Building a Dream B2B Marketing Team

Drew: Hello, Renegade Marketers! If this is your first time listening, welcome, and if you’re a regular listener, welcome back. Before I present this episode, I’m thrilled to announce the first-ever in-person CMO Super Huddle that we’re hosting in Palo Alto on November 8, 2024. The theme is “Daring Greatness in 2025” and we’re rocking a full slate of inspiring speakers with ample time for networking. Early Bird tickets are on sale now, so grab yours at cmohuddles.com. It’s gonna be flocking amazing!

You’re about to listen to a recording from CMO Huddle Studio, our live show featuring the accomplished marketing leaders of CMO Huddles—a community that’s always sharing, caring, and daring each other to greatness. The marketing leaders of this episode are Marca Armstrong of Sensera Systems, Lesley Davis of WEI, and Isabelle Papoulias of BackBox. They share how they’ve structured and evolved their marketing teams over time, filling in critical skill gaps, fostering strong cultures, and aligning to revenue goals. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to this podcast and leave a review. You’ll be supporting our quest to be the number one B2B marketing podcast. Alright, let’s dive in.

Narrator: Welcome to Renegade Marketers Unite, possibly the best weekly podcast for CMOs and everyone else looking for innovative ways to transform their brand, drive demand, and just plain cut through. Proving that B2B does not mean boring to business. Here’s your host and Chief Marketing Renegade, Drew Neisser.

Drew: Welcome to CMO Huddle Studio, the live-streaming show dedicated to inspiring B2B greatness. I’m your host, Drew Neisser, live from my home studio in New York City. Whether you’re a marketing department of five or 500, no CMO can succeed without a great team working in sync like an Olympic rowing crew. It’s about coming together into a powerhouse that’s greater than the individual players. When it’s working, it looks effortless. The oars are productively, barely creating a splash. But when it’s not, sloppiness and fatigue abound, and when you dissect the problems, you often find the talent is in the wrong seats or simply incapable of pulling their weight. It’s a lot to sort out, which is why we’ve assembled an all-star team of CMOs to share their approach to building and nurturing dream teams.

So with that, let’s bring on Marca Armstrong, Head of Marketing and Customer Success at Sensera Systems, who already joined us on the show to shed light on the intricacies of leadership and strategies in customer marketing. Hello, Marca, welcome back.

Marca: Hi Drew. How are you?

Drew: I’m doing great. So how are you, and where are you?

Marca: Physically, I am in beautiful Lafayette, Colorado, about 15 miles east of Boulder, 30 miles northwest of Denver, and I am doing great.

Drew: So you joined Sensera in December. I know Sensera was a startup, so talk a little bit about your team and what you’re looking at in terms of your planning.

Marca: When I joined Sensera, the marketing department was very transactional in nature. And what I mean by that is, “I need a data sheet. Can you do this for me? I need a lead. can you find it? We’re going to an event, make it happen.” There wasn’t a lot of thought leadership coming out of the marketing team, which is part of the reason that I joined and I was hired. The functional areas were deficient from a product marketing strategy, overall thought leadership perspective. There were some really great people, and still are, that were doing the execution. 

In the past three and a half months, what I’ve focused on is trying to bring in more of that thought leadership on the product marketing side, make sure that we have in-house the skills that we need from a demand generation perspective because we were heavily reliant on outsource teams to develop that top-of-funnel for our organization. And then also bring on an agency that can help us in our positioning, because it’s sorely needed, based on where we are from a startup perspective.

Drew: That’s a lot to sort through, and it’s so funny because this is often the way it is at startups before they hire a CMO. They’re at the beck and call of the CEO and the Head of Sales, and they just support them. That’s sales support and sales enablement, which are important, but that’s not marketing. Talk a little bit about the structure that you’re seeing. You’re not a billion-dollar IBM, you know, huge company, so you really have to get, we’ll call it player-managers, I’m imagining. Talk a little bit about how you’re developing this team. You did outline all the functions, but are you hiring for each individual function, for example?

Marca: Great question. So let me go to what I call the communications and the brand and PR function. I actually have incredible talent internally for someone who has never done that skill set before, they’ve actually shown interest in it. They’re a designer by background, but they single-handedly pulled together our presence at the largest construction show. That’s our vertical in the January timeframe. So they have an interest in events. They have a keen understanding of how to position the company. From that perspective, there’s a learning opportunity to take this person and say, “Hey, let’s move into this place that I’m going to call communications and brand.” So that was one thing.

Then there was a person who was doing content, but really just blogs and not much more than case studies. From there, ultimately, I said, we really need product marketing. We need somebody that can intersect with product and engineering and sit between that group and sales and then figure out how to make sure that whatever we’re putting in market is relevant to the client. That individual decided that wasn’t her jam. So I’m in the process of hiring somebody who is a core product marketer. So I had to go outside for that.

On the lead generation side, again, I felt really strongly we needed somebody internally who could manage that process, and again, sit between whatever we’re doing from an advertising perspective and sales and rev ops. Rev ops happens to fall under me at this moment in time, so it’s kind of an interesting trifecta of marketing ops, rev ops, and demand gen. It’s actually kind of nice to have it under one house, one roof. So I went and I hired for that.

Then there’s this lovely thing we call marketing operations, which is all the plumbing, and we are currently doing it externally, but we really need to, I think, ultimately bring that internal. So those are the functions and the people. What I’m finding is there’s great talent in the Denver market, especially on the product marketing side, which surprised me. And then I’ve got a lot of marketing ops people floating out there. But like I said, I’m trying to both nurture internal and bring external where the resource doesn’t exist. I think this goes to a future question, but I also need to know what my strengths are, and what I have to bring in to complement me. I think that’s one thing as a seasoned CMO, you know what you do well and where you need the help.

Drew: Well, there was a lot to unpack there, and so I’m just going to check some boxes. So first thing is, yeah, assessing the internal team, and if there’s talent, but maybe in the wrong chair, you’re moving them and exposing them for a growth opportunity, which is really rewarding, because that’s awesome when that happens. I am happily shocked to hear that you’re thinking you’re going to find a product marketing person locally relatively easily because that seems to be the hardest role to fill across and maybe it’s the Silicon Valley folks that are really struggling if they’re trying to find someone locally. So that makes sense. One question I have for you is, I think about rev ops, marketing ops, and wondering if there is such a thing as just a blended of that it’s one kind of group that just is the source of data and truth. I don’t know. Is that wishful thinking?

Marca: I think it’s possible, right now I’ve got two really bright individuals, one doing the rev ops and one doing the marketing ops piece of it. I don’t know that it is a one-size-fits-all function necessarily, because from a marketing ops perspective, you’ve got a different tech stack than you do on the rev ops side of the house, but the two are intrinsically linked. The rev ops individual is working on all the nurture campaigns, the lists, and the outbound calling that the account executives and account managers are doing. On the marketing ops side, we’re trying to get all the stuff inbound and make sure that we’re dissecting it to a point we can turn it over and have higher close rates. I think they can sit under me happily for the time being. We’ve had some changeover in sales, so I stuck my hand up and said I’d help. I’m actually seeing some great synergy there, but I don’t know that it’s a one-size-fits-all model.

Drew: How many direct reports do you have? And in this structure, how many will you end up with? Let’s say you still have rev ops.

Marca: I’ll end up with six because I’ve also got customer success, and six is manageable. I’ve managed as many as 10 because at the end of the day, I need to be able to have my fingers deep enough in the cookie jar so I know what’s going on.

Drew: Right because this is a startup. You are not in a case where it’s a large organization and you are sort of leading marketing. You’re running marketing, you’re in it. So part of this, yes, you did talk about knowing your weaknesses, but also this is about how you believe marketing works. Those six direct reports are going to be the function of, well, these are the levers I need to pull to make this work. I appreciate the notion of having marketing ops in-house. I can’t think of a single CMO in the Leader program that doesn’t have it in-house. It’s just too important these days. 

Marca: We’re leaning on a lot of external consultants right now, and my demand gen person is sort of pseudo-marketing ops at the moment, but it’s not a sustainable model as we are in this rapid growth phase. I need to bring that internally, so I’m being very selective on who I bring in because, to your point, the people that come on board with a company of our size need to be players and coaches, not necessarily of people under them, but to others across the organization. That’s the interesting spin being in a startup series A company. You’re educating sales, you’re educating product, you’re educating—I’m educating the CEO on a daily basis.

Drew: There are a lot of other things, and by the way, I didn’t mean to say you shouldn’t have consultants. There are some specialists out there, like a Spiralyze, which can help with A/B testing, and they’re just so good at it you would want to do that. Or if you’re going to ultimately roll out an ABM, someone like a Jon Russo, those guys can add so much value that it’s worth it. I’m just talking about the basic function.

Marca: We’re on the same page. 

Drew: Okay. We’ll come back to you, Marca, lots more to unpack, but let’s bring on Lesley Davis, CMO at Waggoner Engineering, or WEI. You have to tell me, which should we be calling you?

Lesley: It can be Waggoner or WEI, your choice.

Drew: Alright. I’m going with Waggoner right now. Okay, so you’re here for the first time. Welcome.

Lesley: I am! Thank you so much for having me.

Drew: Well, it’s exciting to see you here. So when you started at Waggoner, it was a marketing team of one, of you plus one. Sorry, make it two. And you had to build a team. So let’s talk about, your several months ahead of Marca, but talk about how you structured your team.

Lesley: Well, I had two things in my favor. The first was, as far as identifying roles, there is one key role in this industry that is usually the first hire when they start to delve into marketing and feel like, “Okay, we’re ready.” And that role was empty. So I didn’t have to wonder for long. I knew immediately before I even joined, okay, we’ve got to hire someone for this. The other part of this is I knew we were going to double in size. That was a massive part of the interview process, and we’re actually almost 200% bigger in two years. So instead of looking around and assessing what I did or didn’t have, I was able to dream about what we’re going to need when we’re doubled in size, which actually did me a lot of favors and led to a lot less investigation, if you will.

Drew: So what was that first hire?

Lesley: A Proposal Manager. That’s a very big deal in the AEC industry.

Drew: Got it, because that’s how you actually get revenue. If the proposals aren’t right, you can’t convert anything. So you can have as many leads as you want. Alright, so that’s a critical one, but I’m imagining that you actually created your org chart for that growth thing, and then you started to fill in.

Lesley: Yes, that’s exactly what I did. I made three hires in the first year. So we got to a good size pretty quickly. I’m grateful I had a leadership team that backed that and knew it was needed, and we were off and running once that was complete.

Drew: Talk about, so what were the others? So we had a Proposal Manager, and then talk about the other parts of the team

Lesley: Actually, it was four hires. That’s wild. I think I did that in like less than four months. It’s crazy. Proposal manager first, and I believe quickly after that was a Proposal Coordinator. We work with governmental entities. They must go out for proposals to give work over a certain amount. And of course, if we’re doubling in size, we need the work. So a Proposal Manager, Proposal Coordinator, Graphics, and now Marketing Specialists that have carried the weight in about 15 different areas. I’m grateful for every single person who jumped on and said yes to the opportunity to join.

Drew: So the first part of this is there was a certain amount of demand coming in, being generated either by sales directly or anything that you had going. But then start to sort of think where marketing is actually creating some demand and managing it. So talk a little bit about that in terms of, was there a demand generation engine, or was that just sales?

Lesley: It’s sales. It was mostly sales. And because we were a smaller firm—I mean, we were 80 people—it was also getting people that had been here 20 years sitting in one office together, doing it the same way, to think about, okay, this is where we’re at, but if we’re going to go where we’re going, we’ve got to operate in a very different manner. So I’m excited and proud. It’s been a fun ride.

Drew: How many people are at the company now?

Lesley: We are at 274, but we expect to double again within a maximum of two years.

Drew: So that’s triple in terms of staff size overall from the company. So first of all, the role of marketing must have changed through the course of that growth.

Lesley: Agreed, it did. A lot more from “Hey, I’ll hurry and do this proposal or flyer” to “Hey, I understand this project requires public meetings, and it’s at this point where we need to be helpful to you. Let us develop the graphics. Please don’t develop them yourselves, like let us help.”

Drew: Yes, so you’re retraining the organization on the function while you’re supporting them and you’re building the team. So as you look at your structure now, with an organization that’s three times larger, what’s your charge look like? Or how does it need to evolve?

Lesley: We need an Internal Comms person of some kind coming soon. I think the next hire behind that should probably be, I’d love someone with photography experience, so that we’re keeping that in house, and someone with that innate knowledge of what they’re trying to accomplish. Beyond that, my dream is earned media public relations, someone out there, you know, pitching constantly so that we can get the spotlight that our SMEs deserve.

Drew: Yeah, because you want to be a brand that’s recognized in there, because that’s got to matter, both in terms of inbound and also just securing business these days, awareness matters, right? I mean, so that earned media can certainly support. So thinking about, you didn’t really have any of the challenges that Marca had, where there’s people necessarily in the wrong seats. Talk a little bit about, sort of suddenly there’s a team, and how are you helping the team work together and nurturing that team while you’re simply going, “Okay, guys, crank out those reports.”

Lesley: It’s so hard because we’re in growth mode, and to grow you’ve got to do a lot of work quickly. We meet every single day. Some may say it’s overkill, but we spend 15 minutes going around, talking about what we’re working on, who can help, where. Sometimes it’s to help reprioritize. Sometimes we’re able to be more helpful to each other. It just depends on the day. And then I’m finally, we’re remote, most of us, and we’re going to all be together under one roof for a few days in June. And I’m really excited. We have a good synergy. We joke, we get along, we have similar personalities. I did certain things in the interviews to make sure it was a culture fit with me, because that’s so important, and so I’m excited for us to be in one place, altogether breaking bread. It’s going to be fantastic.

Drew: Yeah. What a great opportunity. And remote does create its own challenges, right? I mean, it does, and I’m imagining so in the Silicon Valley world, they would call your the stand-up meetings, right? Where we’re blasting through what’s happening. What are people working on? And doing it every day suggests that there’s a lot happening every day.

Lesley: Yes, and there is. It’s constant, and thankfully, that organization has started to recognize these individuals and feels good about reaching out to them directly, which I’m so grateful for. And I think that speaks highly to the people doing the work, but it also means sometimes I have to sort of remind them that this party for you, the person requesting, is party 10 and the things we have to accomplish. And so that’s when I could hear that and say, “Hold on, hold on. I’ll put this at bay. Let’s focus where we know we have to focus this week.”

Drew: Right? So this comes down to, it’s funny, one of our Huddlers has his list of seven different ways to say no. But you know, if you’re really making this transformation that you’re describing, where you’re moving away from being, you know, delivery like Marca was talking about how they were just taking orders. You have to empower your team to be able to say no in different ways, right? Depending on who’s asking. It’s really hard to say no to the CEO, but they can say that sounds like an interesting challenge, let me talk to Lesley and see if we can add that to our list, because something’s going to have to drop, right? Just training. Great stuff. Alright, we will be back with you, Lesley.

Now it’s time to welcome Isabelle Papoulias, CMO of BackBox, and an industry expert who’s been here before, talking about the first 90 days for CMOs and shifting in position post-acquisition. So hello, Isabelle. Welcome back. Where are you this fine day?

Isabelle: I am great. And I’m in warm Chicago.

Drew: Amazing and well, we’re gonna get a chance to meet finally, I think.

Isabelle: Yeah! Thank you for having me again. And I’m surprised you’re not getting tired of me by now. It’s always a pleasure to be here.

Drew: Well, you know, fortunately, this is the first time you’ve been on the show since you were at BackBox, I think, right. So, talk a little bit about, what is BackBox? And let’s talk about that in relation to your org structure.

Isabelle: Of course. So BackBox is a network automation platform. We focus on very security-centric automation for network teams. So you know, if you want to zoom out a little bit, we’re under, generally under the broader cybersecurity umbrella, but really, we work with network teams specifically to help automate work around vulnerability management, device configuration, compliance and such things. So we save them a lot of time, and we improve the security of the network, because it makes network teams, network engineers, a lot more efficient and effective at what they do, and it removes the human errors.

Drew: Interesting. So it’s a technical sell, and it’s a technical audience, and I’m imagining that has some impact on the folks that you hire or that your team talk a little bit about, especially in the context of what you heard from Marca and Lesley.

Isabelle: Yes, yes. There’s a lot of things that resonated with me. But just to answer your question more directly, because it’s an extremely technical audience, the role of Product Marketing is, I mean, I don’t know what even what the word is. It’s more important than ever. You know, I come from sales and martech where, yes, you still needed product marketing, but in this highly technical space, you need that link between the market, product and marketing, frankly one for marketing to be able to truly understand the product, and then the person who can both speak the marketing language, but also speak the language of the buyer and also speak the language of our engineers in house, and the person who’s going to keep their finger on the pulse of the market dynamics. You know, what are the customer needs? What are the competitors doing? What are analysts saying? Where’s the market going? The person who can really, truly lead product launches and major campaigns around product launches, and then the person who can also produce content, again, that’s in the language of the buyer.

Drew: It sounds like, it’s funny, because a lot of when I think of Product Marketing, I think of a lot of ex-engineers who just sort of like the communication function, but it’s almost like they have to have that very strong technical sense. So when you got there was your product marketing team rocking?

Isabelle: Yes and no, they were rocking in the sense that there was a very talented person in that role, and he’s still with us, luckily. He was severely underutilized, in my opinion, right? Someone made a comment that their team, when they joined, was extremely transactional. I mean, he was essentially backed into a corner, the way I see it. I’m being pretty blunt about it, as the content guy, right, reacting to whatever sales was asking, we need this piece of content. We need that piece of content. We don’t understand how the product works. Let’s have a call to explain to us. And he’s extremely smart and prolific, and he wasn’t bringing in, he wasn’t touching the market at all, right, like the market knowledge and pulling in the insights to inform marketing and sales strategy. We had no campaigns around product launches, and there was no customer marketing. No one was communicating with customers about what was coming up. We had a conversation around, essentially, how I see the charter of Product Marketing. And he had, you know, and had broadened his purview as a result, and has felt tremendously across the organization.

Drew: The good news is there was a person there who had the technical chops and understood the product to play the role. Bad news was that they just were caught in this vicious cycle of answering the mail, as opposed to strategically driving the business.

Isabelle: That’s very well said. That’s way better than I said it, I love that.

Drew: That’s one, and that’s important because you are a technical sell to a technical audience. So recognizing that is critical. And it’s funny because it’s in some ways very similar to Lesley, in the sense that, hey, we are an RFP Government service company. So you know, proposals matter, and that’s sort of the glue of the sales process. So what else was working or not working? And then, how have you changed your structure?

Isabelle: I’ll continue with what wasn’t working, and then I’ll talk about what was working. We had a big gap in demand gen talent. And in fact, one of the reasons I joined the company is there was no digital engine at all. It had never been used. The company was completely reliant on events and PR to generate pipeline. And, you know, some great work had been done on messaging, and we had a great CTO that served as an evangelist, so we were getting good content and awareness through PR and great coverage. Events were generating very top of the funnel pipeline. But, you know, we’re not converting to revenue just because they take much, much longer, right? And we needed to be able to deploy all of the tools within the marketing toolbox, and at that point, we’re probably only, I don’t know how many there are. Let’s just say there’s 10; we were deploying two.

So demand gen and digital marketing, in particular, was a gap, and I had to make some changes on the team there. On the plus side, you know, we kind of talk a lot about the changes and what doesn’t work. But you know, one of the things that I’m sure we’ve all done too, is you have superstars on the team you come in, and there’s people like the product marketer that I mentioned, right? There were other folks that were very strong and again, we’re in this answering the mail kind of role, very, very transactional role, and our field marketer in particular, and so we kind of expanded her role as well to take on customer marketing. She’s now going to lean more into brand and comms because there’s so much work that is being done on that side. And, you know, I really need a lieutenant.

And so it was again, identifying people’s strengths and making sure that in their role that allows us to maximize and play to their strengths and give the most to the team and the organization. So there’s a little bit of, you know, do we have any weak players where you need to make a change? Do you have gaps, as in, you don’t have that role and you need to go get that person? And then, do you have superstars that are underutilized? It’s kind of how I looked at it when I started.

Drew: Had there been a CMO in the role before?

Isabelle: There was a person before me that didn’t have my level of experience. Basically, that’s why they leveled up.

Drew: That’s what I was thinking about, is if you are running a company, a small company, let’s just say, and you just want sales support, you don’t need a CMO. You probably are underutilizing marketing. And so what’s interesting in almost all, in all three cases, it was this situation where marketing didn’t really exist as a function, a strategic function and asset of the business, necessarily. It existed to support sales, and you hire a CMO who can come in and structure an organization that can drive the business forward. And that’s just a mindset the CEOs have to make a shift on, right?

Isabelle: Yeah, and if I may add to that, I mean, the person before me just had a lot of experience, but less experience in terms of sophistication, of the background, and really, number of years, ultimately, right? And had done some great things, like I mentioned earlier, especially on the PR side of things, but at some point, it’s more about what gets you here is not going to get you there. And I think you can say that about all of us. So they hired me because I had more experience. You know, my title is not CMO, by the way, it’s SVP, which, you know, is fine, but my remit was very much, and I know it’s a CMO here, that’s fine. I’ll take it.

My objective when I was hired, and the way I was very much briefed by the CEO, is essentially a CMO objective, which was really two things that come to mind from our discussions. One was, you know, we need marketing to be a strategic driver for the organization, right? So you’re leading, you’re not following. And then number two, we need marketing to have a team that’s really gelling together, is visible within the organization, and is driving the culture of the organization. That requires, yeah, a CMO or certain level of experience to do that well.

Drew: And it really speaks to this conversation that we’re having today, which is, you can’t, as a leader, SVP or CMO achieve the goals of being a strategic driver and building a culture without having strong direct reports. And you can’t have just these direct reports without the leader to drive it and be able to provide air cover for these folks to say, no, stop it with this request. It’s not a priority, because this is sort of, you know, what strategy is, saying no to something, right?

Of course, this show is about emphasizing you got to have a great team, and you got to know what the structure is. And it sounds what’s interesting here is, in each of these three businesses, structure is slightly different, not completely, but because of the nature of the companies. But in all cases, the leader recognizes they’re leading somebody. They got to fill their great seats.

Alright, with that pontificating, we are now going to bring everybody back, because we’re going to talk about CMO Huddles. CMO Huddles was launched in 2020. It’s a close-knit community of over 300 highly effective B2B marketing leaders who can share, care, and dare each other to greatness. Given the extraordinary time constraints that CMOs are facing these days and the stress penguins that they’re needing to squeeze, everything about CMO Huddles is designed to help leaders save time, empower them to make faster and better decisions. So Lesley, Isabelle, Marca, you are all incredibly busy marketing leaders. I’m wondering if you could share a specific example of how maybe CMO Huddles has helped you. Anybody want to go first?

Marca: I’ll go first. So two examples I will give. The first is when I was staring down the barrel of transition. Drew and the Huddles team was able to connect me directly with one of the recruiters who had spoken on a show, and so that was super helpful to kind of anchor where I was and where I was trying to go. So that’s example number one. Example number two is now being three and a half months into the role. There’s a lot of information out there on the first 90 days, but not a lot on what’s next. So I reached back out to the Huddles team and said, “Hey, how about the second 90 days?” Because it’s really, I don’t want to say easy, but to make an impression in the first three months. And so then subsequently, they put me in touch with somebody who’s written a lot about that, blogs a lot about it, and we’ve since had a terrific dialog to get my engines spinning on, you know, what I do next?

Drew: I love it, yeah, and I want to see that report, okay. Isabelle?

Isabelle: Yes, I always, whenever you ask, I give the same answer. What I get a lot of from CMO Huddles is not just what happens in the huddles that we have, you know, the webinars, whatever you want to call them, that we have regularly, but what happens outside of those because they’re small huddles, it has allowed me to build really one-on-one relationships with other CMOs that I take outside of the Huddle, and I can follow up with them directly. And I know kind of people are all experts in different areas, and I can set up a call with someone and deep dive on a specific topic. Additionally, again, the continuous learning, the emails that you send out, you know, following the Huddles and whatnot, I feel like it’s not just the event, the Huddle itself, but then there’s a continuous loop of, let’s call it, like interaction around it that I find very, very useful.

Drew: I love it. I appreciate that and you. You’ve been a longtime Huddler. Lesley?

Lesley: I would say feedback is invaluable, and you can get it there. It’s hard to go within your organization sometimes and say, I’m not quite sure what I should do here, but you can do that at CMO Huddles. And the other thing is little, just little everyday challenges, trying to find a vendor that you need in certain circumstances. And it’s a lot harder to start from scratch than it is to go to CMO Huddles and say, “Hey guys, has anyone ever used this vendor? Or do you have a vendor you recommend?” And they’re vetted and known, and you can go from there.

Drew: Appreciate that. Well, if you’re a B2B CMO who can share, care, and dare with the best of them, but currently go on it alone, do yourself a favor. Join us at cmohuddles.com.

Let’s talk about this. You know, Isabelle, you talked a little bit about the culture and so forth. Talk about the role that you play in sort of building that culture, defining that culture, and then using that to attract talent.

Isabelle: Yeah, it’s interesting. So we haven’t quite… I mean, the way you’re asking the question, I imagine you want to know about sort of employer branding, specifically. We are starting to do some things there. We haven’t focused on that as a priority, you know, in the last few months, but we are now. So work around corporate values and mission and vision of the organization and so on. But we are doing other things, like leading… Well, we have a podcast, internal podcast. It’s kind of like an all-hands quasi-podcast that we call “Back Talks” so marketing leads that and guests across the organization on different topics.

Drew: That’s a fun idea, by the way.

Isabelle: It’s a little different than typical all-hands with, like presentations, and, you know, the CEO presenting. It’s really more… it is like a podcast. I mean, it’s on Zoom, but it’s a Q&A, it’s a Q&A, and very fluid.

Drew: Yeah, no, that’s really cool. It reminds me of another CMO that I know who, you know, every week was writing a sort of state-of-the-company address to the folks. And became the glue that sort of brought the organization together. It was growing like crazy.

Isabelle: If I can elaborate on that a little bit on that, culture. So I went to employer branding. I don’t know why. That’s very sort of like linear, but really, where marketing has impacted culture in the way we work. And I think, really, that’s what when I was hired, and then the conversation I had with the CEO was around that. So there’s a mindset of, again, leading versus following, right? We’re very much, in many ways, driving go-to-market strategy. There’s a planning mindset in marketing now. We work with V2MOMs, which is kind of a version of OKRs, right? We plan ahead for each quarter. The entire organization leadership team knows that. The way marketing is working is more strategic, it’s more elevated, and it’s more visible across the organization. And in some ways, it’s also pulling other departments in, if that makes sense. And I believe that’s culture as well.

Drew: Yeah, how you work. Which is really interesting. Wondering, Marca, Lesley, did that spark some thoughts in terms of your role with culture at your organization?

Marca: I can chime in. So from a cultural perspective, I think it starts with your purpose as an organization. People want to work for purpose-built companies. So what is it that you’re solving in your market? And then how do you attract people into that? And then ultimately, what are your principles as an organization that support that effort? So, you know, one of the principles that really attracted me to Sensera was this ongoing desire of curiosity. So we have some people at our company… There’s one electrical engineer, just an incredibly brilliant individual, and he just asks and asks and asks and asks, right? You know, in some cases, you’re like, “Wow. Where does he come up with these ideas?” But it’s just an ongoing curiosity that he has, and it could be about product, it could be about manufacturing, it could be about a customer. But when I get up in front of the organization, I’ve done it now three times for our monthly town halls, I can always anticipate that this particular engineer is going to ask me some question, and it’s just because he’s curious. And so I think the principles that you embody within an organization help drive that culture. And then to what Isabelle was saying, as a marketing team, you know, we’ve got the responsibility for employer brand, so you know how you push that out? There are various ways to do that, but that’s what I would say.

Drew: It’s funny, as you were talking about your engineer, I was thinking about the five whys. I can’t remember if it was the founder of Sony or the founder of Matsushita who kept, you know, used that as a way of sort of getting at the real insight. But, yeah, it’s nice if curiosity is part of the culture, because if, boy, if it isn’t, it’s a problem. You know, Lesley, it’s interesting because you’re, you know, you’re a bunch of engineers and marketing isn’t. How are you finding the balance then between this sort of need for innovative, creative versus technical?

Lesley: We just do our best to show options anytime we’re trying to do something a little different. Here’s the ways we can do it differently. Our Graphic Designer is really good about that with visuals. And here’s how it could look if we wanted to move forward. And then sometimes I’ll just have to be not well-liked, and say we are moving forward, and so we’d love your input, but if you’d rather not give input, that’s okay. We’re just gonna, we’re gonna do this.

Drew: Someone’s gotta say we’re going this way. You know, I got your input, appreciate it, but we’re going this way. And of course, your team needs to know you’ve got that, you’re protecting them. You know, this is the hardest question, which is, you know as a CMO you have a remit to your organization to deliver a certain amount of revenue and pipeline and all those things. We talk about those metrics. But how do you translate sort of the business metrics of growth to your individuals in your team’s performance, given the fact that it’s not always a straight line from “I’m doing PR and marketing or events” right to bottom line. So talk a little bit about your metrics and how you look at team performance against, sort of individual goals versus the goals of the business. I’m going to pick on you, Isabelle first.

Isabelle: Yeah, that’s interesting. I don’t know that I go as deep with individual measurements, and I’d love to hear what Lesley and Marca say. But the V2MOMs, obviously, there’s owners for each initiative, right? And there’s outcomes attached to each initiative. So that goes back to the individual, right, if we deliver on this initiative or not. In my annual performance review document, it’s actually a quarterly performance review document with objectives for the individual. And we review that every three months or so. So that’s another aspect of it. Yeah, in terms of individual performance, I think those are the two things that come to mind.

Drew: In theory, if they’re, well, you know, I’m familiar with EOS and rocks and so forth, but if they’re three rocks of that quarter, they’ve delivered, then they’ve done their job. And if, in theory, those rocks align with the bigger rocks of the organization, then there’s full alignment. And so that’s what makes that work? Marca, how are you sort of evaluating performance? And, you know, how do the revenue metrics permeate the marketing metric from a performance standpoint?

Marca: Yeah, I think this is an art that we as CMOs have continued to perfect over time, and I’ve certainly learned a lot from my peers on this. But in my former company, I had the opportunity to work with a Principal at Bain Consulting, and she was brilliant in terms of taking the top-level OKRs for the company, like the objectives for the company, and then enabling us to whittle that down, then to functional OKRs, and then to individual ones. And it was really important in order to get, and this was during COVID, right? So we were all displaced into our homes, so you couldn’t have the water cooler conversation. And it was really important for people to have metrics that every day they could wake up and say, “Okay, I need to, you know, if I’m responsible for social media, one of my things is to do three posts this week, and then over the course of the month, how have I increased followership?” as an example, right? And then that ladders up to, how are we driving awareness as a brand? And then that ladders up to, okay, you know, what is the customer feedback that we’re getting through NPS? I’m just kind of making this up as I go. 

So that’s what I’ve done at Sensera. In my first months, I said, “Okay,” and fortunately, I walked into an organization that had the established OKRs at the company level, and then from there, I said, “OK, what are the objectives for marketing? And then what are the objectives for CX?” And I tried to keep them the same, but then the actual KPIs for those teams are different because they’re different functions. And then ladder them down to the individuals. And when you get to an individual level, for example, for a technical support person on the phone, it might be, “Hey, I’m going to write three articles for the knowledge base based on what I’m hearing from clients that they’re having issues with,” right? 

And then, on a quarterly basis, you go in and you say, “How’s that person done?” So I’ve made it very prescriptive, and especially now that I’ve got RevOps under me, it’s even more important because I’ve also got the SDRs. And those SDRs, you know, they’re like, “Hey, I want to make my bonus. What do I have to do to do that?” And so, yeah, I think the quantitative and the qualitative match are critical in order to keep the organization flowing in the right direction, especially when you’re in a high-growth company, because you can get bifurcated so fast.

Drew: And I’m also just thinking about Liz Wiseman, the impact player versus a contributor, that is a whole other thing. And I’m just wondering if the structure and everything, because for contributors, you can say, “Write three blog posts,” and they’ll write three blog posts, right? But an impact player will say, “Well, gee, blog posts are for thought leadership. Thought leadership is about differentiating in the marketplace and having a unique point of view. Oh, having a unique point of view means looking at all the other points of view and finding that one.” And so suddenly, this person is not just writing three blog posts, but they’re writing three blog posts that are absolutely making, you know, because they’re right on the issue that their customers are facing. So anyway, I don’t have an answer here, or I’m barely even getting to a question, but it does make me wonder how you sort of nurture, encourage impact players, versus in this, in the structure. So Lesley, I’m throwing it out to you and save me here. Help me a little bit in terms of your metrics and so forth.

Lesley: Really honestly, Marca sort of nailed it. We have the big rocks, and they all flow down. And we do each have KPIs. I think there’s a qualitative part that’s very important. And so what I try to do is we know our KPIs, our team is aware of what they are. And I try to go two ways. I try to say which way is best. You tell me which way is best, which way we’ll accomplish whatever this goal might be. So I’m, again, just throwing out three blog posts. I’m saying, “Okay, what’s going to get us the best ROI for this?” And then one thing I did at the end of the last year was I put together, and I don’t know how much I hope they liked it, but put together all the wins we had had over the year. When you’re in high growth, you’re so busy, you kind of forget to look back. And I was like, here’s how much sales revenue we did, and we know we touched a piece of this, because here’s our customer journey, and here’s all the places we’re a part of. So we know we had an impact here, and here’s how many graphics we created, presentations, all of those metrics and numbers. And then also, I’m always thinking of my team. I tell them, “Keep your resume updated all the time,” and that way they can take that with them, and they can feel good and own it as well.

Drew: Interesting. Yeah, no, I love this, sharing the wins, and that’s so much part of this is the cheerleading and the culture of success. Okay, so looking ahead, I mean, you know, we’ve had a lot of huddles on generative AI and whatever, but do you see some emerging skills or roles that you think are going to be critical for marketing?

Marca: So I just came from a local called Chief Growth Officer group in Denver the other night, and we were having this big debate over, is AI going to take over the marketing function or not? And it was interesting, because we were a group divided, and where I land on this is it’s not an emerging role for me. It’s more of a reemerging skill, which is the ability to critically think and write. Because I do believe, you know, AI has a place for us in the future, just like for those of us who are, you know, have enough tenure to remember when the web showed up and we were all like, now, what do we do, right? And the fact of the matter is, we’re all humans, and we need to make sure we’re connecting with humans. And at the end of the day, you know, I’ve used ChatGPT and other tools to write things, but I still find myself having to find that customer connection in whatever it is that it spits out. And I think critical writing and thinking skills are something that will need to come back in force as we get our arms around all of the development that’s happening.

Drew: It’s funny because I’ve had this debate in real time, and in a recent conversation in a Huddle, because one CMO said, this is just another bright, shiny object that we can get distracted by, whereas others are saying, “No, this is transformational, like the internet.” And I, of course, lean on the side of this is not one of those bright, shiny objects. But however, you’re absolutely right, in my opinion, that the importance of being a good writer now is even harder, is more important. And ironically, a group of people coming up with these tools, chances are they’re not going to be because they have this tool to do it. So it’s really going to be hard. You really have to find critical thinking and critical writing in order to get the best out of this. Isabelle, you want to weigh in here?

Isabelle: Yeah, that’s an interesting question. You know, I don’t know that I can think of any new roles, per se. Where my head goes is a sharpening or maybe a further specialization of existing roles. Meaning, look, it’s getting harder and harder to sell. It’s harder and harder to buy. With buyers, you know, not wanting to talk to sales and wanting to have the experience on their own, with technology getting more complex, and the paradox of choice and all those things, and so I almost feel like there needs to be a person that’s very focused on understanding the buyer journey. There needs to be a person that’s full-time focused on bringing these insights outside, into the organization. These are just variations on product marketing, so on, right? So I don’t know that there’s a new role, per se, as much as a fine-tuning of existing ones.

Drew: Yeah. I mean, I think the point there is that the CMO’s role, ultimately, is to know the customer better than anybody else in the organization, one way or another, that information, as you get larger, needs to flow back to the CMO. So I appreciate you bringing that up, because you could lose that in all the other things that we’re doing. Okay, speaking of losing that, we’re losing time. So we’re going to now go with final words of wisdom for CMOs, building or rebuilding their marketing team. We’re going to start with you, Lesley Davis, what you’re advising other CMOs who are building their marketing team? What’s your advice?

Lesley: My advice would be to not just listen to what you’re being told when you’re building that team, but to look around the team you have, see the skill sets that they have, and think about not just the next six months in front of you, but the next five years. And build that way.

Drew: Build for the long term, but assess your team on the talent you have in the short term. Okay, that’s number one. Let’s see, Marca Armstrong. Marca, what’s your tip here?

Marca: I alluded to this in my opening comments. I think it’s really critical that you know your skill set and that you bring people on around you that can be advocates for your skill set, but also support you and be an annex to what you’re driving towards. I made the mishap in the past of hiring another me, and then that person ultimately ended up being redundant.

Drew: You really need to know your blind spots, which means you have to be really good at doing a self-assessment and recognizing that. And so maybe ask a former boss, “Hey, what was I good at? What wasn’t I?” Just be honest, so that you can really fill in, that’s great advice. And last, Isabelle Papoulias. Isabelle, bring us home. Final words of wisdom?

Isabelle: I would say, trust your gut more than what others around you are saying. So to build on, I believe that’s what Lesley was saying as well. And with that, don’t take too long to make decisions about any changes you want to make on your team, any new hires, or any expansion of responsibilities. If your gut tells you something is right or not right or needs to change, it’s probably telling you the right thing, and make those decisions sooner rather than later.

Drew: Yeah, so, because these are people, and these are sort of human decisions, where you really are looking at it. And it’s funny when we had a conversation the other day, and it was a question of, how long should you wait to replace someone that you don’t think is quite doing it as well as they could? And the answer was, the minute you thought of it, which could sound mean-spirited, but no, what you’re really doing is creating an opportunity for this individual to find a better spot for them. So all right, thank you, Lesley, Isabelle, Marca, you’re wonderful sports. Thank you audience for staying with us.

To hear more conversations like this one and submit your questions while we’re live, join us on the next CMO Huddles Studio. We stream to my LinkedIn profile—that’s Drew Neisser—every other week!

Show Credits

Renegade Marketers Unite is written and directed by Drew Neisser. Hey, that’s me! This show is produced by Melissa Caffrey, Laura Parkyn, and Ishar Cuevas. The music is by the amazing Burns Twins and the intro Voice Over is Linda Cornelius. To find the transcripts of all episodes, suggest future guests, or learn more about B2B branding, CMO Huddles, or my CMO coaching service, check out renegade.com. I’m your host, Drew Neisser. And until next time, keep those Renegade thinking caps on and strong!