As the needs of our accounts change, our marketing visualizations can't remain the same. Is there a touchstone for these ABM adjustments? In the final episode of this series, Dudley Tal Stokes describes how his relationship with the movie "Cool Runnings" changed over time as his perspective and experiences diversified. We also hear from visualization expert Kevin Bailey on how teams across sales and marketing departments can align their goals for corporate success.
[00:00:00] Hiromi: When people look at you, what do you think they see? Do you think their picture aligns with your own? And if not, whose needs to change? In this episode, we continue the story of Tal Stokes as the view of his own journey evolves.
[00:00:18] Dudley Tal Stokes: The movie portrayed a version of Jamaican bobsled. I was trying desperately to escape.
[00:00:25] Hiromi: We explore the catalyst for this evolution and draw insights for ABM challenges. This is a podcast about submitting B2B marketing and the account based mindset. This is Rich. Thanks so much for joining us today. My name is Hiromi and I'm here with the CEO and Agency Founder, Jaycen Thorgeirson.
[00:00:49] Jaycen: Welcome. Glad to have you.
[00:00:51] Hiromi: And Chief Creative Officer, Garret Krynski.
[00:00:53] Garret: I'm excited about today.
[00:00:57] Hiromi: In our last several episodes, we followed Tal in a whirlwind journey through two Olympics and a series of revisions to his practice of visualization. We've talked to doctors and business leaders about what this practice is, how and when it works and why it's effective. But as with anything visual, unless you stay in one place, your view evolves even as a snapshot in time remains unchanged. And this is something that Tal had to digest and the years since his Olympic success.
[00:01:32] Speaker 5: Ah, [laughs] Always remember, your bones will not break in a bobsled. No, no, no. They shattered. So, who wants in?
[00:01:45] Dudley Tal Stokes: Cool Runnings was released on October 1st 1993. And, uh, Jamaican premiere was shortly after that. At this point, the team was in good shape. I picked up two world class athletes, Winston Watt and Wayne Thomas to put on a sled. We just signed up Sam Muck who was our coach who would revolutionize my life, but revolutionize our approach to athletics, to diet, to training and to the actual side in the sport of bobsled itself. And I had a good feeling about the season.
[00:02:19] And then they released this movie Cool Runnings, went alongside the Premiere, and I was not happy. I thought the movie portrayed a version of Jamaica bobsled I was trying desperately to escape. But one immediate result of the movies is that the corporate sponsors came beating at the door, and we're able to raise enough money to have a decent season and go into the Olympic Games in Lillehammer, the best prepared we have been up to that point. I have to say that my opinion of Cool Runnings was not shared. Everybody loved it. Mother and wife included. Everybody in Jamaica was overjoyed. It was really very well received.
[00:03:11] Later on, in early 1994, in Innsbruck, Austria, before the Olympic Games, they had the Austrian premier Innsbrook, and I went along to that, and was very funny in German as well, apparently, from all the last [inaudible 00:03:26].
[00:03:26] Speaker 6: [inaudible 00:03:26] Sponsor for the [inaudible 00:03:28] for Jamaica.
[00:03:26] Dudley Tal Stokes: But I, I still didn't actually enjoy the movie. Nor did I understand really what it was about as, as firmly convinced that we're actually hadn't done anything of value yet. I certainly was working very hard to reverse the, the whole concept of Jamaica bobsled. My relationship with Cool Runnings began changing in the early 2000s when my children found a VHS tape around the house of the movie. I had never shown it to them. When they found this tape, and when I got home, they were all looking at me wide-eyed and said, "Daddy, is that you?" And, you know, "Sanka, are you dead?"
[00:04:11] Speaker 7: Sanka, are you dead?
[00:04:13] Dudley Tal Stokes: They had all that lines though, and they were very impressed. So, I have to watch it with them. And I saw it through different eyes. Again, a different appreciation of this. Of course, by this time, I'd let go of a, a lot of the anguish maybe baggage I was carrying out of 1988. So, it was easier and to see the impact on children. And the fact that we were coming up to 10 years and this thing was still going, our phone, it was still interesting.
[00:04:43] But then, back in 2020, in the first lockdown, my children were in the UK, United Kingdom. My wife and I were in the Caribbean where we live and we started doing regular calls, just to stay together as a family. And out of that came the idea that we should do a Cool Runnings watch along where people watch Cool Runnings on their preferred device. We'd have a countdown and everybody hit play at the same time. And I would be watching a, a live streaming on YouTube and providing insight commentary.
[00:05:14] 00 PM UK start, live stream, kicking back this afternoon and watching Cool Runnings.
[00:05:20] We set the set to self-promote it and so on. In the end, we had maybe nearly 300 people coming in, and they had fun. But in order to do a watch along, I had to research that movie and, uh, came to an understanding of how it came about and why it was made.
[00:05:37] The, the most important thing I learned was about Dawn Steel, who was a producer of Cool Runnings. Now, Dawn Steel is born to a Jewish family in New York, he dropped out of college, worked for penthouse, worked for Playboy, ended up at Paramount Studios, who was involved in many great movies including Top Gun, Fatal Attraction, went over to Columbia, first few months, they head a major movie studio. They left there in acrimonious circumstances, started her own private company, a production company and went to Disney for work where some of her former colleagues from Paramount, [inaudible 00:06:19] and Katzenberg are taken over this day. And she went there, and they basically gave her an office in the basement and six scripts that they didn't have any idea what to do or both.
[00:06:30] And one of them was Cool Runnings, and she saw the potential. And I think the sort of diverse experiences that she had growing up, had prepared her to see the potential in Cool Runnings and she made a movie, which was dealing with a lot of very sensitive subjects like race. Dawn Steele, tragically died within a few years of Cool Runnings. But I, I think the thing that she would be most proud of is that she made a movie that's lasted 30 years and is still being watched. It stood the test of time. And, you know, I finally accepted in, in that journey that Cool Runnings is bigger than me. It's probably more important.
[00:07:18] Hiromi: It's such a, a humble admission by Tal to acknowledged that this movie, although not accurate, although not always flattering, was somehow bigger in scope than any one person. And it seems like it took a lot of years, a lot of experience to broaden that view, realizing that, you know, say people overseas would have a viewpoint and that his kids would have a viewpoint, and that even the producer of the movie, Dawn Steele would have her own viewpoint, and that her wealth of experience, in particular, her, her failures and process adjustments were the very thing that empowered her to visualize the outcome and, and see the potential of Cool Runnings.
[00:07:55] Garret: Mm-hmm.
[00:07:55] Hiromi: This is not a narrow mind we're exploring here. So, to, to recap the mindset, visualization involves forming a deliberate and detailed mental picture of the outcome where we want to be, and the process, the, the steps needed to get there. The outcome X is like a motivator, and remain somewhat fixed in the horizon. The process, on the other hand, is undergoing a constant revision, as we add to our experience, it acts as a rehearsal for the actions that we're about to take.
[00:08:26] So, we've discussed how marketers are already applying some of these principles through the use of personas and journey maps. But we've also discovered that some of these methodologies fall apart in practice, especially when we're making the transition from a traditional B2C, one to many type of communication to the account based or one-to-one communication. So, what do you guys think? Does, does this principle translate to the account based mindset?
[00:08:53] Garret: So, as I'm looking at known marketing, best practice, you know-
[00:08:57] Jaycen: Mm-hmm.
[00:08:57] Garret: ... role play, personas, user experience and empathy mapping, this is all part of the marketing vocab. But is it to the level that Tal is talking about it? And if it isn't, I think there's a bit of an audit here that needs to happen of how can we bring it to that level? And in the ABM space-
[00:09:17] Jaycen: Yeah, I think, you have a lot that translates honestly. It's understanding the customer, right? Understanding what they're thinking or what they're doing or how they're receiving, how they're consuming, how they're experiencing, the same set of questions that a brand should go through, or a marketer should go through in terms of connecting with that person they want to connect with. A, a lot of similar questions.
[00:09:39] Hiromi: Yeah.
[00:09:40] Jaycen: Um-
[00:09:40] Hiromi: Like Tal, you might need to start in a simulator type environment, but eventually you need to get out there and practice on the real thing.
[00:09:47] Jaycen: It's an interesting thought, though, practice like this idea of mental preparation or mental practice, thinking through maybe customer journey and empathy mapping and blah, blah, blah, understanding that but what about practicing our discipline? Not techniques, not tactics. Uh, and I made this a question for you guys. Where are there opportunities to do that as marketers? How do you practice gaining awareness? Or how do you practice product market fit? How do you practice engagement? How do you practice acquisition sales tactic? Is it just a mental preparation to thinking through how this stuff is going to work and connect, you know, and get to the outcome that we want, finding that clear outcomes, not certain metrics, but certain results? And then thinking through mentally how we're going to get to that experience? Is it focus groups? Maybe that's how we practice? Maybe we should be doing more focus groups? I don't know. [laughs]
[00:10:45] Garret: Well, I think, maybe there's relatable extracurricular things that you could use back in business like improv? Does the audience laugh? Are they aware of what you're doing? If I was doing something that's just like that as a hobby? I don't know. I don't know. That's the question.
[00:11:02] Jaycen: Well, one thing that's coming to my mind is, especially as it pertains a little more Account Based Marketing, working more closely with sales, you know, sales is on the front line, hearing from the customer, hearing the customer's pain, hearing the customer's desires, blah, blah, blah. So, it's like maybe practice for even a marketer to get in the mindset. They could try to visualize what that persona looks like. But are they talking to the customer?
[00:11:27] Garret: No, the sales guy.
[00:11:28] Jaycen: You know the... You know what I mean? Like in, in Tal's experience, again, being in the simulator, or thinking what a bobsled is like, unless you've done it, you don't know. So, you need to gain all the senses by sitting down, like hearing the conversations, being on the show floor, the virtual show floor, whatever it is, and talking to prospective customers. You need to be talking to existing customers, and not just formalize surveys, having real conversations is where you're going to really understand behaviorally, and the insights and the emotional intentions and those bits that are going to help formulate the right approach to addressing this audience.
[00:12:06] Garret: You need to base your visualization off of something.
[00:12:09] Jaycen: Yeah, exactly. Where are you basing this? And where are you getting the practice? I think one of the best places I learned seriously was being on the trade show floor.
[00:12:16] Garret: Mm-hmm.
[00:12:16] Jaycen: Having conversations with people, you get to iterate your pitch constantly. And you find out what triggers a question, what triggers someone asking what you want them to ask next. And it's just by repetition of trying over and over and over again. I wonder like, how many marketers are doing this?
[00:12:34] Garret: Well, uh-
[00:12:35] Jaycen: Especially in a large org, like, how many are doing this?
[00:12:37] Garret: Yeah. You know, what that reminds me of is that show where the boss, the CEO goes undercover.
[00:12:42] Jaycen: Yeah, Undercover Boss.
[00:12:43] Garret: And he goes in this-
[00:12:43] Jaycen: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:44] Garret: ... cooks the burger at McDonald's. Like literally gets into the process. I don't understand why we're wasting so much money on cooking burgers, like why is there so much heat getting lost out of it?
[00:12:53] Jaycen: Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:54] Garret: So, he literally goes in and cooks it. Oh, and then he gets it. Oh, now I get it. So, maybe that's one of the problems with us, as marketers is we're in our silo.
[00:13:03] Jaycen: Yeah, we're not close enough.
[00:13:04] Garret: It's all theoretical.
[00:13:06] Hiromi: Yeah, yeah.
[00:13:06] Garret: We're not close enough to the customer. If you're not in that process, you have no idea what the message should be.
[00:13:12] Jaycen: Yeah.
[00:13:12] Garret: So, there's almost this humility moment here that we need to get closer to the real customer, as opposed to theoretically involved in developing message for who we think someone is, and if we can't get right beside them, we talk to the people who are right beside them, aka the salespeople. This is a team effort. So, if as a team effort, we need to develop this picture together, either by firsthand knowledge, or by getting the people in the room who actually have that first hand knowledge.
[00:13:41] Hiromi: Yeah, and I wonder if this is a challenge for you guys, too, because in UX design, we always want to talk to the customer or the user in that case, but access is a real problem, because it puts the person who's developing the product in a vulnerable position to have to ask their customer for advice and paints them as like, we don't know.
[00:14:06] Garret: Mm-hmm.
[00:14:06] Hiromi: And so, there have been many times when I've been producing a product to assist sales f- from a marketing department. And of, of course, we're like, "Hey, can I talk to the users who are in sales?" "No, I'm sorry, we can't do that because it's going to get off in the weeds." And then, "Well, can I talk to the customer?" "Oh, no, we... I'm sorry, we can't. Now, you're in a position of just guessing."
[00:14:28] Garret: So, I think that there needs to be some discussion around the commitment as an org to have that level of integration between departments, especially at the enterprise level. If nobody talks to anyone, I'm developing tools in marketing [laughs] for the salespeople who are talking to individual accounts, one to one, one to few, and I'm developing tools that don't work for you-
[00:14:49] Hiromi: Yeah.
[00:14:49] Garret: ... in your conversation. Why? Because we don't have the humility to sit in the same room and have this honest discussion, is that the real barrier here?
[00:14:58] Hiromi: But that's what Tal, in effect, was doing each time. I don't have access to the football team. So, I guess, I'm just going to have to do my best to visualize what it'd be like to be on the football team. Later, I don't have access to a real helicopter. So, I'm just going to have to sit in his box and pretend until I have access. And then later, he does get access to a bobsled, and it's not what he thought it was. But that visualization, that preparation in advanced, wasn't a lost cause.
[00:15:28] Jaycen: Yeah, I think-
[00:15:29] Hiromi: It wasn't a wasted effort.
[00:15:29] Jaycen: Uh, actually, thinking about it, so if you don't have access, visualization can help you. If you do have access, it helps you even more-
[00:15:37] Garret: Mm-hmm.
[00:15:38] Jaycen: Right? Because then you're able to rehearse mentally in real scenarios, which only gets you better and closer. So, whether or not you have access, you can apply this. But the lesson coming out of this will be the more access you can gain with sales, the better y- your process is going to become, the better outcomes you're going to achieve because you can really think through the journey of the customer with clarity and understand everything there is to know.
[00:16:06] Garret: For real, this is actually really enlightening with regards to our actual process, developing client work.
[00:16:12] Jaycen: Yeah.
[00:16:13] Garret: But honestly, honestly, though, who do we sit with when we develop the scope of work?
[00:16:17] Jaycen: Yeah, to- totally. It's like marketing controls that and like, like you said, Hiromi, I think maybe they have those conversations at times with sales. But do we have access to sales like very rarely-
[00:16:28] Garret: Mm-hmm.
[00:16:28] Jaycen: ... or even have like leadership, sales leadership.
[00:16:31] Hiromi: Mm-hmm.
[00:16:31] Jaycen: Be part of the conversation, which they totally should be, very rare. I know, some orgs are having them internally, but still the level of what those conversations are and the transparency behind them, and literally sitting in the place of maybe a BDR, Business Development Representative or a sales development representative, being on the front line, the voice of the customer, and hearing those things, that likely is not happening very often.
[00:16:58] Garret: Mm-hmm.
[00:16:58] Jaycen: But I find that the leaders that are, I mean, you do hear about it, they either came from those positions more on the sales side. So, they have-
[00:17:05] Garret: Mm-hmm.
[00:17:05] Jaycen: ... the empathy required, or they have the humility to enter into and get down beside-
[00:17:11] Garret: Mm-hmm.
[00:17:12] Jaycen: ... those folks to really absorb what's going on. And then they bring it up into the process.
[00:17:17] Garret: Yeah.
[00:17:17] Hiromi: Yeah, because the shame of it is that in almost every case, that an institution has had the humility to allow us to speak to those real users, to the sales staff, the front line employees, their assumptions about what was important to them, what would empower them to do better work, were almost always not necessarily false, but mis-prioritized. Their real core needs were not even mentioned in those initial meetings with stakeholders and the marketing department. And by really talking to them and observing and listening, we were able to greatly improve their workflow.
[00:17:56] Jaycen: That'd be really int- interesting to f- find out, what is the barrier? Why? Like why does this exist? Why are people-
[00:18:03] Hiromi: Yeah. What-
[00:18:03] Jaycen: Is, is it, uh, to save face? I don't know. Is that what it is? Is that a pride issue, because we don't want to be looking like we don't know what we're doing. Is that-
[00:18:11] Hiromi: Is that-
[00:18:11] Garret: Is it or, is it because as an org, you're structured improperly, like, where does sales fall? You, you know, you're in some orgs, and there is a VP of Sales and Marketing, one guy, same umbrella or in other orgs, sales is on a totally different floor. Let's call it then marketing. They're tossing stuff over the wall, left and right, [laughs] up the elevator, as the case may be like, in some cases, it's probably systemic, according to the company.
[00:18:35] Jaycen: It's interesting, like the tech, you know, I think about especially the companies that are doing gifting, direct mail, sending stuff, sales activation, the rise of all that stuff is due to giving sales, more control of certain marketing campaigns on a level of one to one or one to few. Having general brand awareness stuff, message developed, marketing controls that, but enabling sales the ability to execute campaign like execution, let's call it, light, in market for, for individuals. And some of it is because of that, it's when you need something like for marketing to respond to something, how long does it take-
[00:19:12] Garret: Mm-hmm.
[00:19:12] Jaycen: ... to develop a campaign or to develop messaging or develop whatever, it becomes a really long tail effort to do it. So, the more transactional tactical approach that you can do it in the moment, and enabling the sales to be able to do that, kind of allows marketing to get closer to sales, but again, maybe they don't have the insights as to how it's being leveraged, or maybe they do on a certain level. But, yeah, it's interesting-
[00:19:39] Garret: Mm-hmm.
[00:19:40] Jaycen: ... especially as it pertains to Account Based Marketing that there's a big effort. I don't think you can be as like activation heavy in that sense. There's elements of it that your sales team needs to be capable of acting in different situations, but in terms of achieving really monumental outcomes, in terms of driving growth or expansion in those accounts, that's where this alignment comes in, having sales and marketing and having those insights and being able to visualize or practice what's to come can be really helpful.
[00:20:09] Hiromi: You know, in the last episode, we introduced visualization specialist, Kevin Bailey. And in our conversation with him, he actually touched on one good reason why organizations often struggle to get members to share the same vision across an organization.
[00:20:24] Kevin Bailey: Yeah, because, well, most leaders are trying to align the behaviors of the team. But they're not attributing the fact that behaviors are a result of emotions, feelings, thoughts, and physiology. Emotion is what creates memory. It's the reason why you probably remember a lot of songs, but you may not remember a lot of lines for your textbook. If you feel it more, you're going to create more neuroplasticity.
[00:20:48] So, if you have an entire team, and you get their emotions, thoughts, physiology, feelings aligned with an outcome, the same outcome, we're all visualizing the same thing. You have performance that's much more coherent. If they're pulling the same side of the rope, so that just cuts down on a lot of maladaptive behaviors.
[00:21:07] Hiromi: So, behaviors, not emotions. Doesn't it seem to you like 99% of employee training is centered on what the team members should do, how they should do it, with very little consideration to why they should do those things?
[00:21:22] Garret: Mm-hmm.
[00:21:22] Hiromi: You know, and of course, that's largely driven by efficiency concerns, it takes time to convince, it takes time to inspire. But by not sharing that vision, the organization experiences fragmentation and inefficient, maladaptive behavior, as Kevin puts it, yeah.
[00:21:38] Garret: I think an important aspect to mention at this point, too, with, with regards to Account Based Marketing is generally we're talking to someone who is fairly senior and or probably a key decision maker. So, if I don't treat you like that, I may not even start a discussion. If I don't give you [laughs] the respect that you have clearly earned to become a decision maker in this org, and I treat you just like a group of X, Y, Zed demographic type of people, it's like, well, hang on, I may just disconnect because clearly you don't respect me. You don't value me, you know, even my time.
[00:22:16] Hiromi: So, ha- having a vision, adapting that vision, and then sharing that vision with those that you rely on, is central to the account based mindset. Would you say so?
[00:22:26] Garret: Mm-hmm.
[00:22:27] Hiromi: Uh, uh, you know, Tal's story shows us that this guiding principle can help us to navigate our own twists and turns. It's not foolproof. But Tal says, you know, we can't let fear of the unknown keep us from never knowing.
[00:22:41] Dudley Tal Stokes: At the end of the day, Cool Runnings, uh, eh, well, you know, Cool Runnings had a significant impact on what we were able to achieve in changing a narrative around Jamaica bobsled. In its conception, Jamaica bobsled was optimistic at best, if not outright lunacy. Young men with no fear, I guess, seeking fame and fortune, adventure, pushing boundaries, doing things that are not necessarily safe. Bobsled is a risky, risky thing. But so is living. These are the traits that we should lose.
[00:23:21] If we spend our entire lives and build all societies to remove all risk, at the end of it, we, we may not actually have something worth living. We need to have risk. We need to have resilience. And we need to have the spirit to take on hard things, difficult things, to struggle to get through them. And in that struggle will come suffering, and in learning to contend with that suffering and continue to struggle will come growth, growth in us as individuals. Ultimately, I think, that's the nature of life.
[00:24:03] Bobsled has many parallels to life. Firstly, a defined beginning and an end. Many of us live life as if there is no end. And this causes us to under appreciate the moments that we have and the moments that we are in. If you live your life, understanding that time is limited, then it forces on you a different set of priorities. In bobsled, you start hard for the standards that you've tried to create momentum. And so, you should do it in life and then maintain it as best as you can.
[00:24:36] But after the human power of the athletes at the start, the bobsled is accelerated and decelerated by gravity, a force of nature. And that is really how we live. They are forces of nature that act on us over which we have very little control. We have very little control over what will happen to us. But we have one 100% control over how we react to what has happened. Human beings are unique in that we have the ability to change the meaning of something that has happened simply by the way we choose to react and bobsleigh as in life, the same situations and working through things in your head, which eventually transferred into preparing yourself to be able to react to changes as they come.
[00:25:32] Hiromi: Well, we'd like to thank Tal Stokes for sharing his amazing story with us. Thank you so much, Tal, it was wonderful to meet you. We'd also like to thank Dr. Frank Niles from BSM partners, Randy Frisch from Uberflip and Kevin Bailey from Dreamfuel for contributing their insights to this story. Thanks also to Sarah Gibbons, Patti Doverwalski, Dr. Tara Swart and the Andy Roadshow for letting us reference their research.
[00:25:58] If you have any questions for our guests, please reach out and join the conversation on our LinkedIn group. You can learn more on our website, reachabm.com. If you've enjoyed what you've heard so far, you're going to love what we have in store for you next. From artists to chefs and musicians. We're going to extend the boundaries of B2B marketing and the account based mindset.
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