Emily Canon, Demand Generation Marketing Director, Management Controls Inc.

Welcome to the podcast Above the Cloud: Stories from the Boardroom. In every episode, we interview business leaders who are navigating the complex world of B2B marketing. Whether you're trying to grow revenue, swoop into a new market, or launch new products, we promise you've landed in the right spot. And now, your host, Richard Bird. Today on the show, we have a very special guest. We have Miss Emily Cannon. And Emily is the demand generation marketing director at Management Controls, Inc. Welcome to the show, Emily.

>> I am so excited to be here, Richard. Thanks for having me on today. >> Yeah, I'm excited to have you on. We've known each other for a really long time. I think of all the guests I might that have been on, I think I know you longer than anybody. >> Yeah, I think we go back what are we going to say like 12 years, 13 years, something like that. >> Yeah, something like that. So, yeah. Well, uh I'm really happy to have you on and you know in the pre-in uh we had a lot of uh interesting discussions about what you guys are up to and how you're leveraging technology and how you're leveraging some old school tricks as well.

>> And so I really I think the audience is going to get a lot out of uh out of your interview today. So, as you know, tradition on the Above the Clouds Stories from the Bordering podcast is we ask our guests what if their company was a bird, what kind of bird would it be? >> So, I love this question and I pondered it for quite a while and I know Richard, you and I talked about it a little bit um and I did some research. So, I have now come up with I I came up with my bird um and it's different than what we talked about.

So, I am going with a falcon. >> Hey, >> I'm going with a falcon. And >> why why a falcon? >> Why? Yeah. No, I would love to Why a falcon? So, they are cool. Um, they've got talons, which I really appreciate. Um, love that. Um, but they are known for their precision, their speed, and their sharp vision. Um, which is very much in line with our product, Mitra. So, we deliver real-time data in a very precise way for um thirdparty vendors um on site. So, I saw Falcon and I was like, "Oh, yeah, that's that's like very similar to our product.

Um they are also very strategic hunters and I we have a very defined ICP. We know who we want to go after and essentially attack, if you want to use a bird term, um with the claws." Um, so I really aligned with the fact that they're strategic hunters and I feel that we are very much strategic hunters as well when we're trying to find new plants. >> Oh, I love it. Yeah. You know, they are um people don't know this, but falcons are actually better hunters than eagles. >> And I I mean I believe that's why that's why I picked a falcon.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Eagles will eat anything. They'll eat dead stuff. They don't care, >> you know. Forget it. >> Yeah. I mean, they are also built for high performance and that's exactly what our platform does. So, we're a high performing platform. So, I was like, this is it. We're a Falcon. >> I like it. Way to tow the company line there. High performance platform. >> I like it. I like it. It's almost like you're in marketing or something. >> I know. I had like buzzwords. I'm like throwing quite a few buzzwords in there, but you know, >> I had to to make it a little creative.

>> I like it. Well, you know, I guess for the audience, why don't why don't you walk us through your career? How did you get your start in the in this marketing game? >> So, I knew I always wanted to be in a creative field growing up. Um, always loved the creative side. Um, was not on the math and science side, although I did love physics and geometry. Um, so I knew I wanted to be something on the creative side. So, um, after graduation, I have a degree in communications, minor in journalism, and I just got I was just like, "Sign me up for whatever job will hire me out of college." And I took a marketing assistant role and just really loved um the just like the um amount of like change it offered me, right?

Um, and I think we can all agree that marketing just changes so much. And me starting 20 years ago was very interesting, a very interesting time. It was when, you know, Facebook was coming out and, you know, social media really wasn't a thing and like how where we are now. Um, so I I started in as a marketing assistant and just kind of grew my way through. I was in oil and gas for a while and once obviously like the market kind of was very cyclical I went over into tech um for about five years um in transportation tech and fintech and then I have now merged my two roles and so now I work for a software company that's in the heavy asset space which is very big in the oil and gas side and technology so I've kind of blended both worlds together but it's all been on the B2B side so >> Wow.

So I I didn't know you had a journalism minor. That's cool. >> I did. Well, it was photography. So that kind of aligns with >> my sidekick. So >> journalist. >> We've had we've had a few guests that were you have studied journalism. I I would had a journalism major actually. It's pretty uh so I think it's some it's something that really helps you as a marketer, you know, to be able to ask questions and understand what's going on and then tell it in a succinct way. >> Yeah. Well, I really just wanted to do graphic design because I was like, "Oh, I really love art." But my college didn't have a graphic design degree, so I just went communications and I was like, "Cool, I'll try this." So, >> no, we what brings get you on your path.

>> Yeah. Yeah, it is. So, here we are. >> So, as you as you kind of went down your career and you know, tell us tell me about that first job when you're a you say marketing. >> Uh what was it? >> It was like literally a marketing assistant. >> All right. >> So, you know, low man on a totem pole. And you will appreciate this, Richard. Um, speaking of like the old marketing tactics coming back, I found the ad or I found the job in the Houston Chronicle. >> Oh, wow. That's old school. >> Yeah. Yeah. I sat there at my parents house highlighting jobs that were listed in the paper.

Isn't that crazy? >> Yeah. And I went in and interviewed and they gave me a job. It was right after I came back from I did the Walt Disney World's uh internship, the college program. And then I came back and I said, "I can't live at my parents house. Give me the first job I can get." So, >> man, yeah, listen up kids. LinkedIn wasn't always a thing. And >> no, LinkedIn literally a highlighter like circling things and then email. I I mean, email was a thing obviously, but I like emailed my resume in W for the interview.

I was there for about a year and a half. Um, and I still talked to a couple people that were that worked there. So, I mean, I did like the old school like stuff. I mean, but which is coming back now. So, like like writing like direct mail postcards and stuff like that, which is totally making a comeback now. So, >> yeah. Well, people are more apt to open their mailbox than they are their email box these days. >> Oh, for sure. Like I love something in the mail that's like not a bill. So, >> yeah, exactly.

Well, you touched on it there. So, I'm gonna Let's go there. I want to talk about the Disney experience. Tell us tell us about when you're working at Disney >> because there's a lot of there's a lot of lessons around brand and branding. >> Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. And I've had this conversation with quite a few people. It's always it's kind of like, you know, like your party trick, you know, like it's like your your fun fact that everyone you get cringe cringey about asking like tell me your fun fact. And I always use Disney usually as as my fun fact.

Um you know, typical college senior. I had zero plans after college and my advisor said, "Hey, Disney's coming to interview and I said, "Sure, why not? I have not one idea of what I'm going to do after I walk across the stage." And I interviewed and they hired me. So, I packed my car up, I don't know, maybe a week after graduation and moved to Florida. And uh I lifeguarded. So, it had I and I told it like had zero to do with my actual degree. But when I tell you it taught me more in, you know, six, eight months that I was there than it did in like my four-year college, you know, experience.

Um, Disney is run like a I mean, a tight ship. When you talk about brands, they're they're up there, right, with their their brand continuity, just how they operate. um they're very big on we want everybody to have the same experience every single day when they walk into a park, a hotel or you know whatever property that they're on. We want them to have the same exact experience. So that they really harped that they really like drove that in um to us. Uh they were run like a welloiled machine. So down from the you know how you looked and how you acted, how you talked to guests and things like that.

So, I think that that has really taken me through in my career because I always bring things up like don't point with one finger, it's rude, you know, just like stuff like that. Like um and smile in the background of photos because you're in the background of people's vacation photos. So, like kind of always remember like what your face looks like and how you're talking to people and just things like that. And like like I said, I was a lifeguard, so it had nothing to the job, right? the the skills and the job description had nothing to do with where I'm at now, but it had everything to do with kind of where I've gotten.

So, >> yeah, man. If everybody paid as much attention to um to customer experience as Disney, it would be a this world would be a a great world. >> Yeah. That's like that in like Chick-fil-A, you know, they tell you like, "Man, if everybody ran like a Chick-fil-A drive-thru, >> oh man, the efficiency of this country, our GDP would go through the roof, >> right?" Yeah. >> Michael is >> Yeah. >> Well, talk to me about your job at uh Management Controls. What um what's your day-to-day look like over there?

>> Yeah, dayto-day I'm a typical marketer. No day is the same. So um I started with management controls about oh my gosh two and a half years ago came in um on the demand genen side. So really helping drive um our awareness in the market. Uh we are very unknown company which is like horrible. Everybody's like oh we're the best kept secret. Like nobody wants to be known as that, right? And um so we were like we need to build our brand. We need to get out in the market. We need to get into new spaces. we need to, you know, increase our customer base um on the net new side.

So, I came in and and started helping with with that um strategy, I guess, if you will. So, I really look over um you know, our events, you know, was over like a lot of our social media, demand genen campaigns, um helping with like our our PPC and just and and working with um speaking events, um things like that. Um the company's about 36 almost 37 years old and um >> Wow. >> Yeah, they've been around for a very long time. Big in the oil and gas space, but uh you know it's it's incredible that companies can survive that long without any kind of marketing.

Um so they have really good Yeah. really good market retention. So we knew we needed so like you know you can use that obviously to your advantage to help build your customer base because like we have customers don't leave us. So um but it's like how do we do that? So they so kind of in doing that. So no day is the same. We're very very big on on events um inerson events like large small onetoone webinars like partnering with associations things like that. So that kind of touches on what we were saying earlier like the old methods of marketing are coming back.

Yeah. >> Which is, you know, everybody kind of like like hates on events, but it has been it's been great for us. So, >> yeah. Well, you know, I do think, you know, post pandemic events have gotten to be one of those things where I think people want to they want to get out. They don't want to be cooped up in, you know, so many people are working from home now. It's like, >> it's a good excuse to put on some pants and, >> you know, get out of your house and go do something fun. catch up with old people at the trade show and your old see your old friends kick the tires on some new technology.

>> So we've seen that with our clients too that the that people are really engaged at trade shows. >> Yeah. >> And that that's definitely what we're seeing just because we know um if we can have a onetoone conversation with somebody that's the right ICP um it usually triggers something to be like okay I want to learn more. I want I want to dig in a little bit deeper on your software. So, we have really learned specifically in the last um couple years that events are a driver for us. Now, of course, we have got failures, right?

We have events that were just like, man, this was not it. This was not the right target and we just won't go back, right? So, it it's taken a lot of this has been like a what we call like a learning year for us to just go all in on some of these tactics that we kind of knew were working, but like if we maybe really go all in a little bit more, then maybe the return on investment is a is higher, right? So, um there's so many tactics out there and it's like obviously that magic question is what's the magic bullet?

Like what's the one thing that works? You know, it's like the worst question to ask a marketer. Um especially in like a B2B space that's a enterprise sales. like there's not one but um we have been able to determine like this one is like a higher return on investment for us. >> Yeah. So people always ask me that too like what's the best marketing tactic? I was like they all are great and they all suck. >> Yeah. >> I need to know more. >> Yeah. It's it's kind of and I was thinking about this yesterday. I was like, man, I was like, you know, you know, we're talking about how good events work, but I've been in my career, too, where I've gone from one job to the next, and a company that I was working for was like, man, like you your team drove 80% of your company revenue at your last company in like a year and you did all this and did all this.

He's like, well, you've been here for six months, so we don't have that. And I'm like, oh, like we're not comparing apples to apples like at all. You know, they were known on the market. you're not known in the market. That's like a big thing, you know, PPC is higher, cost per conversion is higher, this is lower, this is our our and it's so crazy and it's just it's I I think I was just like, man, it almost was like offensive, I think, in a way. He was like, well, you're not doing your job. I'm like, well, I did it's like you're diminishing what I did at my last job, right?

But it it's like you can't the same things are not going to work and it's definitely not going to work in you know a couple of months which I think is like the hard story to sell right like everyone thinks that you can just turn a button on and things work. In some cases it might right but in most cases especially coming from a B2B world on an enterprise sales world it's not that quick. >> Oh man for sure. You know I think we see that a lot. A lot of our clients have really long sales cycles. So, you know, if you went from a job where you had a two-month sales cycle to a job where you have 18 month sales cycle >> Yeah.

>> Well, guess what? You're not going to know if it's working. You're not going to know for a while if you're looking at at ROIs or measurable. Right. >> Right. Right. And even if if you're not tracking it. So, and it's been really cool that I've been at a few companies where we went from not tracking anything to implementing Salesforce to really be able to determine, you know, the impact that marketing has had because we have actual hard data to show this worked, this drove revenue, you know, over the course of this time, this is our sales cycle, this is this, this, and this.

So that's what I have really loved to see. And it's kind of funny because I was never a math person. And one of my old bosses, she would tell me, this was I don't know, maybe four or five years ago, and she was like, "You have to like math." And I was like, "Oh my god, I hate math." Like I don't want to I don't like math. But now I've come to be like, "Oh my god, we equated for, you know, $4 million in revenue by this point. We invested, you know, so it's it's been kind of a an interesting um evolution, if you will.

Yeah. >> From I'm just, you know, sending a a piece of mail to somebody to like, oh yeah, now we're diving in and we're seeing like factual numbers that you can prove that are like driving revenue. You can't just say like, oh, I had this event and I think it worked, but then how do you know, right? Um, so that's been actually probably one of the coolest things for me to see within the past I would say like really like seven, eight years, I guess. >> Yeah. You know, I think that's something too that um you know, I think people in in B TOC and in some industries within B2B, but take for granted that you can that you can see that clear ROI and that everything is, you know, you can really attribute do good attribution modeling and all those kinds of things.

But somebody so so many times in the B2B space they sell things with such long sales cycles that are so big ticket are touched by so many people and and all that. It's really, you know, they have such disperate systems, you know, they don't have an all-in-one system that's like, "Yep, here's where the lead came through and we tracked it all the way through their our CRM and then we followed it all through our uh ERP system and it came back out and here's how much money came out of the other side." >> Yeah.

>> Sometimes those systems don't talk to each other and it's Yeah. takes takes a little work to to get to the bottom of you know did that turn into real money >> right for sure and and I feel like especially on the enterprise side to your point it it takes like you can implement Salesforce you know say in January but you still need and that's if it's functioning correctly right if you don't have things that are breaking right or you're not you know you're constantly having to you know change and fix and kind of modify like what you need your reporting system to do so it's like you have to give it a full 12 months to kind of really see, you know, the fruits of your labor, if you will.

So, it that's been really cool to see um the whole Salesforce side of it. I never thought I would be a person that would be like, "Are we reporting on this? Are we tracking this correctly? What was the lead source? Like, what is this?" And then, you know, being that person at um one of my jobs um a few years ago when I was at the transportation company, like we we we were we had high inbounds. And so we would refresh, we were like, "Oh my god, we're refreshing the the dashboards every every couple hours to see like our, you know, our new logos like refreshed and because we would close, you know, 25 to 30 new logos a month." Um, so that was that's a lot for especially my history and my career a month.

Um, so like, oh my god, we closed another one, we closed another one. Um, so so that it's very cool to see that and you can like actually like kind of see the performance and track it. So >> those short sale cycles are so rewarding. And they are so rewarding. Like >> I love that. Yeah. >> I remember one of my early jobs. I worked for a formal wear rental place. Al's formal wear. >> Oh my gosh. I remember Als >> as in the marketing department there. It was great because like Friday we had we had to I had to design the ads.

We would send it to the newspapers and the magazines and everything every Friday. And then we would come back in on Monday and we knew how well the stores performed. we had the the data from the store right there and it was like it's a terrible weekend or oh my god I did a great weekend so you're like great you know that was uh you know it was really was fun to you know to get that instant feedback because it's like I'd send them off to the publications before I left on Friday and then Monday morning we had the numbers it's like >> I didn't even miss anything.

Yeah, it was really cool. >> Well, so you said you've been in this job for two years now. I can't believe it. It sounds like uh just yesterday and you came in there, but what's one thing you you know now that you wish you had known on day one about your about your current role? >> Oh my gosh. I think I like So I knew like we had a long sales cycle, right? But I think I maybe I wish I would have known how long maybe um I don't know. And I maybe like Yeah, I think I that just to kind of know like man it does take a long time.

Like I've been in enterprise sales, right, where it takes, you know, four, five, six months, but but man, like we've been working some of these accounts for a year plus, you know, and it's like, man, it's like why don't they just close? Like why don't they just close? Um but um it can be frustrating, but you know, honestly, I think it makes all the all it makes it sweeter when it does close. You're like, man, we finally crack cracked you, right? Um and then uh yeah I think just just knowing like kind of like learning that and then really like I knew we were niche right I knew we were a very niche product but we are niche like nobody knows like nobody knew us no like not I was like well how do people not was like I feel like people should like like this software everybody should be using this right so I think those are kind of two like big things that maybe um that I wish maybe I knew one day one.

Um, but I feel like that's kind of been the case at most of the jobs I've been at, too. Um, I think I like the challenge, too. So, I don't know. I haven't really been super surprised by by much, but >> Yeah. Nothing surprises me anymore. >> Yeah. I think Yeah. It's like, oh, okay. Like, >> like, yeah, okay. Yeah, I believe it. >> Yeah. >> But, you know, it's interesting, too, because the company had been around for so long. They had a very niche market and they still had low brand awareness. You know, it's interesting because I think some of those companies you don't be a household name, >> but the >> 2,000 people in the world who need to know your name, >> they do, right?

So, yeah. How that's interesting. How did you when you guys were working on that brand awareness knowing you have a very niche market? What were you guys What were you looking at, Emily, to to kind of build that brand awareness out there in the market? >> I think for us, so we don't really we have like a couple competitors in the market. U we've got a Pay Shepard, which is based in Canada. got AES-32 um field glass. Um so we we don't really have like a strong direct competitor in our market. I think for us when we wanted to bring to build our brand awareness in the market, we needed to define our ICP.

We needed to define like who our ideal customer profile was, who did we want to target because we just can't we just couldn't just hit everybody, right? Like so we really sat down probably about three years ago. It was right after I came on board, you know, they were like, "We need to sit like we know like, yeah, we want to talk to these big oil and gas companies or these big manufacturing companies, whatever, but like who do we need to talk to?" So, they really did a good job at defining that ICP and then defining their pain points.

So, we really took all of that and started doing more like targeted messaging or targeting content, right? Because we just couldn't be like, "Yeah, you have contractors. We can help you solve uh their invoicing problem, right? Like it's like, okay, I don't care." But it's like we would talk to somebody in procurement or somebody in maintenance or somebody that's a plant manager and be like, "We know you're probably having this problem. Let's talk about it." So that would trigger more of a conversion, right?

They're like, "Oh yeah, I do have that problem." Like, "Let's talk about it." You know, oh, my truck can help you solve this. You know, are you overspending on your you're you're getting overbuild xyz amount. Well, our software can come and help with that on like a procurement side. So, really coming in and and defining that and then on an added layer, it's like, well, we're know we know we're industry agnostic. Like, we can go into any industry, but then it's like you kind of have to have that other layer of discussion of like, well, we can't target every single industry in the market that's XYZ revenue, XYZ XYZ, right?

It's like, who do we want to target? Like, what industry do we want to target and which titles? So we really have had to drill that down and then focus that way. So it really is like a like an ABM approach um from a onetoone one to few one to many approach. Um so that I think that really helped us you know really kind of target our messaging target who we wanted to talk to you know kind of goes back to that falcon bird thing. Um they're so precise and you know accurate. So I think that has really helped us build our awareness.

still it still takes time right so >> yeah maybe talk about this the um management control solution that you guys they're talking about because I think you know when we see these kinds of uh it's when you describe it to people you all people I think people understand why the sales cycle is so long and why it is it's challenging >> yeah so management controls is is the company my track is the software so our software works with thirdparty vendors with your third party vendors that you have on site, their contracts.

So, we essentially digitize the contractors that you have on site. Our software digitizes their contracts. So, we integrate with um your site's gate access controls like a ERP your ERP system and our software goes in and essentially just digitizes all of that. So, we are able to track your time on site, your contract compliance, you know, is this welder working on the right job? Does he have certifications? you know, things like that. So, um, historically, a lot of our customers would track your their contractor's time on site, like by just a paper invoice and an Excel document.

And so, John Smith over at XYZ Plant said he worked 10 hours when he really only worked seven hours. You know, it's it's crazy the amount of overbilling that happens. And people are just like they just don't realize it because you're so busy just signing off on stuff. So essentially our software comes in and just digitizes all of that and they can build our customers essentially build dashboards. So like okay we can eliminate the overbilling side of it. Um we've estimated that we save around 18 to 15% on just like the contractor spend.

So on some of these big sites you know at Shell P66 you know we've got some large name customers like that. I mean it's it's millions that they're saving a year and yeah >> just when we eliminate the overbilling. Isn't that crazy? >> Yeah. >> You look at you when you're working with those big enterprise clients that all the KPIs just scale massively. You know, it's like we'll save you 2% in uh you know, all of a sudden that's 50%. >> It's like millions. Yeah. >> Yeah. You're like 8% like I don't want to go shopping and get an 8% sale on my t-shirt, you know, because that's I'm like oh but then when you look at it you're like oh you just 8% on know $100 million or whatever it is.

Like that's huge. So it's it's crazy >> and I bet that is a complex cell too because think about all the stakeholders that need to be involved. >> Oh yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean you got to have people in from procurement from a legal standpoint from IT you know we've got seuite involved you got CIOS CTOs um people that are you know on the plant the plant side um things like that. So I mean we could have you know 15 20 decision makers that you know need to be in the room on those meetings right so that that also plays into you know long sales cycle.

So you have to be uh be patient sometimes and then of course there's turnover in our industry too like we could be talking to somebody like the whole procurement team was no longer there. They've left so you got to kind of restart everything. So >> yeah re-educate the next the next person up. Yeah, >> that is that is so frustrating in those long sales cycles where people that have a have all the turnover and you're like, man, our our champion left, the person really pulling us through this whole >> No.

Yeah. >> Yeah. And then it is there a tougher person in the buying committee to convince an IT I don't think there is. >> You're like, oh, you're going to bring a software in to this like enterprise. So, typically the way we work though too is we we won't go like enterprisewide. be it like you know one or two facilities or one or two plants or locations and then we do like an expansion. So once we get in there we get implemented and they see the value they're like okay I'm really you know I'm seeing the value at these XYZ sites let's go ahead and implement at the next sites.

So, so we we won't ever like we don't close like close a net net new logo and then we're done, right? We're like, "Okay, we're we closed you at, you know, your orange site, your Bowmont site. Let's go to Louisiana. Let's go to this site, this site, this site." So, our expansion opportunities um kind of grow from from there after we get into those first, you know, couple sites. So, >> yeah, that that um I think that probably helps with your stickiness, too, right? That explains a lot of that. You can a new logo is one thing, but when you can, you know, but if you have room to, you know, tenfold your initial sale with all the other locations, you're just gonna, it makes a huge different from a revenue cycle and everything.