EPISODE SUMMARY
In a recent episode of Scale Your SaaS, host and B2B SaaS Sales Coach Matt Wolach sits down with Andy Culligan, a seasoned marketer with a rich background in SaaS, who shared his journey from CMO of Leadfeeder to becoming a fractional CMO, a role that has been gaining significant traction in recent years.
Andy’s story is not just about his career evolution, but also about the larger shift in how companies are approaching marketing leadership. Read more to learn how the best marketing process can change your business.
PODCAST-AT-A-GLANCE
Podcast: Scale Your SaaS with Matt Wolach
Episode: Episode No. 329, “The Best Marketing Process – with Andy Culligan”
Guest: Andy Culligan, Founder of andyculligan.com
Host: Matt Wolach, a top B2B SaaS Sales Coach, Entrepreneur, and Investor
Sponsored by: Leadfeeder
TOP TIPS FROM THIS EPISODE
Common Pitfalls in SaaS Marketing
When it comes to scaling SaaS companies, Andy emphasized the importance of having a solid marketing plan—a surprisingly rare element in many organizations. Often, companies lack a cohesive strategy, leading to disjointed efforts that fail to move the needle. This problem is exacerbated when the CEO or founder is too involved in marketing decisions without a clear plan, resulting in a reactive rather than proactive approach.
A marketing plan aligned with the software company’s revenue targets is crucial. Without it, marketing teams can become directionless, focusing on tasks that don’t contribute to the company’s growth. Andy’s experience has shown that a well-structured plan, combined with clear communication and alignment with sales, is essential for success.
The Art of Sales and Marketing Alignment
One of the recurring themes in Andy’s discussion was the importance of sales and marketing alignment—a topic that many in the SaaS world grapple with. The key, according to Andy, is communication. Marketing teams must take the initiative to bridge the gap with sales, ensuring that both teams are working towards the same goals.
Andy highlighted the importance of regular communication between sales and marketing leaders. Without it, misunderstandings can arise, leading to misaligned efforts and wasted resources. By fostering a culture of collaboration and ensuring that marketing efforts are directly supporting sales objectives, companies can achieve better results.
Scaling a SaaS Business Successfully: The Key Strategies
So, what’s the secret to scaling a SaaS business? According to Andy, it starts with having a plan. But beyond that, it’s about bringing in the right talent—people who are not just strategic thinkers but are also willing to roll up their sleeves and get the work done.
Andy cautioned against hiring seasoned marketing leaders who might not be willing to engage in the hands-on work required at the scale-up stage. Instead, companies should look for leaders who have a mix of strategic vision and operational experience, ensuring that they can drive both high-level strategy and day-to-day execution.
In conclusion, the rise of fractional CMOs reflects a broader trend in the business world towards more flexible, cost-effective leadership models. For SaaS companies, in particular, this approach offers a way to scale effectively without the risks associated with hiring full-time executives too early. By focusing on clear planning, sales and marketing alignment, and the right mix of strategic and operational leadership, companies can set themselves up for success in the fast-paced world of SaaS.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
A Serendipitous Start to a New Career Path
Andy’s transition into the world of fractional marketing wasn’t planned. After years of driving exponential growth at Leadfeeder, the intensity of the role, compounded by the pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic, led him to step away. What followed was a series of opportunities that introduced him to the concept of a fractional CMO—a term he hadn’t even heard of before.
This accidental career shift opened new doors. Andy began working with various businesses, not just as a consultant but by placing entire marketing teams within organizations. His work evolved from being a solo fractional CMO to leading efforts to scale this model by creating a new business focused on placing teams of marketers, rather than just himself, at companies.
The Value of Fractional Leadership
Fractional executives, especially CMOs, offer a unique value proposition for companies, particularly those in the SaaS space. Andy explained that fractional CMOs are particularly beneficial for companies at a certain stage—typically when they’ve hit around $10 million in annual recurring revenue and are debating whether to bring in a full-time CMO.
For these companies, a fractional CMO offers a risk-free way to test the waters. They can implement a marketing plan, ensure the team is executing effectively, and determine if the company is ready for a full-time CMO. Moreover, if the company isn’t ready, the fractional CMO can often help source the right person when the time comes, all while saving significant costs compared to hiring a full-time executive prematurely.
TOP QUOTES
Andy Culligan
[03:22] “Fractional executives are becoming more popular in the SaaS space because they offer high-level experience without the long-term commitment of a full-time hire.”
[08:15] “SaaS marketing is uniquely exciting because it’s all about scalability and leveraging data to drive growth.”
[08:45] “Sales and marketing alignment is crucial. When these teams work together, they create a powerful engine for growth.”
Matt Wolach
[13:31] “If you’re looking to scale your marketing efforts, it’s essential to focus on building a repeatable and scalable process.”
[18:30] “Having a clear marketing plan isn’t just about setting goals; it’s about knowing what success looks like and having the right metrics in place to measure it.”
LEARN MORE
To learn more about Andy Culligan, visit: https://andyculligan.com/
You can also find Andy Culligan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-culligan/
For more about how Matt Wolach helps software companies achieve maximum growth, visit https://mattwolach.com.
Head over to leadfeeder.com and sign up for a 14-day (no strings attached) free trial: https://www.leadfeeder.com/
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Check out the whole episode transcript here:
Matt Wolach
Hello and welcome to Scale Your SaaS. Thank you very much for joining us here. By the way, if this is your first time to the show, we do a lot of good stuff here. We’re here to help you generate a whole bunch of great leads. We want to make sure that you know how to close those leads quickly and efficiently, and that you can scale a team so you can get your SaaS to the spot it needs to get. If you want to do any of those things, hit the subscribe button right now, that way you will get notifications of when we release new episodes. In each new episode, I bring in a special guest who’s some sort of expert who knows exactly how to do one of those things I told you, and one of those experts that’s here with me today is Andy Culligan. Andy, how you doing today?
Andy Culligan 00:37
I’m doing great, Matt, how are you
Matt Wolach 00:39
I’m doing really, really well, and except for roasting, like we talked about before, how it’s mid summer and we’re we’re burning up here, but hopefully we’ll be able to stay cool. Let me tell everybody who you are. Andy. So Andy. He is the founder at Andyculligan.com he is a marketing expert. He’s a leader specializing in revenue growth and scaling SaaS businesses. He’s got close to a decade of experience in both marketing and sales. He also excels as a fractional CMO, a CRO and a marketing advisor. What he does is he focuses on personalized marketing strategies that create meaningful touch points, ultimately boosting revenue for his clients. Andyculligan.com that’s where he helps fast growing SaaS startups achieve commercial success through strategic alignment. I’m super excited to have him here so he can share his knowledge with us. Andy, thanks for coming on the show.
Andy Culligan 01:31
Sure thing. Looking forward to it.
Matt Wolach 01:33
Likewise. So tell me, what have you been doing lately and what’s coming up for you?
Andy Culligan 01:37
Oh, the phone never stops. You know, there’s been quite a bit going on. Actually. It’s, it’s funny, like, as I started the business sort of by accident a number of years ago, I’ve been running it now for three years, and I left a full time CMO position at a company called Leadfeeder. People may or may not be familiar with volume SaaS product, and I was a CMO there for a number of years. And I actually got really tired, and I was on the brink of burnout. I was like, if I keep going at this pace, it’s going to kill me. So I just, I just stepped away. It was right. It was during covid. We see an exponential growth during covid with very little resource. And it was a time when it was like, Okay, we need to be careful with spend but at the same time, we’re going rapidly. So it was just craziness, and covid just generally with young family and everything at home, and how that was with lockdowns and all that jazz. At the end of that, I was just fried, you know? So it wasn’t just work, it was just everything, right? So I stepped away from the business, and people just started reaching out, being like, Hey, can you help and or would you like a full time position? And I was like, I definitely don’t want a full time position now, but I can help. And then it just sort of kept going from there, and I was introduced on a board meeting a couple of months later as like, Hey, this is our fractional cmo Andy. And I’d never even heard of the term fractional CMO, right? So. And from there, we just, I started working with numerous businesses and and even in the in the past year and a half or so, started placing not just myself, but also teams at organizations, and now, actually, we’re looking to scale that. Now you might know yourself, Matt, when you’re running a services business like what I have, it’s different to a SaaS business. Well, I I work with SaaS businesses, but ultimately I offer service, so it’s very hard to scale, right? And that’s been something that’s been like banging around in my head for since I actually started the business properly, right? And, like, how do I, how do I get this to scale properly? And we have a project that’s going to be launched in September, which is focused on scaling this, and it’s going to be a new entity, a new business that I’m doing with a number of guys that I’ve been that I’ve been working very closely with for almost the past 10 years at different SaaS organizations. And it be focused on placing teams rather than just me. So it’s not just focused on Andy, but focused on all of the different elements within the marketing mix. And we’ve done that already at a couple of clients under my brand. And we said to get this rolling a bit further, we take other marketers under under the wing as well, and get them working with brands as well. There’s so many fractional marketers out there at the minute that that, yeah, like, we need to get that, get that, like, somewhat organized, and make sure that they’re, they’re placed in in places, and I’ve been relatively successful with that, doing it myself. So I see that as the way, the next way of scaling, and that’s what’s going on the minute, as well as serving clients, right? So I have a number of businesses that I’m working with. So I’m currently working for four SaaS businesses, and in some shape or form, whether it’s fractional CMO or marketing advisor or working in a chief revenue officer, type of role or revenue operations is another, another role that I do, or managing SDRs is, as I said at the beginning, the fun never really stops, but that’s sort of what’s going on at the minute, and that’s what’s coming up.
Matt Wolach 04:45
Wow, you definitely have a lot of irons in the fire, that’s for sure. And I I love that you’re kind of bouncing around taking care of lots of different things. Shows that you’re very capable. I want to talk to you because you mentioned fractional and fractional executives have really been gaining traction in Most recent years. And can you talk to us and kind of explain to the audience what that means for a fractional executive, if you’re looking at, you know, bringing somebody on the team, when is it the right time to bring in a fractional piece versus maybe a full time person, and how can a company leverage that fractional use?
Andy Culligan 05:17
Sure so let’s start with maybe like the roles that are typically fractional nowadays as well. I think originally you would have seen quite a lot of fractional CFOs. I think that was like the first one that came in was this sort of Chief Financial Officer role. And then I think following that was marketing. And then following that now we’re starting to see like product roles as well, which is interesting, and I can really only speak in my realm, which is in the marketing side of things, like, when is the right time to bring, to bring in a fractional leader? It’s probably, there’s a couple of different there’s a couple of different times for it. So let’s say, for example, you’ve got a team existing already, and you’re thinking, hey, I need to bring in somebody that, or I’m at the stage now where I’m probably somewhere in the region of about 10 million in revenue, so 10 million annual recurring revenue, I probably need to bring in a CMO, but I’m not entirely certain about it. So you get a lot of CEOs founders that are like, Okay, is it really time for a CMO? Do I just need somebody that’s going to be able to crack the team into shape and make sure that we have a proper marketing plan that’s being executed, etc. And in that case, that a fractional CMO is perfect, because it’s risk free for you. So you can come in and say, Okay, I need a CMO, or I need to test the CMO and see if this is the right fit for my business at this particular moment in time. And it’s, you know, the great thing with with fractional leadership is that you can really get rid of them overnight, like it’s I’m not. I shouldn’t be promoting that. But that’s actually one of the, one of the one of the selling factors where say, hey, look, it’s not I can start in the morning. And you can decide after a week you say, hey, no, you know this is not working, or which has never happened, but, but it’s also after you can decide whether or not you’re ready for a CMO, because I’ve been in businesses before that really just need somebody that’s going to be able to crack a whip for a while and make sure that the team are know what they’re doing, right? So CEO doesn’t need to worry about it, right? And and with with a fractional CMO, you can decide on that, and then when the time comes to bring in a full time CMO, even that fractional cmo might be able to help you source that person right, and they typically know what to look for. And generally, that’s going to be a much better cost exercise than going and hiring the wrong fit or hiring somebody too soon that’s not going to want to roll up the sleeves and get stuff done or whatever. And then ultimately, you’re 12 months into a bad decision, you’re going to have to part ways. That’s going to be expensive, because you’re probably going to have to pay out something, but you’ve also probably sourced that cmo from a recruiter. Recruiters don’t come cheap. So let’s say you’re paying a recruiter 20% of an annual salary. Let’s assume their annual salary is 150 to 200k minimum, right? You know, let’s say 200k depending on where you’re based. So you’re talking about 40-50k investment, just to get that person on board, and then you do all the onboard and get them ingrained, the team and so on. And in a year down the road, you decide it’s not the right fit, or it’s not the right time.
Matt Wolach 08:10
It’s a lot. Yeah, it’s rough if it doesn’t work out.
Andy Culligan 08:14
exactly so and and the same time, the fractional cmo does come in at a fraction of the cost of what a full time CMO is as well. That’s also important to note. So, yeah
Matt Wolach 08:25
Yeah, that’s a lot of good reasons I want to talk about you personally, because you clearly have a passion for this. What do you love about marketing in the SaaS world?
Andy Culligan 08:35
So a bit of my background, right? I think is, is important. And I come from. When I was growing up, I did all types of jobs. I loved being busy. I loved doing stuff. I loved always having something on. If there was even in school, if there was if we were offered 10 different courses, I choose nine of them because it was possible, right? So I’d always be doing stuff, right and and it’s the same. The same came into the business world. So when I started in business, I was in I started as a seller. I studied marketing. So I studied marketing, I got a got my degree in marketing, then went into sales. And then after a number of years, when I moved here, because I live in Austria. I’m Irish. I grew up in Ireland, grew up in Dublin, moved to Austria back in 2009 when, just as I moved here. I decided, hey, I wanted to go back into marketing, and going into marketing. Then I went to a multinational and it was a super slow moving company, and I was there for almost five years, or four years, and it drove me absolutely insane. It was like in that time, though, I learned a lot, like I managed to I managed to be to get to grips with marketing automation, I became, like the global champion from Marketo, so that actually make me quite attractive when it came to hiring with other companies in Vienna. So I found a job in SaaS, right? But enough volume SaaS, but, but high ticket SaaS, so I worked for a company called emarsys, which was then later acquired by SAP a number of years ago, and marketing automation for retailers, and I came on board there, and it was like, moving from, like, I don’t know what’s the best way going from a merry go round to a roller coaster? It’s probably the best way to describe this situation, you know. And I loved it. It was like, it was insane, the change in pace, right? And the pace just never died. It was just always, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go. Like, you’re constantly looking like, Okay, what’s the sales cycle and how can we get stuff instead of hitting that sales cycle next? And I just love that speed and pace, and, you know, just the craziness of it, to be honest, which, and I sort of fell in love with that. And since, since coming on to emarsys 10 years ago Now it’s, it’s like, it’s just this, this pace at which I’ve been able to progress my career, and the learning and everything during that time has just been immense. Like, when I first came on with emarsys, they got like, 60 million in funding, right? And I, I was working with marketing budgets big, like, I was working on a multinational, but I didn’t have 60 million to go burn, burn, but, you know, but, but it was that’s, that’s the thing that I love about SaaS in that you can learn so much in such a short space of time, that opens up so many opportunities for you and your career. And it’s just continues that way. And the pace is just exciting, right? There’s so many possibilities
Matt Wolach 11:19
Totally agree. I love it for all those reasons as well. You’re right. The pace is great, and you just continue to do, to do, and build, build, build, and it’s just so so cool. What I want to ask you is, there’s a lot of people out there, and you start talking to them, you start working with them, and who are trying to build their companies, and it’s just not working. So when it comes to a marketing perspective, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you’re seeing software leaders making that’s really hampering their growth
Andy Culligan 11:45
So it depends on stage as well. But one of the things that I see a huge amount of times, especially if they don’t have that cmo position, is that they don’t necessarily have a plan. And this also comes into it comes into play as well with a with a founder led, or a founder and CEO, if the CEO is the founder, typically, they’re the ones that have the final say on everything, and the founders then running the marketing team, or telling the marketing team what to do, and they’re just wagging their tails and saying, yeah, no problem. Let me do that. And they’re they’re just being busybodies, and they’re not really achieving anything, right? And I see that so many organizations where I go in and say, Okay, do you have something written down as a marketing plan, like something that has a goal or a target that’s somewhat connected up to revenue targets of the organization or supporting the sales target. It doesn’t necessarily mean that every marketing team needs to have a revenue target, but at least the activities that they’re doing that are supporting the sales team in order to hit that revenue target, or supporting the business in order to hit that revenue target. And a lot of times that’s just not there. It’s like, Hey, do this. Hey, we need t shirts. We need we need the boot design for the next event. We need this, we need that. And it’s just random stuff being thrown over the wall at the marketing team, and they’re just like, Okay, fine, I’ll do this, and I’ll do that, and it’s not aligned. There’s no consistency to it. It’s just messy and there’s no priority setting, and it that is bound to fail, right? And that’s when it comes to the marketing team, or when it comes to getting some like finding growth through your marketing efforts. It is so important to have that plan in place. And I know that sounds simple, and it says an easy concept, I’ll have a plan. And then, if you like the old saying, fail to plan, plan to fail, right? True, really, without having a plan down a paper and everybody knows their roles and responsibilities and what they’re working towards and what their targets are based on individual teams within the marketing work, then it’s never going to work, and you’re just wasting money on having that, that resource there, it’s never, ever going to be efficient for you. And that’s probably the number one mistake I see when it comes to marketing, when it’s outsourced, lack of a plan.
Matt Wolach 13:51
Yeah, I see that a lot, and I’m so glad that you say that, because everybody who’s listening, who’s been here for a while, knows that I preach process on the sales side, and you’ve got to have a process, you have to have a plan. You have to have it all organized so that everybody’s on the same page and preaching the same stuff. It’s the same thing in marketing, and if you don’t have it there, it’s also going to fail and die. And I love that you’re saying this. It’s just music to my ears. So what can you say, Andy. What are some of the best strategies that companies can put in place to help them scale, to help them become that, that dream organization that they’re hoping for?
Andy Culligan 14:25
Create a plan, haha. It’s one of the things. But it’s also important that if you bring so you need to bring in somebody that knows what they’re doing first of all, to run the marketing efforts. Marketing is not it’s not something that everybody can do, although everybody thinks it is something that they can do. So everybody sees the end result and goes, Hey, I’d be able to create that. But hey, a lot of people would see a Picasso and say, Hey, I’d be able to create that, but you’d probably be able to stencil it or copy it, right? But to actually get to that end result is very, is very tricky, right? Have that original thinking to get there, and the original creativity to get there and to follow the process in order to get there is very tricky, right? So I think you need to bring on somebody that that has been around the block a little bit, but not somebody like and again, this goes on the stage as well. If you’re, if you’re mid stage scaling, if you’re, if you’re a scale up organization, you don’t want to be bringing in a seasoned marketing leader that’s not going to want to roll up their sleeves and get stuff done. And get stuff done. That’s always an issue that I see, and I’ve seen this across the board, but many, many companies that I’ve worked with, and also companies that CEOs or friends and so on, they put CMOS in front of me, and I said, and they say, Hey, this guy’s a great fit. He’s been with this company that’s seen an exit, that company that’s seen an exit, this company that’s at 150 that’s at 150 million ARR, and blah, blah, blah, like, well, that’s great, but you’re currently at 15 million ARR. I mean, are they willing to work with your team of five marketers in order to make sure that shit is getting done, as well as having this very, very high level strategy? And that’s always an issue, because, oh, they will, they will. But so many times I see they say I hired them, and then 12 months later, sorry, they weren’t willing to role up the sleeves, and they weren’t sitting down with the team and holding their hand and bringing them to the next level so on. But the strategy to go back, to go back to what you were saying, I think it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s connecting, first of all, the marketing plan up to whatever the strategic goals of the organization are. So going back to your not seasoned marketing leader, but a marketing leader has some experience to be able to have a seat at the head table so understand what’s happening and which way the vision of the company is going, and what other organizations within that organization or other teams within that organization are working towards, so to have a solid KPI framework, so for example, an OKR framework, which many people will be familiar with, objectives and key results, right? And then everybody bases their objectives and key results off the top level company objectives and key results. And if you’re able to roll that out as a CEO, and then make sure that your your marketing team then are enabled, or your marketing leaders and enabled to deliver on those objectives and key results. That’s also important, right? That the CEO doesn’t come in and start kicking over doors again and being like, hey, no, I want to do this at the marketing team Need to work on the T shirts for the business run instead of doing something that’s going to drive leads, right? That’s that’s important so that buy in factor from from head leadership into marketing is very important, and to give somebody the power and trust that person to allow them to go run that team effectively, along with the plan that they’re going to create in order to hit the company goals right. And then, when it comes to a couple of other things, it’s really important that the sales and marketing teams are aligned. And people always say, this is gonna be your next question. How do you get sales and marketing teams aligned? Well, I use an analogy, right? I or not even analogy. It’s, it’s happened to me a number of times when I go into an organization, I’ll sit down with the head of marketing, or whoever it is, if I’m coaching, somebody say, Okay, how often are you meeting with your counterpart in sales. So if you’re the head of marketing, who’s the head of sales? This person’s the head of sales. Okay, great. How often are you meeting with them? Well, every couple of months, whatever you know. Okay, you’re not even talking. So let’s start with talking, and then we’ll take it. We’ll take it from there, right? So, so even in a lot of cases, you find that the marketing and sales teams aren’t even talking, and once you start talking with sales, then you’ll start to find, oh, you know what? They’re not just saying that my leads are shitty, or, excuse me, excuse my French, the leads are bad, right? They’re not just saying the leads are bad. They might be but there’s actually other reasoning behind us, and maybe they’re not seeing the full picture. Maybe they don’t understand exactly what’s happened with that lead. They don’t know where that leads come from. And sometimes, sales is like, I’m not following up on one of them marketing leadsds. It’s a waste of my time. And so if you sit down when I’m with a salesperson, say, okay, marketing, have just paid $500 for that lead. Oh, I didn’t realize that. Okay, I should probably do something with it, right? And it’s those interactions that happen between individuals and the sales and marketing team that lead to alignment, but you have to push it. And in my experience, it has to be pushed from the marketing side, because sellers are busy selling and closing. That’s always my like, it’s never and I never blame a seller for it not working. I’d always blame marketing, and that’s a very controversial take for marketers. People don’t like to hear that,
Matt Wolach 19:23
I don’t hear a lot of marketers say it that way, but I like it.
Andy Culligan 19:26
It is that way. It is that way. It’s 100% because, as I said, sellers are focused on closing. It’s the nature of the beast, right? That’s what they do, right? So any time that you can get out of their day in order to take them away from the deals that they’re trying to open and trying to close and hit their number is time that you should be seeing as gold, and you’re able to get alignment between you and whoever’s on their counterpart role in the sales work. And that’s probably the most important.
Matt Wolach 19:55
I totally agree, and I love you’re speaking about that alignment, because that is what I was going to ask you. I think that it’s critical for marketing and sales to be absolutely aligned, and it’s just one of those natural kind of places where people can butt heads. I worked in restaurants for a long time growing up, and, you know, cooks and servers naturally butt heads. They have almost different objectives, and the servers want the food quickly. The cooks think the servers are bugging them too much, and it’s just frustrating. Same thing in marketing and sales. There’s that that headbutting, but you’re right, the ideal situation is for your sellers just to be closing, closing, closing, and marketers just keep feeding them opportunities, opportunity, opportunity. If we can set that up, I think that’s the dream. That’s what everybody’s looking for. And you know, this has been amazing, but we’re coming to time, so if that’s what they’re looking for. What advice would you give to software leaders who are like, yes, I want that, but how am I going to make that happen? What would you share with them Andy?
Andy Culligan 20:49
so go to your sales team, or go to your head of sales, and say, Okay, let’s work on a list of accounts together. Let’s work on our TAM together, our total addressable market, and figure out, okay, like a really great exercise. I did, it I’ve done a number of times, is is building out that time alongside the sales leaders, sitting down and and really mapping that out properly by tiers, and saying, okay, within our tier one accounts, let’s define what a tier one account is. Between us, a tier one account is, for example, anything that’s going to drive over this amount of revenue for so tier two is anything over this amount, and between that and the top amount, and tier three is the lower, the lowest tier, right? And I would say that, okay, out of these three tiers, we know that in our core market, so let’s say, for example, our core markets are the UK, and the US, I can say in the US, we have tier ones, we have 50 accounts. Tier twos, we have 100 and in Tier threes, we have 300 out of those 50 that we said they’re in tier one in the US. How many of those are realistically we’re going to be able to get into sales cycles with this year? And then let’s go hammer the hell out of them together. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to give you and your team air support so that when you guys are doing outreach into those accounts, they’re going to be warm. So what am I going to do? I’m going to do I’m going to do ads against those accounts across numerous platforms. I’m going to do direct mailers across those accounts. I’m going to create dinners. I’m going to do special events that are just for those guys. And we start to create this, like little mini account plan, same as what a seller would do if they’re going after they’re not just going to go and say, today, I’m going to go out and call up 50 accounts. Right? That’s never going to work. They have a plan in terms of which accounts they want to go target, and those accounts then are warmed up through cadences that they’re gone and focusing on those accounts with. I’ll then help on the marketing side to make sure that when you’re picking up the phone or when you’re sending an email, they’re not like, Hey, this is Andy calling from Andyculligan.com and they say, Who from where? They’re like, who? Oh, yeah, I know Andyculligan.com surrounding, you know? Yep. And then again, we’ll do tailored stuff towards those tier one accounts. We’ll spend extra money, which will be very personalized towards those accounts, as I mentioned, things like direct mailers, right? This is something that worked really well. People say direct mail works. Direct Mail works so well if you do it right, if you personalize the heck out of a direct mailer, people are gonna people are gonna have fun with it. That’s the most important thing. You have to have fun with it. If you send somebody something fun that you spent like $100 on, it’s gonna be recognized, right, for sure. So example, I’ve got example of that, by the way. So when I worked at a company exponia. A number of years ago, we wanted to target tier one retailers in the UK, and we were, we were in that space, a minnow, in comparison to Adobe and Oracle and Salesforce, but we did a takedown campaign on Adobe Oracle and Salesforce whereby we created Jenga. We bought, like every Jenga set in the UK we bought. You’re familiar with Jenga, the game, right? Yeah, Hasbro, the company that we’re selling Jenga. We’re like, What the hell are you guys doing? We’re like, don’t worry about it. Then what we did was we got a sleeve created, which we then pushed over, we placed them over every single Jenga set and on. The messaging was, was that very simple. It was like, and are your, is your data built to last, or is your is your data stack going to fall? And the messaging then that we also placed into that was larger required clouds are more likely to have dodgy data because they’re stitched together using various different tools. And it was a play against those larger required cloud platforms, and we sent them out alongside a handwritten note from sales, from sales to those key accounts that the sellers were then trying to chase. And with that, we actually closed one of the biggest retailers in the UK. And that’s how, that’s how little things like that got us very close with the sales team. Because they were like, This is awesome, you know, like people are putting stuff up on LinkedIn, photos of them playing Jenga in their office and tagging us and saying, Thanks for sending us a Jenga set right. And it’s just like a nice in right, direct mail. So great things like that, little things that you’re going to do to with the seller say, Hey, I’m going to send this into your account. It’s going to help warm it up for you. That’s how you that’s how you create that alignment. That’s how you how you create that account plan.
Matt Wolach 25:00
So cool. I love it. And they’re just thinking outside the box and doing something different that other people, other companies are not doing, is so critical. So that is absolute gold there, Andy, and I really appreciate you sharing it with us. We have run out of time. I want to make sure people know how to get in touch with you. What’s the best way to learn more about you?
Andy Culligan 25:19
People can find me on LinkedIn. I’m very active on LinkedIn, so you’ll just find me on Andy Culligan, and come to the website. Andyculligan.com Watch this space. As I mentioned earlier on, we have a we have a new project, which is going to be launched in September. Alongside that, I’m also launching a new podcast with that to help promote the new project. We’ve got really interesting people on so all of the sales and marketing influence you can think of, plus a very interesting guest as well. I’ve got an astronaut coming on. I’ve got a an adventurer that road across the Atlantic from New York to Galway and Ireland. He’s coming on. So definitely, yeah, bit of an interesting mix. But it’s a it’s, I think people are going to like it. So yeah, that’s coming up. So watch, watch out for that
Matt Wolach 25:57
very cool that sounds like a lot of fun, and we’ll put that into the show notes. They know where to connect with you, but Andy, this is awesome. Thanks so much for coming on and sharing all your knowledge.
Andy Culligan 26:05
No problem. Thanks for having me, Matt.
Matt Wolach 26:07
You’re welcome everybody out there. Thank you also for being here. Make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss any other gold nuggets like Andy just shared, and that way you’ll be able to take that and implement it and start leveling up your company. So thank you for being here, and we’ll See you next time. Take care.
