58: Brand Building For Company Differentiation and Workplace Fulfillment

Drew’s guest on this episode, Juliette Rizkallah, has an MBA from Harvard University and over 20 years of marketing and cybersecurity experience. As the CMO for SailPoint, she has linked the idea of identity management to cybersecurity and built a brand that is synonymous with excellence.

In this conversation, she and Drew offer your company the best tactics for brand building, how to differentiate your company from competitors, and why branding is important for employee buy-in and workplace fulfillment. Juliette believes that going beyond “FUD - fear, uncertainty, and doubt factor” marketing leads to customer empowerment and a solid foundation for your company to stand on for many years to come.

On this insightful episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite, Drew and Juliette tackle some of the biggest challenges for new CMOs and discuss how to handle one of the biggest obstacles in any workplace - ensuring top executives buy into a marketing initiative.

Juliette has some exciting ideas to share with you, so be sure to listen.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts - Stitcher - or Podsearch

What You’ll Learn

• [1:22] Drew introduces the guest for this episode, Juliette Rizkallah, CMO of Sailpoint
• [2:30] How marketing influenced SailPoint’s recent growth in sales
• [5:26] The human element of data breaches
• [6:47] Juliette discusses the mission and strategy of SailPoint
• [8:05] How do customers emotionally buy into SailPoint?
• [11:46] What is branding?
• [13:20] How Juliette is helping SailPoint cut through the competition through branding
• [18:23] One great effort that Juliette did with SailPoint to differentiate the company
• [20:54] How to handle a competitor copying your branding efforts, and what that means for your company
• [27:02] Slow branding is better than fast branding = builds a better foundation
• [30:00] The biggest challenge as a new CMO who is building a new program
• [33:00] Advice for fellow marketing professionals
• [35:33] Drew’s summary of the episode

How SailPoint built a brand that ultimately increased sales and moved away from FUD tactics

When Juliette joined SailPoint two years ago, their existing branding efforts were not linking the impact of identity management to cybersecurity. She led the efforts that brought SailPoint back to their mission and core values, which “gives enterprises the power to grow, expand and innovate, securely and confidently via innovation, integrity, impact, and individuals.” SailPoint moved away from relying on FUD techniques to incite fear in their customers and demonstrated to them the “power of identity.” Juliette explains that by empowering your IT team and taking away the minutia of cybersecurity work, they are better equipped to focus on company growth - which leads to great fulfillment. These combined efforts led to an exponential growth in sales, increased customer satisfaction, and improved company culture and morale. You can learn how to make these benefits come to fruition at your company if you listen to Juliette’s full story on this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite.

So a competitor copies your branding efforts? What’s next?

After the intense branding process, SailPoint was faced with a large competitor copying their efforts - unfortunately, a common problem in B2B environments. Drew and Juliette discuss the emotional discovery and how SailPoint turned a potential conflict into a reflective exercise. She explains that while the competitor copied SailPoint’s tagline, they could not capture what made SailPoint an exceptional and unique company. Simply changing color schemes and logos does not bring about real change, and clinging to that mindset got Juliette’s team and SailPoint through the challenge. She encourages other CMOs to accept the issue, move past it, and know that those who go through the long process of building a brand will ultimately find more success than those who simply copy the work of others.

Slow branding is better than fast branding, and why a firm foundation is critical to company success and workplace fulfillment

Throughout this episode, a common theme of Drew and Juliette’s conversation is that “slow branding is better than fast branding.” When she began the process of building a brand at SailPoint it was ten months later before real internal and external change was recognized. “We decided to do it well rather than fast,” Juliette explains, and she recognizes that this mindset can be challenging with sales teams, marketing qualified leads, and executive boards looming. This process can excite employees and refresh the ideas behind why the company exists and why employees have dedicated time to its efforts. You can implement her same problem-solving techniques at your company and build a branding platform that you can use for many years to come. Be sure to listen to this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite to take advantage of Juliette and Drew’s CMO experience and learn why effective branding can differentiate your unique company from the rest.

Connect With Juliette Rizkallah:

• SailPoint’s Executive Team Website
• Juliette’s Forbes archive
• Connect with Juliette on LinkedIn
• Follow Juliette on Twitter
• Follow Juliette on Facebook

Resources & People Mentioned

• “Marketing Today with Alan Hart” podcast
• Chanel’s marketing videos
• SailPoint’s “Identity is Everything” initiative

Connect with Drew

• 917-679-8852 (Text “renegade thinking” so we can talk about how to cut through the noise as a marketer)
• http://renegade.com/
• On LinkedIn
• On Twitter
• On Facebook
• On Instagram