Episode 298: What if your marketing strategy was directly tied to your revenue, and actually worked? | Shannon Murray-Doffo | Chief Revenue Officer & Marketing Expert
In this episode, Kara talks with Shannon Murray-Doffo, Chief Revenue Officer and marketing expert, about what it really takes to turn marketing into a profit engine. Shannon breaks down how to build a sales pipeline that converts, why so many marketing investments fall flat, and how business owners can get better at measuring ROI and trusting the data. They also dive into her unique home life, what it means to lead with intention, and how to stay grounded while growing something big. If you're scaling a business, or want to, this one’s for you.
This episode explores business strategy, sales funnels, and revenue-focused marketing.
“You have to get people to know, like, and trust you. That’s hard to do when it’s a cold lead! It’s all about how you can build relationships to delight your dream customers. ”
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Follow along using the Transcript
Chapters:
(00:00:01) - Introduction to Revenue Generation Strategies
(00:01:26) - Understanding the Role of a Chief Revenue Officer
(00:02:24) - Transitioning from Marketing to Sales
(00:03:45) - The Importance of Collaboration Between Marketing and Sales
(00:06:13) - Measuring Marketing Success and ROI
(00:07:37) - Key Metrics for Understanding Customer Value
(00:12:13) - Building Effective Sales Pipelines
(00:20:26) - The Power of Referrals in Business Growth
(00:21:49) - Overcoming Fear in Sales and Marketing
(00:48:52) - Balancing Family Dynamics and Professional Life
(01:01:23) - Rapid Fire Questions and Conclusion
If you're a business, then you really need to figure out how you're going to drive revenue. And a lot of that has to do with, well, what are the levers on the marketing side that make sales happen? And then from the sales perspective, it's really about communication back to marketing because neither of the two of those are in a silo, right? They need to be working together.
That's Shannon Murray Doffo. I'm Kara Duffy, and this is the Powerful Ladies Podcast. Welcome to the Powerful Ladies Podcast. Well, thank you for having me. I'm very delighted to be here. I am so excited that we have met. We are in each other's circles at this point and for many reasons, but one of the things that I so love about our conversations is that We are on such the same page about how business does not need to be as hard as everyone makes it.
Amen to that. I love that. Yes.
So I want to get into all of that today, but before we go any further, let's tell everyone your name, where you are in the world, and what you're up to. Okay.
I'm Shannon Murray Doffo. I am a chief revenue officer for an MSSP, which is a managed security service provider here in Scottsdale. So today I'm in Scottsdale, Arizona, but I actually live out of Southern California. So I'm really excited to be on this podcast, mostly just because I get to talk to one of my favorite people. Kara is just one of the people that you can sit and talk with. About any topic at any time. So delighted to get in.
Well, thank you for that. So, you know, you are a chief revenue officer, which most people are like, what is that? And you've also stepped into this role coming from being a fractional CMO or a chief marketing officer in general. So let's break down kind of that journey from marketing into revenue focused and what CRO means.
Yes. So let's start with unpacking what a CRO is. So that really is just someone who leads the marketing and the sales department, right? So all of sales and all of marketing roll up to me. So that means that I get to work with and control where the leads originate. How we get those leads, the cadence of those leads, the velocity of how they work through the pipeline.
And then I get to work with our sales teams to be able to really see it through. So handholding it all the way through to what the R stands for in my name, which is revenue for the company. So that's, that's what a CRR does on a day to day, it can be many different things. I find myself really running down the gamut of, you know, Everything within a company.
Sometimes it's customer service. Sometimes it's accounting. Sometimes it's projection and pipeline management. A lot of times it's making sure that I'm celebrating and advocating for the people who are on my team looking at their commission structures or their salaries and making sure that that's fair.
And then also, you know, looking at the marketing and creating that and driving that strategy. So yeah. That's what I do. But the second question you asked me was about how my journey from being a fractional CMO and then Really transitioning through to being the CRO, right? And how, the big question here is how did I get sales?
Right. And I think the, the crazy part about marketing is, is that marketing in itself is fun to do. Right. There's so many different paths that you can go down. You can fix your website. You can create business cards. You can dive into beautiful graphics. But at the end of the day, if you're a business, then you really need to figure out how you're going to drive revenue.
You're going to figure out how. And a lot of that has to do with, well, what are the levers on the marketing side that make sales happen? And then from the sales perspective, it's really about communication back to marketing because neither of the two of those are in a silo. Right. They need to be working together.
They and I think that's something that really happens very limitedly in business per se. So my transition from being fractional and coming in house is an interesting story, but going from being a CMO and really watching the numbers and watching the metrics and watching the operations is not a tough journey to CRO.
It means that I have a lot more people who roll up to me, but it really means that I control a lot more of it. And when I say control, it's not a bad control. It's really the best way possible. So there's somebody who's looking at the larger landscape and, and making sure that all the cogs in the wheel are turning at the same cadence to turn out what the desired goal is.
Well, and I think that's where so many, I see it with my own clients, I see it when I am consulting on a project, I remember it from my past corporate lives, that obviously marketing is part art and part science. And sometimes different marketeers skew more towards one or the other, but what is often missed, which is what you and I have talked so much about on one on one is we don't need to do marketing unless it's unless we need more sales.
Like, of course, we brand image and brand awareness, but when we're looking at. Marketing activities that are going to drive sales and revenue. It's so tactical. And so many marketing people get really nervous to commit to being ROI measured. And you are like, Oh, no, please. ROI measure me because I'm going to dazzle you.
Well, and I love it because I mean, so I guess In in my journey to get to where I am today, I worked in tech for almost 20 years now. And marketing is always seen as a cost center. Right. You didn't earn your seat at the table unless you could say, well, this thing that we did and cost us money created this amount of revenue.
So from my very, like from the beginning of my career in corporate America, like that was, that was the goal. You came to those quarterly business planning meetings and you literally had to earn your seat at the table. So when I did that and I could perform it and I understood what, what I understood the assignment, right.
I knew exactly what I needed to do next, right? And that was, that was not it was not a luxury . It was a keep your job, make sure that you are providing a straight line or a linear path to revenue.
I also think that a lot of people who haven't seen that and haven't seen it work, they get nervous that they can't control it, so they can't guarantee it.
I feel like you have a different feeling of like, no, we can control a lot more of this than we think we can. So can you explain that a little bit? Like the parts that you can control in the pipeline from marketing to sales?
Yeah. So I love to think of marketing is is basically an input, right? For what you're going to get out.
At the end of the day, there's a couple of different variables that you need to understand. One of them is called your lifetime value of a customer, right? So you need to have some historical values in order to be able to achieve this. But ultimately, it's just a math calculation. And really, it's how much do you put at the top of the pipeline, meaning how many people do you have to be in front of, whatever capacity that is, be it Google ads or, you know, Instagram posts or what have you.
And is that really bringing people to the next level? So, as an example, there's There's a consignment store that I love in Newport Beach and one of their best facilities for traffic is Instagram stories, right? We all know that stories only last for 24 hours, right? So they're, they're pushing the FOMO because the items that they have go so quickly that they just, you know, that's what they need to know.
So you know, people log on. They, they into instagram and they go through the really quick, you know, real that they put together and then, you know, optimized for stories and they select what they want. And then they call the store, right? And they're getting sales like nobody's business, which is awesome because that's not a typical way to get failed for a B to C or consumer product, right?
In different ways, you just need to figure out what it is your niche, your sweet spot, which is going to gain you traffic, which means you need to do a lot of things and then get really good at them and figure out what's going to work for you. Now one of my favorite things about that is that marketing is always shifting and changing.
There's always some capacity where we're getting like privacy laws that are coming into play. And then I mean, there's, there's other things that are affecting the way that we're doing it. So you really do need to have somebody who's got their pulse on it. And not just from my God, there's an, there's a unicorn who can do everything because that's not how it works to your point earlier, there's usually a person who's really good at analytics, really good at like, say the FME or outside the SME, the SEO and the and like Google you know, like Ads or Facebook ads or, you know, whatever you have, and then they need to be able to translate that down.
And then there's the people who are, who are the creative geniuses who know either how to write copy that like activates people's attention and makes them want more, or they have these brilliant ideas for campaigns that have, you know, such great shock. It stops you in your tracks. So yeah. I think I'm, I'm skewing this because I love to talk about all the things that you can do to be able to fuel the pipeline.
But at the end of the day, you need to know who is your existing target base. Like who are you going after? How long do they stay in your world? How much does, how much revenue do they bring in and what's the profit margin? Because not all dollars are created equal, right? So yeah. And then you can calculate how much you're spending.
If you understand. How much it's going to cost you to be able to acquire that person. So if, as an example, if I'm spending, you know, 6, 000 on Google ads and it brings me two leads, it doesn't sound like much, right? But if I'm spending 6, 000 a month on Google ads and it brings me two leads and those leads are worth, you know 60, 70, 000.
You know, two is not bad, right? That's, that's pretty great. And is that a customer lifetime value or is that like this year value? That's this year. So, but you need to understand how many touches that takes and all the things that go into that customer journey. So there's a lot of different variables that need to be understood at the end of the day.
It's really, it's, it's hard to put your finger on it. And even when I was working for, you know, the mega business of the the Amazon of the world the people with lots gobs of gobs of money, they didn't have a really clear path to what we call attribution. It's hard because you'll lose people at different steps.
So you have to make some, to your point earlier, it's. It's about a creative and a science and analytics, right? So you have to do a little bit of both. And sometimes there's some creative science that happens in between that I think is really cool too.
Absolutely. I mean, so there's many of my clients would come to me, they have just started their business or they've never invested in marketing.
And everything has been either referral based or like, they kind of don't know how they got the sales they've gotten. So when I'm building a sales pipeline with them, I'm always telling them at each step in your funnel, let's assume you're going to have 25 percent conversion, which is very high. But I'm saying that because These are like, I'm starting with direct sales, not digital things.
So if like in my business, for example, step one, it would be meeting someone and getting them to book an intro call of everyone I meet and talk to. I'm going to assume one out of four is going to actually book the call. Then for everyone who books the intro call, I'm going to assume one in four are going to be qualified and I'm going to send them a proposal.
And of the one in four, I send a proposal to should sign up. Now, I'm very proud that my conversion rates are higher and like how we get them higher is by the messaging part, right? Because we're talking to people usually in direct sales first and the effectiveness of those and getting more qualified leads.
So like we want to be playing the game of how do we get better than 25 percent at each point in direct selling. But when we pivot to digital marketing, it can be 1 percent conversion. And I don't think people realize how many people they have to talk to, even in that direct selling model you're forexing, if you have four steps, you're forexing how many people you have to talk to in order to get the actual clients you need.
And that is the, the sales and marketing math that so many people don't understand that, like how many phone calls you have to make even to land 10 clients. Thanks. Yeah. Can be overwhelming to people. And then when you move it to a digital product where you need, I don't know, 10, 000 website visitors a day, we start adding so many zeros.
And I think that's when people's brains just start to melt.
But there's, there's an easy button for that. Right. So, and it, and it comes into considering what the customer journey is, right. That, and that's, that's, I think where people, cause it's not about. The number of people who come to your website. I mean, that's great.
It's like, you know, so many people come to the mall, but how many of them actually buy things or how many of them are in their, their buying journey where they're ready to actually purchase. They may be coming in and saying, this wasn't really for me. And you can tell that from the bounce rates, but there's also, you know, like, what do you, what are you laying down?
Oops. Of course. What are you laying down for them to be able to take that next step? Right? We always want to ask the question of, so what, so, so what, you know, they came to my website, what else can they be doing? Can they download a lead magnet? What are they looking for? What did they click on? And then.
Gradually give them the thing that they're actually looking for. And your, your goal is to delight them, give them something that they didn't think that they were going to get and give them even more than you thought. But the, the biggest. Misinformation that I've ever heard out there is that if you if you give it all away, then You know, what will you have to sell?
That's not the case because if you are truly the expert and we're talking specifically for services then you know, I I would imagine That there's probably some secret sauce and how you deploy fed services, right? Nobody can be Kara, nobody, they can't, they can't deliver the same things. And you know, when you're looking at bigger businesses, no offense, but when you're looking at bigger businesses, you want to be able to duplicate that same secret sauce across the entire organization being stuck at, at Kara.
And what Kara can deliver is, is it's almost a growth hindrance. Right. You need to be able to make sure that you have multiple Keras, right. They can do all the things for the people and that way you can grow the business to a certain amount. But I, I feel like people get overwhelmed with, Oh my God, I need to really dial in my website.
I'm like, you actually don't probably have a service industry, like, you know, landing page, but if you drop enough stuff like gold on there to be able to get them to take the next step, you have to get them to know, like, and trust you. That's tough to do when they're coming in cold. Like you said, referral base, you're at least gonna, you've got a leg up.
They've got an introduction. They may know you or you know, like they know somebody who knows you and that's, that's pretty powerful. So if you're looking at, you know, the customer journey specifically, you have to know where you're getting the most of your, your customers or clients coming in from, and then how you're going to process that to the next stage.
So I think that that's probably a good place to start is knowing who you're going to target and what are you going to do to delight them? What do they want? Right? That's the thing. Does your service meet the need or the want?
Yes. My, my word is always dazzle. How, how can we be dazzling at every step? How can we be dazzling in that moment?
And yeah, I've told you, we've laughed about how I'll have people call me and say the only way to grow my business with a Twitter strategy. And like, absolutely not. Like, no. Know what, like, I don't know anyone whose business is growing because of that. So the messaging, because that same message to your point should be showing up everywhere.
And I don't think people spend enough time with how their words or their offerings are encouraging people to be an obvious yes. And that's, yeah, they're so focused on the sale, the sell. They're not focused on the relationship and the delighting and the dazzling component. Yeah. And if that's why, like, people get so frustrated, like, how did that person make all this money?
I'm like, they're just dazzling. Yeah. I can't guarantee their products good. I can't guarantee they deliver what they say they're going to, but they are dazzling your pants off to get you to check out. Yeah.
Yeah. It's, it's one of those things that, you know, charm is, is a, is a wonderful trait in a failed feature.
At the end of the day, you do need to have something past charm, right? So past, past the dazzle, there needs to be some substance. I like to think of marketing as the tools in your tool belt. And then, but you still have to have a really good foundation. And then you need to use those tools to build the house on that foundation.
So there's, there's lots of different ways to build a house. Just like there's lots of different ways to go to market. Do the ones that work. If it holds up and it, you know, like build one house or one, one platform or one, you know, like story and see if it holds. And then if it does an awesome, like, you know, but building that next level, it's going to be, it's going to shake your core and you better have a really great foundation because when you stack on top of it, which is growth, then, you know, you could break that foundation easily.
Well, and you're also not going to get the optimum. Lifetime value of a customer because they're going to buy one thing and never again, and never again, and maybe some bad reviews. It becomes a negative lifetime value. You know, I think that there's a lot of people who are, who know that ads and creating a funnel is what they need to do.
It terrifies them. And they also don't really know the power it can have. I know in the spaces you've worked. There's lots of ad spend. There's lots of funnels. How are you kind of evaluating when to lean in on ad spend versus when to go back to another marketing sales tool?
Well, I'll tell you one that I never turn off is the referral system.
You never turn that off and you find different ways to compel referrals. Right. So that's one of the things that I, I always say is, and I'm going to deviate from your question just a little bit because I feel like this, this point is, is not it's just not hammered down enough, right? When you are talking to somebody who is a dazzled customer, people do not ask for a referral.
Like you love this customer. This customer loves you. Why would you not say, Hey, I'm a customer. We're really good for each other. Do you know other people who can who are like you? Because I mean, it's a compliment. It's not you're not asking for a favor because these people will ask the same favors of you in many different capacities.
So this is this should be table stakes when you're doing business is figuring out where your best referral partners are and then doubling down there. And that is the easiest way to grow your bottom line. It is not always scalable, but it's one of those things where you just need, you, you need to make it part of your best practices.
In fact, I just said that to my sales team yesterday and they were like, Oh, right. You know, I mean, these are sales professionals, but even they forget this is, this is an easy thing to do. Okay. I will. Oh, do I really want to do that? I'm like, yeah, you do. You do. And the other, the other portion of it is just pick up the damn phone.
So thank you. Yeah. Yeah. You need to be, so it's not so scary, but there's, there's an exercise that you can do that's going to prepare you for, for a no. And I think it's, it's the exercise of wrapping your mind around the fact that not everybody is going to say yes to you. In fact, it's probably going to take a couple of no's before you get to a yes.
But you have to pick up the phone. You have to actually call that person, interrupt their day. And ask them what you can do for them. If you continue to persist, what you're showing is that you're sticking around and you're diligent. Now, don't like, you know, don't hard sell them, but just ask them what you can do.
Right. And the phone is your friend emails. I get so many emails from so many different email platforms. Most of them I delete. So if you're, if you're just doing cold email, I mean, it does work to a degree, but you're playing an incredible numbers game. So yeah, I usually say don't yeah, if you're if you're in the service industry cold email is Like I said, it can work But I would rather you spend your time and energy doing you know Google ads because people are searching for that and there's an algorithm behind it.
That's much more powerful than one little email, right? so, I think the original question. What did you ask?
Well people get so kind of overwhelmed about ads because You and I know that there's like layers of science to the ads, and everyone at some point has tried to boost a post somewhere, and it hasn't done anything, and so then they're terrified to do ads, and then they talk, bring in an ad expert, and they have a flat fee of say, 2, 000 a month to work with them, plus the ad spend on top.
Right. These are having a panic attack about how much they're giving and how much now the now the ROI expectation is like through the roof. Yeah. So I think they're never sure, like, when does it make sense to invest in ads? What do I need to be worried about? And then the third part would be How long do I need to give it because they'll spend money for three months and not see things happen and like, be like, Nope, cut it off.
Like, I can't. This is scary. It's not doing anything. So I see you laughing.
Well, like there's, there's a lot of different things. And sometimes you're, you're right. Your gut instinct will tell you this is, this is too expensive. I'm just losing money. This is what it is. Like, like anything else, like an investment in your business, you need to be able to have the money.
You're, you're testing the waters. And for, I would say, depending on, on the sales cycle of your product and the cost of your product you're basically paying for data. Which is why it's so important for you to understand the data that you're getting back. You need to trust your ad expert. And if you don't trust them, which is, you know, like the underlying reason why most people pull the rug, is they're like we haven't seen anything we don't know.
And, and I don't really trust you and you're taking all my money and I'm not getting anything out of this. Well, that's because they can't get anything out of it. You know, if I were to invite you to like a Halloween party, Carrie, you and I know each other very well, you might come. But Halloween parties may not be your thing.
You know, you may be like, I don't know. I don't really love to get dressed up. That's a night for me to spend inside. And I love to answer the trick or treaters at my door. Right. So, you know, it depends, even though I know you that well, and I've invited you to something that's personal, you can say, no, I don't take offense to that.
But so when you're asking somebody on the street to come to your Halloween party, you know, or whatever party they're going to be like, I'm sorry. Excuse me. What? Don't, I don't know you. I don't know what you're kind of weird for asking me, right? So you're, you're invading the world in a digital capacity.
It's like being in a car next to somebody who's cut you off. You know, that's, that's the mentality. It triggers that same response. Do you have to know that that person has to be really far down their buying journey? They have to have, they know about the solution. They know about how much it costs. They know about what they want.
They know what their problem is. They know a lot about what's Going on and they've probably already done ample amount of research. You just happened to hit their, their search in the right moment, in the right time. So it may not be the right time. And so the question at hand is how do you know when to double down?
You double down when you see you, you see success. When the data comes back to you and is positive, that's when you double down you only. And sometimes you do have to wait. Like I said, you know, I'm, our services are not cheap for where I work. But we use Google ads. We just, we just had a form fill from a Google ad that was, it's going to be, I would say at least six figures at least.
Right. So it does happen, but you have to spend some money and it's, I think we've gotten three really good leads. Over the course of six months at 6, 000 in, in, in Google ad spend. Now, each of them are worth a ton of money, right? So they've more than paid for themselves, but it took us at least four months to get into this.
Four months to be able to generate and have the real data to come back. Four months. And then after the four months. Then we had to really do some optimizing and tweaking before we could really say that this was going to get down there. So you have to make sure that you're actually hitting, your Google ads are hitting at the right capacity.
If you hit too low in the funnel, meaning they're ready to buy and that's who you're, you're optimizing for. It's like asking some stranger to marry you. They're not ready. They're just not ready. You need to warm them up. You need to take them on some dates. You need to show them what you can do and don't make it all about you and make it about them.
Like Kara, tell me about you. What do you do in your business? Really? That's so cool. What? And you can't ask like the crazy questions off the top. So tell me what's, you know, keeping you up at night. That's not going to work. Right. Would you, would you tell that information to a stranger? No. So why are you asking it in a digital capacity?
I use the reference all the time. We do a whole series on it about how business is like dating. Exactly what you just said. It's really weird to walk up to somebody at a bar and say, let's get married. And people do this every day with their cold emails every day when they're telling it, talking about their product.
And it just be like, most people have not been taught how to sell. Yes. Yes. And when you convert it into dating people like, Oh, I know how to go on dates. I know how to be a normal human from a romantic relationship. At least the people I'm talking to do. Right. And so that makes it make more sense, but then they also immediately jump to, I need money now, and I don't want to wait to court a client for six months or whatever, however long it's going to take based on the value you're asking them to commit to.
So it's a really funny exchange. Yeah. But I think it's important for people to know. And you also, it's not just on the brands and the businesses spending the money and what they should be looking for. But I think also so often the people hiring social media, SEO, ad spend people, they're like, Oh, let's try it for three months.
And I'm like, you can't, it's like a six month to one year commitment minimum, because to your point, we have to give the marketing experts we hire. room to test and get the data and they have to figure out your customer and your business in that data centric way. Yeah, we cannot get in three months.
Oh, yeah. And the the folks who are like, Oh, my gosh, well, I should probably just go down the path of referral. Right? Cool. But Kara, how much time do you spend networking?
Well in the past year, I've spent significantly more time than I did before, but I, I'm probably under valuing how much time I do it because I think I do it all the time.
Yeah, you probably do. I actually, I believe that knowing you and how well you're connected. Yes. So what if I told you that you would see returns for. Three to six months, but then you would have a pipeline that's flowing and it would cost you the same amount of money that you spend. Not only in your networking fees, but also in parking and lunches and follow up.
And here's the best part, priceless, your time, your time is what you're getting back. So you have to wait for a set duration of time, trust the person you're with. And then you have a funnel that's automated, right? You're getting leads that are coming in that are ready to purchase because you put the time in.
So no, it's not instant gratification, but there's, Like, you can do both. You can do both. You can spend less time doing referrals until you're ready to, to get that caught up. And I think that the bigger question and the thing that I heard you say is that you can't come from a place of desperation. You can't, you cannot come from a place of lack.
Oh, I have to, I need this money. I'm losing this money. No, you're investing in your business when you do that, but you have to make sure that your investment is worth it. So like, you know, do what you would normally do if you're going to go spend a chunk of money. Let's, let's call it 24, 000. Right? Know what you're spending it on.
You're spending it on data. You're spending it on an expert. You wouldn't do anything less if you were going to go get your plumbing fixed. You wouldn't, you know, you would research the crap out of it. You would check out all the referrals. You would call them up and have them come out and do an estimate.
You would, you would give them a smaller project to do, and then you'd build it up over time so that you were like, okay, I have to redo my entire plumbing for my house. You know, soup to nuts, pull up the floors, the whole damn thing. You would never call somebody out of the blue unless it was an emergency, right?
Unless your hand was forced to do that without putting them through, you know, smaller projects.
Mm hmm. Wait, and you also mentioned the trust part and yeah, there's this really funny situation where a lot of business owners, especially if they are creative, they think they understand marketing. They're like, Oh, well, I've done Instagram or I, I, I've done the messaging, I've done my own website and the, I don't know, maybe audacity that anyone thinks that they know how to properly use a marketing channel when they haven't gone to school for it, haven't been trained by it, haven't had, haven't seen And been a part of producing tremendous results in those spaces.
They become the worst clients for some of my marketing. Agency clients, because they're constantly being like, Oh, I don't know if you're right. Like that trust thing shows up. And I just, this is a PSA. If you have a business and you hire an expert, give them the room to do their job. If you hire them for six months, leave them alone.
Just you will get better results. If you just say yes to whatever they recommend, then if you try to critique and creative direct it and whatever else.
Yeah. And I think that that's, that's the, that's the thing, right? Right. You do this. We do this all the time in other industries. We do it for real estate agents.
We do it for our financial planners and advisors, but we don't do it in marketing. We're like, okay, I let go. I will do this. I have spent, you know, like I said, almost two decades in marketing and there are things I don't know, things that have changed. COVID ruined us for everybody. You know, like we, everything that we thought.
Was good. And we understood like, that's, that's not something that we understand anymore. We don't understand it. You know, I think that that's, that's important for us to say is that you cannot be, and should not be the, the marketing expert of your business. You should not be that. And because you have a job to do your job as CEO, your job as CEO, and probably operations and accounting and finance, let the marketing people do the marketing.
I did it for my business too. And I was so glad that I did. Right? There's, there's a reason to let it go. There's a reason why real estate agents will let you be in the house when other people do the walkthrough. Yes. You know, and it's because you can't, you cannot handle the truth, you know, like you can't handle it.
You need to, they're going to critique it, and it's going to be bad, and people are going to say no, and they're going to say some awful things on the internet about your posts and your YouTubes and everything else. Don't, don't read it. Don't read it. Just let them be, and trust.
Well, and we're recording this the day after the election.
And I don't want to, we don't need to step into politics right now, but I think a key takeaway of what has happened ties back to business owners, which is you mentioned motivations and how COVID shifted, why people are buying and what they're looking for and hopes and fears. Like it opens up a lot of different things that impact marketing psychology.
Yeah, but what. I think the results of this election are showing is also that politicians, just like many business owners, are not doing customer research. We are not, we are not doing research for people who have said, no, we're not doing research on people who have said, yes, we're not asking for, like, we're not understanding them enough to be able to give them the easy customer journey.
We assume we know who they are. We're like, Oh, we know who they are. They care about this, this, and this. And if we give them this funnel, it'll be great. And then it doesn't work. And so again, you said pick up the phone. I have instructed clients to call customers until you talk to 10. Their phone numbers are in there.
They're in their order form, especially for like tangible products. Yeah. Go call them, ask them if you can have 15 minutes of their time, it will radically transform your business. Totally. And My clients fight me about this all the time, but the ones who do it, yeah. Come back with a holy shit list of all these things they never knew.
They didn't understand. Yeah. Cause whatever are from the inside looking out, we see our business is totally different than the outside sees it in. Yeah. And so It'll save us so much time in changing our products, changing our services, our message, like all the things. So what is your opinion on having that customer research customer data?
My
gosh.
I mean, it's a no brainer for me, but I think what you ask those customers is probably more important than just picking up the phone. So for a customer who said no to you or yes. The question is why? Why did you say no? Why did you say yes? A lot of people. So I even tell myself that, you know, what is the flavor of the objection?
And do you do objection tracking, right? Because you'll see that you'll get better at handling those objections. Once and there's lots of books out there on that. Right. But I think it's, it's really important to your point of understanding your customer base because how can you be saying the right thing?
You know, what I say to you is different than anybody. I'd say that to provisors because I know that you understand marketing. I know you get it. I can rift on that stuff all day with you because I'm like, Oh, she gets it. It doesn't matter to anyone else. I'm like, Oh yeah, it's top of funnel. And people are like, What's a funnel?
What's a funnel? What are you doing? Yeah. You know, I say LTV and I can like, I can use all the jargon. I think it's really I think it's really, it's, it's pivotal to a business to not understand who you're talking to. It's like if you, let's go back to the dating thing. If you're going on a blind date and you don't know who you're talking to, you don't know what to prepare for.
You don't know what you're going to do. You are putting yourself out there in an adventure and, you know, good for you, right? I used to do this all the time and it was super fun, but I gamified it because it was like, Oh, you know, I'm going to get a free meal out of it. That's great. And I might, I might even offer to do it, but I'm always testing out the person who's on the, on the other end.
You can go down that path in your journey as an entrepreneur, or you could know and do the research and the proper cyber stalking to be able to figure out who you're going to be talking to. And then you'll get deeper in the conversation. It won't be like, Hey, so tell me where you grew up. You'll be like, Oh, So tell me why you moved to seven different places and you could have a more probably a scarier conversation, but you know obviously I've been out of the dating world for a moment.
But I think you and I probably go on dates in the same way where.
We don't hang out in like the shallow conversation. So we probably bring up all the scary things sooner. But I think that also makes us very effective in sales and marketing because we're not afraid to ask the question that we don't want the answer to. And those are the questions that give us so much more information.
Like everybody likes to hang out and the people pleasing like just like us and sure just buy from us one time. That's enough. And I'm like, no.
So let me let me ask you this. Yeah. And if somebody told you, no, you're not for me Kara, or versus somebody who was like, yeah, just, you know what, I think you're a really good fit, but not right now.
Which one do you feel better about?
Well, I, I like to, I'm a direct person. So I prefer the direct answer, but I also had this conversation with someone the other day about how, if you tell me any, like a soft note or direct, no, I need. If you really want me to leave you alone, I need the no thank you, this will never happen, leave me alone, don't call me back.
Otherwise, I'm always like, they're just a no right now. And so I'm always secretly plotting how to convert them into a yes. someday. Yeah. And I may also be motivated by someone who says hell no, never, even more so, but I need the firm like, no, thank you. And here's why. So I can really grasp like, oh yeah, we're not a fit.
Otherwise I get too competitive and start playing the game. But the people, I'm also the weirdo who, no matter what they would say that, Oh, I don't know. Or the no, I have 8, 000 more questions. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
But that's so, so you are a rare breed. Well, we'll just say that we knew this before. There's a lot of people who will be like, oh, they, they said, they said, they said, yes, they liked me, but they didn't hear the subtlety of what happens there.
There is an objection. The next question of that is, what would it take for it to be a hell? Yes, right now. That's the next level of questioning that needs to happen with a soft. No, or a meth. Yes. Right. And that's where you need to take your business is because every time you get a hell no, it will never happen.
Regardless of being you, Kara there's, there's a, there's a, There's only a finite number of hours in the day, and you gotta know where to spend those hours. So if you're continuing to go after the no's, and that'll show up in your digital marketing too, as the people who bounce off your website in zero seconds.
Nope, didn't mean to be here, can't believe I did that. Then you are, you're not crafting your message enough, and that's an internal facing thing that you need to do is, how am I speaking, and who, to whom do I want to be speaking to? I spent forever in my early entrepreneurial life thinking, Oh, I'm going to help the underdog.
I'm going to help the people who don't make a lot of money. And you know what happens with that? You don't make a lot of money then you do not make a lot of money and you spend your life in, in like you know, urgent mode trying to help them figure out how they're going to do it because they're not business savvy enough to be able to handle marketing.
Right. So for me, I was like, okay, let me just start at, you know, anyone over a hundred thousand dollars. I was like, okay, but there's still that like they come from this place of black. They're not really sure the business isn't there So I was like, okay, what about 1 million dollars and like for entrepreneurs?
We're starting up like a million dollars. That's amazing I don't I totally want my business to be there. But what it turns out is that They're just starting to scratch the surface of success and getting their, their people process and technology into play and understanding what that takes. And then you're not probably looking at profitability yet, which is the most important piece of business.
I started at 5 million and under, I was like, but we're, we're getting there kind of 10 million and under. And you know, the tipping moment for me was when I started working for this company. As a fractional and they're a 30 million company and they paid me early every time I was like, Well, that's that's exciting.
So I knew like, that's what I wanted. I wanted the financial stability and security. I wanted to make sure that this was a thing that was important to me. So you have to really go back and look at yourself and say, what's important to me? Do you love the chase? Are you cool with maybe not getting paid all the time consistently, then fine.
Go with the startups. That's perfect. If you are looking at, you know, non B2B, you're looking at consumers, who are you looking at? What's the demographic? What do they make in terms of money? Where are they located? But what, what keeps them up at night? And I know that that's an overplayed marketing, whatever, but what else are they, it is important.
And what else would they put if you were, you know, holding a shopping cart and yours was in there, what else would they put in there? What is their life and why the hell do they need you? It goes back to the, so what? Okay. So what you're you help me solve my problem, you know
when I don't think we play The, the snarky card enough when we're evaluating our business, like, we don't do the devil's advocate side of it where, yeah, was doing this two days ago with a client who was walking me through their speech and the talk and their programming.
And I was like, okay, why do I care about this? Yeah. And they were like, what do you mean? I'm like, if I you have, if you can't convince me and I'm your coach who's on your team already, we have problems. And I'm not saying it to be a jerk. I really am like, okay, tell me why. Because we don't say our true why fast enough and early enough.
So people are like stuck in this gray haze of like, what the hell are you talking about? You're using jargon I don't know. You're using words that are too big. Like, Yeah. It, there's a level of clarity and simplification that would argue having clarity and simplification is the best stuff to invest in because without it, then you really can't invest in the other parts of marketing because, Yeah.
Sure, you can put whatever you want through the scientific side of marketing. Sure. But you're going to get a bunch of garbage back if you're, if there isn't the clarity and simplicity included in it. That's so
true. And so going into that, like digging into that just a little bit more. So clarity and simplicity, not in, not only in your messaging, but who you are, what you do.
And. Why it's important. That's the clarity. And, and, and I mean, honestly, I always say, why should they care? Why, why would you care? You know, if I was selling you fractional you know, chief marketing officer services, you would be like, well, but I already know marketing. I already have, I have an agency and, and I love, is it Jen?
Who does it? No. Who is it? Alex. Yes. Alex. Alex does it. And she's amazing. She's like, you know, I don't know. sunlight in a human being form, right? That's how, that's how she is, but she's, she really knows her stuff. And I, I mean, you don't need that today. You may not need it next week, but you have to know when, when the nose are good.
No. Cause for every yes, you were saying no to something else.
Yeah, and and to clarify everyone who's listening when I say I'm chasing knows it's only the people I want that I'm like, there's people or brands you meet that you're like, No, I know I am the one who should be helping you. I get it that you're You can't see it yet.
So I'm going to put you over here on my long term chase game. And in the meantime, I got to go talk to people who are yeses because I need clients, customers now. Yeah. And so it is, it's a, I'm trying to get better at talking about those really simple strategy components that I forget to say out loud.
Yeah. Because like winning, but I don't like winning to the point of beating someone else. It's like me to myself winning. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. And I do think that every maybe or no is really just a not yet for better or worse. Absolutely. I also know that, know the distinction of, we're not going to, like, it's, I'm committed to helping these people that I'm excited about.
I'm not attached to it. And I think people get attached to everyone that comes into their pipeline and they're hanging on to them for dear life. And I'm like, Oh my, let them go. They're annoying at this point. It's like, they're a bad date. Like, Get him out of here. Yeah.
Yeah. You need to purge your email list.
Only the people who really want to be there should be there. It should be that as you're in it, let me just say this out loud, because it's also not said enough is you need to be emailing your, your database. You need to email them consistently. I get emails from brands that I love and people that I love to hear from, and it doesn't matter how many times they email me, I would be like, Oh, and I may not read all of them.
That's okay. Right? Your open rate isn't that important as what you're giving them in the breadcrumbs for the next boo. What is it that you're asking them to do? So make sure you're doing that click through rate, make sure you're emailing your list. Make sure that you're giving them something that they absolutely want and need, you know, the delight and dazzle goes into effect in every stage of your business.
It cannot just be for the end product.
Well, I want to pivot a little bit to You and your history and your family because something I find so admirable about you is That you have a very unique home setup situation that wasn't unique 40 years ago or 400 years ago, but today is unique So what is your home situation and how did you make that choice?
Oh, man. Well, so what Kara is saying is that my parents live with us, right? So my husband and I well, so I've known my husband forever. We have known him for 20, 27, going on 28 years now. We've been married for about eight. We have a 10 year old together. You do the math, right? It is one of the great things that we always have an open conversation about where we're being effective and efficient.
So every Sunday we have, you know, kind of our, it's a life business meeting, but we have a business meeting where we talk about our hopes and wishes and dreams and goals and et cetera. And as we are, you know, we're getting older, our parents are getting older. Right. So you know, it's, it's really, it was really tough to watch cause I'd come over and my mom would be like, you know, looking at her computer, trying to figure it out and bless her court.
Cause she's just, you know, an amazing woman, so smart. She was a college professor who taught OBGYN nursing, wrote her own textbook, has multiple, you know subsequent textbooks that have come from that. But you know, one of the things that I, I really value about her is that as she, she ages, she's so graceful about the things that, that come with aging.
I hope, I hope I am too, but I guarantee you, I'm not going to be too much of a control freak. They, they, they just weren't, you know, like we noticed right away that there's, I mean, I guess over time, but you know, there was, there was a tipping moment where we were like this could be bad. And then COVID happened and we happened to we were renting a house in Costa Mesa.
It was a killer deal. Loved it. It was a great house. Had a great relationship. And we ended up talking to my parents about getting a house together. Right. And so they, they said yes. And we decided to do that and they moved in with us. And we noticed that there were some things about their house that were just like doing so well, you know, like there was a platform that the water heater was on and it was crumbling.
And I mean, that could have been a huge disaster. So we took care of it. Right. And then the years kind of progressed and they stayed with us and my mom has had multiple little strokes. And so she has a hard time remembering things. She just, you know, she'll walk into a room, which is normal. You walk into a room and you're like, Oh, I can't remember why I'm here.
What was I doing again? But it happens to her all the time. Especially when she's, she's trying to tell something and the more she's under duress, the harder it becomes for her to be able to talk about whatever just can't find the right words and it makes it very tough for her. So when she's, and she'll forget to do things like, you know, when she goes to the doctor, tell him that, you know, her left eye is fuzzy or she's seeing double vision or, you know, so when you get into those things, you're like, okay, We're going to be in this spot for a while.
And because we because what we, you know, have this relationship and I, my mom and I are very close. I was like, let's, let's just keep this, this, you know, this process going. Let's keep this, this structure to our house. And I, I think it's interesting because my husband and I had, had a deep A good conversation, you know, early in COVID days when he stops doing what he was doing because he couldn't anymore.
I was like, listen, our parents are getting older and we need somebody to take care of them. And I, you know, I think that there's more for me. There's more financial reward for what i'm doing and where i'm going. Then there will be for you. And it was a tough conversation, right? Like, you know, the normal, the normal guy would just be like, I can do it too.
But my husband is, you know, he's a, he's a special person for sure. In many different ways. He took that for a beat as he does. And he's like, okay, I'm, I'm willing to do this. So he takes care of our parents collectively and he takes care of our son. So he is a stay at home dad. And it was a, it was a real true honest to God conversation.
And I think one of the things that makes it so special is that, you know, we have these, these talks where he can listen to me rant about work and do whatever, but he's also, he's been in business. He knows what things are like. So he's a really good ear for me to bounce ideas off of and what I'm going through and he gives me very sound advice, but he's also much more of a patient person.
He's more nurturing than I am and in lots of different capacities. So he's great at handling situations that would. Frustrate the crap out of me. You know, my mom isn't getting it. I'm used to her being so sharp and like on top of it and witty and all the things. And as she's slowing down, it's, it's a struggle for me to see her go through this.
And it makes me resentful and angry because I knew who she was and I need to start embracing who she is. And that's, it's scary. It's tough. Like that's a tough place for me to be in. So to have this reprieve is, I mean, It's more than I could have ever hoped or wished for.
Well, and I think there's so many, it's very European, it's very international, I should say, not even European.
Like they, it's common in every other part of the world, except the U. S. to have multi generation living. It's common to need to understand that there's a village component to making all things in life work. And just think that more people are thinking about should we do that and they're nervous about losing their independence or the compromises that have to come up and , I so admire that you and your husband have that relationship where you're like, no, we'll figure it out together.
Like, let's just do what's the right thing. And we'll go from there. Because I see so many benefits for having that type of environment and just making it work. And the fact that you are doing it today, and it's a rarity, I think is a bit absurd for everyone else. But I think it means a lot about how you are choosing to prioritize your values.
and the efficiencies of making life happen and not have to spend so much time doing that. Like, you guys are busy. So it's like, how do we make all the things in our life work? And that's one scenario.
Well, thank you for that. I mean, it was to to be completely transparent. You know, it's been a number of years since we've been in this situation.
And I can tell you, it was not always so graceful. You know, my husband had complete imposter syndrome that was he, you know, contributing enough. And I was, you know, I still to this day feel like, you know, my son is having, he has a better relationship with my husband. You know, and there's, there's a little bit of FOMO that I get, and then I'm not in the, the cadence of the responses.
And so mommy doesn't know how to do it properly. Or mommy doesn't know how to do it the way that daddy does it. And it's, it's tough. Like there's, there's a lot of things that come up. You know, I'm, I'm the kind of person who gets shit done. So they still call me in when, when there needs to be a strongly worded email or somebody to handle a situation that, that they can't handle, or we need to like, holy shit, we all forgot, you know, taxes, but you know, Shannon can do it in a day.
Right. And that's, that's my strong suit. That's my contributing factor for my husband. I mean, he is the unsung hero, right? I bring home the money, but he, he handles all the little things in the house. Right. So, you know, when there's a catastrophe or, you know, when all of a sudden one of the pets is sick and my parents, you know, can't do whatever he's the guy who does it.
He's the He's also the guy who does laundry. I pitch in every now and again, but 10 to one, I'm, I'm likely to start it and forget it because I have 6 billion other things going on. So he's probably like, please don't do that. But we, but then it makes, you know, doing laundry together. Nicer, you know, it's, it's the, the moments that you choose that make, and you get to, you have a choice and how you want to see your life.
So it could be a chore or you could have resentment. Yeah. Or you can choose to, to the people and, and why you showed up for them. I think that's probably one of the biggest things for us is that we realize that there aren't that many years that we will get with the people that we love. And that's, I mean, heartbreaking for me to even think about, you know, but you, we have to, we have to treat each of the moments that we have with them as precious.
Even when they're getting a pain in the ass.
Exactly. And I think that's a balance that I'm always looking at myself between leaving space to chase the dreams and the adventures and the things that we want and remembering that These other things we really care about are finite. And so it's like this really interesting mix, I think, of finding the balance between investing in the values that you have and some, like for me, anyway, my other, my other values of travel and growth and business, like all these other things.
are always in conflict. So it's like, how are we finding that balance between honoring the relationships that we care about, honoring like the integrity that we want in our home and our family relationships and having this other side that kind of runs amok all over the world. So it's, it is, it's like, how does that rhythm come together?
It doesn't. I mean, I think that the dissonance is the, is the thing that, that creates The adventure. I mean, it's never boring in my world. Never. That's there's not a moment that goes by where I'm like, Oh, I came home and you know, the dishwasher's out or I came home and you know, there's this, you know, minor catastrophe.
And that's, it keeps us on our toes and it keeps us sharp. It also gives us. When there is a reprieve, be it, you know, a dinner or whatever. And I can say like, this is, this is the other point, you know, I get to say that my, my son gets to have dinner with his grandparents every night, you know, that there's no price tag on that.
My dad's 87. He's not going to be around forever, you know, into, into my son's twenties, you know, maybe if we're lucky. So, so you, you get to pick the moment that's, that's like, pick what you want to do. And some days I, I think the best decision is to say, what makes me happy today? You know what, what, what?
And understanding that, 'cause I just had this conversation with my mom and she's, she's going through the, I should, I should, I should do all these things, but she can't anymore. But she can't, you know, balance her checkbook and she can't do her taxes and she can't check her mail and she doesn't understand when she gets a, like a phishing scam.
She doesn't understand, you know, so when but I asked her, I was like, what are you doing for you? What, what makes you happy? Like, what if, what if you threw out all the I should and you just did the things and whittled it down to a list of, this really makes me light, like lights up my whole day to talk to Kara, lights up my whole day.
Lights up my whole day to you know, don't know watch my son do something crazy and fun. Right. And that he has zero like shyness. But, but you know, when you don't, you're not in control. When I travel, I have to go with the flow because there isn't anything that I can do about that. So, you know, you have to know your limits and your boundaries of what makes you happy, but also know where you can, you can influence things to your benefit.
I guess that's, that's my long winded way of saying that.
Perfect. So we are running out of time. So I'm going to ask you some rapid fire questions. Yes, ma'am. The first is, how would you define powerful in ladies? And does their definition change when they're next to each other?
So women who know what they want, and they're willing to do what it takes to get there.
With kindness and grace, it's how I define powerful ladies. Does it change when they're standing next to each other? No, I think it, I mean, it does. It changes for the better. That makes them more powerful. If they're willing to lean into that is together, we're better. And we, we, if you learn to compliment instead of resist, you can be anything and you can do anything, which is pretty bad ass.
Yes. On the, we ask everyone where they put themselves in the powerful lady scale. If zero is average everyday human and 10 is the most powerful lady you can imagine, where would you score yourself today? And on an average day?
Oh, today I feel pretty good. So I'm going to give myself an eight today. Depending on the day and the hour and the minute it can range all over the place.
So You know, yesterday I was feeling more like a three and that's okay because I know that there will be days when I feel like a 10.
We've also been asking everybody, what do you want? What's on your wishlist? How can we help you? Whether it is a to do list or a to manifest list, big, small, significant or insignificant, how can we help you?
And, you know, I, Love to be connected with people. I love the idea of just expanding my horizon. So if you're a cool person who loves to dig into the real heart of a matter, then let's talk like that's, that's like my biggest wishlist is to surround myself with more, More powerful women who are ready to take on the world to like conquer everything.
That's what I want.
Amazing for everybody who wants to know you, support you, connect with you, work with you in some capacity. If there's ever a spare moment you have how can they find you and follow you?
I mean, I'm Shannon. I'm Shannon Murray Doffo on every platform. So it's S H A N N O N M U R R A Y D O F F O. So you can find me anywhere there. If you like this kind of content, you want to learn more about marketing. I have a tick tock YouTube. It's really bad and I love it so much. But it'll give you two straight because that's, that's my jam. But yeah, yeah. Connect with me there. Reach out. I'm terrible at responding. I'm not going to lie. Or, you know, connect with Kara because Kara always is the best connector.
Thank you. Well, thank you so much for being a yes to me, first and foremost, powerful ladies as well. You know, it's just, it's nice knowing that there are women like you out there. Caring and being considerate about all the things in business and in life and the community.
And yeah, I'm just really glad that we have met and you're in my circle now.
You too, Kara. Thank you so much.
All the links to connect with Shannon, her revenue generating and marketing skills are in our show notes at thepowerfulladies. com. Please subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening and leave us a rating and review or share us with a friend. Join us on Instagram at powerful ladies, and you can connect directly with me at Kara Duffy dot com.
I'll be back next week with a brand new episode until then I hope you're taking on being powerful in your life. Go be awesome and up to something you love.
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Instagram: @shannonmurraydoffo
Website: fegrowthstrategies.com
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Email: shannon@fegrowthstrategies.com
Created and hosted by Kara Duffy
Audio Engineering & Editing by Jordan Duffy
Production by Amanda Kass
Graphic design by Anna Olinova
Music by Joakim Karud
