In this episode of Beyond SaaS, Jason Niedle speaks with Sharon Harrison, CMO of Gravyty, about the critical role of engagement in driving growth for tech companies, particularly in the education sector. They discuss the importance of pivoting in marketing strategies, aligning sales, marketing, and customer success teams, and the unique challenges women face in tech. Sharon shares insights on Gravyty’s recent mergers and how they are innovating in alumni engagement and donor relations. The conversation also touches on growth strategies, understanding customer needs, and the significance of effective communication.
Takeaways
- We shouldn’t be afraid to pivot in our strategies.
- Alignment between sales, marketing, and customer success is crucial.
- Women in tech face unique challenges that need addressing.
- Gravyty is innovating in alumni and donor engagement.
- Understanding the academic cycle is key to outreach.
- Communication must be bi-directional for effective engagement.
- The importance of A/B testing in marketing strategies.
- Internal constraints can hinder growth; prioritize effectively.
- Utilizing AI can enhance operational efficiency.
- Building a strong team culture fosters collaboration and success.
Sound Bites
“We shouldn’t be afraid to pivot.”
“You don’t want to talk over their head.”
“Communication is bi-directional.”
BeyondSaaS Transcript
Jason Niedle (00:00)
Today we’re talking with Sharon Harrison, CMO of Gravyty about engagement and how that drives growth on every level.
Welcome to episode 49 of Beyond SaaS. I am Jason Niedle, founder of Tethos, and we solve growth problems for tech companies through strategy, design, cold email, educational campaigns, and much more.
Today I’m excited to explore tech company growth with Sharon Harrison. She is the CMO of Gravyty, which pushes engagement with AI powered solutions to connect and support the student and donor life cycle. They serve over 2,700 education and nonprofit organizations with the newest technology and data driven insights to help build stronger communities.
So for example, their virtual assistant can help engage students to build the funnels, they help drive student success and outcomes, and ultimately all of that helps create engaged alumni. They recently merged three brands, Ivy.ai, Ocelot, and Gravyty, and I’m gonna let you explain that, Sharon, to see where that synergy all happens and how that is changing everything for higher education.
Sharon excels at driving growth through integrated multi-channel campaigns. She recently joined the Chief Network, which is a peer mentorship community for female executives underscoring her commitment to leadership development. And I also hear that you’re an avid golfer. So welcome.
Sharon (01:16)
Thank you so much. really appreciate being here and I’m looking forward to the conversation.
Jason Niedle (01:20)
Hey, is it true that you’re a student of art history?
Sharon (01:23)
I am, although I feel like it’s one of those things that went in one ear and out the other with all of the other things I was busy doing and distracting myself with in college. Although I do enjoy kind of looking back and dipping into things like Antiques Roadshow and pretending like I know what they’re talking about and giving the very knowing nod along with the experts.
Jason Niedle (01:47)
I love to offer listeners something right off the bat. Do you have a golden nugget for us?
Sharon (01:52)
Let’s go with two golden nuggets. Although, you know, some of them might be like tarnished bronze at this point, but we’ll see if they resonate. So the first that I would share is that we shouldn’t be afraid to pivot. And what I mean by that is whether it’s in your sort of professional life or your personal life, to not be afraid to constantly kind of A-B test things and change direction. So I’ll give a couple of little examples, right?
certainly in the world of marketing. know, 20 years ago when I started, it was that you’d be working on a print campaign that was going to have, you know, a full page ad on the back of the sports section for the Wall Street Journal.
That took a month of planning, you locked in the creative, you did the photo shoot, and once it was done, it was done, and there was no adjustment to be made. We’re fortunate now where as we are building a campaign, we’re kind of building the plane as we fly, right? Like that’s just the speed at which we do things now. And so we’re able to have a thesis going into it
and assign projected outcomes and budget. And as we work through the execution of it, we’re able to adjust the creative and the outcomes, etc. And as it runs, we’re also able to look in real time and understand is this working or not? And the easy path is not always the best path, right? The easy path is set it and forget it.
But the harder path will give you the better results where you’re looking at it, you’re iterating, and you are making changes and adjusting. And I think that that’s almost counterintuitive to people. And it’s a little, it’s a lot uncomfortable, let’s be honest. Because it’s admitting in real time, this is failing, but we can fail and move on and still get a successful outcome from it.
The other pivot when we think about how it applies to us as individuals and not sort of as the collective team is in your career trajectory. So coming out of college, my understanding was that, you you pick a career in an industry and that’s the very linear path that your life will take. And I think that’s kind of antiquated, right? Like how often does that happen anymore unless you are
Jason Niedle (03:50)
Forever, yeah.
Sharon (03:56)
highly, highly specialized, right? A doctor, lawyer, etc. So, you know, looking at my career as an example, starting out in the sports industry for almost two decades and then, taking a hard right into EdTech and SaaS, seemingly disjointed, right? There’s no way that just looking at it from a one-dimensional perspective, you could assess that and go, well, that makes perfect sense. But when I look at 20 years of
experience in various roles within sports management and marketing, I built a toolkit. And as long as you’re agile enough in your approach and willing to pivot, you can take that toolkit and apply it in other areas. Right? So, so that’s my one golden nugget, pivot. And also if you’re a Friends fan, anytime you hear the word pivot, you’re immediately thinking of Ross Geller and you can hear it in your head. So if you haven’t seen that clip, Google it, it’s worth it.
Jason Niedle (04:27)
Hmm.
Jason Niedle (04:48)
Hey, it’s Jason with a 10 second note from our sponsor, Tethos. I wanted to offer you our Hypergrowth Playbook. It’s a free guide that I put together, a compilation of our first 20 or so episodes of learning from the show, which includes book recommendations, golden nuggets, and the amazing learnings from all these tech leaders. Simple to get it, just drop the word GROWTH in the comments and I’ll send it to you, or head on over to tethos.com/playbook and that’s T-E-T-H-O-S dot com slash playbook, and you’ll have it right there. All right, back to our episode.
Sharon (05:17)
The other golden nugget, if you’ll indulge me, is unalignment. We hear that word is thrown out all the time and the typical relationship between sales and marketing is not aligned. It’s usually a finger pointing relationship. You haven’t given us enough leads, well, you haven’t closed the leads that we’ve given you in very simple terms. I look at it and really like
the philosophy of it’s not just sales and marketing alignment that needs to happen. It’s sales, marketing and customer success alignment. And so the better aligned with your revenue model that your entire team, your entire go-to-market team can be, the more successful. Because if your marketing team understands that how they are talking to prospects in the market informs how that prospect then moves through the sales cycle.
Jason Niedle (05:50)
Mmm.
Sharon (06:10)
And the messaging needs to all be consistent, right? And all of that, and they move towards the middle of that bow tie. Once they move to the right side of that bow tie, you will have set the right expectations to deliver then a healthy customer that is looking for that rapid time to value and is ultimately engaged with the product and that becomes your recurring revenue. So I look at that and go, that alignment doesn’t just apply to the Gravyty business, for example.
But that’s also how we view our customers. That’s not in the terms that we talk to them about. If at Gravyty we’re looking at the entire higher education life cycle, we’re thinking about how do you talk to your potential students, your applicants, in a way that sets them up to be invested and engaged alumni? And I would argue that that applies in any industry. You know, where you’re building a funnel and
Jason Niedle (06:45)
Mm.
Sharon (06:59)
it works better if you can set that up to be a recurring revenue source than just a one and done. So that’s a lot of talking for me. I’d be curious if either of those nuggets resonate with you.
Jason Niedle (07:10)
Oh yeah, so I think, I mean, we could have a whole podcast, I think, about either one of the topics. First of all, I love the idea, like as a marketer, I’m thinking about the A-B testing all the time, and nowadays it’s A to I, or A to Z testing, or whatever.
All day long, we’re A-B testing, A-Z testing items, but I haven’t particularly thought to apply that directly to my life, right? So, does this work or does that work and let’s just compare one to the other and I love that. And then this idea of alignment from top to bottom. I think there’s some people that I speak with that really understand it that we, that,
In the beginning of the process, you really have to understand something and… I kind of talk about Fiverr all the time. Like I could go into Fiverr and get a logo for 50 bucks, right? But that logo doesn’t have any understanding of who I am, what it’s supposed to represent, who the target audience is, or any of this through line of the whole thing. And the logo is really a small part of this mass understanding of who we are as an organization.
Sharon (07:54)
Yeah.
Jason Niedle (08:02)
And I think to your point there, like the better we understand ourselves top to bottom, then the more we can actually serve that audience that we’re working to serve. And I think it’s just, like I said, we could talk for the entire time about that if we wanted to.
Sharon (08:10)
Yeah.
Yeah, but that through line, right? Like that’s what you need and it’s making sure that everybody that’s talking about what you do, how you do it, why you do it, is saying the same thing. We talk about consistency of messaging, but it’s really like, you’ve got to really understand why does your customer care? Like what are they in this for? Because that’s what you’ve got to speak to.
You don’t want to talk over their head. You don’t want to talk around them. You want to talk right at them about the things that matter. And so the clearer you can be on the value of your solution, the value of the work that you’re doing, and really have your entire go-to-market function, and I would argue your product team, right? Like we look at it very holistically. Does everybody understand
how what we’re doing matters to customers from a very granular level. And does everybody understand that this company succeeds or fails by virtue of the entire contribution, right? To go back to that alignment piece and the finger pointing, we really pull back from that and think along the lines of, if we don’t hit our number at the end of the year, that’s not just the fault of the sales team.
Jason Niedle (09:01)
Mm-hmm.
Sharon (09:21)
Right? If we think about it in sports terms, because that’s what I default to, the ball doesn’t get past the goalie without going through everybody else first. Right? That ball had to get past your forward line, past your midfield, past your defenders, and then the goalie. There’s a lot of steps to get there.
Jason Niedle (09:39)
so I have a fun little game in relation to what you were saying. 9 out of 10 times when I go and do a deep dive discovery with a company, we’ll go in there and we’ll ask the executive team, what’s your mission, vision, values, blah, blah, blah, right? Then we’ll go into the company and we’ll say, we’ll ask, you know, salesperson A, okay, how do you explain your company? Right. And write it down. And then, you know, customer service rep team and ask them the same question. And then like anyone who’s outwardly facing, we’ll ask them that question. And
Sharon (09:51)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jason Niedle (10:05)
9 out of 10 times there’s absolutely no alignment with what the executives say is the mission and then with how people on a day-to-day basis are explaining what’s happening and it’s like if this is not right it’s never going to be right so where is it the wrong mission is it the wrong statement is it wrong training like you need to get an alignment
Sharon (10:16)
Right.
But in order to do, it’s almost overwhelming to try to think about, okay, how do we get everybody rowing in the same direction? So I don’t know what the appetite of the audience for your podcast is for slightly off color language. So we’ll keep it with the abbreviation. Okay, what we found successful before and we’re working to operationalize here at Gravyty.
Jason Niedle (10:38)
They’re okay, they’ll be okay.
Sharon (10:44)
Prior to Gravyty, I was with Ivy.ai and that’s how I, by virtue of the merger, was placed in seat at Gravyty. And so what the sales leader and I put in place at Ivy in order to address that sort of disconnect or the, it’s not the distillation of the messaging, it’s really almost the adaptation by role of the messaging.
⁓ We implemented WTF Wednesdays but that was really where we pulled the entire customer facing teams at the company and also the marketing team onto a call. And it was, you know, there was a topic every week and it could be, you know, role plays that could be addressing specific use cases. It could be competitor objection handling and what it allowed for was
Jason Niedle (11:08)
Hmm.
Sharon (11:31)
the collective learning, right? It’s one thing to hear how an account executive handles an objection, but a customer success manager may run into that same objection in the renewal process. And so how do they handle it? And is it the same or is it different? What’s worked, what hasn’t? And how can marketing then take that and deliver some proactive interventions?
Jason Niedle (11:43)
Mmm. Mm-hmm.
Sharon (11:54)
So we found that to be really, really helpful in hearing how, just like you said, hearing how these different parts of the company are speaking to the mission, vision, and values of the organization.
Jason Niedle (12:05)
Well, on top of that, that’s super smart because you’re also getting to find the best practices and what’s working, what’s not, and getting feedback. So there’s a lot of different levels of great about that.
generally it’s hard to find women in tech to show up on the podcast. And I was wondering why do you think that is and what needs to change about maybe the industry or hiring or what people are doing?
Sharon (12:25)
Hey, I’m just curious, how much time do you have? Because this is a great topic. I feel like we could really roll with this. You know, I don’t want to paint it with broad strokes, right? It’d be very easy to say this is a male-dominated industry because X, Y, and Z historical perspective. What I really think it is is that
Jason Niedle (12:29)
Hahaha
Sharon (12:47)
women have just not pursued and spoken up enough in the roles that they’re in. They haven’t been given the chance. And that’s not necessarily a male leadership thing. That’s also a female leadership thing, right? Are, as a female leader or as a leader in general, are you evaluating talent based on talent? And are you mentoring those that come behind you, right?
What are you doing to pay it forward? And so yes, women in tech, harder to come by. I have seen a proliferation of late. I really enjoy the Chief Network because it is very helpful to have those conversations and find pathways to elevate women. I think also women tend to be, you know, I
years ago founded my own sports management company that was focused on female athletes. And I think it was the same sort of thing. I recognized that the male athletes were getting higher dollar value sponsorships because they were more willing to say, well, I’m worth this. And females, again, broad strokes, have a harder time defining and speaking up for their value. I find myself doing it, right? When
previously when I would be looking for a job. I’d read the criteria, like, yeah, but I don’t do that one thing. And I know there have been studies, and I’m sure we’ve all seen them, where, well, if a man looks at a job description and there’s five things that he’s not qualified for, he’ll still apply. The woman will go, never mind, I’m not qualified for it. So I think it’s a combination of things. It’s a combination of, you know,
Jason Niedle (14:19)
you
Sharon (14:21)
generationally how we were raised and the family dynamics, right? Like that’s something that has to be part of it. Who is the default parent or caregiver in a family? What additional strain does that put on in this context of female? Is she able to devote the time to pursue a higher level career? So I think it’s a lot of things. I know I’ve just given you like a potpourri of reasons.
But I do, I find it really interesting and I really like the mentorship part. I feel very lucky to be part of a leadership team at Gravyty that is majority females. And I know that the women within the organization also appreciate seeing that. I also have a marketing team that is a majority women. And I love it because what I see is not the stereotype of catty, know, backstabbing kind of behavior.
But what I see is a lot of collaboration and a team culture that is founded on being authentic and bringing your whole self to work. And I think that’s when we get the most out of people.
Jason Niedle (15:21)
Mm.
I love that. So tell us now, we’ve touched on it a bunch of times, tell us about Gravyty and the mergers and what you’re doing there.
Sharon (15:29)
Yeah, so it’s I think it’s a really neat story. Gravyty has been a leader in alumni and donor engagement and fundraising for over a decade. And by virtue of being backed by the same private equity company, Gravyty was introduced to Ivy and Ocelot. so Ivy and Ocelot prior to the merger were competitors. We were head to head on every deal.
And we were watching what the other was doing all the time. It was fun, right? You have to have a rabbit. You’ve got to have a rabbit that you’re chasing. And so we were each other’s rabbits. And so, the thesis behind the merger was, well, let’s take the top two AI powered virtual assistant communication platforms in higher education. Let’s get the best of both worlds and combine that technology.
Jason Niedle (15:54)
Hmm.
Sharon (16:17)
But let’s also bring it together with the leader in alumni and donor engagement and fundraising. And now we can really support the entire education life cycle. And by that, I mean not just the student and alumni experience, but also the business of education. So, two different paths there, but what we’re looking to drive is efficiency and outcomes. On the business side, if we can increase operational efficiency,
address staffing shortages, really help keep the dollars coming through the door. I mean, it sounds a little bit callous to say, and I think in higher ed, we’re always reticent to talk about the dollars and cents of, right? It’s always been this very esoteric thing, but it’s a business. And so how can we support the business functions, but also ensure that that’s in alignment with student success and outcomes?
Right, so as an example, my oldest daughter is a rising junior at the University of Maryland. And so I pay very close attention when she was, a senior, junior senior in high school, how were institutions recruiting her? Right, it was all direct mail, right? There’s your mailbox is full every day and newsflash, she didn’t look at any of it. It all went in the trash or recycling depending. What she did respond to was when she would get
Jason Niedle (17:24)
Mmm.
Sharon (17:36)
text messages or when she would see something on social media. And then when she would go to look for more information, she would look on the school’s website, but it would lose her after a few minutes because, it’s too hard to find exactly what I’m looking for. I don’t want to read through pages. Like students just, it’s a generation. They are not interested. They don’t want to make a phone call. They want the information on demand. Right? So we, our technology supports that, right? So we’re building a
a bigger top of funnel for the institutions by making information easily accessible. And then we help get the students onto campus and then keep them on campus and support their career objectives by making career information easily available or, making sure they have the information about graduation to send to their parents. So we’re really just an additional headcount for each department on campus without
you know, we’re not a fully benefited employee. We’re there in the background doing all the things that you don’t want your staff taking the time to do. They can be doing higher value activities. And then when we look at the alumni side, how can we support alumni and advancement offices to really drive that recurring donor, right? We have major gift officers, but we also have folks like me when I donate to my alma mater, I am not
in that major gift officer target demographic. I wish I was, but I am just not. And so how does the institution keep the average person engaged, informed, and also provide them with that alumni network? I know that I’ve benefited from the alumni network, and I now also am part of it and helping mentor other students or connecting them to career opportunities. So there’s a tremendous amount of value.
on that post-grad part of the life cycle. So that was very long-winded. Can you tell them in marketing, there’s like a surplus of words at any time?
Jason Niedle (19:28)
But I love this idea, so I still have the dream of not being able to find my class. I had it a month ago or something that I was on my university campus and I had no idea where I was going. And that’s kind of indicative, I think, of how complicated it can be to figure out any of this stuff. How do I know how to apply? And so my wife is a voice teacher and she has all these students and they’re continually applying to multiple schools and everybody has different things going on and you have to research the information.
Sharon (19:38)
Yes.
Jason Niedle (19:54)
And that’s just the application process, not withstanding going there and then graduating and like, do I stay in contact? So having chatbots and having information and having a way to really keep this engagement going, I think is amazing, especially using technology.
Sharon (20:08)
Yeah, you make a great point. So when we add that complexity of the application process, but also financial aid, what a dumpster fire right now, forgive me, but I think we can all kind of collectively agree on that where there’s so much confusion around it and the administrators are are just as befuddled and frustrated, right? Like the fund allocations are late, so they’re late getting the disbursements out to students.
Jason Niedle (20:16)
Mmm.
Mm.
Sharon (20:35)
Imagine the volume of questions they’re getting when students and parents are counting on that, right? And then you add a layer to it where, there’s this, not concept, but this population of students that are first generation. So I benefited from having two parents that were both college graduates and my children benefit from that as well. But what about those students that are the first in their family?
And so they have no one to help them figure out the application process or how to apply for financial aid or understand what classes to sign up for. So how do you make information available for them when they’re ready to consume it and in a way that’s digestible? And so that’s really kind of the philosophy behind this whole merger, right? Like let’s make sure that we are.
you know, meeting students and alumni where they are. That term, that phrase is a little bit worn out, but that’s because it’s true, right? Where they are in their life, where they are economically, where they are digitally. Let’s meet them in those places so that they have what they need when they’re ready to make a decision.
Jason Niedle (21:36)
Yeah, for sure. So let’s talk about growth really fast. How are you growing Gravyty? Like what tools, what outreach are you using? Because this is very specific audiences and kind of a resistant field. Like education is not particularly easy to make. And I was a professor for eight years at Chapman University on the side, right? I was doing marketing here and then I’d go at night and do the professorship thing. And I would see the administration side of things, which I guess I shouldn’t comment publicly on.
Sharon (21:50)
Yeah.
Jason Niedle (22:01)
but it’s not always a smooth process, right? ⁓ Administratively, right? So how are you reaching in and getting these people to do things? How are you dealing with long engagement cycles and what are you doing?
Sharon (22:03)
Yeah. Yeah.
I think this is where that great alignment comes into play, right? We have a very clear understanding of our ICP. We really understand the consideration process, the academic cycle. We know that their budgets come out July 1. So we understand when decisions are being made on technology purchases, when they are in budgeting season, when they might have additional funds left over. We understand when there are
spring giving days and they do not want to hear from us at all because they are head down. Fall giving days right we we understand that and so our strategies are built calendars that buying cycle. We know that it’s a it’s about a six to nine months sales cycle. So what we’re doing now, we will hope to see
the benefit of in Q4 and Q1 next year. So it really is that obviously then permeates the strategy. What channels are you using? What are you messaging about? And so we combine these sort of longer tail campaigns and strategies with these much more quick turn dipping into the white space of our customer base. How can we cross seller upsell because now we have these 20 almost 2800 customers.
And some of them use all of our products across their campus. Some of them only use one or the other. And so how do we drive that full life cycle adoption? Because the real value of that comes at the, really in like the CIO decision-making budgeting, right? We’re seeing a lot of system consolidation because, my gosh.
we didn’t realize, but somehow we ended up with eight different CRMs across campus. That’s a nightmare to manage and service, let alone the budgetary impact when you can’t capitalize on any kind of volume discounting, right? It’s just a nightmare. And so that’s really the sort of intersection point for us. And so it’s talking to those decision makers, but this is what is so interesting, I think, about higher ed, is that
Jason Niedle (23:58)
Right.
Sharon (24:19)
We could sell into the individual departments and have, and have done, across all three now merged companies. We can talk to the admissions team. They have their own budget. We could talk to financial aid. They have their own budget. The one stop, IT help desk, alumni advancement. But again, then we’re getting the disparate purchasing and the institution isn’t really benefiting from the full budgetary impact, but also
from the technology impact. So we’ve got to find a way to tell both stories, right? How can you get the maximum for your students while also getting the maximum savings for the institution? I don’t know if that answered your question, but hopefully there was something in there to work with.
Jason Niedle (24:59)
Mm.
For sure. How do you plan and project growth? What are your growth goals? And with 2,800 institutions, it’s not like there’s a lot left over. So are you internally or seeking to grow internally with extra product adoption and other departments? How do you look at this growth challenge?
Sharon (25:18)
Yeah, well, I think you nailed it, right? We’ve got to look at it from twofold. There is still a lot of net new, sort of green space for us across the institutions. There’s about, you know, 25 or so hundred more institutions that we don’t have penetration into. We have a brilliant data scientist on our team that’s able to give us some sort of some like little top secret nuggets that we can extract from the internet where we can see who’s using our competitors.
And so we can take a very targeted approach into those institutions and try to intercept, you know, do some really, I mean, I get excited because it’s really that like head to head competition again, right? Where we can try to displace those competitors and know that those institutions already have an appetite for this technology, right? So that’s like, that’s the green light. I love that. That’s not the worst conversation you can get into is where it’s, what’s a chat box?
You’re like, this is going to be like a 12 month sales cycle on this one. So we look at those kind of intent signals. We look at the white space in our customer base because we do have on the Ivy and Ocelot platform side, we do have lot of, I’ll call it a non-enterprise customer, meaning they have a few departments or a handful of departments utilizing the technology.
Jason Niedle (26:10)
Yeah
Sharon (26:33)
But that means that there’s 10 other departments that should be using the technology. We have a lot of customers that are just using sort of the OG legacy Gravyty products on the alumni and advancement side. And so we also then want to stitch together the story for them and help them understand how integrating this new Ivy and Ocelot platform for enhanced engagement would benefit them.
So that’s, you know, a couple of different layers, but then there’s also just generally the net new, which we have the opportunity to craft a different conversation there. And so there are multiple sort of growth paths, because if, it’s an institution that hasn’t got any of our solutions, the question is what are they using? Do they have an appetite? And then we get into the whole DIY versus buy conversation, which I am really geeking out right now. So you can rein me back in if I’m like,
Jason Niedle (27:06)
Mmm.
Sharon (27:24)
way off in the nether lands of not interesting sharing, tone it down. But the DIY versus buy thing in AI is so fascinating because it comes down to a managed service versus self-managed. Do you at the institution want to potentially add headcount to build and manage this new platform that could be built off of any
open source large language model or use something that’s white labeled or do you want to go with a managed service where we’ll build it for you, we’ll maintain it for you and you don’t have to add headcount. So it’s really interesting to understand like, okay, what’s the why behind the DIY option? And it usually comes down to, well, that way we know exactly what is happening and we can really prescribe.
When we hear that, that makes me go, I have not done a good job at my job. I have not done a good job telling the story of why our technology is better than that and how we already address those things.
Jason Niedle (28:18)
Mm.
One of my favorite topics to get into is constraints and internal constraints. If you had a magic wand and you could grow something or enhance it or adjust it or resolve the problem internally and you could wave that magic wand and enhance one of your systems to make you grow faster, what would you do?
Sharon (28:38)
Hmm.
When you say, yeah, well, budget. I mean, is that a fair answer?
Jason Niedle (28:42)
What constraint would you get rid of?
resources.
Sharon (28:48)
Yeah,
I think that there is a world in which resources are endless.
Jason Niedle (28:55)
guess the question if we dig deeper on that is like, what’s not getting done then?
Sharon (28:58)
Mm.
Jason Niedle (28:59)
There’s always something in marketing that we know we should be doing,
Sharon (29:01)
always, God, that’s almost like a scary question to answer, isn’t it? mm. Well, right? Yeah, you’re like, I’ve got you good and warmed up now. Let me check out what I can get out of you. What’s? What is the thing? I think it’s more about
Jason Niedle (29:06)
It is. That’s why I wait till like three quarters of the way through is like ask the scary questions later. Yeah, that’s right. Sharon’s good. Now let’s ask her a hard question.
Sharon (29:18)
priorities. It’s setting your priorities because if everything is important, nothing is important. So all the resources, tooling, headcount, all of it doesn’t mean anything if you’re trying to be everything to everyone. And so, what we’re battling right now, not battling, but I think just by virtue of bringing three companies together, three teams, three technologies, three product stacks rather, and then also
all of the tech that supports each part of our business function, we’re really having to get very clear on the priorities. And so in the marketing side of things, it’s, okay, what population are we trying to capitalize on? And what do we need in order to do that? Everything else needs to be put in the parking lot. It needs to be a not right now.
I mean right from like the asks from other teams from outside the company But also the tooling that we’re using right I don’t want to pay for something that we’re just not using and won’t use for this year because it is not aligned with our priorities, the converse of that is I need to add the things that we need. I’ve got a scope of work to sign in my inbox right now for Goldcast because we need to do a better job with our
slicing and dicing of our video content because we need to do more with that. That lands better with audiences. They want to listen to a 30 second clip and not read a five page case study. So it’s looking for things like that. Not anything, but most things that are AI powered. It seems very rote at this point to say
Jason Niedle (30:44)
Mm-hmm.
Sharon (30:52)
an enterprise license for chat GPT, right? So that it’s restricted. We can put things in it. We can fine tune. You can have a like a brainstorming conversation with this platform and get further along in the ideation process so that it’s not a cold start every time. Using Grammarly, I have placed a very high premium on using good grammar, spelling things correctly
and that goes across the entire organization. Anything that’s going out as an internal comm or an external comm needs to be reflective of the standards that we have at the organization. it all comes back to, for me, priorities.
Jason Niedle (31:27)
You don’t like sending misspellings and bad grammar to university executives?
Sharon (31:32)
Oddly enough, no, right? Like when I think back to some of the papers I’ve turned in and the red markings on it, right? Like that’s a battle scar. And yeah, I’m not willing to get an F on my email writing.
Jason Niedle (31:44)
I told my students, because I was doing a communication course, visual communication design, and so I made them do a resume that actually looked nice. And I said, if you turn it in with a typo or a grammar error, you lose a grade instantly. I don’t care if it’s one letter, because this is your professional world. You can’t look at it? And I won’t hire people here at my I get a typo in their piece, I’m not going to hire them, because
Sharon (31:56)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jason Niedle (32:07)
we do calendars that are 100,000 units, so if you got the date wrong, what happens? You know?
Sharon (32:11)
Well, and there’s just no excuse
anymore, right? There’s just no excuse. I’m not saying use GPT to write your resume, but have GPT read it and tell you if there’s a typo, right? Like it’s, mean, we used to all send our resume, like I have three sisters and two brothers. And so before I’d send a resume out, I’d send it to my siblings and be like, can you please read this and tell me, did I miss anything? Is anything misspelled, right? You’re my proofreaders. We just don’t need that anymore.
Jason Niedle (32:20)
and proof it.
So I want to let you go because I know we’re getting long on your episode here and I thank you so much for being here. We’ve talked about some really good growth topics. We’ve talked about being in alignment. We’ve talked about understanding your ICP.
We’ve talked about our history, but what What do you really wish other leaders knew, CMOs knew, like about how to grow sales?
Sharon (32:48)
We really hurt all the people.
Communicate and by communicate I mean be really in spite of how I’ve communicated on this podcast be very concise in understanding the value of your product of your organization of your people, get very tight on that and do also the other side of it is do a lot of listening. You’ll inevitably be like your prospect or your audience, they will tell you what they want
if you’re listening close enough.
Jason Niedle (33:21)
I think that’s a huge key because communication requires both, but I think in society today, communicate often means speak or write. Like communication often means push, but communication is really, has to be both.
Sharon (33:31)
Mm-hmm.
bi-directional.
Yeah, yeah.
Jason Niedle (33:35)
Yeah, 100%. Did I forget any topics today? Is there anything else you wanted to add before we jump off?
Sharon (33:40)
No,
this was wonderful and such a great conversation. I appreciate you giving me the opportunity
Jason Niedle (33:45)
I love it, it was super interesting for me. Where can our audience find you?
Sharon (33:48)
So you can find me on LinkedIn, but also I would encourage you to check out the Gravyty website, g-r-a-v-y-t-y.com.
Jason Niedle (33:57)
G-R-A-V-Y-T-Y.com, Gravyty. Sharon, thank you so much for being on Beyond SaaS. For tech leadership out there, we’re committed to exploring tech And you can find me, Jason Niedle, at tethos.com, T-E-T-H-O-S.com. And of course, don’t forget your lead magnet, your useful lead magnet, at tethos.com/podcast. If you got some value today, please share the episode with a friend. I love questions from you or for future guests. And until next time.
Sharon (34:00)
with you.
Jason Niedle (34:22)
This is Beyond SaaS.
