When you're a CMO and are part of the exec team, you've got to understand the nuts and bolts of your business. I think it's also important when it comes to hard decisions, like we're all living in markets that are tough right now. At first, if marketing wasn't getting funded to the way I thought it should be, it was easy to take it personally. Over time, as you see the benefit of that approach and then also that it happens not just to your team or whatever, you become desensitized to it.
Our guest is Sara Varni, CMO of Attentive, a conversational commerce platform. Before joining Attentive, Sara was Twilio’s CMO and spent 10 years as a senior marketing leader at Salesforce.
In today’s conversation, we talk about what startups can learn from enterprise marketing playbooks, particularly around creating and honing a corporate message. Sara takes us behind the scenes at how companies like Twilio and Salesforce craft a corporate message from the ground up, and tweak it as the company grows. She also shares specific advice for marketers with sights on the CMO seat, including how to form collaborative, not combative relationships with sales counterparts.
You can follow Sara on Twitter at @SaraVarniBright
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