133 Creating Categories, Movements, & Startups with Sangram Vajre, WSJ Bestselling Author of MOVE
Lochhead on Marketing
The Greatest Song in Marketing History
"We live in this world of ant er porn and hussel hussel hustel," he says. "It makes people thinkt they should always be pitching a when, in point of fact, that turns you into a fucking carnival barker." The company spent $1 million on four conferences last year to take the gospel of a b m around the country. There's a very big difference between the marriot in new jersey and the saint regis in new york,. Soa, this was one of the best locations we hat.
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Speaker 1
What
Speaker 2
I ended up finding, it was very hard because when I was in college, I used to just arrive to Newsweek, you know, but they don't really, they don't exist really in that form anymore. So I finally found one called The Week. And it does just what you're saying. For each story, it actually had quotes from all sides of the political spectrum. And I found it really quite illuminating and lovely. I want to ask you about for people who work in the tech industry, I'm sure some of them will be listening to this. People who work in the tech industry as designers, developers, leaders have a lot of leverage at Instagram, Google, Facebook, Netflix, OpenAI now. And for any of them listening, how could they steer technology toward interacting in healthy ways with their customers? Is it even possible with this top line of profit?
Speaker 1
Yeah. So I don't have the answer to this question. I wish I did. I think it's something we need to be working on. But there's a couple of lenses. One I shared earlier about the collaboration between tech companies and regulators and scientists and individuals to gradually lead to culture change. And you can look at things like drunk driving and cigarettes as some historical examples of these type of collaboration, which I think is essential. But for the average technologist who's working at one of these companies, the reality is, as you probably already know, you're in a system with incentives, and it doesn't really feel like there's any way to escape those incentives. So depending on where you are in the hierarchy, you might be simply mandated to follow those incentives as they are, or you might be someone who actually has a say in setting the incentives. So let's start with the latter group. If you actually have a say in setting those incentives, let's be realistic. You do need to make a profit. You do need to make technology that drives business, but that doesn't have to be the only incentive. And as we've talked about it in personal life, that awareness drives change. Simply measuring something else can have a dramatic impact. So what is a small amount of resource you can set to measure something? And the way that I tend to package this for large companies is if you go to the mission and vision of these companies, you tend to find the answer to the question of what to measure in a way that is palatable to the leadership and the board. Because the reality is Facebook wants to connect the world, Airbnb wants people to belong anywhere, et cetera, et cetera. So why aren't we measuring belonging? Why aren't we measuring a sense of personal deep connection? I don't know what changes that lead to, and maybe I'm being a bit idealist, but I think if your dashboard has, yes, adoption, retention, activation, but also has some measure that's connected to your highest vision and values, it can be a way to start the conversation of systemic change. And I also want to address the individual who doesn't have a say in the incentives. And what I have for that person is that, you know, fundamentally, I believe change comes from within and you have a long career ahead of you. Educating yourself about these approaches, working on your own personal relationship with technology, seeing through the conceptual illusions in your own life, seeing how you can bring that to your design practice to, yes, you do have to shoot that three-pointer through those incentives, but is there a way you can do that in a compassionate way and trying to find those opportunities and stay true to that deeper mission? Your goal, if that's you, is to not let the incentive structure turn you into an incentive driving robot, but to retain your humanity while you do what you need to do to succeed and to climb the ladder and eventually, hopefully, find yourself in a position where you can shape those incentives. One
Speaker 2
of the favorite things I learned at work is what gets measured gets done. So in Buddhist centers, we do something that sounds a little cheesy, which is that before we start a meeting, we say, may our work benefit others.
Speaker 1
And
Speaker 2
I think a little bit about that when I think back to working at Facebook if we had just said that at the beginning of every meeting boy I think we would have made more beneficial products
Speaker 1
yeah and we do have to learn from our mistakes like you were in-house at Facebook and you know some incredible work was done at Facebook and it's still happening but there's some some mistakes were made and I think we do need to accept that. And we need to learn from it. And I think when you go back in time, that's one example. And I think measuring elements around what was actually happening in the user experience for individuals would have been a huge boon to help steer the ship early when it wasn't too late to actually think about the effects of some of these elements like newsfeed and others. So
Speaker 2
you've, you already led us through one nice exercise and you agreed to lead a meditation that will air separately. Most of our interviews, our guests lead a meditation and we're going to air that in the next episode, but could you tell us a little bit about the meditation you're going to lead?
Speaker 1
Yeah, we're going to go through something that may seem a little bit scary to people is we are going to get into a mindful state. And then we are going to engage with our phone in that meditation. And what we're going to do is, if you've ever done like a mindful eating exercise, there's a lot of inspiration there where you inspect the raisin and sniff it and eat it and think about, you know, where it comes from. So we're going to deeply and mindfully investigate our foam with clarity, including activating it. And then at the end, we are going to look a little bit into false urgency in particular, and notice the tug of false urgency on our attention in the moment.
On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, we go on a deep dive into category design, community building, to starting a company and becoming a category leader with Sangram Vajre.
Sangram Vajre is the co-founder of Terminus. He is also the author of a WSJ bestselling book called MOVE: The 4-Question Go-To-Market Framework.
We touch on the different startup marketing topics, including how to avoid the SaaS Valley of Death. We also talk about how to build a scalable marketing and sales model. Most importantly, we talk about how to leverage your competition to build your category.
Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing, the number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.
Sangram Vajre on his Bestselling Book, MOVE
Sangram shares the one question that he always gets when he talks about his book. That is, why did he put THAT specific quote on the cover?
The particular quote was made by me, and it read: “Love the guys, but hate this book.”
Sangram explains that he has a good reason for putting it up right in front for everyone to see.
“I think you and I both know that everybody feels like they're walking on eggshells. They can't say anything. Everything has to has to be politically correct. Everything has to be in agreement.
I think people have forgotten a good way to discourse. That it's okay for two people to have completely different opinions. And that’s the point of being people. Otherwise, we’ll be animals eating each other.” – Sangram Vajre
Coming in from Another Angle
Sangram then explains that while his heart bleeds category design and creation, he believes that not every company should be a category creator. To him, there are some that are not destined to be category creators, and that is fine. They could still be a better company; they just have to approach it from a different angle.
That’s where his book, MOVE, comes to play.
“There are 99% of the companies out there in the world, who probably are following suit to become a better company. And this book is for them. If you want to build a category, go and read Play Bigger. But if you want to build a great high performing revenue team in your organization, I hope you'll take a look at my book.” – Sangram Vajre
Sangram Vajre on Engaging the Community to Create a Bestseller
Sangram talks about his process on making this bestseller of a book. He says that he has always believed that without a community, you’re just a commodity.
“I truly believe that every company needs to think about building a community before they think about the product they want to build. Because your community is what's going to give you the float that you need to get your business going.” – Sangram Vajre
So consult the community, he did. He would send out early parts of his book and asked people for their feedback. Those that gave him feedback, he made sure to acknowledge in his book. So when the book became a WSJ bestselling book, his community who gave their feedbacks are now part of it, which gave his community an even greater sense of belonging.
To hear more from Sangram Vajre and how to become a high-performing company in your market, download and listen to this episode.
Bio
Sangram Vajre is the co-founder and chief evangelist of Terminus. Before Terminus, Vajre led the marketing team at Pardot through its acquisition by ExactTarget and then Salesforce.
He is also the author of Account-Based Marketing For Dummies and is the mastermind behind #FlipMyFunnel.
Links
LinkedIn: in/SangramVajre
Twitter: @SangramVajre
Check out his book: MOVE: The 4-Question Go-To-Market Framework
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.
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