Chiefs of Marketing

Drew: Hello, Renegade Marketers. If this is your first time listening, welcome. If you're a regular listener, welcome back. You're about to listen to a recording from CMO Huddles Studio, our live show featuring the flocking awesome B2B marketing leaders of CMO Huddles. In this episode, Kathie Johnson, Lorie Coulombe, and Allyson Havener explore what it takes for CMOs to lead as true peers on the executive team. They discuss why it starts with looking beyond the marketing plan, connecting dots across the business, and weighing in on company issues, not just marketing ones. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. You'll be supporting our quest to be the number one B2B marketing podcast. All right, 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 episode 75 of CMO Huddles Studio, the live streaming show dedicated to inspiring B2B awesomeness. I'm your host, Drew Neisser, live from my home studio in New York City. Today, we're diving into a critical topic: peer leadership with the executive team at CMO Huddles. Our mission is audaciously simple: it's to help huddlers win, and increasingly that means helping CMOs succeed, not just as marketers, but as leaders in the AI era. The role is evolving fast. AI is reshaping how work gets done. Expectations from the CEO and board are rising, perhaps ridiculously, and marketing leaders are being asked to operate as true peers inside the executive team, so that's why we're bringing in leadership experts almost every month in our expert Huddles, and dedicating multiple episodes of this show to tackling specific leadership challenges. This is a moment where we're emphasizing the chief in Chief Marketing Officer. So today we'd like to explore what it takes to lead effectively alongside your executive peers, how to influence across the C-Suite, earn trust in the boardroom, and help shape the company's direction, not just its campaigns. Easy peasy, right? With that, let's bring on Kathie Johnson, Interim CMO of Nintex, and a returning guest who's previously graced the stage to discuss many topics, including martech pipeline playbooks and structuring marketing departments. Hello, Kathie.

Kathie: Great to see you, Drew. Congratulations on the 75th episode. 

Drew: How about that? That's a nice little landmark. And so, anyway, how are you, and where are you this fine day?

Kathie: I am living in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, right now.

Drew: I now actually have a vision for Cape Cod, because I got to go there for the first time last summer. So, lovely place, part of the universe. So, given your breadth of experience, what do you think distinguishes CMOs who truly operate as strategic peers on the executive team versus those who don't?

Kathie: Yeah, I love this question, Drew. And I actually took the opportunity — because I've been at Nintex now for three months — so I took the opportunity to also poll all of my peers and incorporated their feedback in this as well, to see am I aligned with them. I was, and that was a good sign. But I really bucket the thinking, as well as their feedback, into two areas. One is that a strategic CMO is owning more than just the marketing plan, and I'll talk about that in a second. And then the second is — and this came through a number of my peers — a strategic CMO is connecting all of those dots across the functions. So on the first one, like doing more than just the marketing plan, I had a lot of discussion with my peers around, you know, looking at the growth model overall, not just talking about MQLs, right? Not looking at marketing in a silo, being really focused on the business overall, understanding it, and then where do we win and how do we go win more, and really focusing on that piece. So, yes, understanding all of the basics that you do from a marketing perspective, but thinking also broader than marketing alone. And then on this other piece around connecting all the dots, that's all around how a strategic CMO really proactively surfaces gaps and inconsistencies across the whole organization, not just within their own org, and creating that no light between us — between the CMO, COO, CPO, and CFO — like really being one team to win for the company.

Drew: I love it. First, I have to applaud your bravery for going to the peers and just flat out asking, especially since it's been so — it's like, how am I doing, guys? Good for you for doing that. And the thing that I just want to put a pin in is the broader purview: whether you like it or not, if you don't hit the revenue numbers, you lose — whether you have quote the best marketing in the world. So that broader purview is really important. The connecting the gaps one is one where I'd like to go a little bit deeper, because theoretically that sounds exactly right, but it feels like it's harder. You might have a good relationship with your sales person, and you have to — and that you've actually, as Kelly Hoppe likes it, you've convinced the sales team to love marketing, and you've gotten that far, but it's often hard to have that relationship with customer service or the CFO, because you're measured differently. So how do you connect those folks? In some ways, it's the job of the CEO to do it, but I love the fact that you're accepting responsibility as a CMO.

Kathie: Yeah, and interestingly, that came up from two of my peers who responded with that as an important factor. Like, how does the CMO look outside of the marketing purview alone and come to the table with, "Hey, I'm seeing this gap, can we talk about it?" And I think that's the role of every member of the C-Suite — ensuring that, hey, I have this saying that I borrowed from someone many years ago: ship, shipmate, self. Like, make every decision based on the ship, right? And every member of the C-Suite, CMO included, should be thinking about the ship more than just their own individual silo.

Drew: If we are collectively measured by the ship, great, but if we're measured by the function that you're assigned to, it gets a little bit trickier. And the other point I sort of want to get a response to is, look, famously, marketing and sales can be in full sync, they can be doing a great thing, and then retention is lousy, right? Because A, they may have been selling to the wrong people, or B, your customer service or the product is flawed, so you sell it in and you have this high churn, and that's obviously not in the interest of the company, but marketing and sales are doing great.

Kathie: Yeah, but Drew, one of the things that's so important to note — and I love that you go back to how are people measured, right? Because that's how people behave. I wouldn't know of any CMO whose bonus or equity isn't tied to overall company performance in some aspect, right? Nobody's bonus or equity is only tied to "did marketing deliver?"

Drew: Right, I hear you. And then I want to say, okay, then yes, all of those things. And if you think about the best case scenario, when you, as a marketer, identified, "Oh man, our customer service is below average here, and sales aren't giving the right message" — are you able to fix those things so that you can sort of help the whole ship, if you will, sail through?

Kathie: I think here's where the difference is. It's surfacing challenges and raising your hand to help, right? Like, it's not surfacing an issue and saying "not my purview, you go fix it." It's surfacing an issue and saying, "Do we, as an organization, feel that this is important enough to bubble to the top, and should it become a priority for the leadership team?" I think that’s the difference —It's not like, "Hey, you peer, your area is dropping the ball." It's more, "Hey, with the ship in mind, I think that we may have an issue. Do we all feel that this is important enough that we should elevate it as a topic?"

Drew: Yeah, and in an ideal world, those issues get surfaced in the strategic planning process, which a CMO can play a profound role in, right? And I think that's really where that opportunity sets the agenda, and makes sure that all of those things — for marketing to work, everything else has to work too.

Kathie: Absolutely, you know, we're all interdependent, which I think is also really important. And the only other time where it does come up, Drew, is when something fundamentally shifts in the world. I mean, look at what we're going through right now in the Middle East, right? That impacts things when you have teams and business, as we do at Nintex in the Middle East — that's a topic to be discussed. So I agree with you, it comes up in the strategic planning, but things happen, competitive shifts happen, acquisitions happen, and so it's not just at that time, it can happen at other times as well.

Drew: Yeah, and we've had conversations here where CMOs are revisiting their strategic plan every three to six months now, and that's just a sort of acceptable norm, because there is a new entrant in the marketplace, or there is this external factor, or there is this sudden realization that SaaS isn't what it used to be, kind of thing, right? Whatever. And so there are these factors. Okay. All right. Well, thank you for setting that up really, really well from an alignment standpoint and a connecting standpoint. Now we're going to bring in Lorie Coulombe. Lorie is the Senior Vice President of Marketing at Equity Shift and an industry expert who has joined our stage before to discuss everything from event strategy and analyst relations to introverted CMOs. Hello, Lorie. Wonderful to see you again.

Lorie: Great to see you too. Thanks, Drew, for having me.

Drew: And so, where are you this fine day?

Lorie: I'm in rainy New York City.

Drew: Indeed rainy. Yes, but we're cheery here in the studio. So from your vantage point — I know you're at a smaller company, it's a smaller team, and I think that's an important part of it — what does effective peer leadership look like when you're sitting at the table?

Lorie: Yeah, so you know, thinking about this role and previous CMO roles I've had, it really comes down to having respect for each other, being respectful, building trust, understanding that we're all committed to the company's success, and the idea that we can engage in healthy discourse and healthy discussions where we may disagree, but ultimately commit. I had a colleague in a prior role on the executive leadership team who used to say, "Let's disagree, but commit." You know, that helped with decision making. But I wanted to say too, I think you know, flexing your EQ along with your IQ, being prepared and understanding the folks in the room with you — your peers on the leadership team — and something Kathie said that I was thinking about as well: as CMOs, you need to own more than the marketing plan. I, you know, identify gaps and be active participants in discussions about the company's business priorities, performance metrics, where we're challenged, and really use your voice and share your opinions as well, because you're not meant to be a silent participant on the executive team — you're meant to work with your peers to commit to the company being successful.

Drew: And it's interesting, so I love this — "disagree, but commit." I do think that a lot of first-time CMOs, sometimes when they're in a board meeting and they're presenting, they feel like they have to stick in their domain, right? And I think that's problematic. And if that becomes a habit, then they — you are "just the marketer," and those are three words you never want to hear, right? And I also feel like this is a moment because of AI where, even if you have the most EQ in the world, you can just have an outrageous advantage if you are anticipating and creating character profiles of all the people you're supposed to interact with and anticipating what they might say to what you give them.

Lorie: Yeah, and I think you know, AI is a tool, but it's building. I'm fully remote, just to share with everybody, so my peers are in another city, so I make the effort to have more one-on-one conversations with them and build relationships with them, so when we are on our exec calls or board calls or together, I understand — I can not just see the visual cues on a Zoom or a Teams, but I also have a better understanding of who they are and what motivates them and how they approach being on the leadership team at the company.

Drew: Yeah, and boy, understanding their personality so matters.

Lorie: It really does.

Drew: There's, you know, it's like I want to know what order were you — an oldest child? This would be a really good time for me to understand that. Were you the youngest or the oldest, or stuck in the middle, and if you're stuck in the middle, do you have a complex about that? It's just funny, those things start to matter. So that's an interesting thing. I'm wondering if, other than what we talked about — which is one-on-one and getting to know them and building up these relationships — if you can give... it's disagreeing but committing, which sounds easy, but it's a lot harder. Because look, if you disagree, for example, on a product launch, and you're the marketer, right, and you're in fact right, and they were wrong, and you go forth with it, you're going to fail, and then it's still going to blame marketing. So, how do you know when you're in these disagreements? How far? When do you fall on your sword? When don't you, and how have you worked that out in the past?

Lorie: Yeah, so, you know, I've tried in the past to — well, first of all, understanding the things that will trigger peers on the leadership team, trigger my CEO, or what is important for him or her. And I also know when to step back in a group meeting and maybe bring the conversation to a smaller, like one-on-one, to say, "Hey, you know, we need to talk about this separately," because this — maybe you're not seeing that this product launch not only impacts the dev team but impacts how we talk about ourselves, how our sales team will be able to potentially sell this or not. There are greater ramifications, and I've been in meetings where I've said also, like, "We can talk about it here or we can take it to a smaller group."

Drew: And then, having done that, when you take it to a smaller group — are you finding, because now it's not the show in front of the boss, it's just you and this person, and you're sort of trying to work it out — that it has really helped you?

Lorie: Well, I don't always win, but it has helped me work through some of the details and make sure my voice and perspective is heard. So, you know, we try our best. We don't always win, but we have to advocate for our business and understand that, you know, going back to performance — I'm being held to certain performance metrics and standards, so I have to make sure that I represent that in conversations, whether it's in the larger executive leadership team or smaller.

Drew: Yeah, I do think part of this is knowing little things versus big things, right? There are things where, if the strategic direction of the company and the position of the company is wrong or doesn't resonate, those are things where, if you're not going to fall on your sword, you better — you're going to be a dog with a bone fighting for it. Whereas there are other things that you can probably just disagree on, but you recognize it's not going to be that big a deal.

Lorie: Right, right. And I think, to me, it's understanding that maybe it comes down to something as fixable as, you know, resource allocation issues, and when you have those smaller conversations, you can get at the meat on the bone and figure out where we can problem-solve together.

Drew: Exactly. Okay, love this. Now we're going to welcome Allyson Havener, who's been waiting patiently for 20 minutes. She's a former CMO of TrustRadius, who has previously joined us to discuss a mix of topics, including customer-led growth, moving up market, and B2B buying trends. Hello, Allyson. Welcome back.

Allyson: Hi, Drew. How are you?

Drew: I love there's a little pooch behind you there.

Allyson: I know, it's like I have an old picture of my grandma and my dog, you know. Those are the important people.

Drew: If I could swing my camera, you'd see my dog is there joining us for this show. So, by the way, where are you?

Allyson: I am in sunny San Francisco.

Drew: Sunny San Francisco!

Allyson: I know, it's actually like a beautiful day. I took my dog on a walk this morning, and I was like ready — like everyone in San Francisco, you know, Patagonia is like the uniform — and so I put on my jacket, like ready to go, and I'm sweating. Which is very rare, right? You have to wear a lot of layers in San Francisco, but it's beautiful right now.

Drew: Let's talk about — yeah, first of all, I'm wondering: you heard from Kathie and Lorie. I was just curious, anything that they said resonate with you, or did you want to riff on anything?

Allyson: Yeah, I mean, one thing that resonated with me was what Kathie was saying, and I think this is really the CMO's mindset — it's kind of like that business-first mentality, right? She really talked about thinking about the ship, and you're thinking about the business, and having the executive team as your team — that's your first team. Secondarily is the marketing organization. I think that type of mentality really helps CMOs excel in the executive room with the board, because you're truly coming as a business leader, and you're laddering everything marketing is doing into the business — where corporate strategy is, what those initiatives are. That mentality is really important, and I think gone are the days where marketing is very insular, it's about our team. You know, I always used to tell my team, like, there are a lot of these "engine room metrics," and nobody really cares about those except for us — like, we're marketing nerds, and so we can chat about that, we can optimize, and we can have those discussions, but those are engine room discussions. When we bring those discussions to the rest of the organization, we have to tailor that and ladder it into what they care about, what their bottom line is. So if you're talking to sales, or if you're talking to customer success, or product — they have different incentives, and I think Kathie also mentioned this — they're measured differently. So, what are we doing from a marketing perspective that aligns cross-functionally, gets stuff done, and drives results for them, that's going to improve their bottom line? And the CMO has to do the same thing: here are the business metrics to get us to wherever our goal is for our company, and what is marketing doing to improve those metrics, and how do they all ladder up? And so I think that was — I think about that all the time. It's so easy for marketers to talk shop, and it's not that I should say nobody cares, but if you're not also — to Kathie's point — connecting the dots, it's harder. Like, somebody that's not a marketer, they'll have a hard time connecting the dots, so do it for them.

Drew: Yeah, I think we're going to run this ship metaphor into the ground, but I love it. "Engine room metrics" is perfect for that. At some point we're going to have to get to the poop deck, and I'm not really sure what happens there, but anyway — who's driving this ship? They might ask. Let's talk about what's interesting to me: you grew up at TrustRadius, and you weren't the CMO, and you became the CMO through a journey. And I'm imagining that you learned marketing, you learned leadership — you learned all of it as you were just a kiddo on this fast, very fast ship that was TrustRadius before it got bought. So talk a little bit about how you didn't walk in there with all these skills.

Allyson: No, definitely not. At my previous company, I was number two to the CMO, so I was again learning really how to work cross-functionally — that cross-functional alignment, being in the trenches with sales. But leveling up to a board and an executive team is very, very different. And so, when I started at TrustRadius, I was a VP of Marketing, but I was still reporting to the CEO — and obviously the board — and my goal was to become CMO. And so I had to really think about what elevates you from a VP of Marketing to a CMO. I know that there are a lot of differences in the way people fit into a company and everything, and I really wanted to level myself up. I think that was part of it — building my business acumen. And so the first thing I did was become best friends with the CFO, because I knew that, really, if you understand the business metrics and you can talk about, like, "Hey, these are the types of things that we're doing, this is how we're gaining market share, this is how we're thinking about our customers and how we're educating them to retain them" — whatever it is that you're doing, whatever initiative you're running, if you can ladder that into the bottom-line metrics of the business, and the CFO agrees with you and is essentially backing your story, like that's best case scenario. So that was the first thing I really wanted to do — essentially create the benchmark. And then from there, it was all about alignment with our COO and the sales and CS organization. And so I kind of just started to build that, and eventually staked my claim as a CMO before our acquisition, and now just living that post-acquisition life.

Drew: Well, you've had a big exit, and that — congratulations on that, that's really cool. I'm so glad you shared that story, because I think a lot of VPs of Marketing don't see that path — they're stuck as marketers and think like marketers, as opposed to business people. And this is really important. I mean, it's full stop, right? If you can't have a business conversation about how the company makes money, or will make money, or drives revenue, in any seat, then you're not ready.

Allyson: No. And you know, I think the other piece of this — and it's so, so important — is that you're a steward of the customer. I never walked into our executive offsites or the board meeting without customer voice, without customer data, without anecdotes from the customer. I established our customer advisory board — actually, Kathie was on our customer advisory board, so we go way back. But having the customer voice is so important because you're not just pulling things out of thin air. And even though you have data — data is awesome, of course — if you can back that with, like, "This is what our top customers are saying," or "This is what we're hearing across our customer base," that's huge. It's so, so impactful. And I think, again, that gets you out of this "you're just a marketer" realm, and you're really a steward of the customer and the customer voice in that room.

Drew: You know, I love it. And I say this in Huddles all the time — if every sentence starts with "I was talking to a customer the other day," it's just pure gold. If you can drop one of those — "I was talking to a customer about this very thing" — everybody will just stop and turn. The power of anecdotal data and stories like that is so underappreciated when you're busy, you know? "I'm working on my campaigns, I'm getting my cost per acquisition down, I'm doing all that." But man, what'll change the deal is when suddenly the board or CEO says, "Oh, that's what they think? Okay, all right, amazing." Thank you for that, Allyson. Now it's time for me to talk about CMO Huddles, which was launched in 2020. CMO Huddles is the only community of "flocking awesome" B2B marketing leaders, and it has a logo featuring penguins. What? Yes. Well, a group of these curious, adaptable, and problem-solving birds is called a huddle, and the leaders in CMO Huddles are all that and more — huddling together to conquer the toughest job in the C-Suite. And I have data to back that up, by the way. Anyway, Kathie, Lorie, Allyson — you're all incredibly busy marketing leaders and longtime huddlers. I'm wondering if you could share a specific example of how Huddles has maybe helped you recently.

Kathie: I could share, Drew. I've been there since the beginning, and just to give a plug to CMO Huddles — when I went out on my own, you know, launched my own business last year, you have a decision to make, because all of a sudden it's your own money. Are you going to rejoin or not? And I did, so that shows that I have gotten value out of it. And even in that same scenario, Drew, I leveraged you — I leveraged you from a conversation perspective, but also in the sense of, "Hey, can you connect me to other people who have done this or been on this journey before?" So that's one of my most recent experiences, although I've leveraged it numerous times.

Drew: I love it. Thank you for that. Delighted to see you are on path very, very quickly, which is awesome. Allyson, Lorie?

Allyson: Yeah, I mean, I also — you kind of mentioned this — but one of the first things I did when I became a VP of Marketing, as I started that new chapter of my career, was join CMO Huddles. And Drew and the entire group of huddlers have been so supportive in my journey and helping me grow. But recently, so post-acquisition, there's a great resource called the Transition Team, and it's like, how do you continue to build your brand? How do you go out and find a new job? And for someone that was in a seat for five years, you kind of forget how to do those things. And so it's great that there's multiple ways to really leverage the huddle wherever you are in your career, so I've had just the greatest experiences over the last five years, wherever I've been in my career.

Drew: I'm sending you all hugs. I just want you to know that I so appreciate these comments. It makes me so happy. I had the pleasure of seeing you last week, but

Lorie: I was gonna say, most recently, for me, I think one of the great things about CMO Huddles is bringing to this group of really smart and talented CMOs all of the thought leaders, all of the people who are innovating in their spaces. And being able to go to your strategy lab sessions in Durham, getting inspired and ideas from folks who are doing some amazing things — whether it's in AI or talking about positioning — like really relevant topics and businesses that I wouldn't have had direct exposure to without participating as a huddler.

Drew: I love it. So, anyway, if you're a B2B marketing leader who wants to build a stronger peer network, gain recognition as a thought leader, and maybe even get your very own Stress Penguin, join us at CMOhuddles.com and you can start for free via our Starter Program. Okay, so we've talked about the happy stuff so far, and every once in a while things go off the rails — and this wasn't in the script, so I'm going off the rails a little bit — but so we're in a ship and we're in Drake's Passage, and it's really, really rocky. And I'm wondering if you've been in a situation where maybe a new sales leader comes in and how you've been able to quickly find the equilibrium, whether it's onboarding something or just dealing with that executive team outlier. Anybody want to jump in on that? But you know, again, you don't have to talk about the most recent thing, and you know, we're not talking out of school, but I'm just curious if you have thoughts on that, because I know sometimes I have visceral reactions to focus, like, oh, don't do that. But go ahead, Lorie.

Lorie: Through the context of one book that was really helpful for me was The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins, and one of the chapters was on creating alliances, but also understanding and identifying who will be a supporter of yours, who could be a person who objects to you and what you're doing, and who could be persuaded. And I apply that in my role. I think trying to identify this outlier, and then, again, going back to something I said earlier, connecting with them one on one. You know, you may never agree, but at least having the book and having Michael Watkins' thoughts on it really has helped me navigate overall relationship building at the executive level.

Drew: Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned Michael. We had him for an expert huddle, and I still consider that one of the best business books ever written. Not just The First 90 Days, but it's just such a great framework for thinking about it. Anybody else have thoughts on the rogue team member, and how you, if you have been successful at lassoing them and bringing them back on the ship?

Kathie: Yeah, I'll jump in. I definitely had that experience. I think probably all of us have at some point. I tend to be a pretty direct person, and I agree with you, Lorie. Definitely the one-on-one side, but really pulling that person aside — and I was raised by a psychologist, so I'm always trying to think about what are they trying to actually accomplish, so I can figure out what's important to them, and then helping the navigation from that perspective. Like almost being a guide for them — I understand what are you trying to accomplish, and then let me help you understand how all these other players see and are interpreting what you're saying. And if that's not what you actually mean, sometimes it's not — like going in anticipating, or you know, believing in positive intent to begin with, understanding it, doing some coaching. And sometimes that really works, and sometimes it doesn't work.

Drew: You know, again, sometimes some people are — yeah. So, all right, switching to a positive but interesting moment. And I wonder if this is even a fair question, but it feels like you, as a marketer, when you arrive at a new company, are establishing credibility as a business person — and establishing credibility often for what marketing can and cannot do. And I'm just wondering if there's a moment where you all sort of have an aha moment from the executive team where they're really actually ready for marketing to be this strategic driver, as opposed to just "get us more leads" or "just do more presentations for us." And I'm wondering if you've seen that evolution, and some of the building blocks that have helped you get to that moment where they're actually ready for marketing to be a strategic driver.

Allyson: One thing that I've always framed — kind of like when you're coming into a new organization and you're trying to, like, it's like everyone knows that it's drinking from a fire hose, and you're like, okay great, like, where do I start? Like, how do I prioritize and make sure that that's the most important thing for the business? And I really start with the sales cycle and what's going on in the sales cycle, because I think if you look at that you can start to understand — okay great, are we getting a bunch of inbound, or is our outbound not performing really well, but then we're having a really hard time converting them when we actually start talking to them? And are we getting a ton of objections? You know, whatever it is — that really helped me, because I'm like, okay great, where do we have the biggest problem, and start there. And then I framed everything I was doing around, like, hey, we have a really big problem — our sales team doesn't know how to value sell, they don't have objection handling down, they don't know how to talk about us versus competitors, our pricing — like we're seeing a huge drop as soon as everybody sees pricing. Like, these are the things that I'm going to do to fix that. And talking to the sales organization and getting alignment on that. And I think when you start to categorize those business problems across the sales cycle or even the customer journey — like post-sale, right? We're having a really hard time implementing customers; you know, after 30-60 days we're like, they're going dark on us and we're not getting them up and running. So, what are we doing? What are we going to change? And then, how is marketing going to help the CS organization so we can make sure that our time to value is now 30 days instead of six months? And so when you start to frame it like that, I think for the organization, it's not even like a readiness question — it's just like, okay great, this is the business problem that we're tackling, and we're tackling this across the buyer's journey, and this is how marketing is going to help, and we're going to align on that. And then also, I always hear — like, if retention is an issue, it's a customer success problem. And that's not true at all. It's a company problem, right? And the moment you start — hey, pipeline is a problem, it's an SDR and marketing problem. No, no, no — that is a company problem. So, these business problems — the moment a company is not ready is when they're blaming it on one department.

Drew: Right. When it’s siloed problems, got it. Yeah.

Allyson: So look at the customer journey, start to identify the problems across those, and then start to think about, okay, how do we want to improve? What are those KPIs that we're going to measure the success by? And then how is marketing, sales, customer success, product — whoever — going to ladder into solving those problems?

Drew: Right. And it's funny because you could just look at, for example, win rate — you could say, oh, our salespeople suck because they only win one in seven. But it may also be that six of those seven they shouldn't have been talking to in the first place, which means that the pipeline that you've developed was poor. Or you could have a pricing problem and you're losing on price, so the only time you're winning is because that salesperson was so damn good that they ignored the price. And eventually you can get to the problem that marketing could actually solve, if you understand the first problem. So that's so interesting. Others — Lorie, did you want to build on this?

Lorie: Well, I was just going to — yeah, I think Allyson's spot on. And I think, too, part of it is identifying the problem and going back to something Kathie said, too — like raising your hand and helping, and saying, "Here's, you know, let me jump in, let's figure out how we can solve this together." And then they realize that you want to help be part of the solution, and you're not just there to point fingers at sales or product or customer success. And you really are seen as a true partner — and delivering on that. So not just raising your hand, but delivering on that as well.

Drew: Yeah, I mean, the one thing I like to think of you all as is creative problem solvers, right? And the CFO is not necessarily a creative problem solver, and maybe the COO — maybe, because they were a good salesperson — is. And the customer success person, probably not so much. So, being a creative problem solver and infinitely curious does give you an advantage if you get that seat at the table and earn that right to have that conversation. I love it, Kathie. I know you wanted to weigh in on this one too.

Kathie: Well, I agree with everything that Allyson and Lorie stated, for sure. I think there's a lot that marketing can do. I always think of, especially when you first join a company, one of those beginner's eyes where you can really look at everything overall and create that context for the team, right? And identify what you've seen, and then what you think may need to be fixed to fix it. And one of the things I highly recommend is never point fingers and say it's everybody else's fault. I always start with, "Let me tell you the areas I think we can get better at in marketing, and let me also share with you the areas that I think we need to talk about in the other areas as well." I think where problems arise is when it becomes — I hate games — like when it becomes a finger-pointing game.

Drew: Yeah, no. And by the way, marketing always loses in that one. I'm sorry, just — am I wrong? But you know, the minute you start pointing fingers — oh well, we better fire the CRO and the CEO. No, it doesn't work that way.

Kathie: We love it, though. We love it. 

Drew: Yes, because when it goes well, look what you've done. And then you've — you're there five years, Allyson, you get a big exit. So, yay! Let's talk about — we've already talked about navigating the disagreements, and I think we've gotten that well. What do you think? We got a group of your peers together. What do you think is the biggest misconception among your executive peers about marketing?

Kathie: I'll start with one — okay, I think, and it kind of ties to, are you deemed as a strategic marketer or not — but you know, hey, how you doing with your MQLs? If you're being asked that, that's all that marketing does, that's an issue. And a second one I'll tie to that is, whenever I hear marketing is a cost center, my skin just crawls, and that to me is a pretty big red flag. I've got a lot of coaching to do on that.

Drew: Are there still a lot of companies out there that have MQLs as a stated goal and will hold CMOs responsible for that?

Kathie: Drew, in my role doing what I'm doing with fractional, it's surprising to me how many are still building MQL plans and report to the board about it. 

Allyson: It takes a lot of education. Like, think about how long it took — this MQL model is very linear, like, hey, this is the conversion rate, you have the MQLs, and they turn to SQLs, etc. — and that took a lot of education. And now that playbook needs to be completely thrown out if it hasn't been already. Marketers know that, but part of our job is to now explain what that new model is, and how are we measuring success. I think one example that, again, kind of going back to one of my first points was, like, you're in the business metrics, here's how we ladder into that. But I think when we were really focused on a different persona, and we had classically sold to customer marketing, etc., we were building out some more demand gen cases, and we didn't have a ton of demand gen marketers in our marketable universe, we didn't have a ton of inbound coming from demand gen marketers, you know, meeting set, etc. So I was like, great, let's just — if we're pivoting our whole go-to-market and we're going to only focus on the demand gen persona, because we're going to launch all these new use cases and integrations — these are the metrics that we should look at. And I never once mentioned MQL. But obviously, again, that goes back to engine room metrics and things that we're optimizing for. But I was like, great, we increased, you know, demand gen marketers this quarter in our marketable universe and our database by 25%, because if we did all these outbound efforts to demand gen, we saw an inbound of demand gen use cases by 10% this quarter. And that connected the dots for people. So again, I think marketers are really good at storytelling, so turn on those storytelling skills, because the old playbook — we educated the team, or the executive team on that, we educated the board on that — and now you have to redo that story to get away from metrics that aren't serving the business.

Drew: I love it. I'm wondering, Lorie, we've talked about misperceptions of MQLs and marketing as a cost center. Was there another one — the biggest misconception that you've encountered?

Lorie: Yeah, well, what I'm encountering and hearing about more frequently now is how much can AI do instead of hiring people, so having that conversation about the role of AI to supplement or replace marketing resources is definitely hot right now.

Drew: Yeah, and I want to bring that one back to the whole team here to talk a little bit about that. I did want to, though, before we do that — is cost center, Kathie. I've heard that a lot, you know, it's still out there. CFOs often think of it that way, not as an investment lever. Have you found that you have ever been able to actually convince a CFO to move, who saw it as a cost center, to become an investment lever that they can pull, and if so, how?

Kathie: I don't know about a 100% move, but one of the things I always do — the very first meeting I can get with the CFO — is I actually bring in ROI data, because I want them to know from day one that I look at this as a business, because it goes down to how do you build that trust and confidence in them. And then every time I talk about what I'm doing, I talk about it from the business outcome. I always look at closed-won revenue and pipeline — I never talk about anything before that with the CFO. Have I 100% moved them? No — think about it, they've been doing this in their role oftentimes for many, many years, and they've been trained and educated that way. But have I chipped away at it a little bit, so that maybe the next CMO takes it a little bit further and the next one a little bit further after that? Absolutely.

Drew: Well, and we all know what success looks like is when the CFO comes to you and says, "Hey, I got an extra million dollars. What could you do with it?" I mean, it's painful — it's not an easy one to answer, because it doesn't exactly work that way. Oh, just turn on some more hot water and boom, spend it, or you know, fill up the tank a little bit more. But I think — and I'm going to push back on the — so ROI is meaningful, unless you're looking at an app, how can you actually walk in the first meeting, you know, and do ROI? You have a total number of spend and you have a total number of revenue, just divide it up. I mean…

Kathie: I do it on past behavior. Like, one of the very first things I did when I got into this role that I'm in now is I spent time doing a whole deep analysis, so that I could go to the ELT. And I actually talked through what are our run rates, what's our stage velocity for pipeline, what's our average deal size by region, by industry, by product line, to really show — hey — and then I said, here are the insights, here's where I think we should invest, do you agree or disagree? And then all along the process, sharing this is what we invest in. I don't believe in individual tactics, right? That's not what I'm getting at. Then that's a nightmare. Oh my gosh, like, waste. 

Drew: Why are you spending so much money on search on this keyword? 

Kathie: No, but more from a fundamental level, whether you're breaking it by segment or geo or whatever.

Drew: And when you were doing that analysis, did you go back to the CFO and say, is this data accurate, or did they play a part in developing that data?

Kathie: Did they play a part in developing it? No, but in assessing it and challenging me? Absolutely.

Drew: Right. Because eventually, if they don't believe in the data, then that's a problem too. 

Kathie: But I'll tell you, Drew, because I did that — some of that data that I discovered at the beginning, other people started quoting what I did to the board when I was sitting in the room, not for me, but from other people, right — because I had earned that credibility that she understands the business, she's not about just marketing vanity metrics and MQLs.

Drew: Yes, let that be a lesson to you all — if you can show what the win rate is, and the deal sizes are, and you can bring that data, they'll quote you when you're not there, and that's a beautiful thing. And you know, at that moment in time, you've at least established credibility. You may not have won over the whole executive C-suite, and you may have actually created some jealous people there, but you are on your way. All right, that was one of my takeaways. Now I'm going to go back to each of you and say we've been talking for almost 50 minutes. I imagine that you had a takeaway from today's conversation. It may have been something that you said or something that one of your peers said, but give us one takeaway that you'd want your fellow CMOs to embrace — and it's okay if it was something that you said. We're in reverse order, so Allyson, you're up first.

Allyson: One thing that I'm definitely walking away with is that a great marketer isn't somebody that's just generating demand, right? They're really shaping how the market understands you and why you should win in that market. And I think if you come to the table with that business-first mindset and get away from again just the engine room metrics, you'll be really successful.

Drew: I love it. All right, so we are going to be market-first CMOs. Okay, next up is Lorie.

Lorie: First of all, taking away so much from everything that Allyson and Kathie have said. And I think for me too, it's thinking beyond just being the CMO with a seat at the table and being an active participant in discussions around the business — being part of the discussions around the priorities in the business, the performance, what's working, what's not, the challenges, and helping to problem solve.

Drew: Okay. Well, Kathie, let's bring this home. Make sure this is ship shape, since you brought in that analogy. One of the takeaways that you're sailing away from this conversation.

Kathie: On a personal note, I am now going to talk about the engine room. I was talking about shipmates and self, in that order. I think the number one — and I heard it from all of us — is we are a strategic member of the overall leadership team. Our lens is across the ship, not just across marketing. Know your business, talk about it, and share that. Don't just hold it within marketing; share it across the leadership team.

Drew: I love it. Well, we didn't answer the question about executives and their perceptions about AI, but we have other shows coming up on that, so we'll get to that, I promise. So thank you, folks — Kathie, Lorie, Allyson — you're all great 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 Huddle 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!