An Interview With Rachel Kline
The B2B marketing landscape is a complex and evolving space, with its unique challenges and opportunities. Navigating it effectively requires well-thought-out strategies and insightful tactics. With a myriad of digital channels available, what are the best ways to connect, engage, and convert potential business clients? As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Raja Walia.
Raja Walia is the founder and CEO of GNW Consulting, a strategic marketing operations agency that guides companies through the ever-changing landscape of marketing technology. Raja has been leading teams and spearheading marketing strategies across hundreds of organizations for more than 20 years. He is recognized as a focus-driven leader who consistently delivers the perfect balance of strategy and execution for marketing operations professionals ranging from small to Fortune 500 businesses.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share your personal backstory with us?
Originally, I moved from Punjab, India, to the States back in 1990. I really didn’t get acclimated until the late ’90s. I honestly didn’t even know what pizza was until I watched the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and wondered, “What is that they’re eating, and why does it look so good?”
I started in consulting in 2011, specifically in MarTech, during the MarTech boom. There were only about 900 SaaS products at the time. I’ve been consulting my entire professional career and have worked at various sized consulting firms. I had the opportunity to work with clients like American Express, McKesson, and Nasdaq. I’ve always been a fan of technology, so in my early career, I took the time to learn as many platforms as I could — from Adobe to Oracle (Eloqua), Salesforce, and whatever else I could find. I wanted to be certified in all of them, and eventually I held certifications in every platform I consulted on.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful for who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I can think of a few people at various points in my life, from early in my career to now, who have always pushed me to be better. One of the first individuals I thought of is an amazing marketer named Andrea Lechner-Becker. I was always good with technology, but she was — is — a better marketer. We could argue about that all day. However, the essence of consulting and the thought process it requires involves asking questions and analyzing not just the technical aspects, but also uncovering the reasons behind them. Understanding why a company wants to implement a piece of technology is just as important as the process of doing it.
When I moved to a consulting agency for a more senior role, Emily Salus was my boss at the time. She had a lot of experience managing enterprise-level accounts and clients. She really helped me refine and round out my consulting approach, gearing it more toward enterprise-level initiatives and thought processes.
When I first started GNW Consulting, one of my very first clients was Robert Smithline. He’s been a VP and C-level marketer for as long as I’ve known him. He is an exceptional marketer, and the reason I still use a tagline for GNW today is based on his recommendation. He provided invaluable guidance and feedback, both in his personal and professional time, on everything related to the company I started — from managing personnel to offering feedback on packages and offers I had at the time. He was definitely opinionated and very straightforward.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Vision without execution is just a hallucination,” is a quote attributed to many people, including Thomas Edison, Einstein, and a Japanese proverb. This is one of the biggest components in my life.
Can you share with us three strengths, skills, or characteristics that helped you to reach this place in your career? How can others actively build these areas within themselves?
Experience is the biggest area needed for entrepreneurs. If your goal is to start a business or grow in your career, and you do not have experience in it, you will fail. In today’s world, you have to know, understand or have worked in every part of a company. You have to know the ins and outs of each aspect of a company — or your company — in order to be successful. You have to be comfortable with failing and failing often. You cannot let it tax your mental state or change the vision you have. Resilience and adaptability and having the will to bounce back from any setback is crucial.
Which skills are you still trying to grow now?
Effective communication. Not to be confused with communication. Effective communication is the ability to quickly articulate what needs to be completed, what needs attention, and what we will need to focus on. Separating out the wants and the needs to clearly and efficiently communicate those needs is crucial.
Let’s talk about B2B marketing. Can you share some insights into how you perceive the current landscape of B2B marketing?
Everything is flooded and over-engineered in B2B marketing. Buzzwords and strategies with no real outcome or method of being executed have taken over the landscape. Everyone is trying to move from one strategy or one piece of tech to the next. No real consideration for the buyer, pain points, or addressing a need. We work with companies that have invested time and resources into identifying personas, but no one cares. It’s a race to who can send out the fastest communication first.
How have recent market trends and changes influenced your approach to outperforming competitors?
Since we don’t have a product, what we really sell is our knowledge and experience. What allows us to outperform our competitors is the fact that everyone here, including myself, is a practitioner first. We have built, or launched, implemented, integrated etc. all the things we talk about. There is no one selling the art of the possible, it’s more the art of the probable. That has helped us outperform our competitors at every turn. Because knowledge is something that is directly related to time.
B2B buying cycles can often be lengthy and complex. How do you maintain engagement and nurture leads throughout the various stages of the buyer’s journey?
We want to stay prospect-facing, but we don’t want to be overbearing. We’re not a B2C business and we don’t need to send a small update about everything. We get back to basics, segment our audiences and create conversational content. Right now, everyone is selling, but no one is really explaining the WHY. Why do you need this product and what is it going to help you do better? Why is someone at one part of the buyer journey vs the other, and what information can we give them that will actually help them move from one stage to the next? The martech boom has been amazing, but the inclusion of technology has overshadowed the need for actual storytelling and marketing.
Personalization is gaining prominence in B2B marketing. What are some ways marketers can effectively leverage data to deliver personalized experiences?
If you haven’t started implementing segmentation, targeting, and dynamic content, I would start there first. For B2B companies selling a product, segment by persona, title, and role. Create content explaining how your product will help that person in their day-to-day. If you are already doing that (successfully and consistently), then the next step is establishing a web presence. Utilize behavioral data and actions to create content that targets them based on their behaviors. Consider a customized landing page, with dynamic web content based on visits and engagement that includes segmented content. This allows you to create a web path specifically for them. Include things like chatbot and data from CRM or MAP to create meaningful workflows based on all the collected data. If you’re already doing all of that, then we can start talking about Account Based Marketing.
ABM has also gained traction for its personalized approach to targeting high-value accounts. What advice would you give to fellow B2B marketers looking to adopt this strategy?
Don’t invest in tech right away. You can do very creative ABM campaigns and measure success very quickly before investing your marketing budget in a platform that you’ll need to train your team with. Realistically all the ABM tech platforms do is streamline your ABM strategy, not develop it. You need a concrete personalized ABM strategy that can be optimized through tech, not use tech to develop a
strategy. It’s a failing situation.
Fantastic. Here is the primary question of our interview. What are 5 Tips for Your B2B Marketing Strategy to Help You Beat Competitors?
- Focus on the customer: We want to sell and close deals, but what is the person on the other side getting out of it?
- Actually, be data-driven: Don’t just say it, but spend money on cleaning your data so you can actually implement your marketing strategy appropriately.
- Optimize multi-channel content for the buyer journey: We have to be multi-channel in today’s world. If data is in check, we can have the ability to target a prospect anywhere.
- Emphasize thought leadership: Case studies are nice, but they are required. However, positioning your brand as an industry leader and sharing content that speaks to it is crucial. Make your company the go-to resource for your industry or product.
- Leveraging current resources and tech: You should always leverage current resources and technology before investing in new ones to ensure efficiency and cost-effectiveness. This approach helps us fully optimize our strategies and create a plan forward for martech adoption.
How do you utilize data or AI to refine your B2B marketing approach, and what tools have been particularly impactful in gaining a competitive advantage?
Currently anything that is considered AI is really just data modeling anyway. The majority of “AI” used in the B2B space is mainly for copyrighting and generating images. For our clients, we tend to use more data in B2B to properly create segmentations in the database so we can effectively target people based on persona, need, buying time frame, etc. and a slew of other data markers that differentiate company to company. Regardless, we use CRM data, behavioral data, web data, and even competitor analysis to give our clients a competitive advantage. How to counter-sell a competitor is just as important as selling yourself.
Which digital channels have you found most effective in reaching your target audience, and how do you optimize your presence across these channels to outshine competitors?
The easiest answer is, “what is your data and prospects telling you?” We have a lot of clients who say, “You have to be on social media, have to send 3 emails a week, etc.” and the thing I’ve seen across thousands of clients is that each company’s prospects engage differently. Some databases prefer email, while some prefer phone calls. We have a financial customer where emails are only a soft touch. It’s the outreach from their sales team that generates a conversation. While for some of our other clients, they’ll never answer the phone, but email or text.
In today’s tech-agnostic world. There is no one answer to this like there used to be. You have to know how your audience is engaging with you, and then you use that channel as your primary method of communication.
Are there any underrated skills or qualities that you encourage others not to overlook?
My favorites are: Emotional Intelligence (EQ), active listening, and curiosity. EQ helps you understand the situation and better articulate yourself. Active listening helps you understand the problem or process better. Curiosity keeps you interested.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
My movement would be getting back to marketing with a purpose. Many companies are focusing more on short-term profit maximization rather than marketing with a deeper purpose. We are focused on transactions, superficial marketing campaigns, and a lack of authenticity. Hence the reason we can’t get reporting aligned with anything. No one is doing the foundational work to ensure proper reports are being created so we can identify areas of improvement.
We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
Probably Mark Cuban or Gary Vee. I feel like their mindset when it comes to business is very customer-focused and driven. I would love to pick their brain on expanding or creating different businesses.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
