How to spend $1.5m on marketing to triple ARR with Manny Ataebi, Cybersecurity CMO

[00:00:00] Hey, it's Andrew. Just quickly before we start this episode, I want to tell you about one of my

[00:00:04] favorite podcasts, the Breaking Through in Cybersecurity Marketing podcast. Now, I don't

[00:00:10] need to explain what it's all about because the name of it is so good, but here's why I like it.

[00:00:14] Firstly, the hosts not only know what they're talking about because they've been in the

[00:00:18] cybersecurity marketing role for so long, but also Jen and Maria make it fun. They have

[00:00:24] personalities that come out of the podcast and it draws you in. And secondly, they get great

[00:00:29] guests and together they make super useful episodes. My recent favorites were the one with Ross

[00:00:35] Halley Luke, who is a marketer but also just published the book Cyber for Builders all about

[00:00:40] how to start a cybersecurity company or the one with Joe Evangelisto, the CISO at NetSpy

[00:00:46] or even the one all about telling stories in cybersecurity with Mitch Main. I could go on

[00:00:52] with quite a few more. And by the way, I'm not getting paid for this. I just really enjoy

[00:00:56] Jen and Maria's show. Check it out. It's the Breaking Through in Cybersecurity Marketing podcast.

[00:01:02] Now on with this episode. As the funding environment is getting going again,

[00:01:07] I thought it'd be interesting to tackle the question of how to allocate marketing funds

[00:01:12] after a raise. Manya Tebi has been a marketing leader in tech for over a decade. He's been

[00:01:18] through raises and exits. And in this episode, he takes our series A raise with Cyber Donut

[00:01:24] and talks about how to think about allocations and why, types of programs to run,

[00:01:29] and how to unite sales and marketing under common metrics. Don't miss this one.

[00:01:43] Welcome to the Cybersecurity Go To Market podcast where we tackle the question,

[00:01:48] how can cybersecurity companies grow sales faster? I am your host, Andrew Monahan. Our

[00:01:54] guest today is Manya Tebi, a seasoned marketing leader at multiple startups,

[00:01:59] including a couple in cyber. Manny, welcome to the podcast.

[00:02:03] Thanks, Andrew. Happy to be here.

[00:02:04] Manny, I'm looking forward to our conversation today. We used to work together a few,

[00:02:09] couple years ago at one company. I was involved and you were leading marketing there. So we

[00:02:14] got a good rapport and we kind of know how each other thinks a little bit, which is good.

[00:02:19] But we're tackling the question today for our fictitious company, Cyber Donut.

[00:02:24] We're imagining that they've taken $20 million in a large series A round and you and I are going

[00:02:31] to be discussing what the heck are we going to do with that money? Whatever portion of that

[00:02:35] money goes to marketing, what money are you going to spend and how? So I'm really looking

[00:02:39] forward to how we go about doing that. All right. Before we get to the business end,

[00:02:43] got a treat coming up at the end of the episode when Manny tells us about

[00:02:47] his first job as a kid where he's basically doing Uber-like scheduling in his brain.

[00:02:53] And he's also going to tell us about the time when he broke his leg and decided just to tape

[00:02:56] it up as opposed to go to the ER. So watch out for that coming later on.

[00:03:00] All right. Let's talk about the business side though, Manny. So we've got Cyber Donut.

[00:03:04] They're doing really well. They got a sales leader, a marketing leader. They got some

[00:03:07] sellers. They got 20 real live paying customers and they're just about to take the

[00:03:13] series A for about $20 million. So progress is going well for Cyber Donut.

[00:03:19] The big question though is what they're going to do to spend the money, specifically

[00:03:22] in marketing. So let me ask you maybe an unfair question, but I realize that some of these

[00:03:27] questions are going to be, it depends. But if they're going to take 20 million,

[00:03:31] how much would you expect to get as part of your marketing budget?

[00:03:35] I'll specifically not say it depends because you said the answer would be it depends, but

[00:03:40] some of it has to do with what's been working, what we've run so far,

[00:03:45] how much of the business has come from marketing and or sales or is still founder

[00:03:49] led. If they're getting a series A, I'm probably going to assume it's about 50-50.

[00:03:54] Some of their founder led sales are still going there. I think you told me there's three sellers.

[00:03:59] Yeah, they got three sellers plus a leader plus an SE.

[00:04:02] At that point, I'm going to assume probably one, maybe one and a half of them are hitting 100%

[00:04:07] quarter. That's kind of the way it typically looks out there. They brought in their SE.

[00:04:12] This is obviously going to be a technical sale if they have that

[00:04:16] and they have a sales leader. If I had to ballpark it, it could probably fall anywhere between

[00:04:23] 600K to a million and a half somewhere in that ballpark depending on where they need to be.

[00:04:28] For the first year or for the whole?

[00:04:29] For the first year.

[00:04:31] I don't obviously know the answer to this, but I'm going to guess just based on the way

[00:04:35] where the economy is right now, if they're raising a $20 million series A, I'm going

[00:04:39] to assume they got a few million on a seed round before that or a couple million on that.

[00:04:43] If they're hiring at three reps, if they're at three reps, I have to assume they're hovering in the

[00:04:48] three, four million dollar range of revenue because some came from the founder. This is,

[00:04:54] again, assuming all three reps are just crushing it and it might be even a little bit less.

[00:04:59] In my mind, they're probably in the two to five range or trying to get to that either to

[00:05:03] five million or to seven million. They need to find another few million of revenue.

[00:05:07] In that way, in that case, I'm trying to do the math backwards. I think you probably need

[00:05:13] somewhere along those lines of in that spend to be able to market effectively. That would mean

[00:05:20] SDR as well as well as inbound programs. How would I spend it? First, there would be SDR.

[00:05:26] If you have three sellers, probably want to have one, maybe two SDRs, but you definitely

[00:05:31] want to have one working. I think you said it was me and another marketer. I think that

[00:05:36] is okay for now, depending on what that skill set or that marketer is. If they're a content person

[00:05:41] or a campaign manager, I probably want to get one or the other, but I think you're okay with what

[00:05:45] you have. I would really be focused on what are the things that we can run to affect the pipeline

[00:05:51] in the next quarter or two? To me, I'm assuming this is a cyber podcast. I'm going to assume

[00:05:57] it's a cyber company, Cyber Donut, I think it was the name. I'd be looking at doing custom

[00:06:02] events to try to bring the ICP prospects into a room and to try to engage them.

[00:06:07] I would be looking at activation events at a conference. You're not at the point where I

[00:06:13] want to go spend a ton of money at a conference unless there's a strategic reason to do so,

[00:06:17] but doesn't mean that you can't get a couple of tickets and try to set up a dinner or

[00:06:22] something along with other vendors, that sort of stuff. Then we probably already started

[00:06:28] this already, but I would start to be thinking about content and how to tell our story better,

[00:06:34] investing a little bit on our messaging. There's never been a company at 2 million,

[00:06:38] 5 million, 10 million, zero, 15 million that doesn't have an issue with their messaging.

[00:06:42] So it's why we know each other. That's one of the things I would also be investing

[00:06:48] on those things. But they got this far though, right? Some of their messaging must

[00:06:53] be pretty good if they've got 20 real live paying customers. Could be founder selling,

[00:06:57] a founder can get on there and promise anything, an AE cannot do that. So this founder may have been

[00:07:03] successful before and been able to bring that over. This founder may have a VC that throws them

[00:07:08] business. It's just not scalable. You get your series A to start to get on the path to

[00:07:13] scalable. That's what we're looking for. Have you seen founders be a little bit optimistic

[00:07:18] and have roasted into glasses on about their success so far? And then this team,

[00:07:23] I imagine they're going to double or triple the number of reps, right? You take that

[00:07:26] money, you're trying to get some scale by buying some headcount as well.

[00:07:31] That must be a point of conflict though where, hey, it worked for me. Why isn't it working

[00:07:35] for these guys? Well, that comes down to what we call product market fit.

[00:07:40] I have many a conversation with founders where they're like, we have product market

[00:07:43] fit because we have 10 customers. And I asked them straight out, how many of your sellers

[00:07:47] brought in and moved these along? And they're like, none. And I'm like, well,

[00:07:51] you don't have product market fit. Product market fit is when there's a repeatable process

[00:07:54] where more than one person that is not the founder is able to do that. And obviously we

[00:07:59] got to talk about retention and bring them back. But that is the rose tinted glasses

[00:08:05] that you tend to talk about. I do see that conversation quite a bit, or they have one

[00:08:10] seller that is working with the founder to be able to move some deals across. You can get

[00:08:14] to 20 assuming that your product is something that people would want. If it's not, then you

[00:08:19] have a whole different problem to deal with. But what you're trying to do with the AEs to get to

[00:08:24] that repeatable process. So they're coming in through outbound, through inbound, through partner,

[00:08:29] what we would call any all bound or any bound. And now a rep can take that working with an

[00:08:34] SC and can close those deals on its own or on their own. That's what we're trying to

[00:08:38] get to. And my guess is you might have a couple of those 20, but there's no way that

[00:08:43] the bulk is that way. That just math doesn't make sense. So if you have three AEs,

[00:08:48] my guess is you're probably to your point trying to double that because you need to get to four or

[00:08:52] five that are doing what I just said. Would you want to delay though, the hiring of the AEs

[00:08:57] to get some more repeatable pipeline coming in? Or would you say, no, you kind of got to do it

[00:09:01] in tandem? It depends on how good the AEs are that are there and what they're doing right

[00:09:07] today. You might have those facts for me in this thing, but if I would say if you have

[00:09:13] one AE that's at 60% quota and the other two, I've just been hired in the next two

[00:09:17] months, you probably don't want to go hire another three. Let's get those three productive.

[00:09:21] If those three that you told me are all at 80% quota and they've all been there a year,

[00:09:26] different story. I think you have enough of your sales motion from top of the funnel to

[00:09:31] the end working enough that yeah, let's go concentrate on building enough pipeline.

[00:09:35] What you don't want to do is go burn all through this cash to get a bunch of pipeline

[00:09:40] in when that middle isn't working because then you're just throwing money away at that

[00:09:44] point. You're going to get a bunch of opportunities with companies based on all

[00:09:48] of the efforts you're getting to get them to the top and your motion in the middle is not working,

[00:09:52] your velocity drops and everything drops off. That's when you get like,

[00:09:55] damn we have a lot of first meetings but we don't have many POCs going here. Or the POCs

[00:10:00] we have, they're not good ones and none of them are closing. You want to get out of

[00:10:03] that situation. I would say it would depend on where you are with those things. But

[00:10:07] my guess in the fictional company you just said, if they have three and they just raise

[00:10:13] the series A, I got to think that at the point maybe they can hire one or two more. There has

[00:10:17] to be some momentum. I have to believe that they're not, they wouldn't be able to get their A

[00:10:21] if they didn't have any momentum. This is not two years ago. I was going to say like five

[00:10:27] years ago, whatever we'd, the bottom up planning would be let's hire some reps to

[00:10:30] get capacity first and then figure out how we keep them busy. Yes, this is definitely

[00:10:34] not three years ago. That was a very different piece we live in.

[00:10:37] Manny, let's learn a bit more about you. I've got my 35 questions here and I'm going to use my very

[00:10:47] sophisticated next gen AI driven spin the wheel device here. It is fully audited,

[00:10:56] uses polymorphic encryption to protect the IP about how it does it. And it's going to

[00:11:00] generate three completely random questions. So I'm going to spin this wheel and let's see

[00:11:05] what comes of it. All right, number 29, Manny, how did you first make money as a kid?

[00:11:16] Okay. Yeah, we're going to go on the way back here. So this is going to kind of be something

[00:11:21] you probably haven't heard before. So my very first real job, I believe I was, I want to say

[00:11:27] 14 years old. I was working keeping the books for a car service business. So in today's

[00:11:35] world, obviously you have your Uber, you have your Lyft. Back in the old days,

[00:11:40] yet obviously only two choices of how to take a car to work. You get into Yellow Cap,

[00:11:45] which is obviously you stand on the street, wave them down or your company has an engagement

[00:11:50] with an existing car service organization. Now that could be a stretch limo, that could be

[00:11:54] regular black car. Those still do exist today, but Uber and Lyft kind of own that. So

[00:11:59] back in the day, this was even before it was computerized. My job was to price out,

[00:12:06] based off of a price sheet, what the end-all cost was. So that could be, for example,

[00:12:13] you pick someone in Midtown East Manhattan, you make one stop somewhere up North and then you

[00:12:20] drop them off at JFK airport. Sometimes there's multiple stops in between that. Sometimes there's

[00:12:25] wait time. Sometimes there's phone calls. This was pre-cell phone days, so they had a mobile

[00:12:31] phone sitting in the car. My job was to calculate the vouchers for the drivers. Obviously today

[00:12:36] it's all computerized. So the interesting thing about that is I had to memorize basically

[00:12:42] a huge call list of prices. So back in the day, I could tell you that Midtown East of New

[00:12:49] York City to Trenton, New Jersey was $84. And I still remember that to this day.

[00:12:56] And Midtown East to JFK airport was $33. Midtown West to JFK airport was $38. The reason for that

[00:13:05] being you have to cross the east side of Manhattan to get to JFK. So I had to have all of those

[00:13:10] things memorized, getting hundreds, hundreds of these for different drivers. It was an insane,

[00:13:16] fortunately for me, I was good at math, but you had to do it in quick time. You could barely

[00:13:20] make any mistakes. There was no computer to back you up. And ironic part was it taught

[00:13:24] you to be very careful. And what I mean by that is in today's world, you make a mistake,

[00:13:28] maybe you'll get a red X on the computer and say error, all that stuff. In that world,

[00:13:32] I make a mistake. A week later, I have an angry driver coming in screaming his head off.

[00:13:37] But they trusted this to a 14 or 15 year old?

[00:13:40] Yeah. I had a strong math background and I just kind of had to prove it out. So they

[00:13:46] let me do a couple of test runs and I nailed them perfectly. So I knew the guy

[00:13:51] that ran the business. It was like, I want to say a family friend, but like a work family friend.

[00:13:57] And honestly, he didn't want to pay for someone full time to come in. So he was doing it himself.

[00:14:02] So for me to come at first, I was helping and then I kind of took it over, which is funny

[00:14:07] because toward the end of that job, we started to computerize it eventually and getting

[00:14:12] that set up over time, obviously made the job redundant. I didn't need to do that. I more

[00:14:16] had to just click through. And then I kind of shifted into booking and calling and trying

[00:14:21] to find new customers, which kind of was like my early SDR work of doing that. But it taught me

[00:14:27] early on, unlike most people, I wasn't running in a store and trying to do that kind of work.

[00:14:32] I had something that I really, really could not mess up. This is people's lives and goods.

[00:14:36] You had the formation of Uber left in your brain for a little bit. That's fascinating. I

[00:14:44] love the fact that you had a family member who is a family friend who is cheap enough to want

[00:14:48] to employ a 14, 15 year old and then figure out actually this works pretty well.

[00:14:52] Well, I mean, if the alternative is he wasn't trusting anybody else. So he was either going

[00:14:56] to do it himself or he's going to just look over what I'm doing and then just let me do

[00:15:00] it. Over time, you build up that trust. It's kind of like any job, right? But I basically

[00:15:04] took 20 hours off his plate so he could go do other things. And for me, it was just good.

[00:15:10] It was good. It threw me into the fire very quickly. And the stress of that job just taught

[00:15:17] me that like, hey, in pressure time and crunch time, you just got to be on the ball. You can't

[00:15:22] just get overwhelmed because that's the kind of thing you make one mistake. Then you start to

[00:15:26] make 10 mistakes. It's not going to end up pretty. And it's not one of these things like

[00:15:31] in today's world where you're going to have a talkie to at the boss. I can't even explain

[00:15:35] to you what it feels like to hear an angry driver wanting to just like run over and jump

[00:15:39] at you. That's kind of what it was like. I can only imagine. All right, let's spin the wheel

[00:15:43] for question number two. All right. Number six. What is the most embarrassing or memorable moment

[00:15:55] or funny moment in your work life that you're able to share with us on public airwaves today?

[00:16:02] Embarrassing or memorable. So that's going to take like five things off the table right

[00:16:06] away because I can't share them. I got something. This is a little bit ago. This would

[00:16:12] be around 2011 time frame. It's an interesting story because it paints me in a very interesting

[00:16:20] light in that you're going to hear this and think like, wow, you are a trooper. And then

[00:16:25] you're going to also look at it and be like, wow, what's wrong with you? And that's how

[00:16:28] you're going to end up thinking about it. So I worked at this big company in Midtown Manhattan

[00:16:34] back in the days when everybody went into the office. So we would take lunch,

[00:16:38] lunches and all that sort of stuff. Basically not the way that the real world works today

[00:16:42] in terms of hybrid and remote. And I remember going with a coworker to lunch. We were just

[00:16:48] walking down, I believe it was Lexington Avenue. And oddly enough on that day, I guess there was

[00:16:54] construction going on and they were drilling holes into the sidewalk. And for some reason

[00:17:01] I didn't see that we had walked into that area. There were signs. I just did not happen

[00:17:05] to see it. This is probably where they're like, what were you thinking? I was probably

[00:17:08] thinking about what we were talking about. And there was a hole in there and I fell into it

[00:17:12] and rolled my ankle and it popped. I heard the noise and so did my friend. And so did the

[00:17:18] people behind. Like I could tell I've had sprained ankles. This was a fracture or a break.

[00:17:23] I could hear that. So when the initial kind of pain wore off and the shock of this,

[00:17:28] so I picked myself up, I pulled myself over. I'm sitting on the sidewalk and my friend's

[00:17:33] freaking out. He's like, I just heard that. Let's go to the ER. And I remember that I had

[00:17:38] a presentation due that day. So this is, so what I ended up doing is I'm, he kind of helped

[00:17:43] like I lived on him with him sort of carrying me walked over to like a Duane Weed pharmacy.

[00:17:48] I went and I got medicine tape and I taped up my ankle. And this is where it's like,

[00:17:51] wow, warrior. And what's wrong with you is kind of where it comes in. He was looking

[00:17:55] at me like I was nuts. Like I had a second head growing out of my shoulder. This is

[00:17:59] kind of like when you grow up as an athlete, you kind of tape it up, you get through the

[00:18:02] game and then you figure out what's wrong later. I kind of had that mentality. I didn't want

[00:18:05] to miss this presentation. It was important. So I taped up my ankle. I limped my way back

[00:18:10] in. I got a bunch of Tylenol. I made my way through the presentation, excruciating pain.

[00:18:15] I went home. I went immediately to the ER, got x-rayed, was fractured, ended up being in a

[00:18:21] cast for a long time. So I always remember that story not only for that part of it,

[00:18:27] but here's where it gets kind of funny. As a team, we usually did monthly, sometimes quarterly

[00:18:32] like team awards, you know, person that brought in the most business, you know, the person that

[00:18:38] you could go to for help the most often. And they usually either got like a gift card,

[00:18:42] a monetary prize or some kind of trophy. In that case, apparently the person I was with

[00:18:47] went and told everybody this story. And I got surprised at this meeting. The award was

[00:18:52] called the craziest MF'er on the team. And they gave me a pair of boxing gloves,

[00:18:57] these red boxing gloves. And I kept them for like 10 years. It's just a funny reminder.

[00:19:03] And it just became an ongoing joke within the company and with this person that I

[00:19:08] continue to work with. If he's watching, he knows what I'm talking about.

[00:19:12] Anytime I run into a crazy or a tough situation, he brings me back to that story.

[00:19:17] That's what I would say. That was the most memorable and also embarrassing and I would say

[00:19:22] somewhat stupid memory of my workplace. I love it. All right. Let's spin the wheel

[00:19:26] for the last one. All right. Number 14. What is the story behind you getting your first job in

[00:19:39] tech? Not including your 14 year old in the brain.

[00:19:44] It's kind of tech, right? With the computer at the end there. Yeah, it's actually oddly

[00:19:50] enough segueing. It is the same company I just described. As I finished that role,

[00:19:55] I ended up getting my first head of marketing job in technology. The company I was talking

[00:20:00] about the one where I broke the ankle. There was tech, but it wasn't a full on

[00:20:05] heading up marketing. But the job after that, I got into what we call IT tech.

[00:20:10] And the story behind that, and it's kind of funny because that's followed me around.

[00:20:14] I end up taking head of marketing roles in IT tech, dev tech, whatever you want to call it,

[00:20:20] cybersecurity, compliance, tech, privacy tech. A little not well known fact is

[00:20:26] prior to being a marketer, I spent six years as a developer. I started on the front end.

[00:20:32] I taught myself how to code. I started building websites. I taught myself back in.

[00:20:37] I started doing PHP. I started learning a little bit. I started learning JavaScript.

[00:20:42] I started learning Java. I was even going into cold fusion and JSP, which is Java server,

[00:20:47] very not so great technologies. Let me tell you. And I appreciated figuring this stuff out

[00:20:53] on my own. And where that's translated into the tech jobs of marketing is I just,

[00:20:59] I don't want to say it's easier, but I have a pull into those businesses that tend to be over

[00:21:04] a little bit more technical because as a marketer, besides building pipeline and growing brand,

[00:21:10] the number one thing that I'm supposed to do is take something that is very

[00:21:14] hard to understand or very technical, very feature focused and put it into a story

[00:21:18] and a narrative that the buyer is going to understand. And having that background

[00:21:23] and coming from that background of understanding the mindset of a developer, an engineer,

[00:21:28] it has helped me in areas where it typically wouldn't. So the first time that I got into

[00:21:33] cyber, I had not been into cyber before. First time I went into development tech,

[00:21:37] I had not known anything. And 30 days later, I'm basically describing how a public cloud is

[00:21:43] built in terms of like VMs and the hypervisor and all that sort of stuff. I just picked up on

[00:21:47] it, having that background. So that's kind of how it all ties together.

[00:21:53] Now you mentioned the first two things you said you would do were all around events. You said,

[00:21:58] I think customized events and then activation events. Why events? Why is that where you

[00:22:03] would go first? Because it's the quickest return that you can get. So if our ICP is to find

[00:22:11] people on a threat team or are the people who run the cloud team or whatever it is,

[00:22:16] it's a lot easier for me to get them where they are right now than to try to throw out a bunch

[00:22:22] of content that it may take them several months. You want to do both, but I'm not going to see a

[00:22:26] return on that right away. And what you don't want, in this cyber world, this isn't the

[00:22:32] type of space where I can go pay a bunch of Google ads and they will come in tomorrow.

[00:22:35] It just doesn't seem to work that way. The things that are in terms of bringing them to

[00:22:40] you inbound takes several months to start to work. In this scenario, we just raise money.

[00:22:44] We may or may not be wanting to increase capacity of rep count. I want to get some at bats in front

[00:22:49] of these guys so we can see what's working and what's not working. Because in this world,

[00:22:56] I'm probably changing messaging. I'm working on messaging. Without it,

[00:23:00] bats, how do we know if it's even working? Right. You don't have any evidence except for

[00:23:05] just a new gut feel at that point, I guess. Yeah. And you want to exclude all the stuff

[00:23:09] that came from the founder because you know what, if they came from a relationship with

[00:23:12] the founder or the VC, it's not your normal situation. Your messaging can stink and they

[00:23:17] may still close. Right. You get through power of will, relationships, trust, things like that.

[00:23:22] You've got to think about the short term and long term. If you're looking at, again,

[00:23:27] spending your budget you get from this, how would you allocate between, I don't know,

[00:23:31] short term, long term and then any experiments or things you want to go try and see if

[00:23:35] things actually work? I mean, it depends when you get into the company, but rule of thumb is

[00:23:40] 60-20-20. 60% of your budget needs to be about what's going to happen in this quarter and next

[00:23:46] quarter. So a lot of the stuff I just mentioned, that's SDR type stuff, that's going to affect

[00:23:53] the pipeline as of today. 20% should be what I call brand long term thinking. The reason

[00:23:57] for that being at a certain point, you don't want to continue to be grinding to get your

[00:24:02] pipeline number every single month. It's fine for the first six months to the first year.

[00:24:06] Year and a half from now, that's going to be very expensive. Your cap will be through the

[00:24:10] moon. In the beginning, I always say it's not about optimizing. It's about just get them in.

[00:24:15] And then it's about optimizing. So you need to have your brand have some input on how that

[00:24:20] works. That could be things like, I'm not saying go out and get a billboard on the highway.

[00:24:25] That's not what I'm talking about, Brent. I'm talking about content that spreads through

[00:24:29] word of mouth. That's using LinkedIn the right way. That's things like videos, that

[00:24:34] things like Gartner Cool Vendor. Things that is going to help you in the sales process,

[00:24:40] things like that. And then the other 20% is what you call experimentation. That could be

[00:24:44] campaigns and that could be tech. Hey, let's try intent. Let's see if that works for the

[00:24:50] solution that we have for this market. Let's try comedic videos. Let's see if we can get

[00:24:56] one to take off. Let's try, let's create a game on the site. I'll give you a great

[00:25:02] example. I forget the name of the company did this video. It's one of those password

[00:25:07] ones where they created a, it was Dashlane. They created a YouTube video series where

[00:25:13] it was called like Password something. And it was funny. It was basically you're on a boat

[00:25:18] and there's a person like you're going into this thing that they don't say is heaven,

[00:25:22] but it's like an opening in the sky. And this guy's like dressed like the Grim Reaper.

[00:25:25] He's got a hood on. Anyway, you're getting closer to the thing and he's asking you

[00:25:29] questions like, do you want to get in here? And the guy's like, yes. And he's like, all right,

[00:25:34] what was the name of your dog? What was the first street you lived on? And he didn't remember any

[00:25:38] of them and he couldn't get in. And they're like, we make password projections so you

[00:25:42] don't have to go through that. It's such a funny, like that's the kind of thing you're

[00:25:45] going to share with your friends because this is hilarious, right? That's the kind of stuff

[00:25:49] you want to play around with. Now that can't be your overall campaign strategy because

[00:25:52] that's brand play. That's like, oh yeah, those guys had that funny video. Let me check them

[00:25:57] out. That's the kind of stuff you want to play around with if you can. Now I preface that,

[00:26:03] that if you go into a later stage company, you're probably going to be spending more on brand.

[00:26:07] If I'm at 50 million AR, I better be doing a lot more on brand because

[00:26:10] you're not grinding your way to the next 50.

[00:26:12] Sgt. Mike Allen It's funny you mentioned that I interviewed

[00:26:15] David Klein, who's the CMO at Kentik, a network visibility company. And we had this

[00:26:21] conversation about something that he'd done. He said the same idea as experimentation,

[00:26:25] but this is when you have time and a little bit of extra money lying around, not your core thing.

[00:26:31] They created one video which was an advert for Kentik in the style of a perfume advert.

[00:26:38] And it was all about the sweet smell of network visibility.

[00:26:42] And it's funny if you look at their YouTube channel, I think their how-to videos were

[00:26:46] getting a few hundred views and their perfume had about 35,000 views or something like that.

[00:26:52] Sgt. Mike Allen And he said, him and one of his guys did it in an afternoon

[00:26:57] with their iPhone cameras or whatever. And it was very simple how they went about doing it.

[00:27:02] Sgt. Mike Allen And you said that extra time and extra budget. The reason why I think about

[00:27:09] that in cyber is you go to RSA, every single booth has the same messaging no matter what they do.

[00:27:15] And you need to stand out in other ways. I can't tell you my product is better than

[00:27:20] that product because we have this one feature that's 20% better than this one feature within

[00:27:25] the other nine. That's just not going to work. So if there are ways that I can make us stand out,

[00:27:30] now sometimes it's the person that's running the company. You can build around the presence

[00:27:33] of that founder CEO. Sometimes you can. Sometimes you have thought leaders within

[00:27:38] the company. Absolutely, you want to use those. Sometimes you have to get creative like this.

[00:27:43] One of the most creative kind of campaigns I ever seen, not even in cyber was it

[00:27:48] basically was a company called Vidyard that does videos for prospecting. And the campaign was they

[00:27:54] had a bunch of the people sit there and read the most god awful cold emails and be like,

[00:28:00] is this what you're doing? And you're expecting this to work? And the whole concept was it was

[00:28:04] humorous. Now you've got to, it's very tricky to use humor because there's a very fine line

[00:28:11] between funny and unfunny. But this really tied into their message because that is the

[00:28:14] world they were selling against. It's like, do you want to send one of these emails or

[00:28:19] one of 500 emails? Or do you want to send a video which is personalized? And I could be like,

[00:28:23] hey Andrew, here's why I'm reaching out to you in 30 seconds. And that was kind of the,

[00:28:29] that was the hook. And it was good because it got word of mouth. That company grew based

[00:28:34] off of word of mouth of all that stuff. So in cyber, it's even more necessary because

[00:28:38] everybody is either giving you visibility into something or stopping something. And it's like,

[00:28:44] okay, we need to find other things that we can try. And that's why I call it experimentation.

[00:28:48] That can't be your whole strategy. You still got to grind your way to the other 60%

[00:28:52] and build a pipeline. And you also be okay with a bit of polarization, right? If you want to

[00:28:57] be in the middle for everyone, you're going to be boring. If you want to be a little more

[00:29:01] bold, some people won't like what you do and you have to be okay with that. And some people

[00:29:04] are going to love it, which is the payoff that you want to get. Yeah. And the thing with

[00:29:08] cyber, and I think we all know this word of mouth is key. Most CISOs or other people will buy what

[00:29:15] their friends buy. You're not, and this isn't like Martech where I can get into those spaces.

[00:29:20] I'm, you and I are probably not going to join the secret CISO Slack groups, but they will share

[00:29:27] and they're also not going to share your press release. They're not going to share your

[00:29:31] product specific one pager, but they will share something they thought was interesting

[00:29:36] because it's, and if that's enough to get another set of eyeballs to the brand,

[00:29:40] then you did your job. And it's even better if it ties to your message, obviously. Otherwise

[00:29:44] we'd all just do silly videos that have no point. I like that idea though, Manik, because

[00:29:49] these secret Slack channels and secret societies of CISOs that all talk incredibly hard to get

[00:29:57] into. You can't get into, you can't buy your way into them. You can't barge your way in.

[00:30:01] But if you think about your content like that, at least they might say, I saw this today,

[00:30:05] I thought it was kind of funny or stupid or whatever it might be. At least you're getting

[00:30:09] into them somehow, right? Yeah. I mean, it's about that. It's also,

[00:30:13] you know, when they engage with it on social, I want the ideal. The idea of doing this is

[00:30:19] when your reps or STRs engage. I prefer if that's not the first time they heard the

[00:30:25] name of your company. And obviously if you're an established brand, if I'm calling it on

[00:30:29] Palo Alto or I'm CrowdStrike at this point, their brand is probably well-known. It's very

[00:30:34] rare at this point that you're not going to know that, but most companies are not there.

[00:30:38] It's not an easy thing to pull off because you have, you know, it's basically showing a

[00:30:43] personality within your company, but that's experimentation. You're going to do five of

[00:30:47] these things. Four of them are not going to be great. And it's the one that works that

[00:30:50] you're going to want to do another one. That's why I always leave a little room

[00:30:53] that you want to try that. Now, every company doesn't do that. It seems like it's

[00:30:57] an easy thing to do, but it's not. You know, I can name off top of my head,

[00:31:01] five amazing cyber campaigns that I've seen. There's probably 5,000 that I wouldn't even know

[00:31:07] of because I never got to see them. You brought up STRs. Should STRs report into marketing or

[00:31:11] sales? That's behind them. I'll tell you it depends. I believe it should be a marketing

[00:31:17] function if marketing's function is to build pipeline. If the head of marketing is a brand

[00:31:23] focused marketer, then absolutely not because they won't understand. I mean, I think I was

[00:31:27] telling you like it's whatever bound, right? To me, if you own pipeline inbound, outbound,

[00:31:34] partner, all of that sort of stuff, I as a marketing leader want to be on the hook

[00:31:38] for those things. It's kind of hard to only have one of them or only two of them.

[00:31:42] Sales has enough of a job about also marking those relationships, moving stuff through the

[00:31:48] pipeline, managing all that stuff and closing. Obviously, cyber is not a one-stop shop of a

[00:31:55] sale. It's going to take multiple touches with many stakeholders. There's enough to do there.

[00:31:59] But if my skill set was the videos that I talked about and I believe that that's how you build

[00:32:05] pipeline, I wouldn't even know how to do a comp plan much less to be able to handle that.

[00:32:09] When you work with campaigns, when you work with demand gen and work with messaging,

[00:32:15] and when you are a technical marketer and you probably control the stack,

[00:32:18] those are the four tools the STR need anyway. So it's good to have it all under one.

[00:32:22] How do you get your STR trained up? I'll ask the question like this as well. The downside that

[00:32:28] I've seen in that situation is the STR becomes someone who just parrots the marketing message

[00:32:35] as opposed to how sales will interact and engage with someone. So they become a bit more

[00:32:41] of a, I saw this on the brochure, I saw on the website, I'm going to say this thing and

[00:32:45] not realize, well, that's not actually how you might do it if you're actually talking

[00:32:48] to someone live one-to-one, which is what sales does.

[00:32:53] It shouldn't be that way because if you're marketing, you shouldn't just build a message

[00:32:57] on its own and be like, here, have fun with it. They should be working in tandem with

[00:33:01] the sales leader, listening to customer calls, listening to Gong or whatever they have,

[00:33:06] and crafting the messaging that way. I think you know this in our time together,

[00:33:13] when you work on your messaging, you start with the sales messaging before you even look

[00:33:16] at the website. That's the key. So if you work on the sales messaging with the sales team

[00:33:22] and or with or without someone like yourself, then that message should be in tandem. Then

[00:33:28] you give it to your STRs to test out, you give it to the A's to test out on the market.

[00:33:32] That's how, it's not like, hey, say what's on the website. You're doing something terribly

[00:33:37] wrong if that's how you're doing it. What's on the website should reflect what's been

[00:33:41] working in the sales and STR messaging if you're doing it the right way. I usually do

[00:33:46] that and if it's working, then I'll put on the website. A lot of times what's on the website

[00:33:49] and what's in the discovery deck are not going to even be close to each other because I'm testing

[00:33:53] this out before I start putting it all over the place. Because what if we put the messaging

[00:33:58] together, we get on the calls and the prospect is like, I don't have any idea what you're

[00:34:01] talking about or they're just like, yep, uh-huh, uh-huh, and they're just nodding along.

[00:34:05] Well, clearly we're not reaching them. Clearly we sound like everyone else. Oh yeah,

[00:34:10] I've heard this five times already today. You know, when you hear that sort of stuff

[00:34:13] or even worse when you hear nothing and you go into one of these recording softwares and

[00:34:17] you see the talk time is like 80% rep to 15% prospect. Yeah, I wouldn't even go anywhere

[00:34:23] near the websites. That's how you don't do that. Other way around.

[00:34:26] Got it. All right. We've seen a much better world let's say in the last couple of years

[00:34:31] than 10 years ago where there was a lot of conflict between sales and marketing, right?

[00:34:34] There was arguing about credit and all this sort of stuff. It seems like it's got a lot

[00:34:38] better. So in, for Cyber Donut with their 20 million, what sort of metrics should the sales

[00:34:44] and marketing team rally around? See these important things that we should be really

[00:34:48] tracking for. It's interesting because there's a couple

[00:34:50] ways to look at it. One, and not a lot of companies do this, but in terms of let's say

[00:34:55] board when you're at the board, I actually would prefer if marketing and sales had one

[00:35:00] presentation rather than two separate money companies still will do them separate,

[00:35:04] but you have to work with that person to make sure it's telling the same story.

[00:35:08] Metrics like leads doesn't matter. That's an internal marketing metric.

[00:35:12] Start it at discovery meetings and pipeline. If you start there, it's like, okay,

[00:35:17] this is how many disco meetings we set this month. This was the target because we set

[00:35:22] this target together because this is what we thought we needed based on the conversion

[00:35:26] metrics of what we have started discovery, then the different stages across.

[00:35:30] And then it's kind of like where if there are different presentations, then the sales

[00:35:35] leader is usually going to start with here's what we closed. They always do.

[00:35:38] And here's what our pipeline, which is usually very in the middle. Those numbers

[00:35:42] should match and that story needs to match. And if it doesn't, you're going to have

[00:35:47] issues in the old days. You talked about what would happen is the marketing be like,

[00:35:51] Oh, I ran a bunch of webinars and I got thousands of leads. And then sales

[00:35:55] would present and be like, I don't really have any pipeline. You just can't do that.

[00:35:59] Internally, you want to measure the leads number between a marketing team because

[00:36:02] you want to figure out how many of those it takes. And that's only one metric of inbound.

[00:36:08] There's also outbound and all the other stuff. How many of those you need to get to that

[00:36:12] pipeline number? And the pipeline number is kind of the end all be all metric.

[00:36:16] And by pipeline means you've got the right person at the right company.

[00:36:19] And you're doing a deep dive demo. They have multiple people on the call.

[00:36:23] There is a use case there. Not like I just got on a first call.

[00:36:27] Sure. So qualified pipe, right? There's a problem we're solving and they agree and

[00:36:31] we agree to go solve it. So if we all agree on what that

[00:36:34] qualified pipeline should look like, then we both should be working off of that.

[00:36:37] My job as a marketing team is to get enough of those in there. Sales' job is to make sure

[00:36:43] to do what they need to following up and all of that, you know, and closing them, right?

[00:36:48] Obviously, we help the messaging and all that stuff helps throughout. Goal is to get them

[00:36:52] into let's say, in many cases, a POC. Then the product's got to do what it needs to do.

[00:36:55] Right. But by doing that, then you kind of you don't get as much of the leaky bucket.

[00:37:00] If you're getting a lot of people into POC and people are not converting, then it's one of two

[00:37:05] things. Either your product is just not showing any value or your qualification of what you

[00:37:09] allow into a POC is off. First one, very hard to fix.

[00:37:13] You're going to have to go back to the drawing board. Second one is fixable.

[00:37:15] You could put, you know, you could put a medic criteria in there and figure out,

[00:37:20] you know, if they don't check these five boxes, no POC or whatever that number is.

[00:37:25] In the old world, and even as what I described, if you have an agreed criteria,

[00:37:29] it doesn't even need to be an SLA. If the metric of reason is pipeline,

[00:37:34] you don't really need the SLA that you did in the old days. Like, do you get these leads?

[00:37:39] They need to be followed up by this much. Yeah, it's nice to have that, but it's not

[00:37:42] as critical because you're managing that internally now. And the goal is like,

[00:37:47] we've seen we need this many first meetings that are of this quality. Get that number.

[00:37:51] We should be able to do the rest. Miss that number, we won't do the rest.

[00:37:55] Over hit that number, we should be doing better. That helps the conversation along.

[00:38:00] Got it. Well, let's look at Cyber Donut has done very well. Your first investments in

[00:38:05] your 60% and your 20% are starting to pay off. One of the experiments is paying off.

[00:38:10] How would you expand the team? You've got yourself plus a generalist, let's say.

[00:38:15] What sort of heads would you be looking to add as you're getting success?

[00:38:20] Obviously, I want to keep the one to two ratio of SDR. So if the A team grows to 10,

[00:38:25] that one SDR is probably not going to work. You want to grow that to five.

[00:38:28] And you want to do it in a way. And at that point, you probably want to bring a leader

[00:38:31] in there because after about five SDRs, it becomes a little bit too much. So that's on

[00:38:36] that side of the house. Depending on what the generalist does, you would start to specialize

[00:38:41] the function. Because if you're now going, if you're at 10 AEs, you're probably hovering

[00:38:47] the 10 million. You're beyond the traction or you're either at product market fit or you're

[00:38:53] very close to it. That's when you want to start going a little bit away from generalists and

[00:38:59] breaking marketing down into like the four functional areas, which is demand generation,

[00:39:05] which is brand and buzz about the company, which is product marketing.

[00:39:11] Obviously, SDR is its own thing. And you would be doing it around those four.

[00:39:15] As you even get larger than that, then you're going to break out brand into just pure brand

[00:39:21] and stuff and break out ARPR. Because at that point when you're like, that's when you really

[00:39:26] got to start to work the PR. You don't need it early on, but you're going to really have

[00:39:29] to work the gardeners and the foresters and all that sort of stuff. And probably

[00:39:32] that's where you take it another level. You want to build a demand gen team. So it's like

[00:39:36] somebody to do revenue operations, to start to optimize all the processes and the systems

[00:39:42] and the metric reporting. So you're not kind of doing it all on your own. You want to have

[00:39:46] people run campaigns. You obviously want content, depending on how technical it is. You might want

[00:39:50] to have two people doing content. You're going to start to break that up over time.

[00:39:54] So initially I would just start to look, you don't need the heads at that point because

[00:39:58] you're only up to 10, but you're going to start to hire with those buckets in mind.

[00:40:02] Got it. Well, listen, Manny, this has been a fun conversation. I appreciate you

[00:40:06] engaging with us and giving your help to Cyber Donut who are desperate to succeed. They

[00:40:11] feel like they're on a good track and now we've got a plan to go forward with our marketing group.

[00:40:15] Let's rocket ship it.

[00:40:16] Let's do it. Was it rocket ships and rock stars? That's what we're into.

[00:40:20] There you go.

[00:40:22] If someone wants to get in touch with you, what's the best way to do that?

[00:40:25] LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the best way. Just look me up and I'm more than willing to

[00:40:29] connect with anybody.

[00:40:30] And how do you spell your last name so that everyone gets that right?

[00:40:33] It's A-T-A-E-B-I.

[00:40:35] Okay. Well, Manny, listen, it was a lot of fun and I wish you all the best.

[00:40:38] Thank you, man. Have a good one.

[00:40:52] It will mean a lot to me and to the continued growth of the show if you'd help get the word at.

[00:40:58] So how do you do that easily? There are two ways. Firstly, just simply send a link to a friend,

[00:41:04] send a link to the show, to this episode. You can email it, text it, slack it,

[00:41:09] whatever works for you and is easy for you. The second way is to leave a super quick rating.

[00:41:15] And sometimes that can seem complicated. So I've made it as easy for you as I can.

[00:41:19] You simply have to go to rate this podcast.com slash cyber. That's rate this podcast.com

[00:41:27] slash cyber and explains exactly how to do it. Either of these ways will take you less than

[00:41:33] 30 seconds to do, and it will mean the world to me. So thank you.