Announcer: 

Welcome to Digital-First Leadership, the podcast that focuses on helping leaders and teams understand  how to master the language of social media in today's digital-first world. 

Richard Bliss: 

Hi, welcome to the show. I'm Richard Bliss, the host, and you're listening to Digital-First Leadership.  Today, my guest is Brian Bakstran, Senior Vice President of Global Field Marketing for Veeam Software.  Brian, thanks for joining me. 

Brian Backstran: 

Well, Richard, thank you very much for having me. 

Richard Bliss: 

Now, Brian, just so everybody knows, you and I have known each other for years and have worked  closely together over that time period. I want to say I appreciate you coming on the show because as we  come out of this pandemic, you and I have been talking a lot about a variety of different things, but one  of them that I want to touch on before we get into some of the things that we talked about before, but  this idea of leadership that you have exhibited and demonstrated as you're dealing with so many  changes in the world because Veeam is a global company, right? 

Brian Backstran: 

Correct. 

Richard Bliss: 

I know that you've been working closely with your international teams and you've shared some stories  with me about how you've reached out to them, and I'd like... Because we talk about digital-first  leadership, what's that been like? What was the background behind you reaching out to your employees  to kind of touch base with them? Can you share some stories about that? 

Brian Backstran: 

Yeah, sure. I think over my career, I've... You and I have shared that Tom Mendoza 

Richard Bliss: 

Right. 

Brian Backstran: 

... famous quote, right? "People don't care what know until they know that you care." I think with the  crisis that's happening in Eastern Europe, and I do have people who work for me in those countries and  surrounding countries, I just felt it was really important to reach out. There wasn't necessarily anything I  could do for them directly but just check in, let them know they're not alone, let them know that I'm  thinking about them and if there anything I can do. I can just tell you the feedback has just been  incredible how much it's meant to them. I didn't think it was a big deal, but to them, it kind of meant the  world that I took the time to reach out and just check in on them.

Richard Bliss: 

That's important because, I mean, you really haven't had the chance to do a lot of traveling to connect  with them or spend time I know, but pre-COVID you were. You were in those areas a lot in the world,  but you haven't really seen them in person for a couple of years. Isn't that true? 

Brian Backstran: 

Yeah, that's true, and I think the year before the pandemic, I ended up spending six or seven months  running Europe and I was there two or three weeks a month. I was lucky enough to build relationships  with many of the people there right across, and again, Eastern Europe, Southern, Central, up into many,  many countries over there and spent quite a bit of time with them, so I did have that relationship with  them. Then, when the pandemic hit, everything was over virtual, but I had already built that relationship  with them, so it was pretty easy for me to reach out to the handful of people that I knew really well  when the crisis broke out. 

Richard Bliss: 

I think that's a great lesson for all leaders who are thinking about right now as the world is adapting to  this new reality of what we're dealing with. You know, first it was the pandemic, now it's the crisis in  Eastern Europe, and so I appreciate that. You shared those stories with me earlier, and I just felt it was a  very powerful message that you were able to deliver, so thank you for that. 

Brian Backstran: 

You're welcome. 

Richard Bliss: 

One of the things I know that you do focus on, and you and I talk about this a lot, is this concept of the  relationship between sales and marketing. Your focus is field marketing, and so there's corporate  marketing and there's field marketing. Help the audience understand kind of how you see those two  differences and how you work closely with the sales team. 

Brian Backstran: 

Yeah, so I think at the general level, global marketing pulls together global campaigns that are consistent  in brand and messaging in this global digital that happens kind of at an awareness broad-based  approach. Whereas, in the field, it's very much tailored to the local go-to-market, and so we have built  an organization that very much focuses on being a partner to sales, understanding the local business,  and finding gaps in whether that's new white space accounts or the pipeline or moving pipeline to close.  We create very specific programs to do exactly that, so the difference really is from a global standpoint,  they're looking at the 80-20 rule and trying to pull together programs and digital and campaigns that  cover. What we do at the regional level is pull what we need from global, but then tailor it to that  specific market in Singapore or Sydney or Germany. 

Brian Backstran: 

A tie to that is you need a very strong relationship with sales, and in marketing, for a long time it's been  marketing and sales need alignment, and I look at it as marketing and sales need mutual goals. We have  put a strong focus on sales and marketing is one team, and together we need to achieve the marketing  goals, the leads, the funnels, building the pipeline, but also helping sales build the overall pipeline, and we measure our people even from an NBO standpoint on how much business or revenue was actually  generated in the quarter. We truly have joint goals between sales and marketing which allows us to  work in this one team. 

Richard Bliss: 

I've been in marketing a long time. That's not necessarily common, is it, that this mutual between sales  and marketing? 

Brian Backstran: 

No, a hundred percent, and it's taken a lot of work on the team's part in order to get to that point. I  think one of the key pieces that allowed us to get that, because every marketing team wants to work  with sales and vice versa, but don't always speak the same language, don't always have the same  approach, we agreed with each segment sales leader or each country leader on the top three priorities  for their sales organization. We've applied all of our marketing dollars for the most part to those three  priorities, but most importantly, we had the sales leaders put in place sales metrics for those three  priorities to make sure the sales teams remain focused on it and they're measured on it. Then, we  dovetailed our marketing KPIs and our marketing metrics to those three top priorities. 

Brian Backstran: 

That's about 85% of what we do and just some 15% we do otherwise, but every month we review those  three priorities. How is sales doing? Are they hitting their targets? How is marketing doing? That keeps  complete alignment and eliminates the, "Hey, we want to spend money here or there." No, we need to  stay focused on these three priorities. 

Richard Bliss: 

Yeah, I think that what you just alluded to, that... I'm going to use the term conflict that arises because  sometimes at the corporate level, they're like, "Here, here's their program. Implement it everywhere." I  think your experience over the years is like, "No," that there are nuances to each local market that you  need to give that ownership of execution to those teams. Is that accurate? 

Brian Backstran: 

A hundred percent, and we've stressed in our team that we absolutely need to remain on brand, remain  on messaging. Use those global campaigns, use their content. However, how we package that and how  we add local nuances like local success stories, local data, local wins, local verticals that we know we  need to penetrate, we package all of that up at the street level, and really that allows us to be incredibly  targeted and aligned to those goals I told you before around, "How do we build more pipeline, et  cetera?" It absolutely needs to be a partnership between global and the field. 

Richard Bliss: 

You mentioned identifying gaps and filling those gaps. Can you help me understand kind of, how do you  find those gaps and what those gaps look like? 

Brian Backstran: 

Sure, so begin at, for instance, next week I have a series of meetings with the team by segment, and it's  called the gap analysis check-ins that we do each month. We're lucky enough to have a great operations team here at Veeam, so we have all the data we need from the funnel standpoint, the pipeline  standpoint broken down by Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3. The teams spend a lot of time in Tableau with the data  and they understand what our metrics are on a monthly basis, and if we're falling short on those, they  dig into the why. Why are we missing the pipeline? Why haven't we generated enough leads, et cetera. 

Brian Backstran: 

They report on those once a month with the actions they plan on taking in order to fill that gap. They're  going to generate more marketing leads because we're down 20% this month, that we need to make up  for it, and here's how we're going to do it, and the same with pipeline. It's very targeted to regions.  Maybe it's California and Washington State are falling behind. We've got a plan there. Or, in Japan, we  need to fill pipeline and it's very different what we'll do, but we're viewing those gaps every month and  applying actions to them to fill them. 

Richard Bliss: 

From a sales standpoint, filling pipeline is what sales is always looking for marketing to do. Qualified  leads that are coming in, that are in that pipeline so that they can pick up the phone or reach out and  identify that. It's not very often, so what are some of the KPIs? It's not very often that marketing can  literally say, "Look, this is what we did, and there is a direct correlation between our activity and the  pipeline that's coming in." 

Richard Bliss: 

I have always said, and it's not very... but whenever a salesperson fails to meet quota, it's somebody  else's problem. Whenever they exceed quota, it's all about them. Not to... but it's kind of the way it  works. It's like the blame game can so easily be passed around. How was it that you helped identify and  track how marketing is contributing to that pipeline and how revenue is being tied to that? 

Brian Backstran: 

Yeah, so right at the beginning of the planning process, we work with the sales leaders to say, "How  much pipeline do you need each quarter in order to hit your revenue targets, your sales targets? What  percentage of that needs to come directly from marketing?" We agree on that. We build out all the  metrics, but part of the reason we can do these gap analysis because we've built a really good  relationship with inside sales who follows up on all these leads. We have very open conversations  around what leads are working and what aren't. Most recently, sales came back and said, "Hey, these  particular leads you're generating, conversion rate's awful," so in marketing, boom, we stopped using  those in content syndication, that piece of content. 

Brian Backstran: 

On the other hand, we have metrics to show when we pass a lead inside sales, how many days it takes  them to touch them. We work with inside sales to say, "Hey, you guys are averaging 15 to 20 days  before you touch one of these leads. What's going on? Are you short people? How can we fix this to get  it down to one to two days" Again, because we have that relationship, it's not contentious. We are  open 

Richard Bliss: 

I like that.

Brian Backstran: 

... to reducing content that isn't working. They're open to adjusting how they follow up on leads, as an  example. 

Richard Bliss: 

What do you call... What would be a touchpoint? What would be some ways that you would measure  that touchpoint? Is it a phone call? An email? Is it social media? How is that? 

Brian Backstran: 

Yeah, yeah, so we have all of the regular metrics that anyone has, respondents and leads, and our  definition of marketing qualified leads, et cetera, but from a touchpoint, it's actions they've taken in  Salesforce. When we pass them a lead, within one or two days they need to follow up so we know that  through Salesforce, and they go in and say, "Yep, call the contact. They told me to call back in a week."  Bump, bump, that's the first touch, so we have the ability to track all of those different touchpoints and  really take action on them when appropriate. 

Richard Bliss: 

This is great, and I really appreciate you sharing that. In the last few minutes that we have, as we move  into a more hybrid work environment because we've been a hundred percent virtual, I know that most  of the Veeam team around the world has been, as we move into this hybrid, what are the challenges  that you think leaders are going to be faced with as they start having a hybrid work environment? What  do you think are some of the challenges? 

Brian Backstran: 

I mean, there's challenges from... Let's take marketing, right? 

Richard Bliss: 

Okay. 

Brian Backstran: 

We've been virtual for two years. Now, we've got used to how those metrics come in, meaning in a  simple case, we could put together a webinar for two weeks from now and attract a hundred end users,  run the webinar, and then boom, follow up on those leads. Now, if we're going to a live event, we have  to book a hotel in the future. We need to create invitations. That's a six-to-eight-week period, so  suddenly, you're drawn out in terms of how long it takes to get leads. That's just one example. 

Brian Backstran: 

I think from a sales standpoint, they're very eager to get out and meet with customers, very eager to get  out meet with partners. We just ran an event last week and because of COVID, it's kind of we're kind of  into face-to-face, but now COVID is coming back a little bit and people are a little unsure, so you may  not be getting the same amount of attendance that you used to in terms of a live event. We're taking an  approach of we absolutely want to start doing face-to-face, but we're going to kind of ease into it so that  we don't overcommit and then have to take a step back. 

Richard Bliss:

You know, what's funny is that two years ago everybody had it down. The whole live events is what we  do it, and then suddenly everything stopped. We had to make this really hard adjustment, and now I  think we've all adjusted pretty well and we're like, "Salespeople are anxious to get back. "I'm not sure  customers are anxious to have salespeople come back. You know, in some ways 

Brian Backstran: 

That's exactly right. 

Richard Bliss: 

... right, the customers are like, "No, no, we're good. Hey, I'll take a Zoom call." Right? 

Brian Backstran: 

Yeah. 

Richard Bliss: 

We've all become much more comfortable with this idea of a virtual world that we live in, although that  face-to-face, I was just on-site with a presentation with a sales kickoff in Minneapolis last week. Huge  difference the energy in the room, the interaction, but that was two or three days out of pocket, so to  speak, that the efficiency... We've got this balance between efficiency and effectiveness, right? It's 

Brian Backstran: 

Yes. 

Richard Bliss: 

... super efficient to do it all virtual, but there is some impacts in effectiveness to a live event, and I  imagine you're dealing with that as a field marketing executive. 

Brian Backstran: 

Yeah, a hundred percent, and it'll be interesting to see end users who may not want to deal with  marketing or sales folks have been doing business for two years, and as we know in many organizations  and companies like Veeam, it has not had a negative impact. We've been growing incredibly fast, so to  your point earlier, if it's been working and I'm an end user, do I really want to drive through traffic to a  seminar and spend time and have to talk to folks? That's a lot of time out of the office, so it'll be  interesting to see how quickly that comes back. 

Richard Bliss: 

Brian, I appreciate your time. Thank you so much for joining me. This has been a great conversation, and  if somebody wanted to reach out or connect with you, how would they find you? 

Brian Backstran: 

Sure, they can find me on LinkedIn, and I just want to say thank you very much, Richard. Really  appreciate it and enjoyed the conversation. 

Richard Bliss:

It's been great. I appreciate it, and Brian's last name, for those who are listening, is Bakstran. It's spelled  B-A-K-S-T-R-A-N, and you can find Brian Bakstran on Veeam on LinkedIn. Brian, thanks again for joining  me. 

Brian Backstran: 

Thank you very much. 

Announcer: 

You've been listening to Digital-First Leadership, the podcast where you learn to leverage and build your  expertise on digital platforms. For more valuable tips on mastering the language of social media,  subscribe to our newsletter at blisspointconsult.com. If you'd like to stay in touch, feel free to add  Richard on LinkedIn and join the conversation.