The LeanScale Podcast · Episode 90

Why Your Niche Isn't Niche Enough

Former USC Marketing Chair Gary Frazier on brand, niche, the flattening sales org, and why the CMO lost the C-suite

Gary Frazier · Former Chair, Department of Marketing (USC Marshall) · USC Marshall School of Business Hosted by Anthony Enrico
Published Updated 00:47:23 34 min read 6,706 words
Brand & Positioning GTM Strategy Demand Generation Sales Leadership Enterprise & Public-Sector Sales
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Executive Summary

The one-paragraph brief, extended

Why this conversation matters — and who should spend the hour.

Gary Frazier is a rare guest for a GTM show: not an operator with a bag, but a scholar who spent five decades studying how companies win markets. He is the former chair of the Department of Marketing at USC's Marshall School of Business — a post he held twice across three decades — an expert witness in over 120 legal cases on marketing strategy and channels, and an author with Cambridge University Press and Springer Nature. His latest book, 'Marketing and Channel Management for Low Brand Equity Firms,' codifies 21 principles for companies trying to build awareness from zero. His thesis for this conversation with LeanScale co-founder Anthony Enrico is blunt: the niche your board thinks is 'targeted' is still millions of customers wide, and that is exactly why your brand awareness is effectively zero.

The heart of the episode is a clinic on niche and brand. Frazier's test for whether a segment is small enough is simple — do a significant number of people in the target actually know your brand? For most businesses, brand equity is 'zilch.' He walks through the 'junior market' trap using a friend's LA clothing company: 'women 18 to 34 who dress trendy' feels targeted but is millions of people worldwide who have never heard of you, so retailers slap their own label on the garment and you never build equity. The fix is his sorority strategy — win brand awareness in one absurdly narrow niche (sorority houses at UCLA and USC), then expand to adjacent niches one at a time, with the patience most founders don't have. Along the way he argues brand and demand are 'one and the same,' that companies over-invest in demand and under-invest in brand under attribution pressure, and that the principle firms violate most is his first: chasing too many customers.

The second act turns to how sales teams are structured. Frazier argues the hyper-layered, Salesforce-era playbook — SDR to AE to sales engineer to closer to CSM — is fragile, expensive, and on its way out, because buyers now self-research through AI, search, and reviews and no longer need a salesperson to relay information they already have. The winning seller carries unique knowledge the buyer can't get elsewhere (why some firms hire chemists, biologists, and engineers into sales), gets real authority, and works in a flat structure with fewer managers 'checking the temperature' every day. Anthony pushes back from a GTM-operations seat, and Frazier concedes, landing on tiering territories by seniority: best accounts to proven reps, weaker routes to beginners.

The third act is Frazier's most personal: why the C-suite stopped trusting the CMO. He dates the decline to around 2000, when top universities began hiring marketing professors specialized in buyer behavior and analytics and sidelined marketing-management scholars, so business-grounded courses got handed to clinicals while tenured faculty drifted from — and sometimes against — business. The result is marketing managers who never carried profit-and-loss responsibility, which is why finance and founders quietly relegated marketing to 'do some advertising and promotions.' He believes the pendulum is swinging back in the AI era, as self-serving buyers make brand matter more than outbound.

Who should listen: founders and CMOs deciding how narrow to go and how to split brand versus demand; sales leaders and revenue executives rethinking org design, seller profiles, and territories; and anyone weighing marketing's shifting place in the org as AI reshapes how buyers learn. The episode closes on a personal detour into the value of formal higher education — Frazier just wrote a $41,000 tuition check to USC — and his closing rule: learn from your successes, not just your mistakes.

Key Takeaways

12 things worth stealing

The load-bearing ideas, each with the business implication and who should care.

01

Your niche isn't niche enough — the 'junior market' is millions wide

Founders routinely name a segment that feels targeted but is actually millions of people who have never heard of them. Frazier's example: a clothing maker targeting 'the junior market' (women 18–34 who dress trendy) is chasing millions worldwide, so retailers put their own label on the garment and the brand never gets exposure.

Why it matters: Treat any segment you can describe in demographic shorthand as a starting point that is still far too broad. Real targeting is narrow enough that a meaningful share of the people in it could actually know your name.

FoundersMarketing Leaders
02

The brand-awareness test tells you whether a niche is small enough

Frazier admits there's no clean formula for niche size, but offers a working test: do a significant number of people in the target actually know the brand? If awareness stays at zero as you spend, the niche is still too broad — narrow until awareness starts to compound.

Why it matters: Use measured brand awareness inside the target, not TAM or lead volume, as the signal that your segmentation is right. Awareness that won't move is a targeting problem, not a budget problem.

Marketing LeadersFounders
03

Win one narrow niche, then expand — the sorority strategy

Rather than market to millions, go win brand equity in an absurdly narrow niche first (sorority houses at UCLA and USC — visit, gift product to house leaders, build associations), then expand to the next adjacent niche (cheerleaders, young attorneys, grade-school teachers) with some overlap, and repeat.

Why it matters: Sequence brand-building niche by niche instead of blasting the whole market. It's slower and demands patience most founders lack, but it's the only path to real awareness from a zero-equity start.

Marketing LeadersFounders
04

Founders over-invest in demand and under-invest in brand

Under pressure to attribute every marketing dollar to a return, founders pour capital into demand capture and starve brand — because brand is harder to attribute. Frazier argues that's backwards: brand and demand are 'one and the same,' and brand equity is the most important thing a company builds.

Why it matters: Resist the attribution trap. Fund brand as the foundation demand sits on; the underinvestment doesn't show up on a dashboard, it shows up three years later as a company nobody has heard of.

FoundersMarketing LeadersRevenue Executives
05

Point capital at the highest-propensity buyers, not the 'kind of interested'

Especially when you're new, every marketing and sales dollar should go toward the people who see your product as a no-brainer — not toward anyone who might be mildly curious. Targeting discipline is a capital-allocation decision, not just a messaging one.

Why it matters: Let propensity to buy drive where money goes. Spending on marginal prospects to chase a bigger funnel is how young companies waste the scarce capital that should be compounding a niche.

FoundersMarketing LeadersRevenue Executives
06

Never turn down a sale — but don't build the company around out-of-niche buyers

Frazier and Anthony agree you take inbound revenue when it comes, even from outside the target. But you don't write your messaging, choose your events, or build your product for those buyers — you stay reactive to them while staying deliberate about your tier-one ideal customer.

Why it matters: Separate 'who we'll happily serve' from 'who we're built for.' Opportunistic revenue is fine; letting it redirect your roadmap and positioning quietly un-focuses the whole company.

FoundersSales LeadersMarketing Leaders
07

The most-violated principle: chasing too many customers

Of the 21 principles in his book, Frazier says the first — most companies target way too many customers — is the one firms break most. The corrective is to narrow focus relentlessly and make brand awareness the single objective.

Why it matters: If you fix nothing else, fix your target width. Nearly every downstream problem — weak awareness, diffuse messaging, wasted spend, mispriced territories — traces back to a target that's too broad.

FoundersMarketing Leaders
08

The layered SDR–AE–SE–CSM sales org is fragile and on its way out

The Salesforce-era playbook hyper-segmented sales into SDR, new-business AE, sales engineer, closing AE, CSM, and account manager. Frazier calls these many-layered orgs — with senior, regional, and field managers over '20 types of salespeople' — too expensive, too complex, and too slow, and sees the pendulum swinging to flatter structures.

Why it matters: Question every handoff and management layer. Buyers increasingly want one capable person who can own the solution end to end; a stack of specialists adds cost and friction the modern buyer resents.

Sales LeadersRevenue Executives
09

Salespeople now need knowledge buyers can't self-research

Because buyers self-select via AI, search, websites, and peer reviews, a rep who shows up and recites information the buyer already has just wastes the buyer's time. The winning seller brings unique knowledge — which is why some firms now hire people trained in chemistry, biology, or engineering into sales.

Why it matters: Redefine the seller profile around differentiated expertise, not activity. If a buyer can get everything your rep says from a search, the rep is a cost, not an advantage.

Sales LeadersFounders
10

Give experienced reps authority — and tier territories by seniority

Frazier's provocation is to give strong reps 'the world' and stop over-managing them; Anthony grounds it in operations, and they land on tiered territories. Not all territories are equal: assign the best, highest-potential accounts to proven reps and the weaker 'drive-to-Yellowstone' routes to beginners who must prove themselves.

Why it matters: Design rules of engagement around rep seniority and account potential, not uniform coverage. Over-restrictive territories trap A-players in a box; too many thin territories force you to hire unproven reps you'd be better off without.

Sales LeadersRevenue Executives
11

The CMO lost the C-suite because marketing managers lack P&L fluency

Frazier dates marketing's decline to around 2000. At universities, top schools started hiring buyer-behavior and analytics professors and sidelined marketing-management scholars, so business-grounded courses fell to clinicals. In companies, most marketing managers never carried profit-and-loss responsibility, so finance and founders stopped trusting them with real budget and scope.

Why it matters: For marketing to reclaim influence, its leaders must get grounded in the financials and P&L. Analytics fluency without business judgment is exactly what cost the function its seat.

Marketing LeadersRevenue ExecutivesFounders
12

Marketing's comeback: as buyers self-serve, brand beats outbound

With buyers making decisions through LLMs and search and outbound targeting working less well, Anthony argues you have to invest even more in brand and in attracting people to you — meaning the next era rewards marketing tactics over sales tactics. Frazier agrees and would flip the org so marketing has the status and budget to lead go-to-market.

Why it matters: Plan for a shift in gravity from sales-led to brand-led go-to-market. The companies that rebuild marketing's P&L credibility now will own the pendulum swing back.

Marketing LeadersFoundersRevenue Executives
Frameworks Discussed

10 named models

Every framework Jimmy names, defined and time-stamped.

The Brand-Awareness Test for Niche Size

01:25

A working test for whether a target segment is narrow enough: do a significant number of people in the target actually know your brand? If awareness stays at zero as you spend, the niche is still too broad.

Frazier concedes there's no clean formula for niche size, so he substitutes an outcome signal. Brand equity — the value of the brand in the marketplace — starts with awareness, and for most firms it is 'zilch.' Measured awareness inside the target, not TAM or lead count, tells you whether your segmentation is right.

The Sorority Strategy (Narrow-Niche Sequencing)

04:10

Build brand equity in one absurdly narrow niche first, then expand to the next adjacent niche one at a time, repeating the awareness-building motion in each.

Illustrated with a clothing maker: instead of 'the junior market' (millions of women), win sorority houses at UCLA and USC — visit, gift product to leaders, build positive associations — then expand to Arizona, then cheerleaders, young attorneys, or teachers with some overlap. It's slow and demands patience, but it's how a zero-equity brand compounds awareness.

Run It Like You'll Own It Forever

05:51

A principle Anthony credits to Radian Capital's managing director: operate the business as if you'll own it forever — 'or else you will,' meaning if you won't make long-term bets you'll never build anything worth selling.

It reframes the patience problem at the center of brand-building. Narrow-niche sequencing only pays off over years, so the discipline to under-index on short-term revenue and over-index on durable equity is what separates companies that compound from ones that limp along.

The Riches Are in the Niches

09:35

The counterintuitive claim that narrowing to the right small group of customers — rather than chasing a bigger TAM — produces more durable revenue, because a resonant niche will sell your product for you into tertiary markets.

A well-served niche becomes an evangelism engine: customers who feel deeply understood advocate to adjacent audiences, and micro/nano influencers within the niche amplify it. The move most founders make — going broad for a bigger TAM — dilutes the very resonance that would have carried the brand.

Brand and Demand Are One and the Same

15:02

Frazier's stance that building brand and building demand are not different activities to be traded off in a budget; done right, they are the same effort, with brand equity as the foundation.

The practical consequence is to stop letting attribution pressure split the budget into a 'safe' demand line and a 'nice-to-have' brand line. Frazier's guidance: put whatever you can spend into implementing sound marketing and channel principles, and treat brand awareness as the first requirement of success rather than a residual.

21 Principles for Low-Brand-Equity Firms

14:07

The framework in Frazier's book 'Marketing and Channel Management for Low Brand Equity Firms' — 21 marketing and channel principles that build on each other, aimed at small and mid-sized firms trying to build awareness from zero.

Frazier didn't set out to find 21; the number reflects how complex the problem is. Principle #1 — most companies target too many customers — is the one firms violate most, and every later principle assumes you've narrowed focus and made brand awareness the objective first.

The Four Ps of Marketing

33:49

The classic marketing framework (attributed to E. Jerome McCarthy) — product, price, place, and promotion — the levers a marketing manager coordinates to take a brand to market.

Frazier invokes the Four Ps as the essence of the marketing-management discipline he fell in love with in 1973 and that he argues universities stopped teaching well after 2000. His concern for the CMO is precisely that today's marketing leaders are strong on analytics but weaker on integrating product, pricing, distribution, and promotion into business results.

The Flat, Unique-Knowledge Sales Org

18:26

A move away from many-layered specialist orgs (SDR, AE, SE, closer, CSM, plus tiers of managers) toward flatter structures staffed by fewer, more experienced reps who carry unique knowledge and real authority.

Because buyers self-research, a seller who only relays known information wastes the buyer's time. The durable value is expertise the buyer can't get elsewhere — hence firms hiring chemists, biologists, and engineers into sales. Fewer layers, more responsibility per rep, and deep customer knowledge beat an expensive, slow specialist stack.

Territory Tiering by Rep Seniority

28:35

Assign the best, highest-potential territories and accounts to proven top performers, and weaker territories to beginners who must prove themselves — matching account potential to rep capability rather than dividing the world evenly.

Frazier's compromise after Anthony pushes back on 'no territories.' Good territory design maximizes market coverage so no customer feels 'alone,' but it must flow from the targeting decision — build territories on the wrong customers and the whole structure sits on quicksand. Erring toward fewer, more autonomous, experienced reps beats slicing the world into too many thin territories.

Why the CMO Lost the C-Suite (the P&L Trust Gap)

31:53

A two-part explanation for marketing's declining influence since ~2000: universities shifted from teaching marketing management toward buyer behavior and analytics, and marketing managers in companies rarely carried profit-and-loss responsibility — so finance and founders stopped trusting them with budget.

At the university level, bread-and-butter marketing courses fell to clinicals while tenured faculty drifted from business, producing graduates weaker on business judgment. In the enterprise, that showed up as CMOs relegated to advertising, promotions, and research. Frazier's fix is to give marketing leaders P&L experience and financial grounding so they can be trusted with product, pricing, distribution, and promotion.

Best Quotes

16 lines worth clipping

Pulled verbatim. Copy or share any of them.

“The true test, Anthony, is the level of brand awareness — do a significant number of people in the target actually know the brand? Unfortunately, for most businesses, their brand equity — the value of the brand in the marketplace — is zilch.”
Gary Frazier 01:25
“They think going after the junior market is the answer, but that's millions of women worldwide. No one knows who they are. So instead, if you're in LA, target sorority members at UCLA and USC.”
Gary Frazier 04:10
“The problem with what I'm recommending is it takes time and patience, and most entrepreneurs don't have the patience. They don't have the knowledge, unfortunately.”
Gary Frazier 05:51
“I worked very close with a group called Radian Capital. Their managing director always says: run your business as if you're gonna own it forever — or else you will. And that last part's the warning.”
Anthony Enrico 05:58
“It's gonna influence how you allocate your marketing and sales capital, because you want those dollars — especially if you're new — to go towards the people who have the absolute highest propensity to buy.”
Gary Frazier 06:32
“The key underlying what I'm saying is knowledge of how customers in the niche buy — you get to know deeply how they make their buying decisions, and you can take that knowledge to the bank.”
Gary Frazier 08:41
“The riches are in the niches. If you can find the right group of people, that'll really resonate, and then they'll sell your product for you in the tertiary markets.”
Anthony Enrico 09:35
“There ends up being an over-investment in demand and a significant under-investment in brand.”
Anthony Enrico 10:52
“The most important part of any company being successful is developing brand equity in the marketplace. And it starts with brand awareness.”
Gary Frazier 11:57
“The first principle in the book — the one we started with — most companies target way too many customers. Narrow that focus. And the whole objective must be brand awareness.”
Gary Frazier 17:29
“You have to have unique knowledge — knowledge that the customer, the consumer, the professional buyer cannot get except for you.”
Gary Frazier 20:56
“These huge sales organizations with senior sales managers and regional sales managers and field sales managers and 20 types of salespeople — that's just too expensive, it's too complex, it's too time consuming.”
Gary Frazier 22:24
“Give a lot of authority to your salespeople. Don't have all these layers of sales managers where they're checking the temperature of the salesperson every day.”
Gary Frazier 23:53
“Most marketing managers have never had profit and loss responsibility — and that's a major reason so many top managers are disillusioned and don't trust marketing managers as much as they used to.”
Gary Frazier 31:53
“From a theory point of view, sales is part of marketing.”
Gary Frazier 36:25
“Everyone must do two things: learn from your mistakes and learn from your successes. Successes are rarer, but learn from your success too.”
Gary Frazier 45:56
Practical Advice

What should you actually do?

The playbook, split by the seat you sit in.

Marketing Leaders

  • Run the brand-awareness test on your current target: if a meaningful share of the people in it don't know your name, the niche is too broad — narrow it until awareness starts to compound.
  • Sequence brand-building niche by niche (the sorority strategy) rather than blasting the whole market; win one tight niche's equity, then expand to adjacent ones with some overlap.
  • Stop treating brand and demand as competing budget lines — they're the same effort; fund brand as the foundation and resist the attribution pressure that starves it.
  • Rebuild your own P&L and financial fluency; the fastest way for marketing to reclaim influence is for its leaders to be trusted with the numbers, not just the analytics.

Founders

  • Assume the segment you can name in demographic shorthand ('B2B SaaS companies,' 'the junior market') is still millions too broad, and go narrower than feels comfortable.
  • Point scarce early capital at buyers with the highest propensity to buy — people for whom the product is a no-brainer — not at anyone who might be mildly interested.
  • Take inbound revenue from outside your niche, but don't let it redirect your messaging, events, or roadmap; stay deliberate about your tier-one ideal customer.
  • Make the long-term bet: brand equity compounds over years, so operate like you'll own the company forever and give brand the patience it requires.

Sales Leaders

  • Audit your org for excess layers and handoffs; the SDR–AE–SE–CSM stack with tiers of managers is expensive and slow, and buyers increasingly want one capable owner.
  • Redefine the seller profile around unique, hard-to-self-research knowledge — expertise a buyer can't get from a search — and give experienced reps real authority.
  • Tier territories by rep seniority and account potential: best accounts to proven performers, prove-yourself routes to beginners; err toward fewer, less-restrictive territories.

Revenue Executives

  • Plan for a gravitational shift from sales-led to brand-led go-to-market as buyers self-serve through AI and search and outbound loses potency.
  • Base territory and coverage design on the targeting decision first — territories built on the wrong customers sit on quicksand no matter how elegant the map.
  • Invest in giving marketing leadership P&L credibility and status; the pendulum swings back toward the function that can tie brand to business results.
AI Takeaways

How AI actually changes GTM

LeanScale's signature read on the AI-in-GTM question this episode wrestles with.

The thesis

AI is reshaping go-to-market from the buyer's side first: self-serving buyers who research through LLMs, search, and reviews erode the transactional salesperson and swing advantage back toward brand and marketing — while AI's compression of entry-level work raises the bar for the unique human knowledge that still matters.

Buyers self-serve, so relaying information is dead

Customers now search, read AI-generated content, and post their own reviews. A rep who shows up and repeats what the buyer already found wastes the buyer's time — the value has moved to knowledge they can't self-research.

The pendulum swings back to brand

As outbound targeting works less well and buyers decide for themselves, Anthony argues you must invest even more in brand and attraction — meaning the next era rewards marketing tactics over sales tactics.

AI is compressing entry-level jobs

Frazier notes even engineers from USC, Stanford, and Berkeley are struggling to get hired because AI does much of what new hires used to do — pushing everyone toward deep specialization and unique expertise.

Human judgment and knowledge still win

The durable edge for sellers and graduates alike is specialized knowledge and business judgment — 'take that specialty to the bank' — not generalist familiarity that AI now commoditizes.

Agent & automation ideas

  • A niche-narrowing assistant that stress-tests a stated ICP against real brand-awareness signals and proposes progressively tighter sub-niches (the sorority-strategy sequence) to attack in order.
  • A brand-vs-demand budget analyzer that flags attribution-driven underinvestment in brand and models the multi-year cost of a company nobody has heard of.
  • A seller-knowledge copilot that arms reps with the unique, hard-to-self-research insight a buyer can't get from a search — so a flatter org can still out-know the buyer.
Operations Takeaways

By function

The same conversation, filtered for RevOps, pipeline/marketing ops, and customer ops.

Revenue Operations

  • Targeting is upstream of everything. Territory design, coverage, and rules of engagement all sit on the targeting decision; build them on the wrong customers and the structure is quicksand.
  • Flatten the org. The layered SDR–AE–SE–CSM stack with tiers of managers is expensive and slow; the trend is fewer, more experienced reps with more authority.
  • Tier territories by capability. Match account potential to rep seniority — best accounts to proven reps, prove-yourself routes to beginners — rather than slicing the world evenly.
  • Err less restrictive. Over-restrictive territories trap A-players in a box; give strong reps room while still ensuring no customer feels 'alone' in coverage.

Pipeline & Marketing Ops

  • Brand is the foundation of demand. Under attribution pressure teams over-invest in demand capture and starve brand; Frazier insists brand and demand are one and the same, with awareness first.
  • Spend on propensity. Point marketing dollars at the highest-propensity buyers — people for whom the product is a no-brainer — not at the merely curious, especially when young.
  • Awareness is the health metric. Use measured brand awareness inside the target, not TAM or raw lead volume, to judge whether your segmentation and demand programs are working.
  • Let the niche do the selling. A resonant niche evangelizes into tertiary markets and unlocks the right micro/nano influencers — compounding demand you can't buy directly.
Metrics Mentioned

The numbers, with context

~5 orders of magnitude too broad
How broad the typical niche is

Frazier's core claim: most small companies chase segments five orders of magnitude wider than they should, which is why their brand awareness is effectively zero.

Millions of women (18–34), worldwide
The 'junior market'

A segment that feels targeted is actually millions of people who have never heard of the brand — the trap the sorority strategy is designed to escape.

120+ legal cases
Expert-witness cases

Frazier has served as an expert witness in over 120 legal cases on marketing strategy and channels, a source of his practical, non-academic knowledge.

21 principles
Principles in the book

'Marketing and Channel Management for Low Brand Equity Firms' codifies 21 interlocking principles; principle #1 (chasing too many customers) is the most violated.

~2000
When marketing's influence declined

Frazier dates the shift — universities favoring buyer-behavior/analytics scholars and the C-suite's eroding trust in CMOs — to roughly the year 2000.

50 reps, handful of products
Straw-man sales org

The B2B example Anthony uses to press Frazier on how to translate 'give reps the world' into real territory rules of engagement.

$41,000 (one semester)
USC tuition check

Frazier's personal stake in the higher-education debate — the tuition he just paid for his son's engineering degree at USC.

Entities

Companies, people & tools mentioned

Auto-extracted and linked into the knowledge graph.

Companies

USC Marshall School of BusinessAcademia

Gary Frazier is former chair of the Department of Marketing here, a post he held twice across three decades; he also references paying his son's USC tuition and his work as department chair studying what courses to teach.

00:00 · 30:05 · 43:12Company →
Indiana UniversityAcademia

Where Frazier earned his DBA in 1979 through a program that had him teach an undergraduate marketing course each semester to earn a livelihood.

33:49Company →
Bemidji State UniversityAcademia

Frazier's undergraduate alma mater, where he first fell in love with marketing in a 1973 course and graduated in 1975; he attended partly to play baseball and stay close to home.

33:49Company →
Springer NatureAcademic Publishing

Publisher of Frazier's latest book, 'Marketing and Channel Management for Low Brand Equity Firms,' which codifies his 21 principles.

14:07Company →
Cambridge University PressAcademic Publishing

Publisher of Frazier's forthcoming Sales Force Management textbook for MBA and undergraduate students, and part of his broader body of academic work.

20:11Company →
Radian CapitalGrowth Equity

Growth-equity firm Anthony worked closely with; its managing director's maxim — 'run your business as if you're gonna own it forever, or else you will' — anchors the patience-and-long-term-bets thread.

05:58Company →
IBMEnterprise Technology

Cited as the archetype of B2B sales specialization (technical specialist, logistics specialist, CSM, main salesperson) that Frazier admires but thinks over-specializes; he calls it a wonderful company that is itself rethinking that structure.

21:41 · 37:32Company →
HyundaiAutomotive

Used as a sign of the changing sales landscape — Hyundai selling automobiles on amazon.com — as buyers self-serve and traditional salesperson-led motions erode.

22:24Company →
AmazonE-commerce / Marketplace

Referenced as the marketplace where even automobiles (Hyundai) are now sold, illustrating how much buying has moved to self-service channels.

22:24Company →
CadillacAutomotive

Praised for targeting younger consumers after finding the average age of its loyal customer was too old — an example of a brand correcting its niche.

37:32Company →
DellEnterprise Infrastructure

Michael Dell cited as an example of someone who built a tremendous company without much formal education — the exception Frazier notes while still arguing most people should get a four-year degree.

40:01Company →

People

Gary Frazierguest

Former chair of the Marketing Department at USC's Marshall School of Business; 50 years teaching, researching, and consulting on brand equity, channels, and sales force management.

Former Chair, Department of Marketing (USC Marshall)Profile →
Anthony Enricohost

Co-founder of LeanScale and host of The LeanScale Podcast.

Co-FounderProfile →

Tools & software

SalesforceCRM

Invoked as shorthand for the 'Salesforce-era sales playbook' — the CRM era that ushered in hyper-segmented SDR/AE/SE/CSM roles Frazier argues are now on their way out.

Website ↗
Related LeanScale Services

Where this shows up in the work

Fractional RevOps

Embedded, field-facing RevOps leadership and execution — the operator model Jimmy describes, delivered as a service.

The episode's sales-org and territory-design debate — flattening layers, rules of engagement, tiering by seniority — is core embedded RevOps work LeanScale delivers.

Sales Enablement Build

Stand up a zero-based, sales-academy enablement motion sized to your span of control and sales complexity.

Frazier's argument that reps must carry unique, hard-to-self-research knowledge maps directly to how LeanScale stands up seller enablement and profiles.

AI for GTM

Agents and workflows that multiply operator throughput — the 'make humans superhuman' thesis, operationalized.

The thesis that self-serving, AI-assisted buyers swing advantage back to brand is the premise behind LeanScale's AI-for-GTM work.

Frequently Asked Questions

Straight answers

Generated from the conversation, marked up for search and AI extraction.

What does 'your niche isn't niche enough' mean?

It means the segment most founders call 'targeted' is still millions of customers wide. Gary Frazier's example is a clothing maker aiming at 'the junior market' (women 18–34 who dress trendy) — that's millions of people worldwide who have never heard of the brand. A true niche is narrow enough that a significant share of the people in it could actually know your name, which is the only way to build brand awareness from zero.

How do you know if your niche is small enough?

Use the brand-awareness test: do a significant number of people inside your target actually know your brand? Frazier says there's no clean formula for niche size, so measured awareness inside the target — not total addressable market or lead volume — is the signal. If awareness stays at zero as you spend, the niche is still too broad and you should narrow until awareness begins to compound.

What is the sorority strategy for building a brand from zero?

It's Frazier's method of narrow-niche sequencing. Instead of marketing to a huge segment, win brand equity in one absurdly narrow niche first — for a clothing brand, sorority houses at UCLA and USC: visit them, gift product to house leaders, and build positive associations. Once you own that niche's awareness, expand to the next adjacent niche (other regions, cheerleaders, young attorneys, teachers) with some overlap, and repeat. It's slow and requires patience most founders lack.

Should founders invest in brand or demand generation?

Frazier argues the two are 'one and the same' and that companies systematically over-invest in demand and under-invest in brand because brand is harder to attribute. He treats brand equity as the most important thing a company builds and the foundation demand sits on. His guidance is to put available spend into sound marketing and channel principles with brand awareness as the first objective, rather than letting attribution pressure starve brand.

Why is the layered SDR–AE–SE–CSM sales org falling out of favor?

Frazier calls the hyper-segmented, Salesforce-era org — with SDRs, new-business AEs, sales engineers, closers, CSMs, and tiers of managers — too expensive, too complex, and too slow. Buyers now self-research through AI, search, and reviews, so they resent a stack of specialists and handoffs and increasingly want one capable person who can own the whole solution. He sees the pendulum swinging toward flatter orgs with fewer, more experienced reps.

What kind of knowledge do salespeople need in the AI era?

Unique knowledge the buyer cannot get anywhere else. Because customers self-select through search, AI, and websites, a rep who relays information the buyer already has just wastes their time. Frazier notes this is why some firms now hire people trained in chemistry, biology, or engineering into sales — sellers who bring differentiated expertise, tied to the customer's real needs and pain points, are the ones who still create value.

Why did the C-suite stop trusting the CMO?

Frazier dates the decline to around 2000 and gives two reasons. At universities, top schools began hiring marketing professors specialized in buyer behavior and analytics and sidelined marketing-management scholars, so business-grounded courses fell to part-time clinicals. In companies, most marketing managers never carried profit-and-loss responsibility, so finance and founders stopped trusting them with real budget and relegated marketing to advertising, promotions, and research.

Is marketing's influence coming back in the AI era?

Frazier and Anthony believe it is. As buyers make decisions through LLMs and search and outbound targeting works less well, companies must invest more in brand and in attracting buyers to them — which favors marketing tactics over sales tactics. Frazier would flip the org so marketing has the status and budget to lead go-to-market, but stresses that marketing leaders must first rebuild P&L credibility to earn that seat back.

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00:00Cold open + intro 02:36The brand-awareness test for whether your niche is too broad 04:08The "junior market" trap — and the sorority strategy that fixes it 07:05Run your business like you'll own it forever 10:45The riches are in the niches 12:32Why founders overinvest in demand and underinvest in brand 15:37How do you know if you're investing enough in brand? 18:58Principle #1: most companies are chasing too many customers 20:01From SDR-AE-CSM pyramids to flat sales orgs 22:52Why salespeople need knowledge customers can't get elsewhere 25:20Experienced reps, more authority, fewer layers 30:06Tiering territories by rep seniority 31:36Why marketing lost its influence after 2000 34:22Why the C-suite stopped trusting the CMO 37:32Marketing's comeback era in the age of AI 41:25The case for formal higher education 44:57What universities need to do differently
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00:00Cold open + intro

0:00 (logo whooshing) Today on the show, I'm joined by Gary Frazier, former chair of the Department of Marketing at USC's Marshall School of Business, where he led the department twice across three decades and the author of an extensive body of work spanning channels, brand equity, and Salesforce management with publishers like Cambridge University and Springer Nature. Gary's latest book, Marketing and Channel Management for Low Brand Equity Firms, makes the case that most small companies are losing their market before they ever get a fair shot because they're chasing segments that are five orders of magnitude too broad.

0:43 With decades of consulting work behind him and a front row seat to how the marketing discipline has drifted from business judgment toward pure analytics, Gary brings a perspective that is both academically rigorous and refreshingly direct about what is actually broken. In this episode, we get into why niche is almost never niche enough, why the modern multi-layered sales org is on its way out and why the C-suite no longer trusts the CMO. If you're building a brand without a household name, hiring sales leadership, or trying to figure out where marketing actually belongs in your org, this episode is for you. Gary, you've argued that most small companies

1:25 make the same fatal mistake. They pick a segment that looks like it's targeted but is actually millions of people deep. What's the moment a founder should realize they've defined their market way too broadly? - I think the true test, Anthony, is the level of brand awareness to a significant number of people in the target actually know the brand. Unfortunately, for most businesses, their brand equity, the value of the brand in the marketplace is zilch, and they have little brand awareness. - And in order to start developing that brand awareness, what is the sequence that they should follow? Do you recommend getting even more niche,

2:16 and how do they know if it's specific enough? - Well, that's a great question. I don't really have a great answer to that. Let me give you an example though. I have a good friend who has a small manufacturing company, women's clothing in the Los Angeles area. And like most small clothing manufacturers, he targets the junior market, the so-called junior market, and that is women 18 to 34 who like to dress trendy, like to look young. If they like to look, price is not really the issue. And some world famous brands like Dior, Chanel, Prada, they can get away with that. But most small clothing manufacturers, the retailer knows, no one knows who the brand is,

02:36The brand-awareness test for whether your niche is too broad

3:14 what the brand is, who they are. And so in order to survive, these clothing manufacturers will sell clothing that the retail buyer or the professional buyer likes, but they will put their own store label in the clothing, on the blouse, on the swimming suit. And even if women like the look and buy the garment, they think it's from boot born. And so your brand never gets exposure. And you can limp along a while like that, maybe survive if you're good at business and efficiency and keeping your employees happy and having good looks, having good designs, but it's not a way to really go. It's way too broad. So what should a clothing manufacturer like that do?

04:08The "junior market" trap — and the sorority strategy that fixes it

4:10 Well, they think they're targeting. They think out of the whole market, going after the junior market is the answer, but that's millions of women worldwide. No one knows who they are. So instead, if you're in LA, target sorority members at UCLA and USC, Irvine perhaps, visit their house, go for a dinner, show some of your garments with your label, have some, give some clothing to the presidents or some of the leaders of the sororities, have them wear your clothing. Slowly develop awareness and positive brand associations where they think, hey, this is a great look. I like the fabric. I like the way it looks on me.

4:59 Once you've built up brand awareness and that niche, then maybe go for sororities in Arizona or the Southwest, or maybe throughout the United States or maybe even worldwide at some point and build slowly awareness. Then once you've reached brand equity in that narrow niche, expand to the next niche, maybe women's cheerleaders, maybe young women attorneys, maybe young grade school teachers with some overlap in the segments and then do the same thing, build awareness and brand associations and brand image, brand relevance, brand equity in that segment too. The problem with what I'm recommending is it takes time and patience

5:51 and most entrepreneurs don't have the patience. They don't have the knowledge, unfortunately. - Well, I worked very close with a group called Radian Capital. Their managing director, he always says, run your business as if you're gonna own it forever. Or else you will. And that last part's the warning. Hey, if you're not making these long-term bets, if you don't have the patience, then you're not really gonna build anything of significance. And I think what you're describing, it's relevant in any market. We see it in software as well. People think, hey, I'm targeting B2B software as a service companies. And that's such a broad term as well.

6:32 - So broad, so broad. And it's gonna influence how you allocate your marketing and sales capital because you want those dollars, especially if you're new, to go towards the people who have the absolute highest propensity to buy. You don't wanna waste any of those resources on people who might be kind of interested. It's people who think your product is a no-brainer for them. - I agree. You know, what I know now, it's based upon consulting over 40, 50 years. And I've learned so much from the managers I've worked with and they forgave my immaturity and lack of foresight. I've been an expert witness in over 120 legal cases on marketing strategy and channels.

07:05Run your business like you'll own it forever

7:19 I learned from the attorneys. So much of what I know about practically what you have to do to run a business, I can't take credit for it. And by the way, I don't, I highly respect every small business owner. It takes courage, courage I never had. But they lack the knowledge and often the patience. And you never turn down a sale. I mean, if you go after juniors, even if they don't know your brand, if they buy your good and you have some revenue coming in, great, but you still have to focus on brand awareness with a narrow group and then build on that over time. That's really what you have to do. - Yeah, and I've gone through

8:06 the entrepreneurship journey myself and it is very difficult to say no to a sale, but I think it's one thing if it's coming inbound and you're like, okay, yeah, we can serve you. You came to us, we're gonna serve you. I'm not gonna turn it away in early days. - Of course, of course. - But it doesn't mean I'm writing my messaging for that person. It doesn't mean I'm going to those events. It doesn't mean I'm building the product for that particular person in general. I'm still seeking my tier one ideal customer and just being reactive if those opportunities come in. - Yeah, and you see the key underlying what I'm saying

8:41 is knowledge of how customers in the niche buy. So if you target, and I hope I'm not beating this example into the ground, I likely am, I usually do, but if you target sorority members and you meet with them and talk with them and observe how they make buying decisions and where they buy and what attributes they consider, fabric quality, look, design, price, you get to know deeply how they make their buying decisions and you can take that knowledge to the bank. You can take it to your designers. You can take it to your fabric suppliers and you begin producing products that are more geared directly to them and they'll love you for it and you'll love them

9:30 because you'll make money over time.

9:35 - That's right, secret to success, taking care of your customers. I think a lot of people stray away from that thinking, oh, I'm going after a bigger TAM, so there's more opportunity. It's like, no, the riches are in the niches. So if you can find the right group of people, that'll really resonate. And then they'll sell your product for you in kind of the tertiary markets. - Oh, they sure will, they sure will. And social media are so important today, especially to younger people, millennials, Gen Z. If you can get some spokespeople, I forget the term, but online influencers, to talk to their audience about your product,

10:21 oh, that's a God sound, that really helps. - And it's very difficult to know which influencers to go get, especially like the micro nano influencers, unless you know exactly who you're looking for. - I agree completely. - On the same topic, I think something a lot of companies struggle with, especially now, the founders, especially if you've raised capital and you're really trying to grow as quickly as possible, they're under intense pressure to attribute every single dollar of marketing investment to the return. And I think a byproduct of that is, there ends up being an over investment in demand and a significant under investment in brand.

10:45The riches are in the niches

11:10 Are you seeing the same thing in your experience? And if so, what guidance do you have anybody navigating that scenario? - Oh, that's a great question. You see, people don't understand marketing. They don't define it similarly. I mean, there's, if 200 people got together and defined what marketing is, you get 200 different definitions. But to me, marketing is getting the message out to your target market. And earlier you asked a great question, how do you know when a niche is small enough? I really can't answer that. But market research is very important. Contacts with customers who have purchased your product, develop a brand loyalty program,

11:57 develop points and send people to keep buying your product over time, keep in touch with them, follow suit. And you'll know if a niche is the right size, if you begin to develop significant brand awareness. You know, I simplify things too much, I think, Anthony. But to me, the most important part of any company being successful is developing brand equity in the marketplace. And it starts with brand awareness. It's really difficult to achieve brand awareness. I mean, this is a complex world. I mean, I know so little about so many things. I do trivia quizzes and unless the topics are marketing channels of distribution and baseball,

12:32Why founders overinvest in demand and underinvest in brand

12:50 which I follow quite a lot, I'm at a loss. I just don't know anything. And you're bombarded with messages. You're bombarded with now worldwide brands. No human has a big enough brain to comprehend everything thrown away. You just don't develop cognitive recognition of it. So what I'm saying is very, very difficult, but focus on awareness of your brand with the people you are seeking as customers. If you do that, that's the start of being truly successful. If you don't achieve it, I hope you have a rich uncle, so.

13:34 - Absolutely. Do you have any, and it's okay if not, but do you have any framework for knowing if you're investing enough in brand? Is it a percentage of marketing budget, percentage of sales? It may not scale linearly with your growth, but is there some guidance to know, okay, I'm doing enough investment in brand, or oh my goodness, maybe spending too much on brand and need to shift to demand. How does a founder or CMO judge what they should be doing

14:07 with their marketing budget? - That's a really tough question. My first reaction is take, and by the way, I have enough money, I wrote this book not to make money, but just to spread my knowledge and help people. It's a book by Springer Nature, authored by myself. You alluded to it before. Marketing and channel management for low brand equity firms, principles for financial success. In that book, I developed 21 marketing and channel principles that I believe they sort of build on each other, and again, life's complex. I didn't start out searching for 21. I was hoping to keep it more simple than that, but I would start there, and I would look at the book.

15:02 You may think, oh, Fraser's crazy, or that doesn't make sense. I've heard that many times, but I really think, Anthony, to answer your question. See, again, I simplify. To me, building brand, building demand, they're one in the same. They're not much different. They shouldn't be different. So I really think that you have to have the knowledge on your marketing effort and on your channel development, organization coordination. You have to really be careful in following the right guidelines or principles. And then once you do, and I would say, again, being simplistic, whatever access money you have that you can spend, put everything

15:37How do you know if you're investing enough in brand?

15:51 into implementing those 21 principles that I developed in the book. And then if you have something left over, well, hey, go to Vegas and have fun, but I really do think that having the right guidelines, having the right principles is really, really important. I was listening to the radio this morning and I heard a song by the grateful dad, "Bricks on the Wall," and one of the refrains, "Teacher, stay away from me," or something like that. Man, I hate that song. I really think the key to success, and I'm too old now, I'm 74, but the key to success is education. The key to success is knowledge. The key to success is shutting out all the, sorry, bullshit,

16:40 and focusing on what really is important. And that's really difficult. - It's even more difficult, I think, as you mentioned, the noise of every single channel of people trying to get their brain in front of you, people trying to get their position in front of you, whatever it is, it's really hard to separate the signal from the noise and then follow something. So I'm absolutely with you. On the book, I think, I love how you lay it out. It's very practical and a methodical approach to go through. Of the 21 principles, curious in your experience, which one do you see companies really violating the most?

17:29 - The principle, first principle in the book, the one we started with, most companies target way too many customers. You're chasing too many customers. Narrow that focus. And the whole objective must be brand awareness. Build up knowledge of your brand, and that's not easy. - That's great guidance, great guidance. Moving to how these teams are structured. So outside of the brand and marketing awareness, then moving in down the funnel to your sales team, I think one thing we've seen, especially the Salesforce era sales playbook, Salesforce to CRM, we saw all of these hyper-segmented roles, having the SDR, moving to the new business AE,

18:26 moving to the sales engineer, moving to the closing AE, moving to the customer success manager and the account manager. And you have all of these specialized teams. It feels like the pendulum is swinging to a more general role and flatter structure. Any insights on as to why that move is happening and what firms should be learning from this trend as well? - Let me digress a bit. I was in my heyday when I was younger and it used to be salespeople were the primary way consumers and professional buyers would learn about brands. Now, many consumers, professional buyers, they'll self-select. They don't need salespeople. They'll make their own buying decisions

18:58Principle #1: most companies are chasing too many customers

19:17 on what car to buy or what computer monitor to go after. And so just think of all the ways that customers can get information today. They can do a search in AI. They can look at online generated content. Many consumers will buy a product and experience it and then post online what they feel about the brand. Websites have a tremendous amount of information now. I still remember when I used to hand write my papers and hand them to a secretary and they'd type them up and I'd have to proofread and give it back to the secretary. I mean, I'm ancient. But just think of how consumers now get information on brand.

20:01From SDR-AE-CSM pyramids to flat sales orgs

20:11 Think of how many customers don't even need a salesperson anymore. Now, does that mean I'm anti-sales? No, I just finished the Salesforce Management textbook for Cambridge University Press. It's gonna be published soon for MBA students and undergraduates taking an elective in Salesforce Management. And I'm really enthusiastic about the whole sales area and sales managers. But you have to take a unique approach today. If you take a standard approach, a salesperson who doesn't know a lot about product or the customer, they'll make a sales call to a customer

20:56 and exchange information the customer already knows. And then the customer will say, why did I waste time today? I mean, I know all that already from doing searches on my own, my own independent research. So the key today to be a successful salesperson, that's why you're seeing some companies seek people trained in chemistry or biology or engineering. You have to have unique knowledge, knowledge that the customer, the consumer, the professional buyer cannot get except for you. And then they'll be excited, then they'll be impressed. Then if you know their needs and pain points and you show them this product based on this unique knowledge

21:41 is going to resolve those needs better than any other product at the price, they're going to just be so delighted with you, it's unbelievable. So to get more directly to your question, I think in the future, it's hard to argue against IBM and in B2B, B2B is a little different than B2C. You still see a lot of specialization in IBM and sales, although they're rethinking that too. I mean, just think you have a technical specialist and a logistics specialist and a customer success manager and the main salesperson, even B2B professional buyers sometimes, they just say, hey, this is taking too much time, it's too complex.

22:24 They would like it simplified with one salesperson having more knowledge and responsibility and some technical background as well and a knowledge of order processing and all of that, where one person can basically provide you the solution. Consumers are certainly looking for that when they need you as salesperson for insurance or maybe an automobile. Hyundai is selling automobiles on amazon.com right now, so we'll see where that goes, that's amazing. But I think, especially for smaller companies, but even for larger companies, you know these huge sales organizations with senior sales managers and regional sales managers

22:52Why salespeople need knowledge customers can't get elsewhere

23:10 and field sales managers and 20 types of salespeople, that's just too expensive, it's too complex, it's too time consuming. So I believe there is a move, as you suggested, to flatter organizations. Sorry, my students, but I'd say, companies should hire experienced salespeople. They shouldn't spend as much time hiring students, young students right out of college who think they might want to get in sales. And then, give them the world. Don't restrict them to a single sales territory. One of my best friends works for him, or said he spends dealership. He sells Mercedes Benz cars all over the world. I mean, he's one of the best salespeople I've ever seen.

23:53 So I think that a key to success in the future is one, knowing your customer, knowing your niche, knowing how they make decisions, knowing what needs resolution. Have your salesperson give unique knowledge that cannot be gained from any other place. And then, give a lot of authority to your salespeople. Give them responsibility. Don't have all these layers of sales managers where they're checking the temperature of the salesperson every day. Just have a very simple sales management structure and get more responsibility that sells people and make sure they have that knowledge of the customer and that unique delivery. I think that's the key.

24:43 - I'd like to double click on one of the things you mentioned because it's a pretty intense view to say, hey, give each of your salespeople the world to go sell into. - Yeah. - And I'm curious. - Yeah. (laughs) 'Cause I come from a world where I ran GTM operations. A big part of the role is, okay, let's carve out the territories, whether we're putting people in industries or carving them into geographies that they own. How, on the operations side, how do you recommend managing, let's say maybe I'll give you a straw man company, company that has 50 sales reps, handful of products to sell maybe in a B2B setting.

25:20Experienced reps, more authority, fewer layers

25:27 How would you recommend setting up the rules of engagement for an environment like that? - Well, yeah, I may have went a little extreme there, no territories. I'm a big fan of sales territories. - I like it because I think a lot of times territories can be really restrictive. You have your best reps sitting in. They're only allowed to play in this box when they could be closing big deals elsewhere. So I like the idealism of it. I'm just wondering how to translate that into, okay, how do we make sure, who gets to call dibs on which account? - Yeah, I hear you, I hear you. I probably went too extreme, I often do that. A big part of any successful company

26:10 is how they allocate and decide on sales territories. And it all gets back to the targeting decision, who's the customer, who you're going after. If you're going after too many customers and you assign territories to make sure you get market coverage of all those customers in those 50 territories with your 50 salespeople, well, if you're not targeting the right customer, the territories are just based on weak ground, quicksand. So you have to really make sure, given your market position, given your brand equity, given your brand awareness, those factors will influence the territories that you set up. I agree with you, Anthony, totally,

27:01 that the best part of having a good sales territory structure is that the market coverage at those territories is really good. And you never want a customer to feel like they're alone or lonely, that's the worst thing in the world. But again, I go back to the fact, I think some smaller companies, they probably divide the world up into too many territories and they may try to hire and seek some salespeople who are not proven at doing a great job, when they might be better off hiring fewer salespeople, more experienced salespeople, and giving greater autonomy to them in terms of finding customers rather than being too restricted by the territory.

27:52 But it's a fine line. I'm glad I'm a retired professor. If I were a senior sales manager trying to make some of these calls, oh my goodness, they're difficult. - Well, you're dealing with a difficult personality type too and also people where their livelihood depends on having a good territory, so. - Yeah. - But I like the idea of lowering the restrictions, giving your A plus players a little bit more room to breathe and play and get creative with who they go after and target. Because I have definitely seen too restrictive of territories where you just have salespeople trapped. And maybe like the niches conversation we were having before, it's obvious,

28:35 it's gonna be a spectrum of where you should land, but maybe err on the side of being less restrictive with your territories. - And some companies do a great job of designing territories and not all territories are created equal. I mean, for your best top performing salespeople, you assign them the best territories with the most sales potential with the best customers. And so you start beginning people off with the weaker territories. Montana, where they have to drive to Yellowstone or something, and they have to prove themselves. So there's different levels of territories based upon whether you're a beginning salesperson, a mid-tier salesperson,

29:18 or a top performing experienced salesperson. A lot of the companies really get it right. I mean, there's a lot of work and thought from brighter people than I in setting up a good sales territory structure, that's for sure. - Yeah. During our prep session and prep calls, we were talking a lot about how marketing, ever since maybe 2000, that's when you pegged the shift started to happen. That marketing started to significantly lose its influence within organizations and you saw it in the academic sector as well. I'm curious why you think that is and maybe just walk us through what you've seen happen over the past 20, 25 years for marketing teams.

30:05 - Okay, I'll start at the university level, which I know most about after being a chair of the marketing department at USC in the early 90s and in the mid teens of this century. It used to be that marketing professors had specialties in one of three areas, marketing management, consumer behavior, or analytical modeling. And around 2000 or so, roughly, the most prestigious university started mainly hiring marketing professors with specialties in buyer behavior or analytics. And the marketing management people like me were sort of left by the wayside. What that has done at the university level in marketing departments is it means

30:06Tiering territories by rep seniority

30:58 bread and butter marketing courses are often taught by what we call clinicals, business people who teach in the evenings, make a little extra money. And the leading marketing faculty, the tenured faculty, they don't know that much about business. And some are anti-business. And so what that does is it produces marketing emphasis graduates, MBAs, undergraduates. It sort of leaves them a little bit constrained in terms of their understanding of the business world. Then you leap to the marketing managers themselves. And I believe a lot of top management people and finance founders, CEO, they question the practical experience of marketing managers.

31:36Why marketing lost its influence after 2000

31:53 And most marketing managers have never had profit and lost responsibility. And so from a budget point of view, are you gonna give a lot of money to a senior marketing manager who is bright and experienced, but perhaps not grounded in the financials as much as I should be? And I think that's a major reason why a lot of surveys of managers shows from top consulting companies that they're disillusioned and don't trust marketing managers as much as I used to. And that's why many companies, they've sort of relegated marketing to, oh, do some advertising, come up with some promotions, do some market research, take a good ad agency,

32:49 but they really limit the magnitude of the job for what a marketing manager does. I have a good friend of mine, Dave Stewart, who's retired as well. He lives in Nashville and I. We're writing a marketing management book. And part of our motivation is to simply try to defend marketing in a way and indicate, hey, let's give marketing people more experience and profit and loss. Let's make sure they understand the financials. Let's trust them with insights on product, pricing, distribution, promotion, give them more budget, see what they can do, let them prove themselves. I think marketing could have a big resurrection in the future, Anthony, but right now,

33:45 I'm sort of distressed.

33:49 I fell in love with marketing in 1973. I took a marketing course at Bemidji State University and went there to play baseball and be close to home. He, McCarthy, developed the four P's of marketing, the four P framework, product, price, place, promotion. I just fell in love with marketing. And then I graduated from Bemidji State University in 1975, recession. I needed money, didn't have much. And Indiana University had this DBA program where if they accepted you in it, you'd teach a marketing course to undergraduates each semester and earn some livelihood. I grabbed at the chance and somehow got accepted and received my degree in '79.

34:22Why the C-suite stopped trusting the CMO

34:40 I mean, I know this is a long winded explanation, but I love marketing and I adore it and I've thrived in it.

34:50 And to see the demise of marketing, so to speak, at the university level with what we're not doing for our students, and to see the status of marketing management in so many companies, it makes me sad to be honest with you. I think there's hope, I think there's hope. - I think there is too, especially the trend of, because what has stepped in its place as sales leadership and a lot of these companies, the chief revenue officer owns sales, they have more of a sales background and pedigree, they'll sometimes loop in marketing underneath them. And I think what is happening is more buyers can find what they need through LLM, through search,

35:39 they can make the decisions for themselves and the outbound targeting stuff is not working as much, so you really have to invest even more in brand and attracting people to your brand. And I think the keys to success will be more marketing tactics than sales tactics in this next era that we're entering into, which I would assume would lead to CMOs within organizations more leading the charge on the go-to-market side of the business. - I would hope so. And by the way, most companies, rightfully so, the marketing departments are separate from the sales departments, and you have senior marketing managers and senior sales managers.

36:25 Most companies today, the senior sales managers have so much more clout and power than the marketing managers, it isn't even funny. But from a theory point of view, sales is part of marketing. And so I would like to see the reverse where marketing managers are given the status and the budget to really do a lot for their companies, starting with developing the brand and have the sales managers and marketing managers intertwined, working closely together to take the brand to market. And of course, other functional areas, you have to have, you see, business is too complex. I'm glad I'm just a simple retired professor, frankly.

37:09 You have to have finance, accounting, operations, logistics, customer service, sales support, marketing, sales. All those functional areas have to work together. You have to be synergistic. You know, there's, you have to really collaborate. Intra firm communication and coordination, so important. I think that can happen. And some of the best firms, I mean, I'm impressed by what Cadillac is doing now in targeting younger consumers, because they found the average age of their loyal customer is simply too old, younger than me, but simply too old. I'm so impressed always by IBM. Although I may, I think they may specialize sales a little too much.

37:32Marketing's comeback era in the age of AI

37:56 I think on the whole, they're just wonderful company. You see some amazing companies, both B2C, B2B. You know, we live in a good age, life is complex, but there are still some shining stars that we can be happy about. - Yeah, I think so too. I think so too. We're at the beginning of that pendulum leaning back to the marketing practice, which I'm excited for, 'cause I think there's a lot of art in that practice as well. I was hoping we can dive into, this might be a personal topic for me. So I have three kids, I have another one on the way. I am thinking about the role of higher education,

38:43 both in business and just in society as a whole. I know it's a big question, but I would really love your perspective on where higher education fits, because there's so much noise about, oh, you can learn anything with AI, or you can learn anything by logging into the right YouTube channels, and you can just learn anything you want by going online and figuring it out for yourself. We don't need education, we don't need these institutions. My gut's telling me that's wrong, but I would love your perspective on that topic, 'cause it's such a big one, especially for people in the tech industry too, who are building up a lot of those motifs.

39:26 - Right, I'm a huge fan of education, formal education. I think there's a certain argument to be made that when you're too young, you're simply lack the maturity to really be entrusted with major decisions. I think getting a four-year degree, it's not only what you learn in the classroom, it's what you learn about yourself outside the classroom as you date, as you bingle, as you socialize, as you drink, as you abuse drugs. Sorry, but- - That's part of the experience.

40:01 - There are a lot of ways you can learn, and you have great examples of people like Michael Dell, who created a tremendous company without a lot of formal education, but I think for most people going to a great university, not a trade school, maybe start there, but get a four-year degree, learn about a topic, and what topic? Boy, I don't know, my son is graduating with an undergraduate degree from USC in engineering, but with AI now, and with engineers from Stanford, Berkeley, other top schools, USC, having a very difficult time getting a job right now, because AI is doing so much of what new highers used to do. Now, I can't tell you what to focus on.

40:51 You have to love what you do. You have to love what you learn. You have to adore your classes, but whether it's biology, medicine, chemistry, the law, whatever the area, get an education, get steeped in knowledge, be a specialist, hard to be a generalist anymore, just too much knowledge out there, and then take that specialty to the bank as you progress through life. But really, in my opinion, a lot of people try to make their mark in the world prematurely when they're not prepared to. They're too young, they think they know what they're doing, they really don't, and so I would always argue to your three children and you're one in the way.

41:25The case for formal higher education

41:37 You're a productive guy. I would argue, get an education. Even if you think you don't need it, you'll need it. - Is there anything you think the education system, and I think probably where people have an issue with it is, I rarely hear people shouldn't go to high school. People shouldn't go to elementary school. I rarely hear that argument, and I think what starts to make people question is the level of investment and how much it costs. Is there anything you think higher education institutions need to do differently to adapt to the new world? - Well, I think it's very, very important that every school at a university and every department at a university,

42:25 they study what their graduates need to know to be successful in the world, and make sure that through the design of their courses, that the people teaching the courses and the content of their courses are truly outstanding. I think there's always any department, any school, any university, there's always some dregs. There are always some people teaching courses that probably shouldn't be teaching, and it's not necessarily about teacher ratings either. I mean, you can smile and dance a lot, and your content may not be really helping the students. You might get great teacher ratings, but hopefully you get good ratings, but also share a lot of content.

43:12 That's where I would go, and I was department chairman at USC a couple different times. I always tried to spend a lot of time getting to know what was happening in the marketing world, what courses we needed to teach to be practical, what people we needed to hire and retain to deliver in the classroom for our students. I think every department, in every school, at every university could do a better job of that, and you're hitting me at a bad time. I just wrote a $41,000 check to USC for my son's tuition last semester, so I guess I could get into reduced tuition. (laughing) Yeah, now it's starting to feel like, I don't know,

43:59 before it made sense, but, oh, that's perfect. Well, you're really putting your money where your opinion is, and I appreciate that. No, and I think that's right. I think what people tend to not realize too is when you're entering the world at that vulnerable age, you don't know what you don't know, so I think getting exposed to different topics and figuring out what you like and what you don't like, because you haven't even been exposed to it, so there's a whole aspect of discovery that I think happens throughout the process, and if I'm using my own example, my undergrad was biochemistry, which I realized maybe three quarters of the way through

44:45 that it wasn't something I really wanted to study, but I was already close, so I'm just gonna brute force it and finish it, and I learned a lot, I learned how to learn, and I got exposed to all kinds of things, but I also realized, okay, this isn't really what I wanna pour my heart and soul into, and then later I went to business school, got executive MBA, and that was just fun. I enjoyed every single moment of it. I enjoyed the classes, I enjoyed the projects, I enjoyed the conversations with my classmates, and really, really enjoyed every aspect of it, so I think just getting exposed to things and then realizing, oh, I do really love these things,

44:57What universities need to do differently

45:26 and I don't really click with this type of domain or industry, it just takes going on the journey for a little bit to figure that out, and I think it's tough to do it on your own. I don't think you would figure it out by forcing yourself to watch YouTube videos and certain topics, you'd have to be unbelievably disciplined in order to go through that type of process. - Right, no, you touched on something that I didn't talk about before and that is learning from your fellow classmates.

45:56 Formal education, is it for everyone? Maybe not, but I think everyone must do two things. Learn from your mistakes and learn from your successes. Don't resent yourself for your mistakes. We all make far too many of them, but learn from them. Successes are rarer, but learn from your success too. And if you put that mentality together with a formal education, you're gonna hit the ground running, in my opinion. - I think that's really, really sage advice and I appreciate you sharing that. - Sure. - Gary, thank you so much for sharing everything. I think this is really coming at a unique time in history, advent of AI, I think businesses are restructuring,

46:43 that pendulum feels like it's swinging a little bit from sales having the influence to marketing having the influence. And I think it's so cool to hear your perspective on all of these topics when you've built your career that decades of experience in this subject. And on the personal note, I really appreciate your perspective on higher education's role in business and in society as a whole and that journey that people are going through at a vulnerable time in their life. Yeah, and I just really appreciate everything you shared and I can't wait to share this with our audience. - Well, thank you, I've enjoyed it.