Pipeline Visionaries

In this episode, Eric shares with us how to effectively tailor marketing messaging, why it’s important to push the boundaries of content design, and leveraging tools like ChatGPT for brainstorming ideas. Eric also talks about why fighting pieces of collateral to get to the point is often done in vain and his approach to creating better content. Key Takeaways:Balance products and personas: You need to adeptly balance different products, verticals, and personas to create a cohesive marketing strategy. Segmenting your audience based on their product install base allows you to tailor your messaging and approach more effectively, fostering stronger connections and driving better results.Be innovative with design: Emphasize innovative and boundary-pushing design in your content. Think of new ways to deliver your message and make your content stand out from the competition. Creativity in design can significantly enhance your brand's appeal and memorability.AI is a tool - use it: Use tools like Chat GPT for brainstorming ideas. AI can help you generate creative concepts and refine your strategies, making your campaigns more dynamic and innovative.Quote: “I think the design is so important, and as someone who, I run the marketing team here, I'm personally probably on a lot of sales lists and distributions. I get hit up constantly by SDRs who are sending me things.  If it doesn't look good, I'm not going to open it. I don't really care what it is. Like I'm so busy drifting between emails and Slacks and meetings. And then, my personal life as well, that if it's not designed in a compelling, intuitive way, I'm not going to fight with a piece of collateral to get to the point. And so I think we have really tripled down on brand, visual identity, how the different pieces of our story come together…But when you're getting into thought leadership, I think the era of attaching a PDF or a static white paper, one pager, like those are so long gone. And I think in an industry that is a bit old school as well, I think standing out as a more dynamic marketing function where we're putting out pieces of collateral that not only does the user want to read the insight because the data we have is so unique to us, no one else is putting out content that looks like ours does.” Episode Timestamps: *(03:57) - Trust Tree: It’s all about balance*(16:20) - The Playbook: The data is the hook*(41:56) - The Dust Up: Approaching product launches thoughtfully*(44:02) - Eric’s Quick HitsSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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. Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Eric on LinkedInLearn more about VTSLearn more about Caspian Studios

In this episode, Chris dives into his go-to-market strategy at Wrike, and discusses how they are leveraging AI internally to become more efficient. He also discusses how their marketing strategy allows them to go after different types of companies within a very large market.  Key Takeaways:Efficiency in Performance Marketing: There is no time wasted on optimizing marketing budgets to ensure each dollar spent yields a satisfactory ROI.ABM: Your ABM tactics are increasingly important for targeting enterprise clients. Start by focusing on refining your org’s ICP and leveraging existing customer advocates to engage potential buyers effectively.Metrics and Measurement: It often comes down to data. Continuously monitoring key funnel metrics like lead quality, conversion rates, and cost per lead, to quickly identify and address issues and improve overall performance for your customers. Quote: “From a product perspective, we're looking at how do we leverage AI  to take, in some cases, a massive amount of data that sits in our system around work and tasks and projects and things that are happening and how to use AI to help people summarize a big thread of communication and collaboration that's happened over a period of time. And using AI to use natural language to create project plans rather than creating a project plan from scratch saying, hey, I have a project to do to launch this new product in this type of market. And here's what the product consists of. Build me a project plan and it can leverage data that exists both publicly for similar types of projects,  as well as within that customer's, set of historical projects. Like, how do you generate content that way, and then how do you use AI to predict risks on a project or how do you use AI to identify resources to staff on a project. So it's interesting: both our internal workers are using AI that's available to us to help us internally. And then we're also looking at our AI strategy from a product and innovation perspective and figuring out how do we make our system more powerful, more intelligent to automate some things, to help people, focus on more creative, human-centric work.” Episode Timestamps:*(03:28) - The Trust Tree: Land and expand*(12:47) - The Playbook: Chris’ uncuttables*(35:51) - The Dust Up: Defining your ICP company-wide*(39:06) - Chris' Quick Hits Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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. Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Chris Mills on LinkedInLearn more about WrikeLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Alison Lindland, CMO at Movable Ink, a SaaS MarTech platform that empowers marketers with scalable, omni-channel personalization through data activation and AI decisioning. In this episode, Alison discusses the importance of a customer advisory board and of personally spending time with your customers. She also talks about the flywheel they have built through their unique strategy team and how they incorporate customer insights back into their content. Key Takeaways:It is worth investing in a customer advisory board and building a community there. The insights and feedback that you gain can be fed back into the company to improve the product and create authentic marketing. Movable Ink has built a unique strategy team, made up of former clients that interact closely with their senior clients and bring back insights to their teams. This team has become one of the most sought after resources in the company. Having the outbound function sit under the CMO bring them closer to other marketing functions and creates alignment. Quote:  ”I think you really can never spend too much time with your customers. So making sure that you are out there personally talking to your clients. I'd say is really just the number one piece and, I onboard every new member to our cab and it's a considerable investment of time, but it's my absolute favorite thing to do. And in every single conversation that I have, there's always some light bulb moment opportunity that comes out of it. Some piece of feedback that goes back to the account team. Some personal connection we didn't know we had.  It's just always something great or an opportunity for them to speak at Think Summit, just something terrific comes from it. So I'd say making sure that you're investing in building those relationships and just laying those tracks.”Episode Timestamps:*(09:16) The Trust Tree: ABM playbook as a team sport *(16: 53) The Playbook: THe value of a customer advisory board*(29:27) The Dust Up: Turning disappointment into a big opportunity  *(32:14) Quick Hits: Alison’s Quick hits  Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Alison on LinkedInLearn more about Movable InkLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Andy Raskin, Strategic Narrative Consultant, who aligns CEOs and their teams around a strategic narrative — to power success in sales, marketing, fundraising, product and recruiting.In this episode, Andy shares what a strategic narrative is, how CMOs should think about it, and how to get CEO-buy-in.Key Takeaways:Clarifying and developing your strategic narrative is a leadership level task that requires buy-in from the full executive team, and buy-in from the CEO is crucial. A successful strategic narrative transforms the act of buying into that of joining a movement. The process of developing a strategic narrative often reveals misalignment within leadership teams, even amongst teams who think they are on the same page. Quote: “I always start asking, okay, what are the pieces of this story? I’d say there's always, there's like a little bit of alignment, but almost every time there's, people are going in different directions, and very often I'll get, oh yeah, the CEO will say, yeah, me and the CMO or me and the CFO we're totally on the same page, like talking to the same person. And then I'll ask and it turns out quite different about how they want to talk about the company and build this narrative. So it's a very common thing, yes. When I send out a proposal, I used to say like strategic narrative creation or something like that, and I changed it to strategic narrative alignment. Because I really do think that, at the end of the day, that's the work.”Episode Timestamps: *(02:26) What is a strategic narrative? *(08:10) How should CMOs think about strategic narrative? *(16:52 ) How to get CEO buy-in *(40:15 ) Quick Hits: Andy’s Quick HitsSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Andy on LinkedInLearn more about Andy’s workLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Kelly Hopping, CMO at Demandbase, a go-to-market company for B2B brands. They help marketing and sales teams overcome the disruptive data and technology fragmentation that inhibits insight and forces them to spam prospects. In this episode, Kelly talks about her strategy to make sales love the marketing team and to collaborate with sales on their ABM strategy. She also discusses the ROI on retaining a customer, versus getting a new customer, and how the brand is really the full customer journey.  Key Takeaways:Account based marketing only works as a collaborative effort between sales and marketing. It’s marketing’s job to make the sales team love them, providing them with a brand they are proud to represent and high intent leads. The ROI on retaining a customer is much better than on getting a new customer. Taking great care of the customers is not just a sales or customer experience responsibility. Part of retaining customers is building brand loyalty by making sure customers love the product and building community. Quote:“ I have a general belief, I tell my team, my number one goal is to make sales love us. And that doesn't mean that we do all bottom of the funnel, like pipe create, but it means we're going to give them a brand that they're proud to represent. We're going to give them great air cover at events and through social. We're going to give them high-quality pipeline that has good intent. We're going to focus, so we're not going to try to boil the ocean. We're going to be laser-focused on an ICP and we're going to work together on conquering them. We're going to give them content that's usable versus like a thousand pieces and they have to sort through it. We're going to give them five pieces and a really clean bill of materials that they need to close the deal. And we're just gonna be really, really, really focused on those things. So, to me, that's ultimately the strategy is if sales is successful, then we've done our job right.”Episode Timestamps: *(3:53) The Trust Tree: Building sales and marketing alignment *(23:26) The Playbook: Your brand is the full customer journey *(34:41) The Dust Up: Tensions with sales and ensuring you send them good opportunities*(37:33) Quick Hits: Kelly’s Quick hitsSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Kelly on LinkedInLearn more about DemandbaseLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Katie Berg, VP of Marketing at Klue, an AI-powered Competitive Enablement platform designed to help product marketers collect, curate, and deliver actionable competitor insights to empower revenue teams to win more business.In this episode, Katie dives into all things content, discussing building high quality content for your core audience and avoiding the trap of trying to reach all audiences right away. She talks about the meaning of community and building authentic relationships.  Key Takeaways:You can’t reach every audience authentically through your content, at first. Trying to include too many personas at once results in general content that is not of interest to any of them. It’s difficult to create entertaining content and you don’t need to have a perfect launch. The discipline of constant iteration and learning is the path to excellence.Identity is a core component of community. Build a community that people want to identify with. Quote:  “I agree with you on the point that you don't have to have a perfect launch. And actually that's like a great, nice-to-have that comes from a bunch of different cycles and learnings of running shows. But the most important thing I think we ever did with our flagship podcast was we started it. If you went back and listened to those first episodes, I'm sure they were trash, but every single time we would listen to them. And we take down notes on what do we need to improve for next time? How do you ask better questions? How do we cut this better? How do we create better social clips? And literally just the pure discipline of constant iteration and constant learning, it is like the surest thing to getting to excellence.  It just requires the discipline of being open to learning and trying to improve a single inch every time.” Episode Timestamps: *(16:54) The Trust Tree: Strategy founded on content and education *(41:01) The Playbook: Media driving organic and direct pipeline *(46:06) Quick Hits: Katie’s Quick Hits Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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. Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Katie on LinkedInLearn more about KlueLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Clare Dorrian, CMO at SugarCRM, a CRM that helps marketing, sales, and service teams finally get a clear picture of each customer’s journey. In this episode, Clare talks about gaining clarity on your strategy and ensuring that it is not based on conjecture, advising marketing leaders not to sacrifice data-backed decisions for speed. She also discusses the importance of investing in reputation management and her approach to content.Key Takeaways:You need to focus on profitable growth, and remaining both efficient and effective, especially as a lean marketing team.People buy from people, investing in events is very important, as is investing in reputation management.Don’t drive strategy based on conjecture; keep your team honest about goals and what needs to be done.Quote: “I think that this comes back to getting crafty when you are a lean, mean team. We think about big rock pieces of content…the way that we approach content is to break down those insights and map themes, topics that those insights have and will uncover, and we're in the middle of this right now, by the way this piece of research, into social media soundbites, webinars, into short form, long form, and multiple formats, and with a perspective that will resonate to each of our core buying groups. So that we get the most out of the research that we're doing. We're approaching content in a way where we're trying to uncover insights that we can then package in many, multiple ways to educate. When people are at the top of the funnel to reinforce that the challenge that they're having, or that we're expressing to us when they become a prospect is shared by many others and they are not alone,  but also into door openers for our sales team to give them reason to reach out, to give them reason to connect as well.”Episode Timestamps:*(06:53) The Trust Tree: Focusing on profitable growth as a private-equity-backed company*(15:25 ) The Playbook: The importance of investing in reputation management *(34:39) The Dust Up: Rebrand tensions and using your community to validate the right choice *(38:15) Quick Hits: Clare’s Quick HitsSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Clare on LinkedInLearn more about SugarCRMLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Kady Srinivasan, CMO at Lightspeed Commerce, a commerce platform that helps merchants innovate to simplify, scale and provide exceptional customer experiences. In this episode, Kady discusses the importance of understanding your segments so you can talk about the value proposition for each segment appropriately. She also dives into the process of determining where to play and how to win at Lightspeed Commerce.Key Takeaways:You need to understand your segments in order to ensure that you are talking appropriately about the value proposition for each segment. Go through the exercise of determining where to play in the market and how you can win there. Gain clarity regarding the choices that you are making and where you should say no. Position yourselves as a partner, instead of the provider of a product or service, when you are building your brand. Quote:“The short-term focus on the short-term ROI is a big problem. And then the second thing is like the unattributable spend and how to make the right business case for it. I'll say as a tee up to our budget masterclass, when we do it,  there are three segments of metrics that I've realized, uh, CFOs care about: there's volume, which is usually your MQL, SQL, closed one, you know, whatever that is, right? Then there is the velocity bucket, which is time to close, or time to first transaction, time to XYZ, whatever that is, time to first touch. And then the third one is efficiency. So it could be ROAS, it could be sales and marketing as a spend, as a percentage of spend. If you can convincingly present these three buckets  or the right kind of information in these three buckets, you get a lot of mileage out of your conversations.”Episode Timestamps: *(02:49) The Trust Tree: Leading the shift towards prioritizing higher value ICPs *(23:45) The Playbook: Managing brand building as CMO at different companies *(36:08) The Dust Up: The translation problem *(38:50) Quit Hits: Kady’s Quick Hits Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Kady on LinkedInLearn more about Lightspeed Commerce Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Smita Wadhawan, CMO at SimplePractice, a leading practice management software company for health and wellness professionals.In this episode, Smita discusses the importance of keeping your customers at the center and incorporating their voice. She also dives into educating the customer about the value of your product and then showing up for them through that product.  Key Takeaways:Customer feedback should be taken very seriously and it is worth creating a formal process to give customers a chance to share their thoughts. It’s important to arm yourself with data and examples when trying to sell your ideas internally, or you won’t be able to push them through.The website can serve as your sales function and you should experiment with how the website can “work harder for you”.Quote: “So I would literally think of the marketing strategy as the full funnel from building the right product to getting the product in the hands of our customers, to making sure they use the product and get the most value out of it. And then last but not the least using our communications and our creative to tell the stories which put our customers front and center. We don't use models. We don't use actors. All our creative is telling authentic stories and they are all our customers. That is something that's really key to our brand, always honing in on our customer and having them do the storytelling for us.”Episode Timestamps:*(4:43) The Trust Tree: Fulfilling your obligation to your customers, who rely on your product*(15:42) The Playbook: Customer referrals as the largest source of acquisition*(34:45) The Dust Up: Advocating for staff to support conversion rates on the website*(38:03) Quick Hits: Smita’s Quick Hits Sponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Smita on LinkedInLearn more about SimplePracticeLearn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Kristin Russel, CMO at symplr, a company that offers healthcare operations solutions, anchored in governance, risk management, and compliance.In this episode, Kristin talks about not only creating a category, but also creating roles for the people who work in that category, in an effort to organize their customers. She also discusses going to market with the human in mind and authentic marketing.  Key Takeaways:Creating a category involves driving brand recognition, but it also requires educating your customers and thinking about creating jobs within the category you are building. If you have a smaller budget, “brandquisition”, focusing on brand acquisition efforts with a very recognizable brand, can be a useful strategy.  Prioritize featuring real people on your website. Focus on creating content and going to market authentically with real people in mind. Quote: “When you think about creating a category, we're also thinking  about how do we create people who work in that category? How do I create a healthcare operations director or the manager of healthcare operations for workforce? And so, crazily enough, thinking about not just our content, but also working with our training team, working with the ways that we're reaching out and organizing our own customers.”Episode Timestamps:*(5:56) The Trust Tree: Going to market with the human in mind*(20:58) The Playbook: “Brandquisition” and SEO*(38:13) The Dust-up: Using the “Lencioni approach” to work through disagreementsSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline 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.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Kristin on LinkedInLearn more about symplrLearn more about Caspian Studios