Unlocking Sales Success in Regulated Industries | Craig Nelson from Triptych

Ernesto Quezada: Pathmonk is the intelligent, full website for lead generation. With increasing online competition, over 98 percent of website visitors don’t convert. The ability to successfully show your value proposition and support visitors in their buying journey separates you from the competition online. Pathmonk qualifies and converts leads on your website by figuring out where they are in the buying journey and influencing them in key decision moments with relevant micro experiences like case studies, intro videos, and much more.

Stay relevant to your visitors and increase conversions by 50%, add Pathmonk to your website in seconds, let the AI do all the work, and get up to 50 percent more qualified leads while you keep doing marketing and sales as usual. Check us on pathmonk.com. Welcome to today’s episode. Let’s talk about today’s guest.

We have Craig from Triptych, vice president of sales and marketing there with them. How are you doing today, Craig?

Craig Nelson: Doing well. Thanks for having me.

Ernesto: Nah, it’s great to have you on today’s show. I mean, we’re talking a little bit about Triptych and mostly, you know, the experience and enablement that you have. Quite some full experience. So, let’s kick it off with that, Craig, in your own words, can you tell us a little bit more about what Triptych is?

Craig: Sure can. So, our company Triptych here, it’s one of those well-kept secrets. We’ve been around for about 15 years, and we got to do more podcasts like this, like for podcasts. Now, we’ve been around for 15 years. We’ve been providing a SaaS solution, mainly for regulated industries, be it healthcare, finance, or manufacturing where regulatory risk is present. So we make sure to help build personalized content without that risk.

Ernesto: No. Okay. Awesome. Great to hear that. And so that everyone that is listening can get a good understanding of your company, Craig, what problems do you solve for clients then?

Craig: You bet. I just picked up on it there. Think of it like this. I’ll use a use case, healthcare. Let’s say that you have hundreds, if not thousands, of broker agents in the field. They’re communicating with businesses that are buying insurance. They’re communicating with individuals that are buying it. What our solution allows them to do is to profile that business or that buyer individually and then personalize the content. And then at the same time, because it’s a regulated industry like healthcare or maybe finance, we’ve got this regulatory engine that will scan it to make sure it’s compliant.

We’ve got a print arm to our business as well. PID is that, building relevant content for each and every buyer makes a difference.

Ernesto: Definitely. I think that is true to every count and to every fact. That’s great to hear that. And as far as your clients, is there someone that you guys like to focus on? I mean, you did mention right now healthcare. Is that an industry that you guys focus on or is there a segment vertical that you guys like to go for?

Craig: Yeah, the three verticals we like to go for, and I’ll kind of go in order of where we’ve had great success. Healthcare number one, we’ve got some of the largest healthcare companies in the nation, companies that you’ve heard of like UnitedHealth, Kaiser Permanente, Blue Cross Blue Shield, really solid companies that have a long track record of great customer experiences. So those are the kinds of companies that we work with. We’ve got a service team that also knows the industry. So if we’re working with Baird, for example, in the financial industry, that’s one of our great clients. We’ve got somebody that understands their business. We’re definitely not a technology-only firm. We’re a firm that does both the technology and then also the implementation through expert pro services that more or less know that type of business. And to me, in 2024, if you’re in SaaS, you better know people’s business.

Ernesto: Definitely would agree with that. And well, Craig, you being the vice president of sales and marketing. What does a top client acquisition channel look like for you guys? How do you get those people in the door or what’s the best channel for you guys?

Craig: Yeah, you know, we use as far as our outreach and what’s been interesting over the last couple of decades is, you know, what’s old is new. Sometimes you end up going back to methods that have worked in the past, you know, for a period, email was the rage, AdWords, the rage, you know, they’ve all seemed to have their cycles. You ultimately have to have this multi-channel approach. Today we use traditional SDR outreach. These are people that are going to call out and not try to schedule a demo. Instead, they’re going to schedule a call to understand the marketing and sales challenges of that client. That’s where we start our conversations. We’ll get to the demo later. That’s really secondary. Now, as we do that, we have a good network of people that we’ve had in place. Our parent company has been around since the seventies, a company called Merrick Group. And so with that kind of legacy, you’ve got a pretty good network there, so selling into companies that we’ve done business with forever, establishing credibility isn’t easy, especially today. And with companies like us that have been around for a while, that’s a plus, you know, now we got to find the latest way of connecting. Like I say, we’d like to connect with people and start the conversation, talking about their business.

Ernesto: Definitely that’s important. And I am here on your website, triptych.com for you guys to, who’s listening, you could check them out there. What role does a website play in your client acquisition?

Craig: Yeah. You know, today it’s, to be honest, more passive. You know, it’s out there, one place to learn about us, you know, we’ve got content up on our Triptych YouTube channel. We’ve got content in different places. But the website today, is a great spot to show that we’ve been doing this. We’ve been doing it with a lot of great clients over the years. But it’s going to be more. We’re planning in 2024 to make it more engaging. You’ll see motion graphics, very short, sweet, a couple of minutes at most, conveying the concept, conveying the business value. One of the things that we’ve delivered this last quarter is what we’re calling our risk reward calculator. We want to gauge people with that calculator up on our .com site soon. So stay tuned on that. I like to bring that up because the beauty of this calculator is it’s not just plugging in the size of your company, how many reps do you have? No, no. It’s going to be going down the road of what are your greatest sales and marketing challenges. And then we give you some idea of the payback based on addressing sales execution. So I guess today, more passive. Tomorrow, more engaging.

Ernesto: Definitely. And then that’s part of marketing, you always got to be moving around, right? So that’s great to hear. And talking about that, a little bit of your experience and you mentioned it, right, so much experience every year, something different. But as far as this year, there was a big trend in AI. Curious to know if you guys used any tools or methods that came with that too, in terms of lead generation.

Craig: You know, it’s interesting about our experience with it. First of all, we started with our product. We had a recommendation engine we put in place many years ago, and it’s driven off the data, and that’s the magic, right? It’s good to help. For example, our clients say, we do AI today. And that we recommend for that buyer the right content, the right tools. So for our outreach today, we’re looking at using AI in a similar way. You know, we’re using AI to take a look at a list. We certainly do buy lists, but we want to be able to filter that list on a profile of client that’s going to matter too. And if it’s going to be a healthcare company, is it a healthcare company that does have a big, they can both not just the reward, but the risk part of the risk, getting it right. So we’re using AI to take a look at the data, the customer opportunity data. And then we’re also using AI for our messaging. I think most companies do today. It’s a nice shortcut to be able to do some iterations through AI. So those are some ideas. So we’ve been using it internally for many years, their product, but also now, but the way we go to market.

Ernesto: Definitely, that’s great to hear. And talking about you being a leader there, I do want to switch those gears a little bit and talk about you being the vice president of sales and marketing. What are some key tasks you focus on in your day-to-day work?

Craig: Yeah. And, you know, I don’t get too much out of talking about titles, right? I think for the most part, as companies I’ve seen over the years, or companies that don’t have the boundaries of departments, they don’t have the sort of mindset of titles. What they think about is, you know, we’re either in sales or enabling sales. And that’s a quote from somebody that I stole that from many years ago who said, you know, you don’t have to pitch us on, you know, day-to-day duties being about sellers, partners, and customers. We just get it. And one of the things that we’ve seen over the years, companies that are more customer-centric, that align well with marketing and sales and then sales and services, I shouldn’t say both, all three. These are the companies that grow the fastest. So one of the things that I encourage that we do here is I try to reach out to, you know, somebody I’m doing mainly selling day-to-day, but I’m also reaching out to our marketing team, product team, reaching out to our customer success team. And if that’s something that I can do day-to-day, great, you know, it doesn’t always happen. I think it’s a good general rule because, you know, it’s not a half-hour, hour meeting, it’s more of a, you know, here’s what we’re seeing in the last sales call. Here’s what we saw at the last event. You know, this is the competition is saying, you know, conversations across the cross-functional teams I think is critical. You know, it’s obvious, obviously, you know, doing a task list and so on is kind of tactical. I think, think more strategic. Think cross-functional as you start your day.

Ernesto: Definitely. That’s some great, great advice there. Definitely would agree with that with you. So, let’s jump into our following section. It’s our rapid-fire question round. So while you’re ready for them, Craig.

Craig: I am.

Ernesto: Awesome. All right. Let’s kick it off with the first one. What is the last book that you read?

Craig: You know, I would say this book, the rapid fire only the paranoid survive because they just reread it and it talks about strategic inflection points in the market. Written by Andy Grove from Intel. What I loved about the section on strategic inflection points, who knows those people that are on the phone every day with clients. So only paranoid does survive.

Ernesto: All right. Great, great, great. Read that. Now, Craig, what is one single thing that Triptych is focused on at the moment the most?

Craig: Right now, and we’ve been doing this for the last couple of quarters actually, is truly getting our messaging right, coming into 2024. Okay. We want people to be able to understand in minutes what we do and, and not how we do it, but what we do. So it was messaging, now coming into 2024, a big deal for us is getting the word out. You’ll see us at different healthcare events across the nation here in the U.S. So we’re going to be focused on being at a booth, being up on stage, talking about client success stories. But getting that messaging out, I’m a big, message matters person, I guess you could say.

Ernesto: Definitely. I mean, events, partnerships are all great marketing strategies as well. And, Craig, if there would be no boundaries in technology, what would be that one thing that you want to have fixed for your role as a marketer today?

Craig: No boundaries. You know, AI has done a tremendous amount already, and you know, I can only imagine how much more it’s going to do. But the idea of being able to sit in a 20, 30-minute brainstorming session with somebody and then have AI help us to iterate and go to market faster. If I can go from, you know, idea session, the market to go and sell it, and then go iterate, you know, what used to take us months should now take us hours, days. So if AI has no boundaries, it’s going to allow me to, you know, they say no longer click, click, click, and instead, you’re going to have discussions with technologies. I like that. You know, being able to have conversations with people, then the technology. That’d be awesome.

Ernesto: And that would be awesome. Now that that’s great to hear. Now, love asking this question, especially to someone like you with a lot of experience. What is one piece of advice that you would give yourself if you were to restart your journey as a marketer today?

Craig: No, I think as a marketer and I’ve had a chance over the years, we’ve deployed sales execution and enablement solutions at hundreds of clients. What I see out of the best marketers are those that really do want to understand the challenges of the sellers, the challenges of the partners, and then ultimately the challenges of the customers, you know, truly be open. And in one of the things I think you’ll find out of that is the feedback you’re going to, you’re going to receive is going to help you more target your day, you know, nothing worse than creating, let’s say, a 20-page white paper and having nobody read it, having nobody download it. When I say nobody, I mean small numbers, doing a blog and having, you know, no visitors. It’s really challenging to sort of keep morale up when people aren’t consuming your marketing content. So I advise people, you know, one simple technique is, you know, do a ride-along. It could be, you know, jumping on a web conference, a sales call. It could be jumping in on a quarterly business review with the sales team. It could be jumping on a call with a client. Rather, if you have a customer advisory board, you know, get yourself on that. Anything you can do to stay connected, you’ll have the wisdom to do less, right? Not do more. You probably have heard this, right? More is more, that’s not true. And in the sales arena, we always want a more targeted right content play from marketing. So those are some ideas.

Ernesto: Definitely. That’s some great advice there. Well, thank you so much, Craig, for being out with us on the show today. I do want to give you the last word. If someone forgets everything about the interview today, Craig, what is that one thing that you remember about your company?

Craig: Now, my company, Triptych, remember that we do sales execution better than anybody for regulated industries. We help broker agents, partners, and sellers do business by personalized content within moments. You know, so that’s a big pitch for the capabilities. But I think in the end is if we can help regulated industries, especially during their peak selling seasons, understand and do better year on year, once you do, you know, repeat success in sales, that’s the key, right? Anything you can do to repeat it. One final thing, the customer experience, the sales experience, I think in 2024 and beyond, customer enablement, customer experience, that’s going to be a huge play. So a couple of final thoughts.

Ernesto: Definitely would agree with that. Well, guys, you could always check them out at triptych.com. And just remember Triptych offers sales content management and channel marketing and enablement all in one to increase selling time and allow your marketing team to scale support by 10X. Craig, thank you so much for being on with us today. For our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in and looking forward to our next episode at Pathmonk Presents. Thanks a lot.

Craig: Thank you so long.