Renegade Marketers Unite

Where do you go when you’re a guest on Renegade Thinkers Unite but can’t find a quiet place in the house? To the RV, of course! That’s where Ed Rusch, the VP of Marketing at Command Alkon, has set up his #WFH headquarters, working closely with his team as the company adapts to working remotely. Fortunately, the heavy construction software company isn’t new to big change—over the last three years, Rusch has led the launch of an impressive brand transformation, repositioning Command Alkon as a category innovator and leading provider with the perfectly pithy purpose-driven story statement: “Together we build amazing.”   Command Alkon had defined the way that business was done for the last 40 years, so when they found an even better way of doing things, they were setting out to disrupt themselves in order to change the industry, pulling intercompany value from a supply chain perspective through to construction. On this week’s episode, Rusch leads us through Command Alkon’s brand reimagination, starting with the quick wins that generate leads and gain executive buy-in, developing a provocative story, and then bringing that story out to employees and customers in order to build upon that promise. For additional materials about finding your brand's purpose in order to weather any storm, take a look at our comprehensive guide to effective B2B brand strategy, here!

It's impossible to have business continuity during a crisis if your contact center software is only designed to run on-premises (on-prem for short) and your employees can’t come into the office. This has become a serious issue for many companies in the recent weeks, because if your customers can’t reach your service team, it stops business in its tracks and, ultimately, adversely affects your brand. That’s why Talkdesk, a cloud-based contact center solution, made it their mission to bring on-prem operations home quickly so that businesses can continue thriving while protecting their employees. Their first of many crisis-centered products launched one week before “business continuity” started trending, and Talkdesk CMO Kathie Johnson joins us this week to talk about how her team’s agility, commitment to goodwill, and holistic view of business put Talkdesk front and center in the conversation.

Stack Overflow, an online Q&A community for developers, has a clear #WFH advantage—they’ve operated with a largely remote workforce for over a decade, and they’ve done it well, simultaneously growing their business and earning a spot on numerous Best Developer Website lists. That’s why, in response to COVID-19, they’ve made it their top priority to share their #WFH best practices and anticipate the challenges that more traditionally in-office businesses may be facing. On this week’s episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite, we’re joined by Khalid El Khatib, Stack Overflow’s VP of Marketing, to discuss the things companies can do to not just keep their teams connected, but to continue collaborating and innovating as they work from their new home. Tune in to hear his well-informed take on virtual socializing, the future of events, and the wealth of resources and tools available as we navigate a virtual world. 

As our CEO & host Drew Neisser so aptly puts it, “this an unusual episode for an unusual time.” There has been a lot to think about in recent weeks, and with the current COVID-19 pandemic affecting nearly every facet of life, it’s tremendously important—now more than ever—for leaders to step forward, take action, and lead by example. That’s why, on this week’s episode, Drew reflects on how you can take care of the people in your orbit: yourself, your family, your employees, your customers, and the world at large. His valuable insights incorporate the input of 7 CMOs who have shared their recent actions and thoughts concerning the current crisis, including Sarah Larsen (Brightcove), Jeff Perkins (ParkMobile), Paul Sparrow (Chief Outsiders), Janine Pelosi (Zoom), Mandy Dhaliwal (Dell Boomi), Sara Varni (Twilio), and Alicia Tillman (SAP). For more, take a look at Drew's tips on our blog, here.  

Joshua Leatherman has been CMO at Service Express for 9 years now—during that tenure, revenue has grown from 30 million to 130 million, marketing efforts now contribute a whopping 70% of qualified leads in their sales pipeline, and their NPS score is currently at 90. Behind these impressive numbers is a lot of hard work, gaining executive buy-in, inspiring staff with an employee-first organizational purpose, and building a customer experience that drives satisfaction and referrals. Leatherman is an expert on the metrics that matter, both the impressive ones listed above, and the ones that you look at behind the scenes to get there. It’s not about the number of meetings, it’s about the number of quality meetings; not the number of prospects, but the strategy behind how prospects are brought in and engaged. In this episode, you’ll get an up-close look at CMO math as Leatherman discusses how they calculate ROI and the essential steps to building a revenue-generating marketing engine.

According to a Gartner Report, Dell Boomi leads the way as an innovative strategic partner for its clients in the Enterprise iPaaS category, with over 8,000 customers and a churn rate below 3%. That’s the biggest compliment you can get, especially if you’re a company with a large service component. What role did marketing play in developing these relationships and garnering this reputation? Drew sits down on this week’s episode with Mandy Dhaliwal, Dell Boomi’s CMO and certified sommelier, to discuss how she kept Boomi’s marketing initiatives grounded in company strategy in order to modernize engagement across the board.   When she joined in 2018, Mandy hit the ground running: she developed a company purpose within a six-week period (during a holiday, no less!), presented the positioning at the annual sales kickoff, and oversaw a complete rebrand with a clearer customer focus than ever before. This week’s Renegade Thinkers Unite is packed with remarkable insights. Check it out!

How important are your customers to your business? This one should be a no-brainer—the relationships you build with your customers are vital to success. Leaders that actively focus on customer engagement and satisfaction are able to nurture a customer-base that will champion your product on your behalf and help push innovation. With a wealth of experience under his belt, Chip Rodgers, CMO of WorkSpan, knows the quantifiable value of cultivating customer champions and is here to tell us how he nurtured these relationships from Workspan’s early startup days to now.   Chip puts a special emphasis on building and retaining trust, and shared a perfect Bill McDermott quote on the subject: “Trust is earned in drops and lost in buckets.” For more gems like this, listen in to this week’s Renegade Thinkers Unite and learn about how cultivating customer champions can boost your business value, shape your product, and bring in new prospects.

It’s tough enough to build a company’s marketing engine from the ground up, but Isabelle Papoulias, CMO of Mediafly, successfully navigated through not just one, but two acquisitions within a six-month period. What did she learn? Not all acquisitions are created equal: it was two weeks before their second acquisition announcement when Isabelle, in conversation with her CEO, realized they had an opportunity to completely pivot their brand messaging for the better and decided to scrap their original plan. While this would be considered risky to most, the decision ultimately elevated Mediafly to a new level within the sales enablement category. Join us on this week’s episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite to hear all about Isabelle’s experience during these back-to-back acquisitions, how their campaign brought both expected and unexpected successes, and why ABM goes beyond marketing to give a company a surround sound approach to targeting valuable prospects. 

When purpose moves front and center, a company can attract better talent and better customers. This is not conjecture. Dov Baron, via his leadership consulting practice, has proven it over and over. Dov, who is also a top podcaster, best-selling author and speaker, gets to purpose by asking the tough questions. No wonder he sees himself as the “father of dragons,” helping executive teams find their own distinct purpose, and a collective purpose for the organization. This means digging deep and even exploring one’s biggest fears. There’s obviously a lot more to it and we spend a lot of time in this episode exploring why “starting with why” is in fact just the beginning of every organization’s purpose-seeking journey. On this week’s episode, Dov and Drew are also joined by a live audience of industry-leading CMOs, who weigh-in and help shape the engaging discussion. Listen in for more about the best way to find the why of your why, which questions you really should be asking to get there, and how to get tangible results from shining a light on your company’s purpose.

Sometimes, the big ideas sort of just happen. That said, some magical brand moment isn’t going to just appear without some planning or effort—but sometimes, some small bit of genuine authenticity can grow into a brand pearl. That’s part of what happened with White Ops, and on this episode, Dan Lowden, CMO, discusses how. White Ops is fueled by their purpose-driven mission to disrupt the illicit economy built by cybercriminals; that mission has caught fire and stands as a sterling example of why purpose is a must. Tune in to hear about how they formed their mission, how they show it to the world, why they shun the hard sell, and how an overarching purpose came from a simple t-shirt that just read “human.”