After many decades owning and operating a staffing firm for trucking companies, Jeremy Reymer was bothered by something he had learned through the experience: Truck drivers find it difficult to maintain healthy lifestyles.

So difficult, in fact, that the average life expectancy of an American truck driver is only 61 years old.

Upon selling his company, Jeremy was not content to just relax in retirement. He wanted to do something about the problem. So he joined with a physician named Mark Manera and established Project 61, which is dedicated to helping truck drivers improve their health to the point that such an alarming life-expectancy number might start to rise.

We recently wrote a feature about Project 61 for Caltrux Magazine, and we thought you would like to meet the man behind it – which is why Jeremy is this month’s guest on Six Questions with Dan and Michelle!

Conventional thinking in the “sales and marketing” world is that there’s sales and then there’s marketing. And while they are not completely irrelevant to each other, they are nevertheless distinct disciplines and they operate best when neither one tries to drift into the realm of the other.

We mention this only for the purpose of letting you know that we think this is nonsense. Marketing must support sales. Directly.

Now we will admit we did not always see it this way. In fact, in the early years of the company, we were actually quite purist about the distinction between public relations and advertising. We were on Team PR in those days, and we didn’t want those mangy advertising types getting involved and trying to taint the purity of our efforts.

Without getting too much into why we felt that way at the time (maybe a certain former boss who was constantly trying to manipulate PR copy for all the wrong reasons?), the fact of the matter is experience has told us otherwise.

We have sat in too many client meetings in which we are asked about the metrics by which to measure the ROI of our work, and we got tired of doing the dance and asserting that the value is intangible but nonetheless critical.

No. You have to be able to measure it by showing its impact on sales. Otherwise you have no case to make for why someone should be paying you.

The marketing-as-separate-from-sales argument generally goes like this: Marketing is about your company’s brand awareness and positioning. If marketing does these things well, your positioning will make it easier for the sales team to generate leads and close deals. But they’re still separate disciplines.

This can sound persuasive when someone says it at a conference or in a webinar, or some sort of scholarly journal for the trade association. But it makes no sense.

The content we write is designed to make the case for our clients, to persuade the most critical audiences of their value and of the positive impact they can make. That type of information can and should be in the hands of the sales team, and it only makes sense that we create adaptations of it for the sales team to deploy.

Maybe the 800-word blog post we put on the web site can be broken down to a 150-word email the sales team can send to prospects. Maybe the feature article in the Wall Street Journal (might as well think big, right?) can be repackaged so the sales team can show prospects how strong the company’s reach and reputation are.

It only makes sense that the marketing content team is the one to make all this happen. To do all the branding and positioning work, and then insist we shouldn’t be partnering with the sales team to help them make the case directly to prospects is so dumb, it could only have been thought of by industry purists who have overthought themselves into marginalized irrelevance.

Kind of like we used to be. Before we got old and wised up.

A bit of company news for you: Our longtime managing editor Michelle Cohl has taken on the additional role of networking ambassador for the company. She has already begun an active schedule of representing the company at business and networking events throughout the area in order to help expand our business network and alert us to opportunities to do positive things around town.

This was Michelle’s idea. She brought it to us some months ago and we immediately recognized it’s a great fit for her talents and her personality. And she has quickly taken to it – identifying events and organizations to connect with.

Now for our existing clients, never fear: Michelle remains in the position of managing editor, so there is no danger Dan and the other writers will go off the rails with the material they’re generating. Between Michelle’s strategic management and Angie’s watchful eye as copy editor, our operations will be efficient – and our quality as high – as ever.

But we knew Michelle would thrive in this new role. After all, that’s how we found her. For those of you who haven’t heard the story, our first professional experience with her was in June 2018 when she took the initiative to organize and host an entertainers’ networking event. North Star sponsored the event, so Angie, Dan and Tony worked the registration table while Michelle worked the room.

It was clear that night that she was born for environments like that, and we’re glad we can now fit that type of role into her position here. Congratulations Michelle, and thanks for suggesting it! As always, it’s a privilege to have you as one of us.