Pipeline Visionaries

Caspian Studios

CMOs and demand gen leaders dive head-first into their strategies and tactics for building a pipeline machine.

Episodes

Mentioned books

Aug 17, 2021 • 44min

Marketing for 100% of the Fortune 100 with 5-time CMO Brian Kardon, CMO of InVision

“The part of the playbook is to go slow to go fast. So I see a lot of people going really fast, but if you don't have the foundation of analytics, you're really flying blind. And so as marketers jump into a new job and they want to really show value right away. But if you don't have a good foundation of understanding, what's working, what isn't, you don't have a really good marketing automation platform that's configured the right way and the right MarTech stack and the right data stack, it's going to slow you down later. It's like engineers who have technical debt. Like you can never develop a new product if the foundation is cracked, you just can't build up. And so for marketing organizations, you've got to go slow to go fast.” ---------*(2:24) How Brian got into marketing*(2:53) Everything you need to know about InVision*(5:26) Brian’s main marketing/demand-gen strategy*(7:30) How Brian thinks about InVision’s website*(8:31) Bots are better than humans at demand gen*(13:10) Study SDRs and direct mail like an anthropologist*(17:37) The theme of Brian’s marketing playbook is to go slow to go fast*(36:50) Brian’s favorite campaign of all time*(39:45) How Brian thinks about marketing a new product *(44:50) Brian remicises on a memorable dust up and advice on avoiding them*(46:20) Quick hits--------SponsorDemand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.--------LinksThe Qualified Sales Leader: Proven Lessons from a Five Time CRO by John McMahonInvision’s podcastFreehand by InvisionFollow Brian on TwitterConnect with Brian on LinkedInFollow Ian on TwitterConnect with Ian on LinkedInwww.caspianstudios.com

Jul 20, 2021 • 38min

The Clearing Model: A Framework for Having Difficult Conversations with Sydney Sloan, CMO of SalesLoft

This episode features an interview with Sydney Sloan, CMO of Salesloft, a leading sales engagement platform whose most recent funding round valued the company at over a billion dollars.Sydney is a two-time CMO and seasoned marketer with more than 25 years of experience as an advisor, investor, and marketing leader for numerous companies, most notably Adobe, where she spent 15 years in product marketing, customer marketing, and demand generation.On this episode, Sydney delves into the inner workings of SalesLoft’s website, explains how to personalize your marketing team’s communications, and shares the framework she uses for having difficult conversations at work.Key TakeawaysAll marketing teams must use the communications holy-quad-fecta: email, phone calls, social touches, and direct mail.Your website is a direct reflection of your brand. Treat it that way.CMOs who are trying to rethink or figure out their demand gen strategy: don't try and fix it all at once. Find one part that you can focus the team on, fix that first, and then go to the next one.Quotes“You have to personalize your communications. Email is the primary channel, but you have to use more than email….When you're doing email, phone call, a social touch and a direct mail, that is the holy-quad-fecta. You'll get a 4.7 X higher lift than sending email alone.” “Everybody in SaaS knows that you have to continue to work really hard to maintain a customer, especially in a competitive marketplace. So having those programs where customers can come and learn about what we're up to and learn from others is important.”“I love my website. First of all, I believe the website is the first door, the reflection of your brand. It should speak like a human and we've worked really hard to make it sound like a ‘Lofter’ and even our chatbot’s called Lofty. Just having that ability to communicate in the way that sellers want to be communicated to– that’s so important.”“My one piece of advice to give to a CMO who's trying to rethink or figure out their demand gen strategy would be to don't try and fix it all at once. Try and find one part that you can focus the team on and fix that first and then go to the second one. Trying to do it all at once can be overwhelming and take too long. Get quick wins.” SponsorDemand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more. LinksFuture Female CRO seriesHey Sales People podcastDare To Lead by Brené Brown bookHow to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale CarnegieDare to Lead podcast by Brené BrownFollow Sydney on TwitterConnect with Sydney on LinkedInFollow Ian on TwitterConnect with Ian on LinkedInwww.caspianstudios.com

Jul 13, 2021 • 42min

Globalizing & Localizing Your Brand with Alibaba’s Head of North America B2B Brand and Marketing, Erica Chan

This episode features an interview with Erica Chan. Erica leads Alibaba’s Brand and Customer Insights Team in North America, where she works with over 20,000 sellers and 26 million buyers worldwide. On this episode, Erica talks about the challenges and misconceptions a Chinese company faces when breaking into the North American market. She also shares her insights on building customer trust, trade-show and content strategy, and much more. Key TakeawaysYou’re only as successful as your customers' success.There are over 30M U.S. businesses, but only around 1% do international sales. Think about how your marketing efforts can increase international sales.If you have a brand or company that you’re trying to globalize, don’t forget about the localization aspect of globalization. Local communities make up the global community.Quotes“At the end of the day, B2B is a very human business. What we’ve found is that having an on-the-ground customer success team to pick up the phone or meet face-to-face with our customers to help them through this digital journey has been tremendous. For us, this is a gold mine for customer insights.” “We rely a lot on our ecosystem of partners to help us with content ideas and also content creation...we love creating the content with our customers. We feel very strongly that our customer's success is our success. We're only successful if our customers are successful and we love featuring customer success stories.” “We actually have a competition within our office...We want to encourage folks to talk and get in front of as many customers as possible. It's like a competition amongst teams... like a fun way for us to incentivize getting front and center and really listening to our customers.” SponsorDemand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.LinksAlibaba's B2B Today Daily SeriesConnect with Erica on LinkedInFollow Ian on TwitterConnect with Ian on LinkedInwww.caspianstudios.com

Jul 6, 2021 • 55min

Inception, Flow, & Interruption: Three Pillars of Marketing Glory with Josh Todd, CMO of Mindbody

This episode features an interview with Josh Todd, CMO of Mindbody, the leading technology platform for the wellness industry.Josh is a two-time CMO with 20 years of strategic and tactical experience in key marketing leadership positions, including eight years at Constant Contact, where he led an aggressive customer-acquisition strategy that propelled the company from 50,000 to more than 600,000 customers.On this episode, Josh discusses how he’s structured his marketing organization to serve the unique blend of Mindbody’s B2B and B2C product offerings, and the challenge of building a website that serves both sides of the market.Key TakeawaysLess is more with your website copy. It’s more difficult to nail it, but if done correctly, the influence is huge.By making your marketing more simplistic internally, you’ll get more ideas from people who aren’t typically in marketing.The saying, “Everybody thinks they’re a marketer,” doesn’t always have to be a bad thing. The more ideas the better.Quotes“What we've really focused on is hiring marketers who truly understand what the one-to-one personal touch looks like. And I mean, they are just great at going in and understanding, ‘what do they care about? What do they like? How do I find a creative way to break through that's aligned with our vision, our messaging for how we can support them, and then having that directly connected to the sales team so that they are talking the same language.’” “There are three ways for us to [market] everything we do. There's inception marketing, where we're laying that groundwork. It's thought leadership — we're showing up in your trusted publications, and we're incepting this idea of Mindbody and what we can do. There’s flow, where we’re showing up where you are, whether it's answering a question in search or showing up to an event that you're already at. And then finally there's interruption, where you weren't really looking for us. Some of our advertising falls into that area, but what we're trying to do with these strategic accounts is just get in flow with them. Go where they are. Remove any barriers and any resistance. And then we can have a conversation about how we can help their business.” “We try to keep things as simple as possible. We look at that buyer's journey: Awareness, interest, desire, and action. It may feel old. It may feel too simplistic, but what it does is it creates a common language for the marketing org and the rest of the org. If we orient it to the customer journey, if we keep what we're trying to do simple and straightforward, we can actually stay out of our own way. We can bring the org in and now you start getting ideas from all other places, because you've made a kind of marketing theory, if you want to call that, accessible.” “There are a lot of hard parts in marketing, but one is: everybody feels like they’re a marketer. But like anything, the closer you get to it, the more you understand. This is a science, this is an art. Every little part of it is super complex. So the more we can simplify that and broaden the conversation, we feel like the more smart people we can get engaging and coming up with great ideas.”SponsorDemand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.LinksHidden Brain PodcastMindbody’s websiteFollow Josh on TwitterConnect with Josh on LinkedInFollow Ian on TwitterConnect with Ian on LinkedInwww.caspianstudios.com

Jun 29, 2021 • 44min

How an $11B Powerhouse Tackled Pre and Post IPO Marketing with Jim Sinai, SVP of Marketing at Procore

This episode features an interview with Jim Sinai, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Procore Technologies, a global cloud-based construction software company that recently went public at an approximate valuation of $9B. Prior to Procore, Jim held numerous senior leadership roles across 8 years at Salesforce, including leading the launch for major product rollouts of Salesforce Platform and Salesforce Einstein. On this episode, Jim unpacks the intersection between product marketing and demand gen, the hardest challenge facing modern marketers, the future of webinars, and much more.Key TakeawaysEvery product marketer must think like a CMO. Messaging is important, but messaging for an entire audience is more important.Whenever you have a disagreement, the answer is not going to be found inside the four walls of the building, it's outside with the customer.If you're a CMO and you're not willing to learn how the demand gen systems work, you're not going to be CMO for very long.Quotes“The best demand gen leaders out there can do product marketing. I've seen them do product marketing, and they all have the same attributes in common, which are stakeholder management and alignment. At the end of the day, what makes for great campaigns and great demand gen is when you have the sales team and the marketing team focusing on trying to say the right message to the right people.” “All good campaigns are really just about trying to get eyeballs back to your website where you're trying to convert things. We have this mantra at Procore in our marketing team that the website is our most important asset. And we put all of our attention to make sure that we have all of our merchandising on the website.” “Just think about how your buyers are humans and they want a really delightful experience on the website. [Maybe] that's integrating a chatbot...One of the things that I think is fantastic is when you don't have to talk to a salesperson to book a meeting with the salesperson. I want to talk to sales and I want to talk to them either now via chat or I want to pick up the phone. Giving the shopper that channel is really important.”“Whenever you have a disagreement, the answer is not inside the four walls of the building, it's out with the customer. So the person who has tested it the most is the person who will likely have the winning argument in a dust-up.” “If you're a CMO and you're not willing to learn how the demand systems work, you're not going to be CMO for long, unless you have a phenomenal demand gen visionary as your right hand..” SponsorDemand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.LinksWorld of Concrete ConferenceProcore is hiring! Follow Jim on TwitterConnect with Jim on LinkedInFollow Ian on TwitterConnect with Ian on LinkedInwww.caspianstudios.com

Jun 22, 2021 • 49min

Metrics: A CMO's Best & Worst Friend with Jay Lee, CMO of Avalara

This episode features an interview with Jay Lee, CMO at Avalara, a leading provider of tax compliance automation software valued at $13B.Jay is a two-time CMO with more than 20 years of experience developing high-performing marketing teams, and previously held leadership roles at GE, American Express, and PayPal.In this episode, Jay walks us through the ins and outs of partner marketing, growing site traffic, content strategy, and the key learnings that he and the marketing team at Avalara are reflecting on post-pandemic.Key TakeawaysIf your company is in a rapidly changing industry, treat your website as an online newspaper. Keep your users up-to-date on what’s changing in your industry so your site is the go-to site.Always have backup marketing channels at the ready. You never know when the next curveball will be thrown your way.CMOs that don’t have the numbers on their side are in deep trouble. Metrics are your best and worst enemy. Quotes“We are always trying to get a sense of what the spend is and then what the return is. In B2B, it's all about what kind of leads you are creating and all the different programs that you have and what kind of pipeline you're generating for sales.”“A recommendation from a partner, ‘hey, you should use Avalara to manage your tax compliance in our system,’ that's enormous. We do a lot of direct marketing ourselves. But it's always better to have that trusted advisor or a system that you're already using to endorse us because you know that it's going to work and that’s what really matters.” “COVID happened in March and immediately the whole events industry shut down. That was a whole channel for us. It just went dark. If you're thinking about a multichannel approach to go to market and one of the main ones to your target audience gets shut off — what are you going to do? What we did was we leaned into all the other channels. We put up a bunch of webinars and started to get ourselves into the virtual world.” “What's so great about marketing versus any other part of the company is it's where you're actually supposed to test a ton of stuff. So there really isn't any bad marketing campaign. Just as long as it doesn't cause any reputational issues or do anything that’s too strange.” “Marketing should never say this: ‘We tried that and it didn't work.’ Because the world is always different today than it was yesterday. And circumstances have changed. Testing is always a part of the budget that people should make sure that they have.” SponsorDemand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more. LinksAvalara Crush Virtual EventHidden Brain podcastJay's LinkedinJay’s TwitterFollow Ian on TwitterConnect with Ian on LinkedInwww.caspianstudios.com

Jun 15, 2021 • 47min

From Employee 11 to $600M in Revenue with Alex Rosemblat, CMO of Datadog

Key TakeawaysDon’t sweat the numbers, sweat the quality.All B2B marketing teams should consider hiring a great demand gen person that knows Google ad words as an early hire.To make an event that drives pipeline, you must define your audience as narrowly as possible.Quotes“To make an event that drives pipeline, I think the most important thing is to define your audience as narrowly as possible. If you were to say ‘this is going to be an event tailored for X kind of person,’ that's probably not enough. It's got to be X kind of person that works on Y kind of systems that is really concerned about Z kind of things. You really need to get as tailored as you can.” “Getting a great demand gen person that knows Google ad words like the back of their hand should be an early hire for any marketing team that’s doing B2B marketing.”“Something that we’ve done really well at Datadog: once we find a formula that works—even if it’s at a very small scale—then the challenge on us as a marketing team is to figure out how to keep repeating it or doing it in a bigger way until we hit a ceiling where you can’t do any more of it.”“I think if you were to take a look under the covers, we really do marketing by a thousand cuts. We have a lot of campaigns that do really small numbers, but they’re good numbers or the quality on them is good. So we keep on layering more small campaigns...and that’s how we end up delivering a very good set of leads for our sales team.”“The worst thing you can do is keep on trying to push something that's just not working up the hill and expending effort on it. Because there might be a lot of other campaigns that actually will work. And the effort that you're putting on this thing that you can't ever seem to get to work might be better spent in other places.”SponsorDemand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more. LinksFollow Alex on TwitterFollow Alex on LinkedInDatadog is hiring! Follow Ian on TwitterConnect with Ian on LinkedInwww.caspianstudios.com

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