ABB: Monique Elliott

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Monique Elliott of ABB joins us to discuss the hurdles of transforming marketing departments within industrial B2B organizations.

 

 

Danny:

All right so let’s go ahead and jump into today’s episode. Monique, thank you so much for joining us here. For those who don’t know who you are, could you please introduce yourself to the IndustrialSage audience?

Monique:

Absolutely. Thank you for having me. My name is Monique Elliott and I am the Global Head of Customer Experience for ABB’s electrification products business.

Danny:

Excellent, so tell me a little bit about what’s a day in your shoes like? What do you actually do?

Monique:

I will tell you a day in my shoes these days is very different than it was say a couple years ago. So I am in the midst of helping the organization really transform and revamp the marketing function. So, a year ago my role would have been the Global Head of Marketing, or the Chief Marketing Officer, and today we’re really transforming and evolving that function into customer experience. So I spend a lot of my time educating and trying to understand the different parts of marketing that the company’s doing today, and how we can make that more contemporary for a very industrial market.

Danny:

That’s great. So I love, and like with every guest that we have and we have a kind of off-camera banter and whatnot, but one thing that kind of just came, I’m going to ask you a question off-script.

Monique:

Yeah.

Danny:

So to speak. There’s nothing off-script here but, I’m fascinated by the customer experience function and the fact that you said that maybe a year ago it was Chief Marketing Officer. Tell me why your organization has decided that hey we need to be focusing on this a little bit more.

Monique:

So I think it’s really twofold. First of all, not having a strong focus on the customer, I think was doing the function a bit of a disservice, and so language matters, and in this case marketing in very traditional industries or very industrial industries tends to mean something that was a little bit more old-school around the development of brochures, and maybe we made marketing collateral or we went to trade shows, so constantly or consistently calling what this function wants to be marketing I think was doing it a bit of a disservice. So the first reason for changing it was if you change the language then you can start to change the way people think about it. The second reason was the insourcing of talent, and so marketing in education and in a lot of the universities was starting to change, the curriculum was changing, and so that’s also a way to in-source new talent is to start talking about the function a little bit differently.

Danny:

Absolutely. Now that totally makes a lot of sense. We’ve undoubtedly seen a dramatic change, not just in industrial markets but just across the board relative to technology and marketing. What would you say just in terms of the need for that change now, just as it relates to just that whole cultural change that we’re seeing?

Monique:

Yeah, well I think a couple things are happening. There’s a generational shift that’s beginning to happen in a lot of the more industrial markets, like the one that I’m in, the electrification products business, and so as you start to see buyers’ behaviors change, there needs to be an evolution of the function as well, and that’s what we’re starting to see. Now granted, I would say that this industry is maybe 15 to 20 years behind where our friends in the retail space is, so when I talk to my friends in retail, they’re like yeah, we were talking about that 18 years ago. That’s okay, it’s a bit of a latent shift, but it’s happening now, and so as our distributors or as our customers are buying differently and their behaviors are changing, the manufacturers have to do the same, and so really I think it’s all happening because finally the generation of the workforce in this industry is catching up to where the retail space is and it’s forcing the manufacturers to change as well.

Danny:

What is the biggest change that you’re seeing? You said you’re seeing that in the workforce, like what’s really the biggest change for you, concretely?

Monique:

Yeah, I think a lot of it has to do with the search of the product, so whereas before you very much had a sales force that would go out, and we do a lot of our business through distribution, and so it was very much, and it still is, a relationship-driven industry, but a lot of the search now around hey I want to buy this product, what are some other manufacturers, is all being done online, and that is probably the number one change that we’re starting to see. So the purchase may still happen offline, and the relationship still needs to be there, but it’s the searching of the product is changing to how you and I would search in our personal life, and that’s causing the marketing functions to think a lot differently about how they engage customers at the beginning of that buyer journey.

Danny:

When did your organization start making that change? Was it something that was just within the last year or two, or was it, you started seeing this a couple years ago, what did that look like?

Monique:

That’s a really good question. So prior to being with ABB I was with General Electric for 15 years, and I would say we started to see the change in that organization about four years ago, maybe four or five years ago. We decided to stand up a customer experience team that was all focused on digital. So it was focused on the digital marketing piece, and that was the start of it, that was how it started and now as I’m transitioning over into ABB, we’re starting to now make that transition as well so I would argue in this industry, probably within the last five years.

Danny:

Okay. So when you said you guys started to transition to digital what did that look like initially? Was it, I mean, like specifically what was that?

Monique:

Sure, so initially it was exactly as you would think it would be. Let’s do some email campaigns. Digital marketing meant let’s do some email campaigns, and then you start getting into well maybe we should have our own kind of like digital content that’s available gated on our website and you start to get a little bit more sophisticated. Where we’re at now is really partnering with other types of industry thought leadership or kind of like think tanks around having our own cul-de-sac of digital content, where customers and partners can come in, they can consume your digital content, and you, in return, then kind of exchange, more of an exchange of leads. So that’s one area where it’s starting to advance. The other area of where, again, for us in our personal life we would think we’ve been doing this for a really long time is just around the SEO, and the search engine optimization and all that fun stuff that you get when you go browse on Amazon and what have you. But I would say it started as you would expect, email campaigns, and now we’re starting to get into more personalization.

Danny:

Yeah that’s great. Personalization is such a big thing, and we’re going to see that just continue to grow, just across the board, even back to product development, but certainly, obviously in your marketing. I love the analogy of the digital cul-de-sac, is that what you called it?

Monique:

Yes, yes.

Danny:

I love it. So we’re basically having a block part out with everybody with like-minded people, like come on over kind of thing, basically.

Monique:

We’re having a lot of fun with that, ’cause a lot of our other partners in this space so magazines, for example, they’re realizing not a lot of people are actually picking up a magazine anymore, so as they start to transition their content or their engagement into more of a digital or an online avenue, then we’re following suit and doing the same, and we’re actually having a lot of fun with it.

Danny:

That’s awesome. What are a couple things that you guys have participated in that have been a lot of fun?

Monique:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, so we’re partnering with a company by the name of EC&M Magazine, and what we’ve done with them is we’ve set up a contractor business resource center, it’s like an information center, specifically for contractors, and what we did is we went out and we asked them hey, what do you want to hear about, like what do you want to learn, so we surveyed, and found out that they’re very interested in how the standards are changing, and some of the functionality of the products, and so we just started putting some, similar to what we’re doing right now, some thought leadership material out there, thinking maybe we’ll get a couple hundred people. Thousands, we had thousands of people coming, interested in these webinars and interested in the content, and the engagement between these contractors was really, it was actually very inspiring, ’cause this is generally people who just want to learn and get better at their craft, and so we realized that it wasn’t just about hey, how do we sell more product and how do I get some leads, but it was about how do I connect people who might be struggling with some very similar challenges in our marketplace, and in our industry. And a lot of these are independent contractors who don’t necessarily have the resources to go and do this themselves, so I love this idea of creating communities for part of our market that’s just starting to get into the digital space.

Danny:

That’s fantastic. It just sounds like it’s a lot of empowerment, a lot of training and education, and I love it ’cause that does really identify really well with what you’re talking about, like the whole customer experience there is really, what it sounds like is you’re helping to solve their challenges, really at the end of the day saying here are issues that we know, and let’s not try to throw product down there, cram product in, it’s all over the place, because that was more five, 10, 15, 20 years ago. Not working anymore. So I absolutely love it how you are really engaging, engaging right, especially even downstream too, especially with you guys are working, I think you said primarily through distribution.

Monique:

That’s right.

Danny:

That can be a little bit of a challenge from a manufacturer standpoint as those touchpoints down to the end user.

Monique:

That’s actually a really really good point because a lot of the early digital marketing that we were doing was geared more towards our distribution partners, and to your point it was like a product launch. Hey we’ve got this new product, come buy this new product, and shifting away from that mindset of marketing into, you said it nicely, we’re trying to solve your problem, hey listen, if we have a product that can do that for you, that’s great, but if not, at least maybe I’ve connected you with other people where you can kind of work through this together. It’s a very different way of engaging customers. In a way that’s, to be honest, I think it’s a lot more meaningful.

Danny:

Absolutely, and there’s an analogy, we had a previous guest on here, he was a sales trainer guy, we went through some of his training stuff, and his name was Mo Bunnell, a great guy, I’m giving him a little plug, but one of the things we were talking about relative to sales was just really playing the long game. So instead of– we’re being super transactional, saying, “We’ve got to make the sale, we’ve got to make the sale!” Which, listen, we’ve got to make sales, right, you’ve got to make, cash is king, cashflow, it’s important, but, we’re really talking about playing the long game where we’re really building a brand of saying listen, we’re here to help you, and we want to be a solution provider, or one of the words I love is partner versus vendor. I hate that. I hate hearing oh, these are our vendors over here. It’s like well geez, maybe we’re not as valuable as we thought, maybe we should provide some more value there, and that’s exactly what it sounds like you guys are doing over there, and that’s awesome, I love it.

Monique:

Well I need to elaborate on something that you said ’cause it’s really important. That whole customer buyers’ journey, and how you want to be with them throughout the whole process, and I think that was also a really important factor for changing the language around marketing, because when you talk about customer experience you’re talking about every single touchpoint, and so yes, ultimately we’d love to make a sale, right, we’d love to have the order, but before we get there, let’s think about the experience that our customer has, and it is truly a very different way of thinking about this function versus marketing, which always has the connotation of I’m going to try to just sell you something, I’m promoting. That’s what marketing is, to promote, right, and so this is really about understanding the customer experience, and so when you think about the function in that context I think you start to look at different touchpoints along the value chain well before you get to the deal, well before you get to the order.

Danny:

Absolutely. So one of the things we were talking about, I mean this is great, playing the long game, and you’re providing these, with the webinar, so the digital cul-de-sacs, you’re able to really help provide their challenges, with the SEO I imagine it’s putting out a lot of content out there that’s valuable so you can drive traffic back to your websites, and I mentioned a little bit how sometimes marketing, in the past in particular, and now too, can be very transactionally minded, and that can be very very challenging when it comes to I guess really getting buy-in, to really like make that change and say no, we need to do this, and I know we’re not going to see the sale tomorrow, but this is really important. That is probably I’d say the number one issue that we hear all the time from our subscribers and people is getting that organizational buy-in. What would you say, how can organizations, how can marketers, how can other CMOs or customer experience officer, how can we tackle this challenge?

Monique:

I would say that the challenge is real. The struggle is very real on that one. I think we can all appreciate that marketing is often seen as a class center, and it’s really hard to get a seat at the table. And so one thing that my team has done and really this is just a credit to a specific part of the organization that was also around demand generation, was start to actually track the marketing activities down to every single marketing activity, so the email that would go out, the webinar that would go out, that lead from a trade show, and be able to tag it and follow that activity through the CRM, all the way through the whole process until you can see whether or not an order was received from it, and really get that marketing ROI.

Now, I say that and most marketers would probably push back and say, “That’s really hard, Monique, like how do you do it?” So it’s a process. It’s two things. One, you have to have a process to be able to track that, and two, it’s the marketing automation and the technology stack that you need to do that, because you have to have some kind of marketing automation tool that allows you to track that activity, and then you have to integrate that into your CRM. So through the work through my marketing team, we were able to do that. It took about a couple years, and a lot of integration and a lot of process but now we can say, so this year we spent four million dollars in marketing activities but it yielded 22 million in orders.

It’s not easy, it takes time, but if you can get to that point, then you can have credibility for the function, but also what you can do, which I think is really important, is you can say let’s not do those activities anymore ’cause they didn’t yield anything. I think that’s a problem that marketing often has is you don’t want to stop something ’cause you’re not sure if it yielded something, and what if I stop it and then I won’t, so it gives you a lot of more freedom to be able to stop doing things that really aren’t getting the results you want.

Danny:

I love it. That’s awesome. Really, at the end of the day it’s closing a loop, looking at marketing activity relative to sales, and yeah, that can be incredibly challenging, if not impossible without the right tools. Even with the right tools, it can still be difficult to do.

Monique:

No, you’re absolutely right. Yeah, it’s that whole demand generation process. It’s the process and the technology together, absolutely.

Danny:

Now that’s awesome. And so how, you said it took some years, it’s not something that you’re going to all of a sudden turn on, and contrary to popular belief, and hey great job with the marketing automation. You just buy this, and then you flip a couple switches, and it just works, right? Something like that. It’s very easy.

Monique:

No, no. Here’s what I always say to people. Whether it’s marketing automation, e-commerce, which is a huge area that we’re playing in right now, it’s really never about the technology. It’s always about the process, ’cause the technology will do what you tell it to do, right, you give it a bunch of ones and zeroes, it’s going to do what you tell it to do, but if your processes are broken, if they’re fragmented, if you’re not able to standardize, it’s not going to work, and so that is always more critical than the technology.

Danny:

I agree 100%. So if I could recap on what you’re talking about there as far as the organizational buy-in is really track marketing activities, making sure that it’s measurable, and then reporting that back, so say okay, well this is, we have metrics on this, is this good, is this bad, and different, I don’t know, but at least we have the data and we can look at that and eventually we can look to tie that back on sales and say look, this activity, this webinar that we did eight months ago, we have all these different touchpoints throughout the process and then boom, sale over here, or hopefully shorter than that, but it depends on your sales type I’m sure.

Monique:

Agreed, agreed. Now some folks may come back and say okay well what do I do in the short-term. I don’t have that time. I don’t have that investment to be able to do that. I think some other things that marketers or customer experience leaders can do, show how the market is changing. Proof points are work great, right. What are your competitors doing? What are our customers doing that’s different? Get connected outside of your own organization so you can be a little bit more connected to how the landscape is changing around you. I think bringing those proof points back and those examples back to the leadership and back to the organization, it helps, versus just saying I believe it to be. This is why it’s actually changing.

Danny:

Totally, and so on that point, for any of our listeners who are listening or watching who, we did a big survey, we talked to about 150 manufacturers to get data on exactly what you just talked about, to find out what they’re doing relative to digital, what they’re not doing, what they’re looking to do in 2019 and beyond, and so if that’s something you’re looking for, go download that, there’s a button somewhere on the video or in the blog article you can go get that, but to help address that problem, to say hey, it’s not just like, I think that we’re fine versus I think we need to make a change, if you’ve got that data. And I love what you said too about talking to your customers, like go see what they’re doing. That makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense.

Monique:

In this space, I really fundamentally believe that we’ll push and pull each other along. So as the manufacturers get a little bit more sophisticated and a little bit more contemporary in their marketing, so will the customers and vice versa. So if I have a distributor partner that really wants to push the envelope from a digital perspective, I have to follow, I have no choice to follow. One great example that we haven’t touched on yet but I think is really important is around the need for the digital content, and when you think about the product management organizations in these very traditional industries it’s not native when you are releasing a product to say I need all those digital aspects to go along with it. The specs and all of that, that’s one thing, but it’s all that enriched content, it’s just, it’s not native, and that’s something that we’re getting a lot of pressure from our distributor partners in order to improve because they want to improve as well.

Danny:

Yeah.

Monique:

So, going along with your customer on this journey I think is really really important.

Danny:

That’s fantastic. That makes sense if you think of your typical product launch it may just hey, there’s a whole different suite of assets that you need to have that need to go part and parcel with that. You touched on something, or you made me think of something there. A lot of manufacturers kind of struggle a little bit with marketing activity related to sales, specifically when they’re working with a lot of dealers or distributors, because unless if you’re dealing, well actually let me ask this. Percentage-wise, or at least anecdotally, how much are you going through distribution versus selling direct?

Monique:

About 70%. It’s fair to say, yeah, about 70%.

Danny:

Okay, so unlike going direct, which it’s a lot easier to come back and say okay boom, there’s the sale on here with the distributors and dealers, depending on how that’s set up. How have you managed to kind of track that and look at that, ’cause that can be even more difficult to try to figure out how have we made an impact here?

Monique:

It is, it’s very difficult. It’s very difficult. I mean, it’s knowing your installed base when you go through distribution can be a big challenge. I think this is where having partnerships with your larger distributors is incredibly important. One of the things that we’ve been trying to do over the last couple of years is really engage with some of those larger partners and say maybe, can we go and embark on this together. So let’s identify maybe two or three kind of transformational, digital transformational projects that we’ll work on together, and maybe it’s getting better at the digital content, maybe it’s having more online promotions together, maybe it’s looking at pieces of technology that would help both of us, but setting up these strategies almost like you would set up an annual strategic sales plan with one of your partners, do that around marketing with digital, and follow that, it should really be no different, and I think, but that’s a little, for a marketer, that’s a bit of a different approach, but that’s one way to do it, is to really partner together on this and track the progress that way.

Danny:

I love it. Totally makes sense, like treat the sale, ’cause a lot of times sales sometimes, they get all the budget, they get all the, and marketing over here, well, you know, well you go make your brochures, right. It’s changing now. It sounds like it’s changed in your organization.

Monique:

Yes. It needs to change. It needs to change. We’re talking about this now in the context of customer experience. There was an iteration there before which was around commercial marketing. There was a time in my life where I remember we were moving away from traditional marketing and then it became well I’m a commercial marketer, and that got you a little bit more credibility, because you’re like, I’m not a communications marketer, I’m a commercial marketer, so I want to be treated as such, right, like give me the budget, hold me accountable that I’m going to make an impact to this account or I’m going to make an impact to this partner, and now we’re evolving to more of this customer experience, so there is something to be said about approaching marketing as you would a salesperson.

Danny:

Yeah, well it’s scalable. Marketing sometimes doesn’t get sick, although sometimes they do, maybe, depending on your marketing organization, this plan there. So, one other question that I have, and I forgot to ask this early on, and I totally should have. For those who aren’t familiar with your product line, what do you guys manufacture? Tell me the industries and everything that you’re in, just so we can have a little bit better frame of reference.

Monique:

Absolutely. So we are in the electrification products business so think about it with medium and low voltage electrification products, so circuit breakers, the large industrial ones that you would see in commercial buildings, as well as the breakers that you would have in your residential homes as well. Also EV chargers, which is a fabulous market and an industry to play in right now, getting really sophisticated as it relates to e-mobility, and then when you think about that products that you really play across a lot of different segments. So you can play in the commercial and residential construction, you can play in renewables, buildings, food and bev is another big, data centers is a great example, so think about places where you need to turn on electricity, that’s where we play, and what I love about this product, and what I love about this market is it can be a bit of an invisible product. Like how often do you think about the breaker that’s in your home? You know when you think about it? You think about it when it doesn’t work, when you’re sitting in the dark.

Danny:

That’s when you think about it, yup.

Monique:

Exactly, so it’s these types of products that are really critical to our everyday lives that people really don’t think about, and it’s how do you bring that awareness to folks, and to be honest, and we said this before, kind of in an unsexy environment. How do you make marketing sexy with these types of products?

Danny:

Well, my great next question on that, how do you solve that challenge where you’ve got particularly a product where it’s not necessarily a, let’s talk about, I don’t know, residential or commercial breakers or units, okay, we’re looking at A, we’re looking at B, we’re looking at C, how do you differentiate?

Monique:

Well I think a big portion of that and where this market is really going is around the connected devices. So it’s not just about that one particular product, but it’s how does this product interact and connect with everything else. Let’s take your home, right, with everything else in your home, and in this concept of an augmented home, and now you’re starting to get to a different level of kind of switch a little bit and talk about value props. Now you’re starting to develop value propositions that really mean something to people. So it’s not about just keeping the light on in my house but what if it’s when I’m not home? How do I make sure that things are okay when I’m not home or my children are home and I’m not there, and so I think when you talked about these types of products you have to think about the solutions, and not the individual widget. So what is the solution that we’re solving for here?

Danny:

Yeah.

Monique:

And then you can make it much more of a personal type of buy and a personal type of experience with that product.

Danny:

Absolutely, no, makes a lot of sense. That’s great. I know a lot of manufacturers struggle with that too, particularly, you’ve got OEM manufacturers that come and it’s like hey, like, it’s a widget, or they think it’s a widget, rather.

Monique:

They think it is, right, but it’s much more to that, and I would argue, or kind of that takes us to how do you then also appeal to new talent to come into organizations like mine, where there’s so much, it’s so much sizzle and demand with some of these other high-tech companies and in the retail space, it can be challenging to bring talent over, but I think that goes back to you have to change a little bit the type of marketing that you’re doing, and show people that the value that you can bring in this space I think is incremental, versus the value that you can bring in maybe industries that have already kind of crossed that chasm of digital transformation.

Danny:

Yeah, and that makes sense.

Monique:

How many buzz words can I use in that one sentence?

Danny:

You’re good, you’re good there. So if I understand what you’re saying correctly you’re saying as far as recruiting new talent, attracting them, by going more digital and having, specifically what is it, it’s interesting ’cause we’ve heard from a lot of people, I’ll give you an example. We had a client that their website had not been updated, I mean, very simple analogy here, but very outdated website, and I said you know, listen, we’ve got people, it was an engineering firm, these engineers are coming in and these guys have done everything, and they were awesome, but we were not able to get people to want to come work with us because our website, or if they finally did come and do an interview they looked around the office like oh, wow, this is like way different than we thought it would be, and then they get this new website and they’re like oh my gosh this is amazing. Is that part of what you’re talking about or other elements?

Monique:

No, it’s about brand perception out there, and so for sure wherever, and I would say that this goes to the customer as well. Whatever that initial touchpoint is from your customer experience, that’s the impression that you leave, so bringing in younger talent or newer talent to the organization, and nine times out of ten they’re going to go to your website and check you out, and see what you’re all about, so you’ve got to make sure that that avenue to them is the message that you want to portray. Our customers are starting to do that as well, but maybe for them the first touchpoint is a trade show, or maybe for them the first touchpoint is one of these digital cul-de-sacs that we’re talking about. So what we’re starting to now kind of border on here where the conversation is going is making sure that that customer experience, no matter where they are, is consistent, and is obviously positive is what we want, but there’s also a big portion of what customer experience needs to focus on is also the consistency of message.

Danny:

Yeah, absolutely, across all the channels as well.

Monique:

Across all the channels, absolutely.

Danny:

So to your point, yeah, you encounter with a brand at a trade show versus online, you’ve got to have that, I love it, that experience, because that’s really, in essence, a brand, I mean it’s what we perceive up here.

Monique:

Yeah. Oftentimes I say to folks, what we’re talking about really isn’t rocket science. But in traditional manufacturers and in these industries, it can be challenging, just to get people there, just because it’s not the way that they’ve thought in the past and I think it goes back to the whole changing of the workforce as well.

Danny:

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. We had ADP on a couple weeks ago and we were talking all about that, and it’s a big thing. I mean, Google, golly this was a stat back in 2015 or 2014 saying that nearly 50% of B2B buyers were millennial. I think it was 49 at that point, and that was 2014 or 2015, so I think time has progressed a little bit since then and I suspect that number is going to go up.

Monique:

Yes, I would say that.

Danny:

I was okay at math in school. So anyways, well Monique, I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. We probably could go for hours more, because I could totally geek out on this stuff all day but is there any last parting words you have for our audience or any piece of advice for somebody that says you know what, we’re on the fence and, oh gosh, I would love to get this going in my organization. What would you tell them?

Monique:

So here’s what I would say. In industrial environments and traditional manufacturing companies, it’s anywhere but up, or it’s only up, only up, and so there’s a lot of runway here, and I think any effort that you make you’re going to see improvement, you’re going to see a return, and so for me, that’s why I stay in these environments because there is such much opportunity to grow and to help, and to really change, so if you want to make an impact I fundamentally believe it’s these more traditional industrial environments where people should go. So I would say stick it out. It may not be fun at first or it may not be easy at first, but you will definitely make an impact, absolutely.

Danny:

That’s awesome. I have one quick follow-up question.

Monique:

Yes.

Danny:

Do you have a favorite story or something when you said, you’re trying to implement this or maybe some changes that you were trying to bring to the table, and you were just really, just oh man, really struggling, but then finally had oh, we had that breakthrough moment or that aha moment. Maybe you’d share a story? Might not be there, but I’ve just–

Monique:

Yeah, no no no, it’s a personal story and it’s a few years back, and I was leading a marketing team in Dallas, I was based in Dallas, and I was actually working in a financial services organization at the time, very traditional, right, very conservative, and I was struggling with trying to get a seat at the table with marketing and not have marketing always be, “Hey, can you make this brochure, can you go update this PowerPoint pitch,” or what have you, and we were a couple years into the development of this organization, working very very closely with the commercial leader, and there was a big leadership meeting, and I wasn’t there, but someone came knocking on the door and they said, “So-and-so says that we can’t start the meeting until you’re there, and he needs his marketing leader next to him at this,” and that, for me, was the moment of, “We have arrived,” at being a critical component to this leadership team, and from that moment on marketing was at the table, and so that was very, like I said, that’s very personal, and a very emotional experience but that meant a lot that that leader of that business could not conduct his strategic meeting on this very important topic without having his marketing leader there.

Danny:

That’s huge.

Monique:

That’s for me, that’s when I know it happened. Yeah.

Danny:

Absolutely. I mean that’s awesome, that’s such a great story. How long? It sounds like you put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into that to make that happen. How long did that take?

Monique:

It was about two years working in that organization before that moment happened.

Danny:

Wow.

Monique:

Many years into the career, but in that particular role or that business that I was with, that was about two years until we got there.

Danny:

Well you know it just goes to the point that it’s not something that’s going to happen overnight, and you just have to I’d say continue to have hope, and have faith, and keep moving forward and just educate and do things, look for the quick wins but measurable things and to keep communicating that that you will make that impact, and that’s such an awesome story. I really thank you for sharing that.

Monique:

Thank you for asking, yeah, tenacity and grit, right, tenacity and grit.

Danny:

I’m reading a book about grit. Gosh, I can’t remember her name. Once I finish I’m going to plug that on the show. It’s awesome, but it’s talking about all those things and how much, it’s almost even more important than talent, saying if you have that determination and the perseverance, grit, just to keep pushing forward, so that’s awesome. So, we got to stay gritty on IndustrialSage here. That’s for all of our subscribers, you’ve got to stay gritty. Thank you so much for your time and spending that with us and just really sharing your experiences, and your stories, and advice and what you are doing with ABB. I think it’s awesome, it’s fantastic, and we just really appreciate it.

Monique:

My pleasure. It’s been a joy this afternoon. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

Danny:

Well thanks for coming. All right, so okay, hey, wow, we just covered a whole lot of topics here on this episode with Monique, and just so many awesome things. A couple things, I think what my favorite part actually was really the story that we heard at the end, talking about the grit and that perseverance of rolling in with this digital solution, and it took two years of putting in the time, say I’m going to do this, and she got the seat at the table, and really making a positive impact in the organization, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing right now with manufacturing companies, with industrial companies. If you are there saying we need this and we have to bring this in, but getting this organizational buy-in is so difficult and so challenging, look, stay the course, keep going, keep doing these things, keep pushing forward because you and I know, we know, Monique knows this that this where we have to go. I mean, organizations that don’t make this transition and that don’t adapt, there’s company names that you don’t want to be associated with. Think of Netflix and Blockbuster. Think of what just happened with Toys R Us. Just not listening to the customer. I love that. So anyways, I’m going to stop rambling. There’s so many amazing elements here you need to, I’m just super thankful for this. It was awesome.

So thanks for listening. If you have any questions you’d like us to answer on the show, we’d love to do that. You can reach out to us, IndustrialSage.com/questions. If you’re listening on a podcast, ’cause we’re on all of them, we’re on Spotify, TuneIn, Stitcher, iTunes, everything there, we love a review. If you’re looking at our stuff on social media, please share, like, comment, all of the above, and last but not least if you’re not on the email list, you want to get on that. We got all kinds of great freebies, and resources, and tools and things that are going to help make you a sharper marketer and sales professional, as we tackle this big challenge of making that transition over from traditional over to digital marketing. I’m Danny Gonzales and thanks for watching IndustrialSage.

 

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