Pipeline Visionaries

This episode features an interview with Grant Johnson, CMO of Emburse. Grant is a four-time tech CMO with 20+ years of success in scaling marketing operations and building profitable global businesses. He was brought in last year to lead the group of six travel and expense management software vendors that came together as Emburse to challenge the industry incumbent. On this episode, Grant discusses his holistic view of marketing, encompassing the four key levers and how they work together in an integrated marketing framework, as well as why the best strategies are customer-focused, how to be adaptable in applying your playbook, and much more. Key TakeawaysTemplates, tools, and playbooks are great frameworks to start from, but they’re not the actual roadmap. Keep an open mind and be willing to adapt your playbook as circumstances change.Closed-won is the key metric. Marketing’s mindset has to be that volume of leads and MQLs don’t matter if sales doesn’t make the quarter.The best practices and strategies are customer-focused. You’re more likely to be successful if you understand the pain points and personas and align content and communications to the buyer's journey. Quotes"My philosophy is the ROI of everything. If you can't project what a return is, I'm not spending that dollar…Pre-COVID, I cut between a half million and a million dollars out of events because they were harder to measure and they didn't prove to deliver the ROI. When COVID hit and I put the brakes on in-person events, it took me about five seconds to redeploy those dollars into digital channels.""I tend to look at marketing very holistically. I don't think I can talk about demand gen without talking about what I consider the four primary levers, all working together to help demand gen work optimally. The levers are brand, communications, product marketing, and demand gen, and they really should ideally be part of an integrated marketing framework…those are the levers that really drive a company's positioning, opportunity, and ultimately its success.""For me, the best practices and strategies start with a customer focus…As a head of marketing, that's where I've had the most success. What I consider the foundational work is if we understand the pain points, the buyer personas, and we align our content and our communications to the buyer's journey, we're more likely to engage successfully, create opportunities, nurture and progress those opportunities, and win that business.""We have a high level of complexity because of our tailored solutions; my team is not creating holistic demand, we're creating specific demand…so we really have to understand a day in their life, what their watering holes are, what they're going to respond to…Is the value proposition resonating? Is the messaging resonating? By taking that very customer-centric, persona-specific approach, we’ve found that our demand gen tactics have worked better." 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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Check out this open Demand Gen Leadership role at SurveyMonkey!This episode features an interview with Leela Srinivasan, CMO of SurveyMonkey. Leela joined SurveyMonkey in April 2018 to lead all marketing functions including brand strategy, growth marketing, product marketing, and communications. Previously, she served as Chief Marketing Officer at Lever, VP of Marketing at OpenTable, and Director of Marketing at LinkedIn. On this episode, Leela dives deep into the key components of her strategy, including how to truly understand and add value for your prospects, put your customers at the forefront of your marketing, optimize your channels and tactics, build community, and much more.Key TakeawaysKnow your prospect as well as you possibly can, and focus on how you can add value for themNothing can convince your future customers as well as the success stories of your current customers. Identify the customers you have who can best influence your prospects, and find ways to put them in the spotlight.Experiment, optimize, and measure. You have to be experimenting with different channels and approaches all the time. Double down on the things that are working, while still trying to find the next set of channels or tactics that are going to take you to the next level. Key Quotes“We live in such a noisy world, and your prospects are being pinged left and right with messages and offers and opportunities from all of your competitors. So to have the right strategy, you have to understand what you can uniquely bring in terms of value to that prospect conversation.”“Something that has been a mainstay of my demand gen strategy across companies is identifying the customers that you have who will influence your next customers, and then finding ways to put them in the spotlight, because nothing will convince the next set of customers like your current customers and the success that they are seeing with your solutions.”“Experiment, optimize, and measure. I think about demand gen as a portfolio of approaches or tactics, and they're often at different stages of maturation. For the most mature ones, you are scaling and optimizing those, but in the interest of having value to add to your customer and reaching them in different ways, you have to be experimenting with different channels and different approaches at all times. You're constantly doubling down on things that are working while trying to find the next set of channels or tactics that are going to take you to the next level.”“How do you add value to your prospect? What can you share with them that will be of insight to them? have that be the central meat of your campaign, and then figure out how to leverage that across as many viable channels as possible.”“On NPS, I see a lot of companies that are measuring it, but the question is, what do you do with that? And do you understand the why? That's the big gap that I see sometimes is the failure to really understand the root causes of an NPS score and then put an action plan in place and charge after it, because it’s not a vanity metric. We shouldn't be navel gazing, we should be acting on what we learn.” 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.LinksOpen Demand Gen Leadership Role at SurveyMonkeyFollow Ian on TwitterFollow Leela on TwitterSurveyMonkey Future of Work Resources Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This episode features an interview with Vidya Peters, CMO of Marqeta. Vidya is widely recognized as one of the top leaders in Financial Technology, and joined Marqeta in 2019 after previously serving as CMO of MuleSoft, which she helped scale into one of the most successful and fastest growing public enterprise software companies. On this episode, Vidya discusses the most important elements of setting your strategy for the year, how to keep up with the rapidly changing MarTech landscape, the key elements of her tech stack that she couldn’t live without, and much more.Key TakeawaysThe most important part of setting strategy for the year is doing so in close partnership with your sales team. Name the targets that are must-wins for the year and talk openly about the personas that you think would be the most engaged in looking at your solution. As a marketer, you have to bring hard numbers to the discussion. The burden is on you to arm yourself with data and information so you can have the right conversations with your partners.Forget everything you learned in school or business school about demand generation. Even the things you may have learned a year or two ago are probably out of date. The space is evolving so quickly that the best way to learn is to talk to your peers in demand gen leadership.Quotes“The reality is when you go out and try to put your strategy to work in the market, you realize that every bullet, sub-bullet, and tiny little word in your plan can take months to execute and actually even longer to execute successfully…there's a very large crevasse between thinking about the answer and actually operationalizing the answer and making it successful.”“Sometimes we make this huge mistake of saying, all right, I'm going to go bid on Google AdWords and put up a ton of money and then I'll feed those leads to the sales organization. Then what you often hear back is all of those leads were low quality. What's important is to start with the strategy first and then know that all the channels and all the technologies that you have in your arsenal are in service to that strategy.”“Our goal here is to have the closest partnership with sales on the strategy up front, determine the right channels to reach those accounts–whether that's through targeted events, digital channels or a content strategy–and be the domain leader for the keywords and the topics that we care the most about.”“I'm a big proponent of really leading with content and thought leadership to earn the right to be able to have a conversation with your prospects. It's less about pushing messages and ads, and more about answering customer questions and being helpful to them and earning the right to speak to them.”“You still have to put money in Google AdWords and you still have to own and absolutely dominate the keywords in your category and your space. It’s about shoring up the moat.  If someone were to cut my Google AdWords, I would say we just lost our competitive moat and it can take a long time to earn that back.”“Technology is changing so fast in software, and so much is changing so quickly, that marketing has a responsibility to not only keep up with those changes, but to be an educator and a trusted informer to the market, because unless your buyers understand this quickly changing space, they're not going to be equipped to make purchase decisions with the right information.”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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Find all the information online at www.qualified.com/podcast/uncuttableEvery week, we sit down with marketing leaders from some of the world’s fastest-growing companies on the Demand Gen Visionaries podcast to uncover the demand gen strategies that have been fundamental to their skyrocketing success.  In each episode, we ask our marketing leader guests which three areas of investment are most important to their demand gen initiatives. Tune into this two-part mini series to hear the budget items our CMO guests couldn’t live without!Part two of the special two-part mini-series features 12 CMOs and marketing leaders from some of the world's fastest-growing companies, including:Melton Littlepage, SVP Marketing, TenableChandar Pattabhiram, CMO, CoupaUdi Legergor, CMO, GongHeidi Melin, CMO, WorkfrontJamie Grenney, CMO, OwnBackupAdam Blitzer, EVP & GM of Digital, SalesforceMichael King, Sr. Director of Cloud Marketing, VMwareLauren Vaccarello, CMO, TalendJen Dimas, CMO, GigsterKyle Christensen, VP Marketing, ZuoraSuku Krishnaraj Chettiar, CMO, Sumo Logic‍Sarah Kennedy, VP of Global Growth & Demand, Google CloudSponsorDemand 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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Find all the information online at www.qualified.com/podcast/uncuttableEvery week, we sit down with marketing leaders from some of the world’s fastest-growing companies on the Demand Gen Visionaries podcast to uncover the demand gen strategies that have been fundamental to their skyrocketing success. In each episode, we ask our marketing leader guests which three areas of investment are most important to their demand gen initiatives. Tune into this two-part mini series to hear the budget items our CMO guests couldn’t live without!Part one of this special two-part mini-series features 11 CMOs and marketing leaders from some of the world's fastest-growing companies, including:Scott Holden, CMO, ThoughtspotSara Varni, CMO, TwilioNate Skinner, SVP Global Marketing for CX, OracleCorinne Sklar, CMO, IBM iXRyan Bonnici, former CMO, G2Mike Marcellin, CMO, Juniper NetworksTracy Eiler, former CMO, InsideViewLatane Conant, CMO, 6senseTom Butta, CMO, KyribaJulie Liegl, CMO, Slack‍Dave King, CMO, AsanaSponsorDemand 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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This episode features an interview with Sarah Kennedy, Vice President of Global Growth and Demand at Google Cloud. Prior to Google, Sarah led multiple marketing transformations as CMO of Marketo and as CMO for the enterprise software divisions at Adobe and Sabre. On this episode, Sarah discusses the marketing efficiencies and ROI drivers she’s anchored her career around, how to navigate the macro mindset shift that every marketing team goes through, and why being a career catalyst for your customers is the most rewarding impact a B2B marketer can have.Key TakeawaysHow every marketing team must undergo a macro mindset shift in order to embrace that every dollar and every minute spent must either directly or indirectly drive demand and growth for the business.Why your primary goal as a marketer is to be a career catalyst for your customer. The biggest reward of any B2B marketer’s career is to see somebody get promoted or get their next job because of the decision they made to bet on you. How to align with sales counterparts on a deep, strategic level that establishes a balanced engine that efficiently drives scale and growth.Quotes“All of your investments drive demand. [It’s important not to] view brand as one thing and demand as another. They all interplay with one another to drive growth. That's been part of the mindset shift that I've been driving really my last five years, including now at Google.”“Every interaction, every second that you consume of someone's attention, you have to quantify the value of what you're bringing. Minutes are precious, so you’ve got to think about the trade-offs [your audience is] making. It's different this year than ever before and that makes the bar even higher. It always should have been this high, but I think this year we're actually seeing that come to fruition and I like that. I think that's great for all marketers and every customer we serve.”“Being a career catalyst for a customer is one thing that I always say is my primary goal. If we see them get promoted or we see somebody get that next job because of the decision they made to bet on us, that's the reward of any marketer's career. It’s the biggest reward–that you can walk away from a career and look back and say, wow, I really impacted hundreds of people's livelihoods by making sure that I clearly communicated to them the value of our partnership and I delivered on it. For me, it’s a motivating way to look at the career of a B2B marketer.”Whatever you do, start with your first priority being your relationship with sales…I have found that no matter how much investment, energy, creative tactics, whatever you have, if you have not aligned with your sales counterparts on what the true objectives are and co-signed up for any targets that you're going to hit together, it really doesn't matter what you do. If you aren't already doing that, that's where you begin and end, because that relationship and accountability and alignment is the foundation for all success.Our job is to be career catalysts for our customers, but our second but equally important objective is to be comma catalysts for our quota carriers. All I want to do is put M's in their bank account every day of the week and if I do that, I've succeeded. Having that mindset that we're responsible for their livelihood is the right approach mentally as a marketer, because that makes you focus on the right things and make better decisions that also end up better serving your 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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This episode features an interview with Suku Krishnaraj, CMO of Sumo Logic. Suku is a seasoned senior executive with extensive experience scaling growth at companies like AppFog, HP, CenturyLink, and SolarWinds. On this episode, Suku explains his strategy for driving revenue for the Machine Data Analytics pioneer that went public earlier this year, why the CMO’s primary job is to solve problems, how to never lose sight of marketing’s role in driving revenue, and the importance of having empathy for your customers.Key TakeawaysThe CMO’s job is to drive revenue. Never lose sight of that fact. Keep your eyes on the ball and don't get caught up in vanity metricsBuyers are all at a different stage. You have to educate and nurture them through their journey by looking at the entire customer life cycle. That means a complete end-to-end mapping that bridges your sales and marketing teamsHave empathy for your customers. Think of the buyer’s journey, and try and fix their experience with consistent messaging and a consistent experience, and your results will be there in the long runQuotes“The CMO’s job at the end of the day is to solve problems…Demand gen is one of those things, but I really think of my role as growth. I partner with the CRO and our chief customer officer to drive growth in respect to two things: How do we acquire net new logos–net new customers at scale–and how do we continue to market to our existing install base.”“Marketing is, if not to drive revenue, I don't know what it is. Ultimately it's about closed-won revenue.”“I think one of the things that a lot of marketers miss is that ultimately the folks that are going to win understand how to drive empathy, emotions, and have a lot of care for the folks that you're trying to market to. What is it that they want? You're going to win if you deeply understand what they care about, what they do, and if you show a lot of empathy.”“Our job as CMOs is to drive revenue. Never lose sight of that fact. Don't go for vanity metrics. Keep your eyes on the ball with revenue, which is the hardest thing to do for a lot of CMOs, but do that with the help of your counterpart in sales.”“For any playbook, you have to adapt it to your situation. And the only way to do that is fail often, fail fast. I have several weekly meetings with different groups in the team and they know they have to give me bad news at the beginning. If they're not failing, it's a red flag for me.”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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This episode features an interview with Kyle Christensen, VP of Marketing at Zuora. Prior to Zuora, Kyle served as CMO of 6Sense, SVP of Marketing at Invoca, and VP of Marketing at Responsys, where he drove the growth of the enterprise business up until the company's $1.5B acquisition by Oracle. On this episode, Kyle shares his demand gen master plan that starts with a marketing strategy that permeates the entire company and explains why the best brand storytelling attaches you to a narrative of overarching change much larger than the company itself.Key TakeawaysHow to create a compelling, tactical content strategy that elevates a targeted, account-based approachWhy you must treat content marketing as a virtuous cycle. By helping your customers succeed and learn from their experiences, you can turn learnings into better roadmaps for the next customerHow to frame a great company pitch by thinking bigger than your product, your tech, or your business value, and attaching yourself to a narrative of change that’s bigger than your company on its ownQuotes“In order to do really great demand, you need to start with a compelling underlying story. Without that, no amount of landing page optimization or keyword spending strategy is going to work. The content and the message are really what drives things.”“The way we think about it, this isn't just a marketing strategy, it's a company strategy. And it’s a completely virtuous cycle. The reason to go with us is that we have better data, better insights, and a better product, and we will guide you all the way through to implementation. Then we get access to better data, we find better ways to make our customers successful, and it feeds back into the top of the funnel. We translate that into learnings, content, and assets, and the cycle repeats itself and grows over time.”“I think the essence of a good pitch is…what is the overarching change that's occurring in the market–in the world that you're operating–that gives your company a reason for being. The inevitable change that is happening whether or not you exist as a company. I think the best storytelling companies and the best pitch companies start there.”“Don't evangelize why you have a really fantastic web-based contact management application (i.e. Salesforce), evangelize that there's a massive sea change somewhere in the world…If you really want disproportionate attention from the market and to attract the right talent, the most eyeballs, the most interest from the media and the press, you need to attach yourself to a larger narrative.”“You can't do superficial content, because it’s not interesting. There's so much competition out there now for mindshare and time that you have to invest. You’ve got to have the right people, the right data, and the right narrative that you want to attach yourself to. It's not enough to put out listicles and things like that to drive conversation.”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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This episode features an interview with Jen Dimas, CMO of GigsterFor more than 20 years, Jen has led marketing teams at high-growth enterprise software companies like Plex, Demandbase, Egnyte, Polycom, and Hyperion.In this episode, Jen dives into the ever-changing landscape of demand gen strategy, highlighting the importance of understanding and adapting to the needs of the moment. She also emphasizes the importance of a tight partnership between sales and marketing and explains how to go about cultivating it.Key TakeawaysWhich tactics and technologies are best for empowering digital-first, adaptable marketing teamsHow to align sales and marketing teams across performance, strategies, and goal settingWhy measuring everything from first touch to close is essential to marketing’s successQuotes“As in all things marketing, ‘it depends’ is always the answer. There's not a demand gen strategy that is consistently applied that would make any sense. You have to understand your situation and adapt to whatever the needs are and the resources available in that moment.”“I need to partner tightly with sales. I just don't believe that sales and marketing exist as separate functions from each other. They're all connected and a part of driving customer value and bookings and revenue...That relationship with the head of sales, next to my relationship with my boss, is my most primary relationship at work. It's something that has to be strong so that we're doing the best job we can for the company.”“You need to have enough trust in the relationship of the executive team that you can have healthy conflict. That is the goal of having a healthy executive team. When there is conflict, I always consider it a sign of health, as long as it's respectful conflict and you're saying things in the best interest of the business, even things that are hard, that's the goal, right? You want to have a conversation where you can say hard things.”“Your website is your always-on front door, and that needs to reflect your corporate positioning–what is your value to prospects and customers–but it also needs to engage folks from a demand perspective and speak to investors and potential employees, so it’s very, very important.”“Do not try to make decisions about change in a vacuum. Leverage your community. Talk to marketers who've made the same kinds of decisions or faced the same challenges. Talk to salespeople who have struggled. Leverage people with experience because they're out there, and there's no need to reinvent things that have worked and a lot can be learned from other people's successes and mistakes.”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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This episode features an interview with Lauren Vaccarello, CMO of Talend.Lauren is an award-winning marketing executive with a track record of accelerating revenue growth for some of the fastest-growing SaaS companies in Silicon Valley including Box, AdRoll, and Salesforce.On this episode, Lauren talks about how to hit your numbers in the short term while working to expand the scope of who you’re selling to in the long term. She also discusses how to leverage your executive team to build brand trust, and shares a couple uncuttable budget items that may surprise you...Key TakeawaysThink of demand gen and marketing in both the short term and long term. How are you going to hit your numbers while also expanding the scope of who you’re selling to.Demand gen must start with defining who you are, why you matter, and who you’re selling to, then you can determine how you’re going to execute.With large enterprise deals, it's about emotional connection as much as it's about your product and your messaging.Invest in the backend and the “unsexy” things like tech infrastructure, because they’ll make everything else you do easier and faster.Quotes“Investing in things like executive programs, executive engagement, and building deeper relationships with senior level executives at your target audience is the gift that keeps on giving. You’ll hit your numbers today, and the more they see you as a strategic partner, the more your deal size is going to grow.”“Every CMO who comes in has to get points on the board quickly. The shine wears off our penny probably faster than any other function. You have to show momentum, and I find getting those short term wins buys you time to get long term wins as well.”“What's going to make or break every single demand gen person in the foreseeable future is your ability to be agile and adapt. If you can't move quickly, you're dead in the water. The world is moving too fast...So invest in the backend, invest in the unsexy things that no one sees or understands why you're doing it, because it's those backend, unsexy, tech infrastructure things that make everything else you do faster and easier.”“Our job as leaders is to remove every blocker and every obstacle and to give the people that work for us the ability to be creative.”“Because what we do is so visible, every single person in your company will have an opinion about what you do. And you have to listen to every single person and you have to have thick enough skin to not take it personally.”“I won't cut PR. I cannot ascribe a dollar return to my PR program, but what I've seen in the past is the anecdotal qualitative that just proves that it works...I've seen it enough times-–you're going to get better candidates, better employees, faster velocity, and your inbound interest and brand awareness just start to tick up.”LinksTruth Be Known Podcastwww.talend.comSponsorDemand 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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.