Redefining Enterprise Sales Enablement with Mike Lempko

Mike Lempko: The biggest thing to overcome in sales is the pain of doing nothing. And then other competition in the marketplace as well.

John Common: Welcome to growth driver brought to you by intelligent demand where the best minds in B2B are redefining growth. 

Aaron Owens: Hey everybody, welcome to growth driver. I'm Aaron Owens. And we're diving in today on the topic of sales and marketing integration. This has been a buzz topic for, gosh, it's just like decades now, but certainly a really long time.

And, uh, you know, we have struggled to really figure out what that looks like and what that means. And today we're going to be unpacking that a little bit, uh, and really Maybe sort of redefining a little bit of what that actually looks like, what that actually means in in practice. And we have somebody with us today who has been on all sides of that equation and is a good friend of ours here at intelligent demand.

We have Mike Lemko on with us today and Mike. Is the senior director of marketing operations at Vizient. Vizient is a a large health care consulting company. They do a whole bunch of different things. We're going to talk a little bit about what's going on at Vizient, but also Mike brings backgrounds in on the agency side.

He brings background on the sales side and on the marketing side. So he's seen all sides of this. So a great person to add to this conversation. So welcome, Mike. Thanks for joining us. 

Mike Lempko: Thanks, Aaron. Stoked to be here. You know how much of a big fan I am of yours. And so I'm just happy to have a conversation with you today.

It's kind of the highlight of my week. Oh, thanks, man. 

Aaron Owens: Well, your flattery works every time, Mike. I know. I know you love it. You know me well, you know, one of the cool things about Vizient is that, you know, Vizient, you guys cross a lot of different, um, categories and sectors. You're not just one thing. Kind of what makes it really cool to work with busy and I'm sure to work at Vizion.

Um, you guys are selling software. You guys are selling data. You guys are doing consulting. You guys are, you know, out, you know, your major bread and butter, uh, that everybody knows you as in, in your spaces as a group purchasing organization. So helping, you know, group together big purchases for a bunch of different health systems to reduce costs and things like that.

So you're doing lots of different things. And, um, you're not in the sales org now, but you've been in sales orgs before. And I think it might be useful context for a conversation, uh, just to understand how those, Different divisions, you know, software to data to consulting to this like outsource purchasing, how those how those teams sell differently and like what each one is looking for differently from a sales enablement perspective.

So I didn't want to ask you like what when you think about those different categories, how do those sales teams want to be served differently 

Mike Lempko: from marketing? You know, when we start to get siloed down each of what we call business units, the data side, the consulting side, the GPO side, as you had mentioned.

Uh, allows us to become a little siloed in those areas and value we bring to our customers. But really, when we connect the different solutions across all of those, that's we're busy and brings kind of its greatest strengths across performance improvement. But that's just not how everyone buys. You know, it's the ideal dream from an enterprise perspective that someone comes in and wants to do everything with us.

And I know you do the same in intelligent demand. You offer all these different solutions, but it's much more natural where A provider, a customer will come in and say, Hey, I really need one help with this very specific problem. And so what we can do as a marketing organization, uh, is helping enable those sales teams, as you mentioned, and unique ways across each of their different business units, based off of how those different buying groups engage with them.

So when you think from like a data and software perspective, much shorter sales cycle, it's a relatively crowded marketplace. Uh, there's a lot of different opportunities for people to solve those issues, both with in house, uh, solutions. lack of any attention. That's obviously kind of the biggest thing to overcome in sales is the pain of doing nothing and then other competition in the marketplace as well.

And so what we want to do is, you know, equip the sales teams with up to date product knowledge, up to date competitive intelligence signals as well of, you know, across these accounts, what are the things that they are doing from both first party engagement, all the things they can do with third party engagement that may give us an idea.

Of they're ready to buy in this area. Uh, they're beginning to utilize data more in different ways. They're going through big sweeping changes, or we're noticing changes within their own hospitals, changes in cost performance, quality performance, et cetera, where they might need some more intelligence.

Consulting. That's a massive world. And one. Filled with huge competitors. You know, we're going up against the lights, Deloitte, Accenture, Bain, BCG, a lot of really large household names. And one more bit probably has the biggest opportunity to grow. That is much more longstanding relationship driven. It really relies on The capabilities of the sales teams to establish those relationships with the C suite over time, and it's probably one where marketing is in the longest tail game and supporting sales.

That's more so in prioritizing and highlighting our thought leaders in our own company to make what we want to have is busy and be the first call when a hospital faces a challenge. They call busy and to try and figure out how they're going to solve it. It allows us to, uh, Forces us to build out a lot of thought, leadership, a lot of, um, overall ways that we're representing advisory solutions in the marketplace.

Uh, and then again, a lot of top funnel content. And then we kind of allow the sales teams to help engage and lead those relationships over time, more seniority and more expertise in the sales teams. And so with that, and I'm sure we'll talk about in this call. The amount in which they engage and ask for marketing to help cultivate those relationships is a little different from a shorter sales cycle.

And then lastly, with the GPO, that's a little bit more transactional. As you mentioned, it's Visian's bread and butter. All of those are relationships and partnerships that are really deeply entrenched. It's where Visian has the biggest history. We're, again, helping from a very broad perspective. Data observational standpoint, how to what depth and how much are, uh, our providers and customers and suppliers using the contracts and relationships that we already have established.

If there's underutilization, there's a lot of ways to educate, train and get really deep into, uh, what's going on. Product and solution specific knowledge. So it's a little bit more of that bottom funnel content journey. Uh, and the biggest thing with that across all these three is in a challenge that we constantly faces instead of trying to saturate the market with everything we know, need to be very mindful of all of our different customers, where they're at in their journeys and serving the right type of information with where they're at in time.

Aaron Owens: It sounds like you're saying essentially, uh, if you have a more transactional sale, um, There is maybe more room and desire and need for that like marketing Like active marketing support in engaging with uh with that prospect and on the relationship side You know, maybe there's a little bit less and is that am I saying am I reflecting that back?

Right? 

Mike Lempko: Yeah, and maybe a unique way and so to your first point if it's a more transactional sale or one where there's a very Clear challenge with a very clear solution to it Uh, you know What we want to understand is who are the type of people in the organization who are responsible for solving that challenge?

Where are they in their buying process? And then as they start to engage more with Vizient with the data we're collecting, how do we aid them in accelerating and pushing them towards what will best help them make that decision and closely engage with sales when the time is right? But those solutions are doing a lot of research before they even engage with the sales professional, right?

Or maybe it's getting them to further utilize and understand Vizient. With the data, we're already supplying them. How are they ways? How are there ways that they're not using those at all? Right? And so it's a lot of education in that process. But agreed, marketing plays a more hands on role. Uh, when it comes to some of those longer tail sales cycles, the consulting ones, it's much more thought leadership, advisory education.

And as you know, with that, That requires a lot of time and building a brand reputation and building that understanding in the marketplace and for busy and, uh, instead of just trying to start from square one with that, a lot of it comes from identifying major problems and challenges through our data and analytics tools that we can then use to guide conversations for, you know, larger advisory problem solving in the consulting space.

So 

Aaron Owens: you're, you sort of have tip of the spear offerings that open up a relationship, and then you're backing those up with professional services and consulting to help solve, solve the problems that are revealed by your other 

Mike Lempko: offerings. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. I mean, I wouldn't say that that's like kind of the, The only perspective we take towards sharing some of it, there's a lot of value they get from the data and analytics solutions and some of the most successful things we do in Vizient.

Uh, but a challenge we face is, you know, we can highlight a lot of different trends or changes, whether it be in cost or quality performance, um, you know, patient outcomes, things of that nature from our data and analytics tools. Uh, but the data only goes so far to highlight an issue. And, uh, you know, maybe.

They work in some of that perspective to offer some ways that they can work through those solutions. But a lot of times they require deeply cross functional strategies to actually begin to solve those within those hospitals and make them sustainable solutions. So it definitely opens the door towards some of those larger consulting conversations where we can bring in our advisory expertise.

Aaron Owens: Yeah, I think it's really great. And you know, when you look at a lot of what is out there on the marketplace around, uh, how to do sales enablement, how to, how to do sales and marketing, a lot of it is, I think is so driven by the, you know, venture capital PE funded like SAS businesses that are very transactional.

They, I think a lot of it. Is focused on that the first half of your answer, but the second half of your answer, I'd love to go a little bit deeper on how marketing can support these long term, more strategic consulting type, uh, relationships and sales. Because I think that's, I think there's, there's not as much in the marketplace around how to do that well.

So what if you found, um, If you're a salesperson, so putting yourself in the shoes of your salespeople that are selling those, those consulting services and things like that, what would you say it is that they would say they want marketing to be doing? Um, and it probably runs, runs the gambit of don't touch my accounts to like, you know, wanting a lot more, you know, hands on support.

But I'm curious, you know, in general, sort of, what are the things that you find, um, those Those types of salespeople running those types of sales, what value they actually see from, uh, from marketing, helping them out. 

Mike Lempko: Yeah, that's a great point. I think, I mean, I would echo kind of the point that you've made.

The, the SAS driven software model is one that's obviously super successful, but when it comes to some of that more long term relationship selling, it removes a little bit of the humanity from it that Is pretty necessary towards some of the consulting provider driven relationships in the health care business that we rely on.

And so to your point, it runs the gamut here. We're not unlike any other sales and marketing aligned organization out there. You have your extremely, uh, expertise and longstanding veterans on the sales team who say, please do not get involved in my relationship and deals. Yeah, I think you're just going to screw it up and that requires us to build that trust over time.

And then there's some who have super bought into the program who are saying, you know, I'll accept all the scripts that you're willing to provide all the playbooks, all the guidance, all the data. And so what we've found to especially try and engage more across the whole team and the different type of personalities is really directional data.

Right. So we are not in a position of expertise, you know, I've been in sales in the past, but most of marketing is not. And I, you know, can't say that I've sold some of the things that busy and even offers, uh, To tell them how to do their jobs to say, this is what you should be talking about. This is what you should say.

Here's how you should pick up the phone. When you're working with extremely veteran sales leadership, they do not need a script to say, here's exactly the email you should write. Here's exactly the things you should say in a phone call. They know those relationships and they're working at the C suite.

It's so much more personal and authentic that. Uh, robotic driven, often probably produced by AI script in many ways is not going to be what unlocks the doors to the sales kingdom. However, we work with the majority of our marketplace. Our total addressable market are mostly clients with us, and if they're not, we know the type of people we do need business with the challenges.

What we sell, what we offer in our book of business is so large that a salesperson on our team has so many different priorities they can consider. This is true across most sales orgs. So how do we help them design and understand focus of where are the most ripe opportunities, where are the best ways they can help customers in their challenges, and how do we leverage all of the data we're collecting?

We have so many tools, and like any marketing org, almost too much data that can really muddy the relationship for sales. So what we've been doing and we're on the frontier of this and really kind of one of our biggest successes here in marketing is gathering and aggregating all of the third party and first party data that we understand, segmenting that across all the different customer needs we solve and the buying groups who may be responsible for solving these different customer challenges within our providers and then helping direct our different sales teams of saying, Hey, Provider A is really focused on this challenge from what we understand right now.

And here's the types of people you should talk to. And probably what you should talk to them about. 

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com and book a meeting with one of their expert growth consultants I know they'd love to talk to you, especially if you like this show, 

Aaron Owens: so i'd love to i'd love to uh spend the rest of our time kind of diving into That data and how you collect the data what data you're collecting and how you, you know organize it and display it.

So um, you know, I Uh, to whatever degree you're you're willing to answer these questions in detail. You know, it goes detailed as you want. Um, nothing we're talking about here is a recommendation for any specific platform. Just talking about like what you're using. But, um, you know, I think it's really valuable to hear, you know, specific examples like we're using this platform to collect this data is in this platform to collect this data.

Um, and so, um, you know what? What are the you mentioned third party and first party data? Yeah. Um, let's talk through third party data first. So data that is not related to how they are engaging with your emails, your website, your content, but data that you're getting from other providers. What kind of data are you bringing in from from third party data providers?

And how are you using that? And what have you found is actually useful? So, 

Mike Lempko: yes. There's third party data is super important to our process. It's important to kind of note on our end that since we work with so much of our marketplace and they're active customers with us, we sit on kind of a treasure trove of first party data with our providers.

So third party data is a little less important to business processes as compared to third party data. Other organizations that are more acquisition oriented than I've worked with in the past, so it's kind of a little bit of a difference here at busy him for third party data. We work with an account based platform demand base as our provider, and that brings in, as you know, significant amount of intent oriented data.

There's. And I'm sure that you'll maybe have another episode on this that covers it in more depth in the future. But there's a lot of feelings and opinions and validity and invalidity around how valuable intent based data can be. I think anyone who relies on intent based data too much is probably making a mistake.

It's more so just an additional feather to the cap signal to add to a larger aggregation of data that your customers are providing you. Where we find intent based data valuable is at the very top of the customer journey. Just understanding what research, what challenges and problems they're beginning to research and do a little bit more.

Uh, of their journey on. And then we start to connect that to the conversations and first party data that's happening with busy and to enrich it and make it a little bit more valuable where we've also found intent based data to be valuable as well is for competitive signals so we can know if an act customer, whether it be in an expansion or retention oriented conversation or one where we just need to make sure that we're being mindful of that.

Of how they're engaging with vision. If they're beginning to show signs of doing significant research with, uh, competitor and any field, whether it be across our, our data spend management, which is how we also referred to the larger umbrella that GPO falls under, uh, and consulting, uh, businesses. If they're starting to do a significant amount of research with our competitors, that's something that a salesperson needs to know.

And if I was a salesperson, that is something I would immediately want to know if one of my active accounts is showing signals of researching more with competitors. Having said that, we definitely Temper how much intent data we feed sales. We don't actively take intent data and directly deliver it to sales.

We take that data and begin to enrich it with all of our additional first party signals before any of that third party data falls into a salesperson's hands. Just because I think there's so many other ways that you can add value to it versus just delivering what is a very high level Web research oriented signal that intent is delivering before, for lack of a better word, distracting a salesperson among the many different pieces of information they're taking in on a daily basis, especially in a relationship where it's so or an industry where it's so relationship driven for additional tools, really, The bread and butter of our organization is around data intelligence, and so we do not rely on much more third party data, maybe a little additional data enrichment from providers like Zoom Info and Dun Bradsheath and those that are in that space for, for contact data.

But since we rely so little on acquisition. Oriented business in the green spaces. We would call it. We relied much more on how we aggregate and make sense of all the data that we do collect. And so we work with the data intelligence platform and our analytics team, who is, you know, one of the strongest teams here and busy and helps to collect and aggregate and make sense of all that data that we're collecting it.

And so to kind of wrap up on where we use third party data, I would say third party data is valuable, you know, It's important to understand, but it needs to be understood and evaluated in the context of the larger customer journey, especially understanding that it is an extremely Hi, and towards the towards the funnel of the customer journey itself and likely needs to be validated by other first party data signals that you have in house before using it as a source of truth for your marketing strategy organization.

Aaron Owens: I think calling intent data intent data was one of the worst branding decisions ever made, whoever made that decision, because it's all it's telling you is Topical interest, you know, changes, changes, relative changes over time of an organization's interest in a specific topic, right? And I like what you said about it being a very top of funnel signal.

I think that's really especially true with the consultative relationship type things that you guys are are really focused on. I think there are probably some bottom of funnel applications for some of the more transactional sides of things, you know, software data, instead of things that you're, you know, 30 or 60 day, um, you know, buying cycles and things like that where decisions are made quicker.

There might be some more application there, but I like how you guys are using a top of funnel because most organizations don't do that. They think it has to be a bottom of funnel thing. And one of the things that we've done together is really map out what the buyer's journey looks like for for customers at, uh, busy it and understanding what, what one of the things that we looked at is, you know, Early in the buying journey, topics are people researching and looking for and using that to be able to, um, inform, uh, and give us some insights into where you know, what organizations might have a buying committee that's involved, you know, on a, on a, on a, on a, a A discrete buying journey about you know, some new new product or whatever.

So I I like I really like that I think that's an important takeaway for a lot of companies is to use that intent data Earlier in their buyer's journey higher in the funnels 

Mike Lempko: one thing i'd add there You just alluded to it and I think it's kind of where the The biggest evolution across some of these account based intent based platforms are moving is beyond just supplying intent.

Data signals is also beginning to understand some of those unknown, uh, shadow buying committees that are involved in decision processes that that sales may not even understand. It often can. Railroad or totally put a blockade on a on a purchasing process, you know, understanding that there's decision makers that maybe haven't been revealed or understood yet.

Of course, it's kind of always on the responsibility of sales to try and get full saturation across the buying committee. But where I understand tools like demand based six cents are moving is they're bringing in some levels of intelligence to help inform some of these teams who are other members of buying groups that are involved in some of the challenges they may be researching behind the scenes.

Their intent and delivering value and data like that to a salesperson, even more than intent data of like, who are all the people I need to be aware of? Like, that is a massive value add from a marketing organization. 

Aaron Owens: Yeah, I like that. So you're saying, um, you know, so we have the intent data, but then you're saying really understanding who's on a buying committee, who's playing different roles, who should I be engaging with?

Um, I think, yeah, I think that's great. And, um, You sort of touched on, you know, uh, zoom info and denim breast. We're using those to enrich data purchase contacts. I think that's sort of the old school version of that. I think still incredibly valuable is to know. Okay. You know, if we know who, you know what roles are probably on a buying committee, being able to purchase, you know, those, those, those relevant titles and things and bring them in is useful.

I mean, you're saying some of these platforms are at least Yes. Promising somehow to some degree eventually to be able to help you know exactly who's who's researching certain things who's involved in certain, um, certain buying roles. So I think that's that's awesome. 

Mike Lempko: Yeah, I mean, I'm excited to see where it goes.

And it's something we're in conversations with. There's a lot. It's Mostly driven a lot by their, their own AI strategy and how they're helping to kind of reveal these shadow buying committees in unknown context. I agree. It's a major step up from some of the data enrichment companies that we've relied on in the past, like a zoom info and Dun Bradshy, something of that nature.

Uh, again, need to validate the data, need to integrate it into your larger. You know, data management strategy. And then lastly, most importantly, need to provide the context to sales. You know, if you just dump a significant amount of this data on sales plates without the context and insights behind it, it becomes a little useless.

Aaron Owens: Yeah. And you know, you, you've said a couple of times, some version of, uh, a reason why it's important to have humans who know what they're doing, making decisions. Like this, this data, um, You can't just rely on this data by itself. You can't rely on these A. I. Driven decisions by itself. You need to have, you know, provide that to somebody who can look at it and really be able to assimilate it and make smart, intelligent decisions about how that may or may not impact how you're engaging an account, how you're engaging an individual, et cetera.

Mike Lempko: I know one of the challenges in the world that we've come from of building out like You know, B to B strategies. It's easy to say we've nailed this plan so hard. We need to stay within the strict guidelines of it. There's always room for exceptions, but the companies in the organizations that are most successful are the ones that really strategically and thoughtfully make the plan really in a disciplined manner, work the plan and then allow for data to add color to that plan and additional guidance and strategic direction.

Or I regularly planned intervals opportunities to have a conversation around optimization insights and any redirection with sales as the time comes on a regularly planned cadence, I think, is most important, something that's set between sales and marketing and established guidance, as opposed to any random single comes in.

Any random signal that comes in can totally divert us from the path that we're on. That we put so much thought and strategic guidance around and sending a very clear path of direction. So I think there's, there's opportunities to use that data to continue to tweak and improve, uh, and especially improve how you're working the plan itself, but you shouldn't use it as a reason to totally divert.

From a strategy that you've already laid out. 

Aaron Owens: I'm curious. So what? What? What of that first party data do you find is valuable to your salespeople? So are your salespeople saying, Hey, I really want to know when somebody is looking at the product page for this product, or I really want to know when somebody is, you know, reading our research paper on this thing.

Is that valuable to them? And, uh, you know, is it valuable in its raw form? Or do you have to kind of like turn that into something that More useful than just hey, they downloaded this white paper and went to this web page. 

Mike Lempko: This is probably true of most salespeople, especially in an organization of our size.

They do not have the bandwidth or capability to look through data that comes to them of this specific contact visited this page. Or they opened this email that is far too in the weeds. And as a salesperson, I wouldn't really begin to understand the value of that data and how that should guide, you know, how I approach in a sales process, especially one where we're working so actively with our customers.

We get so much web visitation data. We have so much email data. If we tried to look at it one by one, everyone at marketing would go insane. And then sales would also ignore us because it's so much data we're trying to pass over the pile. So what we do is we aggregate it. And we add context to it. And so we have a whole scoring system built out of based on the type of page based on the type of email based on the type of event.

If they attend, open, visit, et cetera. How many points does that mean to us in a larger point scoring mechanism based on the number of points that you aggregate across, you know how we tag all of our content, different needs or how we group our solutions, you can move from one part of the journey stage to another.

And then when you hit a certain threshold, Towards the latter stage of our marketing customer journey, that's where a contact or an account becomes valuable in us for us to pass it to sales and then get it on our radar. So we're doing a significant amount of data aggregation, scoring and contextualization before we pass a single piece of data over to our sales team.

Our job is to collect all of that data. Make sense of it in relationship to the other signals. The account is giving that scoring model includes the intent data. We've already spoken about open opportunity data within their sales process, uh, as well as existing knowledge of the own thing that the things they've already purchased from Vizient using all that, combining it into a nice, Uh, cooked pie and then delivering that pie to the sales team once it's ready for them to actually, uh, Have a conversation with them.

Aaron Owens: Do you have any recommendations? For somebody who says okay, I want to take all this data and turn it into this like sort of aggregated pre baked marketing pie for my salesperson um, you know any any any first steps or or or tips for where they should start that conversation if they if they can't afford To invest in four different platforms to do that You 

Mike Lempko: Yeah, I mean, we obviously use a number of tools provided by AWS for some of the data integration, but what we do from a business intelligence standpoint, I believe we've used Tableau.

I know we've used some solutions offered by Microsoft, but the one we're leveraging right now is Databricks. It's the one that our team has found to be most effective and cost effective in kind of that journey. One strategic guidance I would recommend to marketing and thinking more about sales enablement and sales alignment, as opposed to just from the tech side, is that.

Any salesperson wants to do the least amount of like work and journeys on the admin side to distract them from the sales process. So working with our account based team, they really want us to work within the demand based platform because it offers a lot of great solutions. And then, of course, you need to work within your CRM platform as well.

And then we need to aggregate the data somewhere. What we're trying to do is take. All the data from all the sources and leverage data bricks to put it in one single place that a salesperson needs to visit so that we're not forcing them to visit multiple different tools. And ultimately, you're gonna lose compliance and engagement with that.

If you start to add complication to that technology journey for a salesperson. So the biggest piece of advice I would be able to recommend is aggregated into one home and create a really strong user experience within that home to bring all the marketing data you could provide in the journey. That's great.

Aaron Owens: That's a really great place to end this. And so, Mike, I really appreciate your guidance on this. You guys really are doing some really cool things that busy and, um, really across the entire go to market function. But I knew that you would be able to bring really great insights into how to enable sales with more than just cool brochures and things like that.

You know, actual real data, real insights, really being a partner with helping them to, uh, to close more deals. So, uh, appreciate that. So thanks for coming on and giving us a little peek behind the curtain of what you have going on there at Vizion. 

Mike Lempko: Yeah, great. It's, uh, it's always great talking to you, Aaron.

I love the way that you ask questions and, uh, we're constantly trying to improve. So I'm subscribed to growth driver here. I'm listening to the podcasts and episodes. I'm trying to understand how we can do our job better because we still consider ourselves pretty young in the journey and how we're helping our sales and marketing alignment, not to mention all the other.

Responsibilities that fall on marketing's plate. So I hope some of the answers we provided here, uh, will help your, your listeners here, but I know for the most part, we're on a learning journey here at busy and ourselves. Thanks 

Aaron Owens: a lot. And everybody listening, have a great day and, uh, share this with your team so they know how to support your sales team.