just been talking about the voice of a customer. Now, I had a few moments with her off air and I just want to reinforce that. Like you want to have someone on your team or hire Jackie and her team to really get an understanding of what's going on with your customers. Why are they buying what you're selling? What is getting in their way? Why would they, why did they choose you? And there's a bunch of other questions that you can use to frame in the voice of the customer. Look at all the data, not just one person, but you know, a mixture of companies and a mixture of, of partners and, and even employees. That voice of a customer will really help you understand and then reshape the marketing that comes out of that. You'll see where there's some gaps if you do this well. Back to Jackie.
10:52 Speaker 00 Ah, that's a good explanation. I appreciate that. Um, this identity crisis that you talked about, how do you know that you're experiencing an identity crisis? So if a CEO is going through, you know, sales are off, maybe they're flatlined, you could easily blame it on the market right now with, with the uncertainty and, and things are changing. Or is there something more foundationally wrong? So how would you know as a CEO that you have that identity crisis?
11:18 Speaker 01 If if if if the CEO were to poll employees, partners and customers and ask them, what is that, what is it that we do that is valuable to you? If they ask it that way, they may get a more unified question, but what they usually will ask is, what do we offer? What did you buy? So to the customer, they'll ask, what did you buy from us? To the employees, they'll ask, what are we building? And to partners, what are you selling on our behalf? And the unfortunate thing is, these different stakeholder groups individually within each stakeholder groups are most likely going to be coming up with slightly different versions of what company X does and offers.
12:00 Speaker 00 I've got a lot of clients that are in this space of, you know, founder expert in a domain and they created their own thing, but they, to be honest with you, a lot of them are in that commodity thing, which is probably a bad word for, you wouldn't want to sit down with the CEO and said, you're a commodity because they have, all of them think that they have the special sauce or the special technology and the innovation that that is different. But when you're working with people that are truly in a commodity, what are some of the first things that you would look at to help them move forward?
12:31 Speaker 01 Number one, we do interviews with customers, existing customers. And these, we do the voice of the customer interviews. And these are primarily to better understand what were the triggers that led and and the factors, scenarios that led to these companies identifying and realizing they have a need.
12:54 Speaker 00 Right.
12:55 Speaker 01 When and how did they realize they had a problem that the company's solution solves? And how did they go about evaluating the various solutions in the market? The the various players, what was important to them? And ultimately, why did they pick the company that they picked? And it is, we we do a a fairly deep dive by talking with, say, if it were a sale in which there was an ultimate decision maker, a rec and and an influential recommender as well as a potential blocker, uh, we would want to talk, like, we talked to all three.
13:32 Speaker 00 Yeah.
13:33 Speaker 01 And not just the one. So, so we, we, we talked to all three to better understand the dynamics and the prioritization. Uh, and so in general, for a B two B enterprise type solution, and this is a rule of thumb, it is not a hard and fast rule. Is that for a solution that is in the high six figures or seven figures and their annual licenses. You know, speaking with five customer organizations and at least two individuals within each of these five organizations. Along with five employees in various departments, so sales for sure, product development, customer success.
14:14 Speaker 01 Uh, for these are important internally and then a partner. So the partner, depending on how diverse the partner portfolio is. Ensuring that I'm speaking with a representative of each partner type. So once we, we get that. We can pretty much map out the pattern and identify the commonalities. So, so this is a discovery, it's a deep dive discovery process that we do that then allows us to distill. Uh, the, the essence of why these, why employees love the company, why they keep working there. Why customers, why they pick the company and continue to stay with the company.
14:56 Speaker 01 And why partners choose to resell or, uh, be referring the solution. So we, we go, when we get the commonality, then we go through the process, the creative process. So the first part is analytical. As well as anthropological. So it's a social anthropo- social anthropological method of discovery. Uh, coupled with data. The second part of that is then the magic. The, uh, the creative, the black box, if you would, of developing what we call a rally cry.
15:33 Speaker 00 Okay.
15:33 Speaker 01 So because people remember how they feel when they hear something. They don't remember the top fifty most something, something award with, you know, fifteen feature, you know, features in this area and so on and so forth. They don't remember all those bits and pieces of bits and bytes, I call them, but they will remember the rally cry if the rally cry is authentic to why they picked the company. It goes back to Simon Sinek's why.
16:07 Speaker 00 Yeah, I'm really curious about this and I don't know if you can talk about clients and and give us an example of a rally cry. Or you could look at some other brand that we might already know. Um, how how help us understand what that rally cry cry is.
16:21 Speaker 01 Uh, so I mean, you're you're going to like cars are really a simple car brands.
16:27 Speaker 00 Okay.
16:28 Speaker 01 So when, you know, in the old days, uh, this now I'm gonna date myself. When when I say Volvo, you'll think.
16:35 Speaker 00 Safety.
16:36 Speaker 01 Exactly. When I say Subaru, you'll think.
16:39 Speaker 00 Um.
16:40 Speaker 01 It's a little harder. Yes. Outdoorsy, rugged. Yes. When I say BMW, you'll say.
16:48 Speaker 00 German engineering.
16:49 Speaker 01 Yes, there you go.
16:51 Speaker 00 That's and so your your statement is from a marketing standpoint, and it's one of the things you have a lot of experience with, is helping companies understand what that rally cry is and then use it in their narrative as they go to market.
17:05 Speaker 01 Yes, so it's a a rally cry is is exactly what it is. Uh, it's exactly what you think it is. It's it's it's emotional. It's emotive. It's not transactional. The we have the top twenty customers in the industry with twenty features and we've won fifteen awards and a hundred and fifty uh employees and growing. They're all transactional. It doesn't make you feel anything. Now, this isn't to say that as you get deeper into a sales cycle, uh, they wouldn't, the prospect wouldn't want to know that you're credible and stable.
17:43 Speaker 01 And that you're you'll stand behind your solution should they pick you. I mean, I'm not saying that that's unimportant, but to to get them to even consider you top of funnel, middle of funnel, to be shortlisted, you gotta have a compelling rally cry that encapsulates the fears, hopes and doubts that prospects have. Now, remember, I deal with uh solutions that have fairly high stakes. Cybersecurity, compliance.
18:15 Speaker 00 Yeah.
18:15 Speaker 01 Uh, uh, supply chain tech that deals with numbers and budgeting. So I deal with solutions that have fairly high stakes versus Bamba socks or Tom's shoes, you know, those are pretty low stakes, right? I mean, but those two, I say those two because people buy them, they buy Tom's and they buy Bamba's because of the impact, the social impact that is baked into their business models. You buy pair of Bamba socks and they'll give a pair away to a community that needs it. There is a certain persona that these, those two brands are going after. And so in the B two B context, there's a certain persona that we are making
18:58 Speaker 01 that that would emerge and certain personality traits that emerge when we interview the buyers and the influencers in the buying committee in a B two B situation.
19:09 Speaker 00 Now Jackie was talking about the rally cry and I was just amazed because I get it when she gave the examples with the cars. And I want to make sure that you understand that when you have a rally cry, it's not what you say about your brand, it's what others say about you. And when you have done the work to know what you want them to say and then you reinforce that through your marketing, you reinforce that through your your conversations and the narrative that is going on around your brand, that will begin to shape itself, but you've got to be intentional and you've got to do it. You know, a lot of it comes from that voice of a customer research that we mentioned earlier. All that being said, you want to find your rally cry? I know I do, and so I'm going to sharpen up mine just because of this interview. Back to Jackie.
19:53 Speaker 00 Jackie, I really appreciate it. I do want to ask you a few more questions. Do you have more time? Or because I know.
19:57 Speaker 01 I I do.
19:58 Speaker 00 Okay, let's dive in a little bit deeper here because we've been talking about that identity crisis first. We talked about the value proposition. We talked about the voice of the customer. But then you you had added on there about really redefining the narrative of of the company and of, you know, so that they can really get the kind of growth they want. What does that look like from your experience?
20:18 Speaker 01 So if you go to LinkedIn and go to any company profile, and I would urge listeners to do that just because it's fun, is to read the description. So when you start, when you see descriptions that say, such and such company is the leading XYZ, such and such company is the next gen ABC. It's just a lot of jargon and it just, there's no differentiation because everyone, I have not met a company yet who's going to say, oh, you know, we're middle of the road. And and but we're stable, we're middle of the road, but we're stable. So you should pick us. I mean, there's no company that's going to say that. However, the reframing comes from saying,
21:02 Speaker 01 the value from putting front and front loading front, sorry. The value comes in front loading, the value and the impact that the company has on its customers. So an example would be such and such types of companies count on ABC company to solve XYZ problem. Do you see the difference?
21:27 Speaker 00 Yeah, much more specific.
21:29 Speaker 01 And it it cuts right into the value and the impact that the company has and on the audience that it serves right out the gate.
21:39 Speaker 00 You know, narrative is something that I don't have a lot of experience with, but you're you're unpacking something I think is really cool. It's it's really the stories that our brands tell to the marketplace. And I'm sure you you have a much sharper definition for this. But how do you know you have a narrative problem? Is it because you're you're in a commodity world and you're fighting hard to get attention?
22:00 Speaker 01 You always have a narrative problem because humans are distracted by all all manner of distractions.
22:09 Speaker 00 Yeah, this podcast is a distraction.
22:12 Speaker 01 It certainly is, it could be. But it, on the other hand, this podcast serves a very specific purpose to a very specific segment of business leaders who have come to rely on it for certain things.
22:26 Speaker 00 Yes, I, I know that I'm really proud of the work that we've done here for the last 10 years and, and really the last six of it really focused on Inc. 5000 fast growth companies. And we've had a lot of success with this. I really appreciate you being here. One more question for you. We didn't get a really a chance to talk about the third piece of that, which is kind of that competitive advantage and, and really the, the brand equity part of it. I'm gonna basically give you a little bit of plug. I'm really known you for a long time, seen the work that you've done through TEDx Atlanta and, and whatnot. Just incredible community market maker from my perspective. And I, if anybody who's looking for that, that level of insight, make sure they check out Jackie, you and iFusion Consulting
23:11 Speaker 00 as well. But I have a big question before we wrap up today. AI is changing everything. I mean, when I say everything, I feel like it's literally changing. In the next five years, it will be a different world. Marketing, sales, technology wise. And I won't even begin to talk about it. But in your world, AI right now, how are you leveraging it? How are you using it to help you better serve your clients?
23:35 Speaker 01 So there are, there are the tactical tools that have made, so one of the, the, the problems, the challenges of a growing company is in, in the marketing department is there's this, there's this content monster. So it, it, you know, content and thought leadership content is the lifeblood of any B2B company, fast growing B2B company. And there's never enough, you can never generate enough quality thought leadership content. So there are point solutions out there that allow for very quick summarization. So there are video tools. I'm, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna stay tool agnostic.
24:16 Speaker 00 Okay.
24:17 Speaker 01 But there are, there are amazing tools out there that are, where AI is the underpinnings that, for example, allows you to make training videos by just feeding it the, the, the, the training instruction, the script.
24:33 Speaker 00 The script.
24:34 Speaker 01 And it generates, uh, it it lets you create a an avatar and it creates all the other things for you. It's wonderful. So what used to take, you know, tens of thousands of dollars in day in months is now fairly quick now. Then there's another, there are tools out there also video, because video is very resource and time intensive. That that lets you take a an executive interview done over any one of these uh online web tools. A Zoom, a Teams, and it lets, uh, it it will seamlessly chop it up into sixty second. Yeah. Little vignettes, little shorts. So you have tools like that that are really useful now.
25:16 Speaker 01 What is becoming interesting and powerful are the more enterprise layers that are starting to recognize the personas. So imagine if I'm able, so I now am able to feed the transcripts of all those interviews into a platform. And it's going to generate personas for me. Right. And personas are the basis. So think of personas as the map, the personality map of who we are creating content for. And we are able to then use those, the tool allows us to create with the human still in the loop.
25:59 Speaker 01 This is the thing, it hasn't gotten so good where it doesn't make mistakes. Uh, in in or actually, it it generates a lot of very commoditized, not eh good enough, but not great. Right. Kind of content. Uh, so for the eh, you gotta have the human in the loop to to layer on the creativity and the uh, the the the witty, pithy headlines and turns of phrase. Uh, but AI is not going to say, you know, we are, for example, in compliance. We're not, it's not gonna say, we help you, we help you with what's here today as as well as what's around the corner. Yeah.
26:42 Speaker 01 So for what's around the corner, AI is not gonna generate that phrase for you. It's it's it's that's something that's a human in the loop phrase. I agree. Rally cries, those rally cries I'm talking about. Yeah. That is not AI gen- generatable. You could try that. It just won't be very inspired.
27:00 Speaker 00 I have really enjoyed having you on the show here, Jackie. I really appreciate your wisdom, talking about the top challenges of marketing for fast growth companies, and I look forward to sharing this out to the world.
27:12 Speaker 01 Thank you for having me, and this was a lot of fun.
27:15 Speaker 00 Wow, what a great conversation about marketing. Marketing challenges are everywhere. A lot of companies are struggling in this. So hopefully today's conversation will at least give you a taste of some of the challenges you might be having around your rally cry, or your value proposition, or your narratives, and the things that are missing in order for you to have your working, your marketing work. So when you think of growth, and you think of leadership, think of growth, as always, with courage, we'll see you next time.
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