Business Research with Praj Gadtaula of Business Brainz

On this episode of OneLeg Up, Ed Davis sits down with Praj Gadtaula of Business Brainz (and BBN International) about the importance of research as part of your sales and marketing efforts, and why term “regionalization” is becoming extinct. 

Play Video

Listen on Buzzsprout

Sign Up For
Tips & Tricks

Others Who Read This Also Liked....

Transcript

Edward Davis 

Welcome to one leg up, where we discuss how you can deliver the very best customer experience and how you can achieve zero marketing waste. Ahmed Davis, the Chief Operations ninja of one leg. And today I’m flying solo on this podcast and will not be joined by my usual co host and and instigator, one leg mastermind Vixen, however, we do have a very special guest joining us today. Praj Gadtaula of Business Brainz project, how are you?

 

Praj Gadtaula 

I’m very well, thanks for having me.

 

Edward Davis 

Yeah, of course. So the reason probably as a special guest is actually there’s a couple of reasons. First, he’s our first client to appear on the podcast, which is pretty cool. And second, he is going to be our first real discussion outside the area of home improvement, which those who listen to this podcast on a fairly regular basis will understand. That’s a focus area for one leg, but we do have other pieces of our business. And where Praj and his company fits in, is under our business to business offering. So, so proud, so that everyone has an idea of what type of business brings is. Can you give the listeners a bit of an elevator pitch?

 

Praj Gadtaula 

Yeah, sure. Before the elevator pitch, let me give a quick background. So after business school, I, you know, wander here and there bouncing around jobs on separate jobs. And eventually I went to work for a company called BT Global Services. It’s one of the global network service providers. And that was probably back in 2008, when I joined their intel unit. And back then we were already we didn’t know in a very specific explicit manner. But me and my team, we were sitting at the intersection of the marketing team and sales team, and delivering the relevant insight or intelligence that they needed for their, for them to function better. And later, once now I can connect the dots looking backward, we were already bringing sales and marketing alignment back then. So fast forward from then now. Found a business Brainz. Business Brainz is essentially research or insight company that works alongside sales and marketing people, delivering them the research back inside that they always needed, or wanted to ensure that they become effective, efficient, and to help them with.

 

Edward Davis 

Cool now, I think the key is and so, you know, one of the things that people ask me about because one leg spans business to consumer business to business, and I’ve spent the majority of my career in business to business, most notably associated with agencies that are part of BBN, which business brings as a part of BBN as well. I think I think the research the Insight bit, fundamentally is one of the key differentiators sort of differences between b2c and b2b. And the reason that I say that is because on the b2c side, you know, the consumer is the one who might be searching the web or whatever the case may be. And that is a as a as a company who might deliver products or services, you’re sort of passive in that equation. On the b2b side. If you are an oil and gas company, and you’re targeting, you know, another company to buy a piece of kit or a service, you actually sort of have to provide the research, you have to provide the reason you have to sort of point people to the research that’s, that sort of helps you position your business and your products and services that would it do I have that sort of correct?

 

Praj Gadtaula 

Yep, pretty much. What while in the b2c world is also changing, I believe in terms of targeting and how granular you can go in terms of targeting because I believe now you actually, if you put your energy and focus into it, you can target people who, who have liked Beyonce and still own a two wheeler in, in a certain zip code within some proximity or something. So yeah, but But with that said, yeah, b2b and b2c are still fairly different worlds, I would say Yeah, right.

 

Edward Davis 

Right. And so talk to me about the importance of research and insights, not just To the marketing function, and not just to the sales function, but you talked about sales and marketing alignment, and I think that’s from a business to business standpoint need to be standpoint, it’s where there’s been a huge disconnect. Well, I think there’s two, three, really, it’s the sales and marketing teams not actually functioning as one team. And those things being sort of in a lot of organizations seen as separate. I think it is the lack of investment in actual insight to fuel campaigns to fuel outreach to fuel, how a sales or marketing team might target somebody. And obviously, there’s a creative piece, which we’re going to have some people on, in the beginning of the year to talk about the creative side of things. And so I really wanted projects come in and sort of lay the groundwork, because to me, Insights is really what lays the foundation for the other two and for success.

 

Praj Gadtaula 

Sure, yeah, I think, Well, traditionally, it what has mattered, I believe, is how marketing and sales were measured in terms of their success, right. So if you look at a lot of traditional b2b marketing, and a lot of companies still do follow that MQL, and SQL, and, and so forth. So if the marketing team is just going to be measured by how many interested people you bring on the table, regardless of do they eventually go and pay the dollars or not? Right? They are really going to run and get you those MQLs, right. And that’s, that doesn’t necessarily, it does, it’s not necessarily a leading indicator of the revenue, right. But now with the world changing, and then realizing now that, oh, that’s not working, let’s tie that to the end dollar that they’re driving, right. And now, now, what is now needed for the marketing guys to function better is they want to get the quality guys speaking with the sales guys, and then want to make sure that they know you well, right. And that’s when the entire dynamic changes. And for the marketing people in order for them to get those right people, they need to now know, the people who they want to bring on the table. Right. And that’s when research or insight become super critical. Because if there are 10 Guys, and or 10 companies, and you can bring three or four on the table, or you would want to, you definitely want to break those four that are the most likely to consume your services, and not the other four, who are least likely to, or who happened to read about you, right, but you would want to consciously design in a way that they do end up reading about you.

 

Edward Davis 

So, I think that’s a key, a key bit to this, the service that you provide, I think sometimes people get it twisted that while my research my insights, like, I think when we when we talk to potential clients about what that looks like, and why you need it, I think they just think about it in terms of what we just understand the customer at a at like a base level, right? And so it’s I, I feel like at times they they equate it to persona research and understanding this job function or that job function. But I think this is where Business Brainz is really interesting is you all actually span, you know that the spectrum of research, you all can do it at a at a macro level and understand an industry or a vertical. Yeah. And then you can get down to not just a persona, but quite literally names on a page of, well, it’s not the CFO of shell. It’s this person who happens to be the CFO of shell. Am I right on that? Yeah, well,

 

Praj Gadtaula 

there’s a very interesting incident that is still shared today. Like there was there was a you know, for for confidential reasons. I probably will not take the name. But there was a sizable company back then, when I was with BT we were the sales teams of chasing. And then we somehow came to learn of the fact that the CIO, used to play golf every Sunday at a particular golf course. And that was a major deal that they were chasing, and we just had to find that insight and then we pass it on to the sales guys. And fast forward couple of months, and eventually they won the deal. And I don’t know what went in the background, but that was something that did happen, right. But coming back to the marketing and sales and alignment and the kind of insight that we bring on the table, we start from the macro in terms of what marketing guys need to know, if, let’s say one leg, for example, you guys are already in the home improvement space. But let’s say you guys want to now start a franchising services or whatever, and you want to start marketing in the European region as well. And home improvement in Europe might look very different, because homes in Europe are in general, very different than the ones in the US. Sure. Right. So you would definitely first want to understand what does the home improvement landscape in Europe look like? Right, then is when you can start marketing. So what are the common challenges are? What are the opportunities? What’s the trend what’s in general happening? So that based upon that the marketing guys can then start their go to market approach? Right? Once they know that right? Then probably, if, if your outreach is aligned around specific named targets, or a lot of companies are saying Account Based Marketing, and everything, then probably you would probably want to identify certain names and get invalidated out of those 1020 3040 50. Which 20? Should you really go after? Right? So that would be when we work with the marketing guys and help them align to a certain extent, right? And once that pack gets passed over to the sales, guys, and once there’s certain level of interest, then we help the sales guys understand each and every account at a more granular level. What what are the opportunities challenges internally, what’s happening at an account level? And we also help them understand, let’s say 20, similar companies? What are the common agendas the CMOS might have or CIOs might have, right? And once you have certain traction, then we will be in a position to tell you what does this cmo really want or is chasing? Or is facing challenges with versus this particular CIO? So it’s kind of looking at the macro as well as be having the ability to get into the micro, but with a clear purpose of who are we trying to help and support and why.

 

Edward Davis 

Right and the bigger purpose is to arm the sales people in the marketing people by extension, yeah, or vice versa, with with very specific information about a particular accounts, sort of pain points so that we can tailor our messaging to them specifically, how our product or service might answer those pain points are absolutely,

 

Praj Gadtaula 

yeah, because any, any buyer who’s trying to buy something at the end of the day is either trying to eliminate certain pain that they have or are trying to maximize certain gain that is on their agenda to achieve throughout the fiscal or whatever.

 

Edward Davis 

Right. So you mentioned and I hadn’t thought about this. So you just sort of told that story about the CIO, and finding and finding out where he plays golf. But that was what, like, 8-10 years ago, that’s stories from

 

Praj Gadtaula

Yeah, 10 Yeah, roughly.

 

Edward Davis 

Yeah. I gotta believe that, you know, we’d become so data centric, or, you know, companies are mining data in all sorts of new new and interesting ways. How has the research insights business evolved over the last decade?

 

Praj Gadtaula 

I think from guesswork to fact work. So sure. Well, I have always been a believer of the fact that tech or whatever you want to call technology, or data and everything that’s an enabler for you to get from where you are to where you want to be. Right? Like, for example, intent data, lets you figure out what are the companies that are showing some level of intent, right, but that’s just the first bit of it right? But beyond that, you still have to do your due diligence, you have to figure out you have to qualify which company might be a good target, you have to understand what they want, what they do not what are they facing with and then take a very, very pragmatic, structured and conscious approach in in putting yourself in front of them. Right. I think just the ability to measure each and every action and, and and kind of calibrate that and take a step back and make certain changes and again, try and iterate. And that measurability probably was used to be spread across a longer time duration now, it’s much quicker and faster. I think that’s definitely something that I have seen over time happen. Another is, again, sorry. No, no, keep going. Sorry. Another that I think. Now we’re seeing is the scalability yet, staying personalized is another thing that I’m seeing a lot of companies being able to do now, which probably wasn’t possible 10 years back.

 

Edward Davis 

Right? Well, I think that that’s a really interesting bit right. In, in so within that, what are the biggest misconceptions around what level of insight you can develop? Like, I I always joke? Well, I mean, you bring up the whole golf course thing. I mean, there’s no reason why you can’t figure out nowadays, you know, we’re an executive, you know, other than for security reasons, I suppose. But, you know, people are shockingly, shockingly transparent in sort of what their habits are, and what their likes are, and things along those lines. And if you are really, on the ball, you could piece somebody’s life together fairly easy, like, easily. Yeah. For the sake of marketing and sales. Right. And so, but but but even within that, I got to believe that, you know, there’s some common misperceptions around research and insights, that that, that you probably have to address on a fairly regular basis? No?

 

Praj Gadtaula 

sometimes. So, people think that we are the solution to a wish list that a lot of marketing agencies, so they come to us and kill like, a lot of times we hear, can you tell us, if they, so most of the companies have it spends, and there are certain tools that kind of do predict it, but they would want and say, Hey, can you tell me how much of budget this guy has? Right, and, and so forth. And everything while it might be a wish list, it’s really not practical or possible for you to have that. And even if, in one case, accidentally, we are able to bring that insight on the table. Right? It’s not going to be practical to scale it and deliver across all accounts or all businesses and everything right. That’s when or Yeah, I think a lot of times, salespeople, marketing people and salespeople, they just were inherently lazy, right humans. So as long as much as everything can come from research, we really won’t have to do much. So that kind of sometimes prevails. Yeah, yeah.

 

Edward Davis 

No, and I think that that is, look, I’ve been, I’ve been in marketing for a really long time. And I and I agree with you, I think, inherently people, not just marketers, or salespeople, they’re there, they’re lazy. And the ones that are successful are ones who are able to overcome their laziness or who are less lazy than then than the average or the normal. And so I think this is where this to me is where, you know, research and insights actually comes into play and can overcome laziness, because to me, and please tell me if I’m wrong, a really good insights or research function. That’s, that’s, that’s a part of your sales and marketing process. It’s not just a one and done, right, where we’re not just engaging business Brainz for the first couple of weeks of our engagement as as part of a campaign to your I think you said it earlier, you know, okay, we’re providing the this level of insights, the sales and marketing team does some things we’re going to check in, how did that go? What What was the reaction? What was the what was the results? How can we how can we recalibrate and maybe go do some additional digging? I mean, it’s a cycle correct?

 

Praj Gadtaula 

Yeah. Well, yeah, it definitely is a cycle. It kind of, well, my orientation is is is from that direction, primarily because Business Brainz one of the things that is in our DNA is to be customized and be bespoke, right? So whenever even if there’s a, like I had a new customer that a fish to today, right? And they I recommend that let’s start with a pilot. And let’s create a very bespoke model that answers all your ideal questions. And once we have that template that’s so customized to one particular company’s needs, right. And then we scale it across all other 10, 20, 50, 100 Top accounts that they want to go after, right? So once we’re able to do that, right, and why we are building that template, we are more than happy to do a couple of back and forth so that we are able to calibrate the exact need for the marketing and sales team at that particular company. And we replicate the same model across all other customers, right? Because let’s say, for ERP service provider, versus a CRM, or a cloud service provider, the kind of insight that they would want to know about for the same industry that that targeting will write, let’s say, if it is financial services industry, the way that a CRM versus CRM marketing and sales team would look at finished services as an industry versus an ERP guide would vary, right. And once they go a level deeper, if they want to know about Bank of America, they would want to know about very different things about the same target account. Right? So we bring that into our service layer, and then we deliver so that we are catering to, well, essentially, we are functioning, like the way the marketing and sales guys were doing research themselves. But that’s the approach that we chose to take, because that was my orientation since the very beginning. And that’s kind of what I knew. And I thought that what, so yeah,

 

Edward Davis 

how, how are your team structured? Are they by virtue vertical? Or is it just purely? These are people who are really good at research? Or are they by type of research?

 

Praj Gadtaula 

Almost all the analysts teams, people are, are have a business background, right? From business schools, and everything we structure them by it’s, I wouldn’t really say would be a fancy term to say Matrix Model. But two ways, one, in terms of seniority in terms of experience, right, someone who is a year or two, no slightly lesser than someone who has already been around for three, four years, and they have seen certain industries evolve and grow and everything, right. And also, by exposure by industry, if someone has already worked in a financial services company, or a bank or a financial institution here, and then joined us, then that person automatically understands how banking system works. And that person will be able to predict if that person is building up an industry insight on financial services, he probably will be in a better position to do that than someone else who hasn’t done that. So it’s kind of experience plus relevance in industry or sector. Those are the that’s how we would structure the project.

 

Edward Davis 

So I do want to just step back because as you know, I’m, I fancy myself to be a fairly international type of guy, I’ve done business, international type of type of guy. I’ve done business in virtually every corner of the globe. And, and I think that that’s a pretty cool thing. But but as you know, I’m enamored with, with with the story of Business Brainz and yourself. So what we haven’t revealed so far on this podcast is is where Business Brainz is Luke. Do you want to? I think it’s a cool story that you want to share with the audience. Yeah.

 

Praj Gadtaula 

So we work from a tiny city called Katmandu in a tiny country called Nepal. And I get asked this question a lot like, Of all the places Why would you be in the global b2b marketing and sales space and working from Nepal and I say, That’s primarily just because I was born and raised over here. Nothing to do with anything else, right? I did my schooling and everything here. I went up my undergrads came back from my business school then I I was in India for a while when I was in the US for a while. What Okay. And then I just thought, you know, let me go back to my hometown. And by then I had whatever skills that I had built in, I thought, let me take that skill. And that was in the b2b, global sales and marketing space delivering research and inside. And I thought, let me try to take that to the rest of the globe. And yeah, that’s, that’s what I’m doing.

 

Edward Davis 

I just think it’s a testament to where we are as a, as a society is, as a marketing industry. In all honesty, I think, you know, like I said, I think you, I don’t know that there’s a ton of organizations out there who do what Business Brainz does, at the scale that you do it. And the way that you do it, I think, can you hire like a KPMG? Or, or UI or somebody like that to do, you know, some level research or whatever. But I think in terms of the broad spectrum that the Business Brainz does, you know, I know that there are some out there. And of course, I’m going to be partial to you all, but I do think that you all sit in a rather special spot. So it was a conscious decision to go back to Nepal and start this business, was it not? Well,

 

Praj Gadtaula 

There was a conscious decision to give it a shot. To be honest. Yeah, right. Let me try for a few years. And if it works out well, and good. If it doesn’t, I’ll figure it out. So I have always, so mark, and my wife keeps on telling me you have a higher risk appetite, and everything. So I thought, yeah. Right. And probably had I not had a slightly higher risk appetite, probably I would have been doing a job someplace to be honest. Right? So yeah, I thought I’d give it a try. And, and. And once you started an entrepreneurial journey, then you fail, and you learn and you fell flat on your face, and you learn and that learning takes you to the next stage and this and that and everything. So yeah, I’ve had a fair amount of learning, primarily, because I was trying to go and be know, and try to sell something in the global b2b landscape, but from, from a place where it’s really difficult to reach there.

 

Edward Davis 

So do you find in your interactions, I got to believe that the pandemic has sort of helped you in the sense that people reshaped their way of thinking in terms of, well, sure, people can be remote, and they can be anywhere in the world and I can work with them.

 

Praj Gadtaula 

Well, can I be honest? Initially, I think, when the pandemic hit and budgets were getting cut, right, the first budget that is the market research budget, right, so we really did get a fair brunch. Right. But yeah, like you mentioned as kind of people started seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. And after two years of the pandemic hitting and now that we’re towards the end of FY 21. Right now people are realizing a lot of companies are allowing their employees to work from anywhere, and as long as they can be effective. Right, that now is definitely changing right now, probably as compared to two, three years back. If now we would go and say, we can deliver insight, probably people are more receptive than they were three years back. But I still get asked this question. What geographies Can you cover? Like? You’re working from Nepal?

 

Edward Davis 

Yeah, well, I think that’s the thing. Everything is so transportable now. And everything’s digitized. Most things are digitized. So it this is one of the things that actually sort of bothers me a little bit nowadays, which is, you know, there’s always this conversation. And you and I have been fortunate to pitch a couple pieces of business together as part of BBN. There’s, there’s still this, this idea that you have to be in the same market as the people who are engaging you or in the market in which they’re targeting. And I don’t personally believe it, I understand why you would prefer that. I think the, the thing that you have to have is an understanding of the market and the way that people operate and maybe the nuances of culture a little bit. Yeah, and Not to put in a plug for BBN, but I think we do that better than most. But I think, you know, we have run into this this, this objection at times where people say, you know, most notably, I won’t say the company’s name, but there’s a, there was a company in New Zealand. And, you know, the marketing person had a very specific conversation with me and said, you know, we’ve searched all over New Zealand, and we can’t find a good b2b agency to help us in APAC, go into go into the Japanese market go into the Australian market go into you know, Mainland China and stuff like that. And so they started talking to us, BBN by us. And then, of course, there was going to be a research component, which is where Business Brainz was gonna come in. And after a couple months, even though she the marketing manager admitted that the one agency that they’d hit historically worked with locally, had no ability to, to operate outside the borders in New Zealand. They decided to go with them anyways, because that’s what they were familiar with. Right. And I think that’s one of the limitations. And I think, you know, we talk about this in sort of the broader circles within BBN. And I think if you’re an organization, you can’t get your head wrapped around. Sort of virtual I, the only thing I can think of is anti regionalization. In the sense that you don’t have to be defined by wherever your location is, then if you can’t get by you are you are truly inhibiting your company’s ability to grow.

 

Praj Gadtaula 

Yet we tend to define ourselves first by function. And like you had to bring up that we work from Kathmandu, Nepal, and that’s the reason you chose to bring it up. But otherwise, we have been catering to companies not because of where we work from, but because of what we do.

 

There are cases where the local nuances are needed, right? Like, there’s the cultural differences in Japan versus cultural differences in the US versus UK or in general in Europe or wherever those would be different, right. But other than that, in b2b how businesses in general function and just trying to figure out, you know, how the businesses are behaving or what direction they’re heading. We have done you know, very granular country specific research for a telecom company in Malaysia, and security services company based out of Russia, global one at that, and a lot of large US based companies, and, you know, European companies and APEC and a lot of BBN partners, the ones that we’ve worked with are all over the world. So yeah.

 

Edward Davis 

Yeah, no, I think I think it’s a really interesting time. And I think that the quicker that either you as an agency or your customers can get out of their own heads in terms of, well, I need to work with somebody who’s specifically located here. No, you need to have you need to work with somebody who at least understands those cultures, those regions, no matter whatever means they use to understand them.

 

Praj Gadtaula 

Yeah, so even this company, based out of New Zealand, right there last day, couldn’t have the entire capability that entire BBN brings on the table that they could leverage, right? They could have simply hired one person from their local agency as the point of contact and that guy could have managed the entire thing and they would have won more business than they probably can. Yeah. So there’s

 

Edward Davis 

No, that’s exactly right. Well, that’s gonna be it for us today. We’re gonna have Praj on again in the coming year. I think it’s a really good discussion. I think, you know, research and insight is one of those things that has to stay top of mind, especially from a b2b standpoint. We hope you’ve enjoyed our chat tonight.

 

Praj Gadtaula 

Thanks for having me. And thanks for waking up so early to be to have this discussion.

 

Edward Davis 

Happy to do it. Always happy to talk to you sir. And, as always, we here at OneLeg believe poor marketing pollutes the planet and that business is full of tired, outdated, indistinct, unremarkable and underperforming marketing that sucks. What sucks even more is that many companies have forgotten the most important thing of all: the customer.

 

We’re on a mission, on behalf of our client’s customers to change that. To learn more, go to zeromarketingwaste.com where you can subscribe to our blog and this very podcast. You can also find us and follow us by looking for the flamingo and the OneLeg handle wherever you socialize online.

 

Thanks, talk to you next time.

ONELEG INC.

“This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website, serve personalized content, and analyze our traffic.

Check Out The OneLeg Up Podcast

Every week we will bring you valuable marketing insights and advice.