Marketing Strategy for Media: Listen first, sell second (podcast episode #127)

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What if collaborating with a competitor could significantly boost your revenue? That’s exactly what Sagnik Roy, SVP at Times Internet, did. In this episode, he shares how listening before selling and prioritizing soft skills reshaped his career.

Times Internet has 571 million monthly users and a US audience of five million. It is owned by the Times Group, publisher of The Economic Times and The Times of India, the largest English-language newspaper by circulation. The Times Group is a private company and claims revenue exceeding a billion dollars a year.

Roy manages a team of 15 to 20 people across three customer-facing brands.

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Stories (with lessons) about what he made in marketing

Ask, or you’ll never know

Roy defied industry norms, pitching a marketing collab with a direct competitor. The result? A TV bundle that significantly boosted revenue for both brands.

Roy’s takeaway – even unconventional ideas are worth pitching if you believe in them.

Prioritize soft skills when hiring

Building a niche sales team from scratch, Roy realized technical expertise wasn’t enough. Instead, he focused on hiring for soft skills – honesty, eagerness, and hunger to succeed – which created a high-performing team that excelled at multitasking and exceeded sales targets.

Listen first, sell second

Early in his sales career, Roy’s eagerness to showcase his company’s offerings backfired. Seeking advice, he learned to shift his approach: let the client share their goals and challenges first, then tailor the pitch to their needs. This client-focused approach significantly improved his success rate.

Lessons (with stories) from people he collaborated with

Lead with latitude

via David Wisnia, EVP, Star TV Networks

Roy learned the power of macro-managing – granting employees freedom to make decisions, which fosters accountability and confidence.

Precision builds trust

via Rosemary Gong, Account Director, DAE Advertising

Gong taught Roy the art of crafting precise, constructive emails that build trust and clarity in virtual communication.

Transparency is strength

via Todd Myers, CEO, Willow TV

Myers exemplified zero-insecurity leadership, transparently sharing information and empowering his team, which ultimately strengthened the organization.

Discussed in this episode

Strategic Delegation: Time is your most precious asset (podcast episode #96)

Marketing Pragmatism: Embrace ‘hand-grenade math’ over false precision (podcast episode #101)

Sustainable Marketing: Take the time to understand your target audience deeply and your value proposition (podcast episode #104)

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Transcript

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Sagnik Roy: One of the things about trust is that the data and then this is more of a private company, things where a lot of the data we feel is only relevant to the person who is in charge of the data. Let me give an example in terms of when you're talking about sales moving to know more information about the company, they need to know how the company is doing from that actually point of view, from a substation point of view and all of those data.

So earlier in, in some of the company, you would always be told the sales team not only this, the marketing team is not only this, and that's when when you interact with Todd earlier, what I would be amazed at is the amount of information he's sort of sharing, and some of it is may not be relevant to me.

Some of the information may not be that relevant to me in my day to day job, but it's good to know. It's good to know how a company is doing. What are the other aspects of the company which are changing, not changing. And I feel that that information led me to believe that I'm part of a larger team.

Intro: Welcome to how I made it in marketing. From marketing Sherpa, we scour pitches from hundreds of creative leaders and uncover specific examples, not just trending ideas or buzzword laden schmaltz. Real world examples to help you transform yourself as a marketer. Now here's your host, the senior director of Content and marketing at Marketing Sherpa, Daniel Bernstein, to tell you about today's guest.

Daniel Burstein: Nelson Mandela famously said, it always seems impossible until it's done. There may be an idea you have right now that everyone doubts even you can't possibly work. But here's some encouragement to give it a chance for my next guest. One of the key lessons from his career has been ask or you'll never know. Joining me now to share the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson filled stories, is Nick Roy, senior Vice president of Times Internet.

Thanks for joining me.

Sagnik Roy: Good to be here. I am.

Daniel Burstein: Let me tell people about your background real quick. So they knew who I'm talking about. So I actually started his career as a senior tax consultant at Arthur Andersen. Then fortunately, he moved into our industry. Is a marketing and sales manager for Sony. He had some other roles, but he originally joined Time's Internet 15 years ago as VP of sales and marketing for its Willow TV international, the first 24 over seven TV channel in the US dedicated to cricket.

Time's internet has 571 million monthly users and a US audience of 5 million. Is owned by the Time's Group, publisher of The Economic Times, as well as The Times of India, which is the largest English language newspaper by circulation in the world. The times Group is a private company and claims revenue exceeding $1 billion a year. Sagna himself manages a team of 15 to 20 people across three customer facing brands.

So give me a sense. What is your day like as senior vice president?

Sagnik Roy: Sure. Good to be here, Daniel. So typically my day starts with a lot of reading, so I typically dedicate about an hour just before my day starts. And because I work in the West Coast and a lot of my team spread across the world. Most of my team is already up and running. And I've got emails in my inbox, but I take about a half an hour and 45 minutes to just sort of pick a pause, read up a little bit of what's going on in the world, read a few emails, and then typically my day starts.

Because I work remote and there are multiple people. Most of it tends to be meetings and calls. Just getting updates from teams, you know, getting sales updates, marketing update and things like that. And then it sort of flows into, a few things, which I sort of work on because as the head of sales and marketing, I also responsible a bit for sort of strategic parts of the company.

So I take a little bit of time to see some of our projects. How's it going? Do I need to fix things? So part of it is I'm probably 60, 70% of it goes into sort of talking to my teams across. And then about 25, 30% is more internally figuring out how the companies are working and strategic stuff.

But yeah, that's cool.

Daniel Burstein: I love that you start with reading. I start with reading two now, though. Personally, I want to ask you read just because I am a print guy where before I get on a machine, I want to read a little bit of print. And so this morning, for example, for me, that was the Wall Street Journal. Are you a print or digital guy or does it just not matter to you?

Sagnik Roy: It just as like sort of I look into my my abs, I look into my news. But I'm most into interested obviously in news about media marketing, and things like that. So those things interest me a lot. So there are typical sort of websites or a couple of podcasts which I listen to in the morning, and I sort of go to get a, a quick line of what's happening.

So yeah, mostly media marketing, but yes, other news also float up. I just want to be a little more informed when I go out there. I start running.

Daniel Burstein: I try to start information. I love it. And one thing mentioned the Sacramento is podcast and feel free everyone start your day with how I made a mark. Marketing. Making a cup of coffee. Yeah.

Sagnik Roy: All right.

Daniel Burstein: Let's take a look at some of the lessons from some of the things you made in your career. As I've said before, I've never really had been in the other industry. I've never been a podiatrist or an actuary or something. But in marketing, we make things that makes it fun. But this I mentioned this first. Austin, I love this.

Ask or you'll never know. And I love the story behind this. Tell us a story. How about that behind this lesson?

Sagnik Roy: Sure. So this is, you know, early in my days, I was I was working at News Corp as part of their international television division, which was called star TV. And what happened was we had newly launched in a platform and the the caveat with launching on that platform was that you have to bundle and launch with your biggest competitor at that time.

So it was a very awkward situation because we wanted this bundle to grow. We wanted people to know about this bundle. So they subscribe to it and watch our content. But that meant spending marketing dollars and also promoting my competition. And everyone's like, how does that work? I mean, every time we add a dollar to my subscription, that guy gets a dollar or two just for free.

So we were like, okay, let's let's try and see, let's go and approach them. And I know it's going to be hard. No, but hey, what's the worst which can happen? You know, I always go with that philosophy. So we actually went and approached them and they were like, are you guys serious? I mean, you want us to promote the combined package?

I'm mean, look, this is what I see when we grow. You guys grow because it's a newly created bundle, right? So think about it and let us know. So they actually took it back to the management. And funnily enough, they got a yes. So when the marketing manager on the other side actually came back to me said, you know, I had no idea they're going to say yes, but they said yes.

So we better start working on it now. So, you know, it stems from a little bit of fact that, hey, we took it out there, we give it a shot. If you had not worked, we would have probably spent all the marketing dollars to promote it. But the fact that it actually got a yes from the other side, was amazing.

And so we actually work together. We we created our marketing, calendar. We created a marketing profile. We did a campaign, and it worked very well for us, for both of us. And, honestly speaking, it became a case study for both our companies, for yours, when they kept on using this as a platform or as a framework of how you can work together and collaborate, and each can sort of get their own, things out of this kind of campaign.

Daniel Burstein: All right. Let me ask, what was your biggest lesson you learned from having to do that collaboration? Because when we talk about collaboration and partnership, so collaborations and partnerships are very hard when it's not your direct competitor. Right. When it when it is, it's even harder. But one thing that I really love, what you did, I just did a webinar a few weeks ago with sports, a small business group about outsmarting your competition, talking about that, and I open with the slide.

There's a very famous quote. It's not enough that we win. Everyone else must lose. Right. And this is the Larry Ellison Genghis Khan very famous quote. And I feel the opposite, because your competitors, those are the closest people to you. In a way. They're going through the same things as you, right? What I always think, what can I learn from them?

And a great example I like to give, which is kind of, a physical example of what you talked about is a diamond district in New York City. And there's there's other examples from this. Right. But all these diamond competitors they chose, they said, let's all be very close together. Right? Which would seem like a bad idea, but it's it will get all the customers there.

Everyone will get a share. We'll work together. But again, let's get back to you. I've talked to many markers about many collabs. Even when you're not doing a collab with a competitor, partnerships are so hard. It's hard within an organization that you're going to cross organizations. What is the biggest lesson you learned from collaborating with a competitor?

Sagnik Roy: It's, you know, two things. One is definitely the first time I keep talking about that. You you've got to be open to ideas. And I it's very important. And the second thing, I always believe this because we work in a space which is slightly nature than the mainstream space out there. You got to build relationships which are for the long term.

So outside of the work of 95, where we literally killing each other with you know, all of the stuff, I think the second aspect of it is that you got to maintain some sort of a bonhomie among your professionals, even though you're working with different, companies, because you never know where and when these things will help. Luckily, the team and at the competition on the team, we've sat together for drinks in conferences and things like that.

And when you're approaching, they're like, okay, this is not a guy will just start from left field. We know the guy, we trust the guy. So I think two things I always feel that every relationship, every meeting always takes something out of it, but you never know where it will help. And that's the biggest thing about Co-Lab that the guy on the other side looks at you and says, hey, I trust this guy.

I know this guy. I've met him a couple of times. Let's see what he has to say.

Daniel Burstein: Now. I love that the word bonhomie, I won't be saying it wrong, but that is such a beautiful, explanation of it. And to do that, it takes some soft skills. And you talked about one of the, one of your key lessons to is prioritize soft skills when hiring. So kind of tell us how you learned that lesson.

Sagnik Roy: Sure. So I always, you know, in our field, especially in a multicultural field, you need people with very niche skills. You need to be able to sell properties and media properties to a very niche diaspora audience. And for that you need specific language skills and things like that. And it's not always you find such people. I mean, there are of course, but very, very few.

So, you know, I've always had to hire people who necessarily don't come from the same fields or don't have that level of experience, which you one needs. So what I tend to use is things like other factors when I'm looking at a person. Right. What are what are the usual human skills as I call it, like what are your day to day skills as a person?

Who are you as a person? And I think that's fundamental to me. When I sit across a person and I'm trying to get this person to be part of my team, right. So I always feel that, you know, things like, hey, are you being honest in your resume? Are you being very frank? And are you really in a place where you're like, you're willing to learn, you're willing to be that person where it's fine to be, you know, to be, to have next experience, but are you hungry enough?

Are you hungry enough? Are you are you collaborative in a person? Like when I'm talking to you, do I do you sound like you are a person who who doesn't know a few things but are willing to take that lesson and learn few things? Because I've seen people say the moment you ask a question, they already have an answer 50% of the time.

And I'm like, hold on, you don't even know what I'm asking. A and B, how could you know everything about everybody? Right? I wanted to sometimes, you know, and I understand it sometimes even as you're young, you're like, I have to make my best impression. Well, don't make your best impression. Just show the person who you are is what I feel.

And those are the people I really, sort of, you know, attracts me as a team member, as a colleague, or even as a mentor, a coach.

Daniel Burstein: That is, you know, just such a good life lesson. I, I was so guilty of that and had a friend, being who went to high school together, we were in something called IB, International Baccalaureate. So the whole advanced and he's a like a cardiologist now, but and he told me he called me out once and he's like, you know, because you were at IBK in high school, you feel like you need to know everything about everything, and you always have to come up with an answer.

I'm like, shoot, I do. And it's a good when someone calls it like, you know, what's your point? I need to I need to step back.

Sagnik Roy: Yeah.

Daniel Burstein: Let me ask you about that specifically because, you know, that be people that will hear that and they'll kind of nod, but they'll still be like, well, I need this, and I need that, like these hard skills. So can you provide a specific example of how honesty and eagerness manifested in your team's operations or interactions with clients? Right.

Because, for example, when I hear you talking about is interviewed, Tomer Zucker, VP of marketing at Did and one of his lessons on how, I mean marketing was look past the CV and he told a story of he was working in sales at Microsoft. You know, fortunately, someone would pass a CV and they pulled him into marketing. That's how he got here, taking that chance.

Right. So I think we all kind of will people will be listening and they'll nod, but then they'll do the next interview and maybe they don't want to take that chance just because someone's honest or eager. So do you have any like specific examples of how that focus on honesty or eagerness helped your team in an interaction with a client or partner or something like that?

Sagnik Roy: Absolutely. So, you know, one of the first person I've hired in my team and a sales person didn't come from a sales background. And, you know, they would be, very nervous. And I remember I'm, I'm bit of a macro manager, and I always say that. Just go there, talk to the client. I'm not going to be with you, but I'm sure you do.

Well, you know, that's that's sort of my mantra. And people get super nervous when they're like, oh my God, this is a client. If I mess up, if I do something wrong, I am going to get it. And I'm like, I have your back. Don't worry. One of the things I remember this, this person going up to a client had a client meeting and and call me back saying it was terrible.

I think I messed up big time. I am so sorry. And I'm like, that's okay, don't worry about it. Let's let's hear back from the client. And, you know, depending on the client, call back and say, hey, you, we we love hearing about your company. You know, it was good. We want to talk back and more and more.

And obviously, the person didn't know that because the client gave me direct feedback. And so, you know, I went back and I said, look, it's all right. I mean, this is what happened. And she was astonished. She was like, are you sure? It was terrible. I said, it felt terrible because you literally went into that meeting thinking of fear.

Right. And I keep saying that do not have any fear when I'm sending you out there for a meeting. I trust you 100%. And it's okay to make multiple mistakes, and it's okay to say things which you do not know the best part of it. Be honest if you do not know something. Yeah, I'll get back to you.

I'll. I'll check with the team and get back to you. And she said that like multiple times. So she felt that that was the wrong thing to do. And and and that's not the case. Right. So I think it's a fear. It's if you I always tell my team, even younger, team members that have no fear, I'm sending you out there because I trust you do not ever think that any mistake you make will be a repercussion for each one.

This is the reason I'm sending you, is because you learn. I always say you learn from your own learnings, not from somebody else's learnings. And that's how I also learned. Most of the time that's true.

Daniel Burstein: And what you're saying there ties really into your next lesson. You talk about, okay, the the customer asks you something, you don't jump in and give the answer necessarily. You said, listen first, sell second. And and this is something you learned earlier in your career in sales. Right.

Sagnik Roy: So that was something again coming back to the lesson from your own learnings. And I remember I was this eager salesperson. This is back in when I was working for Sony. And you know, my first, second sort of sales, shift. And I would go in there and I would put in the document, here's what my company can do.

This is what we can do for you. This is what what we are as a company and all that. And I felt and this is the reward for what the other person failed. In my previous example, I felt I did amazingly well. I spoke for 45 minutes. Great presentation that don't work. And you know, feedback wasn't that great.

Client didn't see much. There was not enough feedback. And this is what happened two, three, four times. And then I'm like, this is something is off here. Something went wrong. So I would I actually went up to my boss and said, I think I'm doing something wrong because I'm not getting enough enough feedback. I'm not getting enough business.

And I think my boss told me that, hey, tell me what you're doing. And then this is when he was like, probably you need to step back a little bit and let the client talk. And I'm like, okay, let me try that first. So I think I went into next meetings probably talking a little less, trying to get more feedback from the client, trying to make this a conversation rather than a sales pitch.

Because you get you get a sales pitch literally every day in your life at every point. And if you can see if you get multiple people talking to you, doing the same thing over and over again, you'll start becoming more on the one which in just tune to the ones where you talk more than the other person. I always seen this and I've seen this date and I tell clients also this at times when we're having a freewheeling conversation, you speak on the phone that I didn't even get a word in there is like, look, I felt like, you know, I could talk to you and I could see things, and these are the problems

I need fixing. Can you fix this? And then I'm like, yeah, sure. You know, this is more of a platform can do for you. And that's about it. And this also leads to the fact that, you know, there are certain times when businesses can convert immediately. I probably have not met the client for the next two, three years, but when the client needs me, he remembers that, okay, this is one guy I can pick up the phone and talk to and maybe you can help me rather than, oh my God, I don't want to talk to this guy.

He's going to again talk for 45 minutes nonstop. And that's what I don't want. Yeah. So that's that's what I talk.

Daniel Burstein: So that's a great lesson from a one on one sales conversation. Have you been able to do anything with that in your career, in your overall marketing to, you know, a broader audience? Because Greg. Yeah.

Sagnik Roy: Yeah. No, no. Absolutely. So I think, you know, this this part the, the the sort of listen and hear it, I think applies to everywhere. When I was having conversations with my colleagues with, you know, other business leaders in, in the sales teams, other divisions, things like that. It's always I feel the fact that you got to be a patient listener.

And I think it helps in all facets of life, even.

Daniel Burstein: Outside of work.

Sagnik Roy: Where even listening for a small period to everybody who's sort of talking to you gives the person, first of all, the confidence that you you are understanding what the person saying and the fact that you're empathetic to what they're saying. I think these are the two things with sort of, you know, work together. And, you know, as a salesperson over the last ten, 15 years, you've had multiple conversations, with multiple people.

So as an as when you, when you step into that, that mature, sort of role in your life, I mean, every conversation you have sort of puts you in that tone where let me hear you out, of course. And then let me add in where I can.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. So I agree with that, especially anyone who's married or has any sort of intimate relationship. But it's also very good advice.

Sagnik Roy: Yes, the longer you stay married, the longer you learn. Yeah.

Daniel Burstein: That's right. Okay. But let me ask you this, but have you been able to do so? That's an a 1 to 1 conversation. Have you been able to do this in a one to many conversation. And I ask this because when we think of marketing, I think sometimes we get too focused on an automation platform or data analytics or attribution or all of these very technical things, and we forget that what marketing is essentially is going to a mass group of people, even if it's niche, it's a bigger than one group of person, like we would in a 1 to 1 interaction.

And one of the things I've seen, so we do coaching to businesses as part of the AI Guild, and often where there should be this kind of longer relationship like you would with a marriage or anything right along a relationship of back and forth right away, or trying to sell something right versus having a customer first objective giving to the customer, giving value and also hearing from them and kind of understanding what that could be.

Forms. There can be many ways of doing this, even a b testing around analytics and then guiding them to the right place for them. If that is purchasing from from your company. So now you're in charge of not just sales, but sales and marketing. Have you been able to take this lesson of lesson first, sell second, and put it into any of your marketing, any of your more, more mass communications?

Sagnik Roy: Sure. So the way I look at marketing is, you know, I always feel that be aware that the customer is intelligent, right? Don't presume that, you know, you need to sort of barraged them with a lot of buzzwords. We are the best. We are number one. We are this year that they know. They know who you are. Don't let's not get into those those things.

You know the top five things you will learn from Times of India. I feel like more of giving them pertinent data. So things which sort of help them in deciding things which are more specific to what they're looking at. You. You're talking to a car company, are you talking to any data which is specific to their needs? Right.

And this is how you can help them. I remember this conversation and you bring this up. An astrologer a long time back would ask me, how do I create an ad where I can differentiate myself from other astrologers, because every astrologer is going and claiming that I can solve your problem in seven days. So I said, here is what you do.

You should say, hey, I'm not sure I can solve your problem. I can try and help you make your life better, right? So that's what got him into a niche. And he's probably one of our top performing clients right now. But yeah, I always feel that don't say things which are obvious and which everybody else is sort of constantly going and, you know, bridging you would make it a little more interactive.

So that is like a little more, you know, I'll try and help you. And I'm that's I feel comes from the fact that I listen to you. Now then let me tell you what to do here. And let me tell you why you need to buy me.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah, exactly. That's great. Well, in just a moment, we're going to talk about some lessons that I learned from some of the people he collaborated with. That's what we do as marketers. We, as I said, we make things. We get to make them with people. But before we get to the second half of the episode, I should mention that the how I Made It marketing podcast is underwritten by MC labs.

I, the parent company of marketing Sherpa. You can get conversion focused training from the lab that helped pioneer the conversion industry in our AI guild. Grab your free three month scholarship to the AI Guild at. Join that Mech Labs ai.com. To join that NPC labs I com. All right, let's talk about some lessons you learned from some of the people you collaborate with.

You said you learned to lead with latitude. You learned from David Wilson. Yeah. The EVP of Star TV networks. How did you learn this from David?

Sagnik Roy: Sure. And this is, you know, one of my first jobs at a large company. And I remember when I walked into, Fox and this is part of the star TV network, I really felt intimidated. And, in my previous job, I used to have, you know, managers who would sort of tell me, okay, do this this way, do it that way.

Make sure this doesn't look like this. And and a bit of a micromanaging tendency, and I was, as I was growing from being a, sort of an executive to a managerial level, I would think that this is probably the way of good leadership or better leadership. David approached things very differently. And and this is also a lesson, which I, you know, have implemented all the time in my sales team.

You would just say, hey, this is the job at hand. You go ahead and do it, and I'll make sure, you know, you have all the tools to do the job, but I don't want you to go out there and every and every step of the way, start asking me how to do it. How what do I do?

Am I doing things wrong? You gave me a little bit of confidence, and I feel that, you know, that confidence led me to do a lot of things on my own without bothering about is somebody overlooking my on my shoulder? Is somebody telling me what to do. And I feel that aspect give me confidence, give him confidence in me.

And by the by, when I go and now talk to my teams, it's the same sort of confidence I install in them, saying, hey, I know you know how to do your job. Here's what, here's what you need to do. Here are the tools I'm giving you. Do your job. Go ahead and do it. And don't worry, I have your back.

So that's a key aspect I learned from very early on. And it really helped me, to be the person I am. And, and definitely I feel that has yielded positive results.

Daniel Burstein: So how do you balance that with accountability? How do you hold your team accountable? Because I love what you said. I heard you earlier when you were telling that little stories use that word micromanaging, which is so great, right? Better than micromanaging. But I feel like, why do managers or executives micromanage? Because they're worried that things aren't going to get done.

They're not getting results, are not going to do the thing. Right, right, right. So how do you how do you balance that micromanaging with okay, making sure that there's some, you know, clear accountability. And we're still hitting the goals we need to hit.

Sagnik Roy: Right. So you know, in every company there are certain processes which are already inbuilt in terms of how you have accountability. You have a weekly meeting, people give you updates and things like that. And that's there in there in the system. What I believe in micromanage happens when you are literally sort of following up on every, every day, everything.

And I feel that when you hire a person, it's that first trust is there that I have hired you because I trust you, because I believe you can do the job I have hired you to do. And I think that's that's already established. Now, if you are going against that grain and saying, okay, I hired you, I am going to make you do the job.

But now I want to make sure you do not do the job, and I'm going to call you every day, and I'm going to sit on your shoulder every day and make you do the job that I feel is a little counterintuitive to, you know, why you have the post in the first place? Because if you know, if you can do the job, then you would have done then that person's job and your job as well.

So that's where I feel, balance is you have to trust that ability. And yes, they will make mistakes that are the places or the cases where they're not accountable. You don't need to call them out in in a fashion where it feels that they've done something wrong. You go and say, hey, make sure you do this right.

You didn't do this on time, but going forward, please make sure you do that. And I think 90% of the cases that typically work well.

Daniel Burstein: Let me ask about what vendors do. You take the same approach with vendors? Because hearing what you said, I know there's so many vendors I've heard who like, you know, this client hired me for this, and then they didn't let me do it and they didn't trust me to do it.

Sagnik Roy: I know, yes, I do. I'm going to do a work with a lot of vendors. We work with, you know, our agencies, we work with, PR agencies, marketing agencies, in some cases, I think the approach is the same. I wouldn't change my approach for either in-house or out hold. It's just the same approach I have for everybody.

If that's not the vendor who has accountable for what you've done, don't you need to change them? And I'm very clear on that. I mean, that's simple then. And ultimately what happens. Do you find that fit? You know, it's always that fit about the person understands what you need when you need things by. And it works a lot.

So I feel trust in accountability is a hallmark of the future of a relationship, whether it's work or work home. And if you don't have that in the beginning, you will never have that at any stage of efficacy. And if you put those sort of, you know, marks at the beginning say, hey, I trust you and I know you can do your job in most cases, you know, they will learn, that that path leads to something.

Daniel Burstein: Well, let's talk about trust and how to win that trust to begin with, you said you learn that precision builds trust. And you learn this from Rosemary Gong and count director at de advertise saying, how did you learn this originally?

Sagnik Roy: Right. And precision actually this is a key word because, you know again this day and age you you convey everything or I'm glad we are speaking in a podcast, but mostly everything goes through emails, text, every conversation. And, you know, she was she was a writer. And I remember she she looked at my first email, I said, what are you trying to say?

And I said something completely different from what I had written. So so she's like, hold on, why would just try and take a deep breath, write this again for me. And I'm like, what is this? I'm why am I going to English class here? Or, you know, I am, I'm doing my job. And a couple of times I would get slightly irritated.

But what I learned from her is that when I actually wrote the email and the way she told me to do it sounded better to myself, I'm like, wow, that's fine. Sounds like a great email. That's what I want you to say. And, and by and by, you know, you know, she started correcting things and all that.

And then I started learning how to how to write something where I'm conveying the right thing because in this day and age, when you're talking to hundreds of people, most of the people you don't quite get to have a conversation with. But it's important to make sure that in your first or second email to conveying the right thing as closely as possible will also help.

When we are having difficult conversations over an email. You know, you have to be, you know, nice and empathetic, but you have to put your point across for sure. But I've seen people write emails without pausing, and I'm going to you probably didn't mean that. In fact, I actually, you know, I didn't. But then I'm like, okay, then you could have just written it a little differently and this could have been better placed.

So I think the auto position is the art of conveying things, to the extent you can in a proper manner. It's something I really learned from it. And that's something I've been told till date that my emails make, you know, are way better constructed than what what people have seen generally, and wouldn't put it to her that she really shaped the way I have communicated going forward.

Daniel Burstein: I love that, you know, and as a writer, that's such a key thing in writing. So there's a great writing Maxim show, don't tell. I even read, I was reading in Wall Street Journal, like last week about how to write a good dating profile, which was so interesting and it kind of said the same thing. It's like good writing is precise, like it's specific.

And that's you look at what we do in marketing. It's a key thing we tend to do well, get these pitches. It filled with adjectives. I don't want to hear adjectives to actually show it.

Sagnik Roy: Right. Yeah, absolutely.

Daniel Burstein: But so something we do on how I made a mark on me here. As much as I agree with you on that, we always ask the flip side of it. All right. So let me ask you the flip side of that. So can you think of any time to your career or are they any examples where precision is not the right approach?

And let me give you one example of what I'm thinking. Yeah. When I interviewed Kara Kamsky, the vice president of global consumer and vendor marketing at the Not Worldwide on how I made it marketing, one of her lessons was hand grenade. Math is good enough, don't change false precision. And so she one of the things she talked about is when we get into the data and the numbers right.

And we're forecasting we we get so specific sometimes it's false precision. And she's like it's a forecast a win forecast that way. Right? I'm not going to get down to two decimal points or whatever because we know we don't know what's going to happen. We're we're kind of take some guesswork. So just wonder, is there any place in your career where you don't try to be precise?

Sagnik Roy: Absolutely. That is it. And then there's a very important point you bring up. It's what we call dead by analysis. It's it's like you, you go at a data and you go at it at such an extent that everything outside sort of, you know, loses perspective. You're only looking at why has five not become six, and six is what becomes seven.

You know, I always feel that data is great. Data is great. Good to have. But when you're so focused on on things like, hey, that that is, you need to make numbers move from 5 to 6, seven, 7 to 8. But I think that there is there's an overarching area there which basically talks about this is beyond data.

There are certain other aspects which are qualitative in nature, and you need to bring those into the fore, not just looking at a target from A to B to B to C and zero D. And I always tell whenever we have financial conversations with CFOs and things like that, they're like, hey, I'm only looking at the number and why not move from A to B?

And I'm like, just don't look at that. Look at, look at other factors, market size, how the product is performing, what are the other things we need to look at, what are the strategies going to put in for? It's not all about the numbers. So I always feel that don't look at a sheet just like a sheet. There are other things in there.

Take the whole thing in perspective and then form your opinion on how a company's progressing, or how a particular group is progressing. We absolutely. I love that term. Grade.

Daniel Burstein: Yes. What does it all mean? I mean, and this is one of the things I kind of feel bad for people that work in the public companies, because this is one thing I've definitely seen when I worked at public companies and were on some of those earnings calls, and they were just such a like, okay, when, when, when the CMO gets on with the analysts and it's like, well, it was 12.12%, why was it not 12.14%?

And I'm like, guy, I all right. So we talked a lot about your managers, macro management and trust. Another thing you learned is transparency is strength. And you said you learned this from Todd Myers, a CEO of Willow TV. How did you learn this from Todd?

Sagnik Roy: Right. And this also has to do with the part of my micromanaging and and those kind of things. You know, one of the things about trust is that data. And then this, this is more of a private company, things where a lot of the data we feel is only relevant to the person who is in charge of the data.

Let me give you an example in terms of when you're when you're talking about sales teams, you need to know more information about the company. They need to know how the company is doing from an actual point of view, from a subscription point of view and all of those data. So earlier in, in some of the companies, we would always be told the sales team to know only this.

The marketing team is not only this and that's it. When when you interact with Todd earlier, what I would be amazed at is the amount of information he's sort of sharing, and some of it is may not be relevant to me. Some of the information may not be that relevant to me in my day to day job, but it's good to know.

It's good to know how a company is doing. What are the other aspects of the company which are changing, not changing. And I felt that that information led me to believe that I'm part of a larger team, not just one siloed department in a particular company. Right. And and that really helped me to just sort of bond with my company as a person and be that I am part of the whole thing.

I know about this, I know about that. And sometimes when you have inconsistent clients and vendors, these things help because you know so much of the company, you're adding different perspective of the company, which a client appreciates to just know about, and it just creates a good conversation. And I have sort of implemented in my when when I'm talking to my team like this is information which may not be relevant to you.

And I start off with that, but this is good to know. So you guys should be just knowing that this happened in the company. This happened to the company that happened the company. And most of the time it's taken positively because people don't want to have a conversation or a meeting just to say, hey, your sales numbers, you didn't do this, you didn't do that.

You didn't do this. No. For 15, 20 minutes. I always talk about this sort of happening complete. This is a new thing which is happen. Maybe you want to know more about it. Here's a link. Read about it. May might help you. So that's what I feel is very important. And that's what I really learned from Todd that be open to your team, give them all the information you need and, you know, make them feel a part of a whole of a company and not just, you know, a little siloed, teams.

Daniel Burstein: Know I love you say it's about context. I remember one of the most powerful story, I think, was in time magazine. This reporter went to China to some of the vendors that were making the products for Apple. And there was this person that worked there ten hours a day, seven, six days a week, seven days a week, whatever.

And her only job was like to take this transistor and to glue it to this board or whatever. Do you even know what she was making? And when the reporter showed her an iPad, she wept. Oh my gosh, she didn't read she like she was. This is what she was part of this, what she was doing. Right. And your point this is sometimes when we solve too much, it's like, well, you're part of the bigger whole.

You don't see the big picture. So let me ask you that. Is there any specific way you've ever used that data transparency to motivate your team to help their performance or something that because, for example, I interviewed, Kristen Stevens, a senior marketing manager for the US at the Marine Stewardship Council, on how I made it marketing. One of her lessons was about the importance of a hero metric that you and your team work for, right?

You know, just that's it's all this, hey, we're all in for this, and they understand it. So is there any way you've used that data transparency specifically to help with team performance?

Sagnik Roy: Pretty much every day, you know, to be honest with you, again, in my earlier roles, it looks at the information was so little that you take that much information. You have an anything else the client would ask about a larger company? You had no idea, right? Because everybody knows everything about the company. There is no place where people don't know much about it, just takes it just makes for a larger conversation with everybody, everywhere.

People feel that they are not just a sales accident, that a company. Good. If I use that word, because you are just not part of one small thing. And I think and to your point, and when we discussed about client interaction and let the client speak and you are having a conversation, you can't have a conversation with the client about a company on this.

You know, a lot of the company, the client doesn't just want to hear what you did in your sales or what are the sales manager of the company. They want to know, hey, what if the company don't? It's a guess what? We did this two, two days ago. We did that two week ago. And they're like, wow, is that the companies in all to this?

Do they also do this stuff? Yeah. So that's the thing which I feel is great. And the and teams always appreciate when you give them updates for this company because it helps them to have better client conversations and convert sales. So I think there is a there's a lesson in all of this that the more you give to the team, the more they'll give back to you.

And we want to give everything for the company in terms of information to the team so they can give back. You know, that much of input into our company as well.

Daniel Burstein: All right. We talked about a lot of different things. It means to be a marketer that honesty, that listening eye transparency. You had to break it down. What are the key qualities of an effective marketer?

Sagnik Roy: I think a couple of things I would say. One is the word empathy. I always feel that, you know, in the end of the this is a people led organizations, the people that, media, media is all those people that you have to be able to listen and learn. And I think it's important that you're not operating a silo.

You're operating and you're doing well, and you're having success because of the people around you. And we should never forget that in your team, the people you work with, all of them contribute to the success which you as a leader get. So I also always remember to be hearing their side of things, understanding where they're working and putting them yourself in their place in times when they really are struggling with things.

So I always feel empathy is a big, important thing. The other thing is that you never remove your marketing cabinetry, your 926 job, right? So always you're always in some part of your brain is always sitting there and say, yeah, I saw something when I was driving bus at nine in the night, something I could probably apply back to my sales team.

So I always say that you should at some point time, you know, it's a passion project. It's not a job. You just you connect to do, you know, get the PTA. So when it's a passion industry, you should always be aware and always be switched on a slightly, a little bit. I don't know if you want to work 12 hours a day.

Six know that that's not what I'm saying. But you should be switched on because that passion leads to, you know, more knowledge and things which you will not realize in ordinary work, which you can apply because you saw something, you heard something while you've been, you know, around your life. I think those are the two important things.

Daniel Burstein: Now, I love it. I love that I've rarely had my best ideas 9 to 5 and four walls. Right. Just kind of off keeping that brain open and those eyes open and those ears open.

Sagnik Roy: Absolutely, absolutely.

Daniel Burstein: That's beautiful. Well, thank you so much for your time segment telling us everything you learned with your campaign and career. I learned a lot.

Sagnik Roy: You're very welcome, and it's great to be here and talk to you.

Daniel Burstein: Thanks to everyone for listening.

Outro: Thank you for joining us for how I made it and marketing with Daniel Burstein. Now that you've got an inspiration for transforming yourself as a marketer, get some ideas for your next marketing campaign. From Marketing Sherpas extensive library of free case studies at Marketing sherpa.com. That's marketing rpa.com and.