The CMO Change Agent

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 featured in this episode are Paige O’Neill of Seismic, Kevin Ruane of Precisely, and Amy Messano of Altair. They epitomize what it means to be a change agent in both your first 90 days and beyond. The conversation yielded some amazing insights, like how to get executive buy-in, the challenges of acquisitive brands, and how to work with PE firms or public companies. Sometimes you may even find yourself driving change but not owning it. 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. 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 Huddles 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. I can’t wait for this conversation and to get going on it. We’re talking about change. Change is hard. It’s inevitable, but it’s also essential for growth, and it’s happening around you, whether you like it or not, so you sort of have to change and try to be the change or have the change happen to you.

For visionary CMOs, embracing transformation isn’t just about adapting to changes but leading them, whether it’s securing executive buy-in for bold initiatives, navigating industry evolution, or pioneering innovative marketing strategies. The path to significant growth is through deliberate strategic change, making choices. And the challenge lies not just in identifying the opportunity, but also in executing in a way that aligns the organization against key values and objectives. So in other words, back to my first statement, change is hard, which is why we have three change agents to share their journeys.

With that, let’s bring on Paige O’Neill, CMO of Seismic, and a returning guest who previously appeared on the show to discuss B2B virtual events. Hello, Paige, how are you and where are you this wonderful day?

Paige: Hello, Drew. Great to be back. I am in sunny California today. We’ve had a lot of rain, but the sun is shining today. So thrilled to join and be back.

Drew: Well, I hope the sun shines on our show metaphorically. You’ve been at Seismic now for just about a year. 

Paige: Eight months.

Drew: Okay, and so what was your mandate, and what was the culture like when you joined?

Paige: Yeah, and you know, the mandate was really to bring together the marketing team. They had been sitting in different pockets across the organization, and Seismic really wanted to go all in on marketing as a growth driver of the business. Build a culture around marketing, get the marketing team engaged and excited about the mission that they have to contribute to the business. And so it was interesting to get, you know, kind of walk in the door and you find yourself there, and you pull the team together. And they’re not necessarily used to working together, so my mission was to create that cohesive team environment and get everyone excited about the vision.

Drew: And so let’s—first of all, what an interesting challenge. And I love hearing things like, let’s make marketing the driver of transformation. What kinds of things did you do to help bring the team together and get to a shared vision? And what is that vision?

Paige: Yeah, it’s, you know, and I think there’s—and it’s very much a work in process, right? It takes time to drive change, which I think can be, you know, lesson number one for people that might be more type A and be impatient to see the change happen. But you know, I mean, when I walked in the door, it was surprising to me that there weren’t the usual cadences that I had seen in other marketing teams that I’d led, of working together, of things like having processes to get things done, of having a common identity of what it meant to be part of a marketing team.

And so the first things that I had to do, kind of overlapping with the, you know, the CMO onboarding period, was to go across the business, make sure I understand where all of the people in marketing were coming in from, what their viewpoints were, what their aspirations were, maybe what some of their frustrations were to try to air some of those things out and then understand from the business, what were the top things that we were trying to accomplish from a demand generation perspective, from a brand perspective.

One of the things I heard was Seismic really wanted to take on a bolder stance in the marketplace and be perceived as more of a provocative, a bold, visionary thought leader, and so uniting the team around some of these common objectives, if you can find the unifying principles that bring people together, you can then go in and kind of use that to drive that cohesion, drive that vision, and get people excited. And at the same time spending a little bit of time, maybe not too much time, but a little bit of time letting people air out the grievances, if you will. And so they put that behind you. And so those were some of the things that I got started with pretty quickly.

Drew: Yeah, no, I love it. You get one time. Everybody on the team gets one time. Get all the garbage out, whatever the blazes. Get them out. Get them over here. We’ll park them in a little plan, and maybe we’ll be able to address some of them, but we’re going to keep moving forward. Now, what I heard was a bolder, more visionary. And, you know, there’s—I’ve heard that before, and then when you start to finally do it and go there, there’s like, “Wait, oh, you can’t go that far.” So, you know, right, talk a little bit about what that meant, because I know that, you know, a lot of people go into marketing because they want to do really creative, really exciting, really bold things, and then they get ground down by the day to day. You know, demand gen, we need more leads. So talk about that, getting to bolder, a bolder vision. And how’d you get there?

Paige: Yeah, and I mean, we’re not 100% of the way there, for sure, it’s a work in process, but you’re absolutely right, Drew. I think the life of any B2B CMO is, no matter what your—and my charter was, absolutely demand gen coming in. It wasn’t just the bold vision. It was, I would say it was number one, demand gen; number two, let’s be bolder in the marketplace. So the demand gen’s never going anywhere if you’re a B2B CMO, at least in my experience, and to not get, you know, kind of bogged down in focusing on demand gen—it’s really hard. I mean, you have to almost remind yourself, on a week-by-week basis, okay, here are the things that we’re doing to move the needle on demand gen, because that’s, you know, kind of job one.

But along the way, there is this appetite across the entire business. And again, that’s the thing that I think really unites the vision around marketing, at least at Seismic, is this desire to be bolder and more provocative, and so you’ve got to find the space to carve out. How are we making progress on that, even as we’re doing the blocking and tackling, the nuts and bolts demand generation programs? So it really, for me, at least it kind of becomes a passion project. It’s my number one thing that I love to do is create thought leadership. Is to think about, how do we turn up the volume on the viewpoints that we have in the marketplace? What are we going to say about that? How are we going to define how we’re talking about that?

It’s a real passion project for me. So it’s never hard for me to carve out time to make progress on that, even though maybe it might not be as quick as you’d like, if you’re having to focus on demand gen a significant portion of the time. There still is that room for people to want to work on that and to drive it forward, and you just have to create a plan, figure out what you want your point of view to be in the marketplace, who are going to be the best people in the company, in the industry, to help you develop that point of view and then put together a team to take it forward. And that’s exactly what we’re doing at Seismic.

Drew: As you’re talking, I’m thinking about demand gen. You know, we talk a lot about in the first 90 days, it’s like, find those quick fixes, but if you have a demand generation engine, we’re really, for the most part, we’re kind of talking about incremental, little, tiny as a proof is you’re not going to get to a 30% increase by doing what you’re currently doing a little bit better, right?

Paige: Can you say that again? Just repeat it again for all those who are listening. You’re not going to get to a 30% increase in demand generation by continuing to do what you’re doing. And I think it can be very hard to articulate that to the business, especially when you’ve got, you know, some departments that might understand how it all works better than other departments, too. And so you do have to figure out, exactly like you said, what are the quick wins? How do you move the needle, and what are you going to focus in on? And from a demand gen perspective, one of the things that I saw when I walked in the door, that was a quick win, was pivoting to ABM, and so we were able to do that pretty quickly, not overnight, of course, but pivot pretty quickly. Aligned with the sales team, align with target accounts, start seeing better engagement from those target accounts. And then when the sales team saw that activity happening, it created a groundswell to want to make more investments. So that’s one example of a knob we were able to turn fairly quickly, get the buy-in from the sales team and then secure additional investment and secure additional air cover, if you will, to take the time to actually do it right and expand it.

Drew: Well, and that’s not an insignificant change. That’s not the same as we’re going to spend a little bit more, a little bit less on this, and, you know, a little bit more on content syndication, and a little bit more on PPC. Those are little things. I mean, ABM ultimately, to really be successful, it’s kind of a big thing because in a sense, we’re saying, you know what, there might be 1000 companies out there that really matter, that are possible, but we’re going to focus on 100.

Paige: Right. And it is, it is a really big thing to, certainly, to scale it and to have that approach across the entire marketing organization. But what we did that was more of a quick, let’s dip the toe in, was we picked off a smaller segment, engaged with the sales teams, and then saw what the impact of those small focus areas were over a quarter or so, and then that created the appetite to look at a broader target account strategy. And there was already a target account strategy, there just weren’t necessarily the ABM motions mapped to it. And so now we’re looking at, how do we expand that beyond into other regions, how do we build out an ABM platform and invest in technology? And those are obviously things that take a much longer time frame, but some of the quick wins around just partnering with the sales team on key enterprise target accounts and seeing how the engagement increases when you run certain motions that didn’t take that long.

Drew: No, that’s great. Well, we’re going to move on. But I want you to be thinking about why you’re off camera for the moment is, you know, for years, we’ve been talking about, how do we get the CMO job to be more than demand gen, so that we’re thinking about customers and that and retention, that we’re thinking about employees, and we’re thinking about this broader than demand gen, which is net new logo, which is, you know, just such a small part of what marketing can do, but we’ll get back to that when we bring everybody together.

So now let’s bring in Kevin Ruane, CMO of Precisely, and an industry expert who has graced our stage before, to delve into the topic of B2B brand consolidation. Hello, Kevin, wonderful to see you again. How are you and where are you this wonderful day?

Kevin: I’m doing really well, Drew. Very grateful to be here with you, Paige, and Amy. I am coming live from Precisely World Headquarters just outside of Boston in Burlington, Massachusetts.

Drew: Amazing, amazing. And well, I think I can kind of guess what the weather is up there. It’s kind of similar to the way it is here in New York. So Precisely has historically grown through M&A and you launched a new brand in 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic. Everyone should listen to that episode if you haven’t. What’s keeping you busy right now? What’s your focus?

Kevin: Yeah, interestingly enough, Drew, given our heritage with M&A that you referenced, we’ve been very focused, I’d say, over the last 18 months or so, on building our muscle around organic growth and accelerating organic growth. So we’ve got some exciting things that our product and engineering teams are delivering. In terms of, we kind of look at it as our greatest hits, of our capabilities, and a new modern SaaS data integrity suite that we’ve been bringing to market. So we’ve had a lot of focus on getting the go-to-market motions and kind of the right alignment related to that. We’ve got a relationship that we’ve been building. A little more than a year ago, AWS picked some of our technology for a data migration service that they’re offering, so we’ve been, you know, hard at work, building that relationship, navigating that incredibly large and impressive organization. And then, you know, you also nailed it. The branding continues. You know, we had kind of an interesting scenario where we launched our brand in the middle, very early days, middle of the pandemic. Within a year, we had sold the company in a really positive outcome. A year later, we had done a couple more acquisitions and brought on new minority investors, and just when we started to get ready to make those investments in brand, the macroeconomic headwinds kind of struck, but we had a really strong, you know, finish to 2023, we feel like we’ve got momentum back. And so now we’re back at work, getting ready to build this brand that we stood up here over the last few years.

Drew: When I hear organic growth, and just in case anybody listening wasn’t sure what we’re talking about, we’re talking about not through acquisition, but actually going out and either getting existing customers to spend more or net new logos, as the parlance goes. When you would look at it in terms of you talked about how the product was evolving and new offerings, was your success in 2023 about net new or existing, or both?

Kevin: It’s a combination, Drew. I think you know the new data integrity suite that we’ve brought to market is opening the opportunity for us to win some new deals and bring on some new logos that, you know, previously, maybe weren’t available to us. But perhaps the biggest opportunity for Precisely, we’ve got over 12,000 customers. You know, 99 of the Fortune 100 is our favorite stat to use. It’s the cross-sell opportunity. We have a lot of customers who have a small number of our products. And so, you know, part of what we’re trying to do is just make it easier for customers to build on the success they had with Precisely and add a new capability to continue to build on solving some of their most pressing data challenges.

Drew: And that brings up the question, and I started to get at this a little bit with Paige, or hinted at it. So if we’re trying to grow existing customers, and that’s part of marketing’s mandate, where does sort of brand, and you know your likability, and you know all of those things that we marketers think about, versus a demand gen, and how do those come together? Because yes, current customers, you could treat them as well. I want them to buy this other suite of additional products, and we’re just going to treat them like everybody else, or we could say, no, we know them and they like us. Talk a little bit about brand and demand in the context of existing customers.

Kevin: Yeah, I think it’s actually really raised the importance for us of brand, and it’s elevated it to, you know, initially an executive team conversation, and more recently, a board level conversation, because we have, you know, having grown through, you know, more than 20 acquisitions over the last decade, we have a lot of customers who own products and think of themselves as customers of these legacy brands, and they don’t even recognize they’re a Precisely customer, let alone that they have been for maybe years or decades, very successfully. And so, you know, that’s created, you know, an opportunity for us to go and have this conversation about the importance of having a strong brand to unlock this cross-sell opportunity for the business. And you know, I’m fortunate to have a CEO and an executive team who, you know, willingly and really wants to be a part of that conversation. They feel and see the same challenges that we see in marketing, and we’ve been able to take that in partnership to our investors and to the board, and it’s really been exciting to me that we’re now really looking at it not just from a demand gen perspective, but the combination of demand gen and brand, because we really do need both to be successful.

Drew: And I’m gonna pull up a page out of Paige’s book where she asked me to repeat something. So what you’re saying is that your investors and your executive team are seeing brand and demand, but brand as a means of growing the company?

Kevin: Absolutely. And, you know, look at it from a standpoint, like many software companies, we’ve got some great technology. Imagine a scenario where you go and you win the technical evaluation only to have a senior person who needs to sign off on the deal say, “I’ve never heard of these guys,” right? And you run into some of those opportunities. And I think, you know, you pull on some of those examples, and we’ve done a lot of work, a big sales transformation, our CRO and some of the leaders he brought in over the last couple years are doing a tremendous job, and their number one priority became brand. And that was something that was just a great partnership opportunity. We recognized the need for more investment in brand and putting more focus in that area with marketing. And then when we got our colleagues in sales, and then our colleagues in product on board, championing that cause as well, it really just had a very powerful effect for us, and it was significant and too much to ignore.

Drew: Yeah. I’m trying to figure out why this doesn’t happen at more companies, because it’s the same problem, right? Even when you have 12,000 customers from 20 different companies, they don’t know your brand, they’re not going to buy another thing from you, because they don’t know you. But lots of companies, and this gets down to sort of awareness and reach matter, and reputation matters. And you know, lack of awareness means no reputation, and you can’t sell into that environment.

Kevin: I think I’m very fortunate from a lot of perspectives. Certainly our investors, you know, who we’ve been with for a while now, our executive team, you know, very supportive. There’s no question that helps. And then I think, look, just being prepared for those opportunities Drew, you know, we’ve certainly done our homework. We did some brand awareness studies to get a baseline of how we’re doing from an aided and unaided awareness perspective, how we’re comparing to some of our competitors and other companies that we strive to compete with for mindshare in the market. And, you know, having those facts and that data along with the anecdotes and the support of especially the sales team really became a good formula for us to just go and engage in a real conversation about it. And I think half the battle, and this is something I know you and I have talked about previously, it’s just getting it to be a discussion and a topic that we’ll spend time and focus on. And we had a breakthrough moment last fall where my CEO invited me as part of an offsite to lead a session that was all focused on brand and that just rolled into subsequent investment and work in the studies that led into the board meetings, and it just really kind of built momentum from there.

Drew: Amazing. I’m going to put punctuation points on several things. One, nothing like having a brand awareness study with competition, to sort of not just benchmark it, but to sort of look at it. I don’t know whether you’re doing it annually or ongoing.

Kevin: We do it annually. 

Drew: And then you know, after a year of that, in multiple years, you can, in theory, be able to attach an awareness lift to a revenue lift. I mean, there is, there are through lines there. I mean, you may have to be a little creative with the data, but you should be able to show it.

Kevin: Yeah, absolutely agree. And I think, you know, that’s part of it, right? We need to be able to not only show the challenge and what we’re recommending that we want to do, but how are we going to know that it’s working? That was an important question that we had to be able to answer. What are the measures going to be? Where can we show uplift? When do we expect conversion rates to potentially improve and improve in a way where you’ll see that impact and you know, it, we had some tough moments like, it’s hard to go to a board and to your investors and say the investments we’re going to make today may not really pay off in the way that we want them to for a couple of years, you know. And I really just am grateful again that you have that vision to build this company and this brand into what it can be over a period of time.

Drew: Yes, I know that any number of CMOs, certainly ones that PE back firms are going to be sort of listening to this with a great deal of envy. Alright, well, we’ll be back. Now, we’re gonna bring on Amy Messano, CMO of Altair, who has previously joined us to shed light on the intricacies of leadership. And of course, Amy, you’ve been through a lot of acquisitions, so this must have been very familiar territory. But welcome back. How are you and where are you today?

Amy: I am in the Detroit area which is where I live and where the headquarters of Altair are.

Drew: Okay. So you know, I mean, it’s funny, you heard Paige and you heard Kevin. I’m just wondering what thoughts were going through your mind.

Amy: Similar, you know, we have so many shared experiences, so it validates a lot of what I feel like I’ve been through, and not just at Altair, but in previous roles, and change is constant, change is hard, change is emotional, the importance of listening and getting key stakeholder feedback and input. So you can’t just necessarily insert a playback for one company into the new company, you know, establishing trust, all of those things that everyone talked about, and then just the last conversation, I feel like I’m happy to report that I can validate that brand can drive leads directly. So we at Altair have been on this journey for I just hit my five year anniversary, and we launched a new brand, and we consolidated a bunch of products and centralized the team and all the things that you’re talking about, and had some resistance from quite a few people, just because it was so different, and it’s what they were used to, as far as control over their local markets. And now, those same people later saying, I want more brand. I want more brand. It’s driving leads. It’s giving me validation, it’s making it easier to sell. It’s giving me credibility, and we can actually track, you know, the organic following the organic engagement, and the leads that are coming from brand. It’s actually happening. So I can say that it works. Just stick with it.

Drew: Wait a second. So again, we get a repeat moment. “We want more brand” that’s actually coming out of the mouths of salespeople.

Amy: I almost, I had like the angels sang and confetti guns went off. We were at an offsite leadership meeting, and some of the country managers who, at the beginning, you know, they were used to was very decentralized, their own sort of umbrella, and we centralized everything and invested in the brand. And they didn’t really, they didn’t quite, let’s say, needed some convincing to get on board. And fast forward to just a couple months ago. They asked for more brand. They said, “It’s working. It’s working. We love the brand. We want more brand. People are calling us now.” And I mean, I just couldn’t have been any happier. I’m prouder of the team that worked so hard to achieve that. So it’s an amazing moment when you hear them saying, “We love the brand. We want more brand.”

Drew: And just to remind folks that you know you’ve been—I know Altair has acquired 30 plus companies, and you and I have talked about some of the things that you’ve done to build and make the Altair brand sticky. Talk a little bit about some of the things. So when they say they want more brand, what are they really saying? What do they want more of?

Amy: So if you go back, at the beginning of this journey, it was kind of the same that you guys were talking about earlier, where you really have to take the time to listen. We talked to every person in the company, partners, customers. We did all the homework. It was not—we knew that a brand is super emotional, it’s someone’s love and work and bloodshed and tears, and people have built this over time, so it was just a sacred thing. We know how much it means to people. So we did not take it lightly. And you know, we were on the journey of going from a house of brands to a branded house. There were a lot of products that either came through acquisition or through internal development, but they were kind of allowed to stand as they were. So we had a lot of products that were known throughout the world, but the name of the company, Altair, was not. So we were on that journey to lift up and elevate the Altair brand above all. And that means some people had to share the spotlight or understand how it fit into the brand architecture. So that takes some talking. But instead of just coming in and saying, “This is the playbook that works,” to really do that listening so they know that they’re being heard, and we understand the importance. We understand how important that brand is. I too am blessed with a CEO who really believes in marketing, but he also knew he had this very sticky brand that people loved and trusted. And he said, “Don’t f it up.” I’m like, “Okay, I won’t,” but, don’t mess it up, right? Because it’s so important. So we did all the painstaking work, involved as many people as we could, and we came up with a—you know, went from 120 websites and 160 social media channels to one main platform. It was a ton of work. Took years, and it’s finally—we’re at that point where it’s, you know, people want more of it. They want more investment in their local communities because we are a global company. So they want to see it everywhere they look. So they want us to spend on brand everywhere, including where they live, not just some big global corporate initiatives. They want it everywhere. Amazing.

Drew: Just the mind-boggling notion of going from 120 websites to one main one. So one thought is, you and Kevin definitely need to have a discussion. You really do. So we’ll remind you to set up that one-on-one. But as I’m thinking about this, suddenly, what’s happened, and what I’m hearing you saying is there’s pride in working for Altair that wasn’t attached to the brand before, right?

Amy: So they were proud. So I don’t want to misrepresent that—people never left. They love the company so much. It was a very unique culture, very sticky culture. One of the main reasons I came to work here was really for the culture, and it still is an amazing culture of which I’m very proud to be a part. But it wasn’t necessarily part of the brand. It has its roots in a lot of very deep technology. So I had a conversation with one of the folks, let’s say he was one who needed a little bit more convincing. And he said, “You know, I used to not even really be able to understand how to explain this to my family, and now they see the stuff that you guys are doing, and they like it, so I’m proud of it.” And that’s a part I don’t think people talk enough about, too, is the internal morale that it causes when you can be proud of it, you have beautiful graphics, videos, websites, whatever the case is, where people can share with their family and friends and their customers and be proud, and they don’t have to work so hard to explain it. You know, we say a rising tide lifts all boats. And in this case, I mean the brand and it just makes it easier to sell, but it also gives them pride when they can see a logo that everyone knows in at least their community, there is a sense of pride there, for sure.

Drew: Well, and this, again, goes back to the thing, and I’m preaching at the moment, and anybody who’s listening to my podcast or read the book knows that I believe the CMO job is about employees, customers, prospects, and that when you look at the role that way, you naturally have to get brand because if you just talk about prospects and oh, well, we can just do demand gen but if you say no, no, marketing can and should have an impact, and what you are is the poster child for that. Maybe you could just give one example of when they say, I love the video, or what is the story or message that you’re telling that seems to be resonating so well with employees about Altair.

Amy: The one part that I can—I believe so hard to be true is that unless your brand is a true depiction of who you are as a company, a real reflection of your values, of your purpose, of however you define yourself as a company, your North Star, your DNA, whatever word you want to use, your brand has to be a true articulation of that. Not just in words, but in visuals and in actions, and how you present the company, and you can only do that again by doing all that homework and listening to the company and understanding: Is this company living by its values? And what do our customers say about us? Our partners say about us, our employees at every level say about it? What was unique from Altair, and we did all these surveys, is that—which was very unique—that the same top-level and sort of entry-level, let’s say, had the same things to say, which is rare and unique, and it was, we knew how important that was. So we were very—we carried that burden very heavily that we didn’t—we wanted to respect that and honor that and take it forward. So one of the things we did, we said, it started off as a hashtag called—we called it “Only Forward,” that sort of embodied our—when we rebranded. And it has become really a rally cry, a true rally cry. People send—they end meetings with that. At the end of their signature lines on their emails. So we actually have a rally cry, which is “Only Forward,” and that came out as part of this rebranding process. So I don’t think that can be undercut as far as the emotional value of a brand and how important it is, but it has to be true to who you are as a company, or no one will believe you.

Drew: Right. You can’t make this stuff up. It’s got to be real on some level, somewhere in the organization.

Okay, well, now we’re going to take a second to bring the group together to talk about CMO Huddles. Launched in 2020, CMO Huddles is a close-knit community of over 400 highly effective B2B marketing leaders who share, care, and dare each other to greatness. Given the extraordinary time constraints on CMOs, everything about CMO Huddles is designed to help leaders save time and give them the confidence to make faster, better decisions. If you’re a senior B2B marketer—before I do that, I’m not going to tell you what to do. I’m going to ask Paige, Kevin, and Amy, since you all three are very busy marketers, I’m wondering if you could share a specific example of how CMO Huddles has helped you.

Paige: I’ve been a member of CMO Huddles for several years, and one of the things that I find, among many, most beneficial is the ability to ping a CMO almost in real-time and get counsel or advice, or you know, just someone to thought partner with, no matter what your issue is. There’s someone out there who’s faced it. You don’t have to go it alone. And there’s almost always a time where you can leverage that network.

Drew: I love that, and it’s got to give you a sense of confidence that you can solve whatever challenge you have right ahead of you, which is pretty cool. Kevin, Amy?

Amy: Yeah, I will say, I’ll join it. I think it’s also the way Drew—Drew is a fantastic host and mentor and guide for all of us, and really listens and then articulates that into whatever the appropriate conversation is. So I think he’s created a space that’s also—people aren’t trying to sell you anything, what you say is confidential, so you can sort of share some of your trickiest problems and get feedback that’s honest. They know it’s in a confidential, secure environment that I think Drew and his team have done a really great job at creating.

Drew: Thank you for that. And yeah, a safe space is really important in all of this. Okay, Kevin, any thoughts?

Kevin: It’s absolutely just the amazing peer network, Drew, that you’ve created. And, you know, I’ll give you a true story. So every couple of years, we do 360 reviews for the executives here at Precisely. And I just have recently completed mine, as always, some positives and some opportunities. What I would say was really enlightening to me was one of the first comments attributed to our CEO was a credit to the work that I’ve done to create kind of peer relationships, be on top of the best practices, and kind of have an ability to see around the corner now. Because I don’t think he’s watching this show right now, I will tell you I am very grateful for CMO Huddles for playing a huge role in all of those areas, and I think it just gives me a different level of credibility when I go to the executive team, or when I go to the board or investors and say, “Hey, I’ve been talking to other CMOs, they’re seeing similar situations here, how some of them are looking at it, and this is what I recommend our plan to be.” It just adds so much value.

Drew: That’s great. Thank you for that feedback, and I love it. And I know that some other folks are taking like, we have these weekly recaps, and they just like, “Hey, see, I told you, we’re not alone here. There are other folks that are dealing with that.” Anyway, if you’re a senior marketer at a B2B organization and need a shortcut to B2B greatness, take a second to sign up for a free starter program at cmohuddles.com.

Also, while I’m here, I just want to do a shout-out to Alan Gonsenhauser, who’s been commenting. Thank you so much for joining us on this journey.

Anyway, let’s talk about executive board, investor buy-in when it comes to driving change. We’ve talked about this a little bit, but we can’t—you know, for trying to do something big like—Amy, in your case of changing the brand, consolidating the brand, getting rid of websites. How did you get—I mean, other than talking to everybody, but let’s talk about really, was there a moment where the executive and board sort of go, “Okay, okay, okay”

Amy: Like you mean enough already, just go?

Drew: Yes, exactly. Okay. Do this.

Amy: Well, you know, we had a schedule too. So we again, we took this after having done this at other places too. It was not my first time doing this. We did enlist some help from the outside. My CEO was 100% behind it. It’s one of the reasons he actually brought me over to Altair. So we definitely had a sort of T-minus schedule, you know, we stuck to it so it was very clear goals and deliverables at certain dates. It wasn’t just sort of like, “Okay, what’s next?” It was a pretty comprehensive plan to start. And I think, you know, we too, were about to do a big internal reveal party and have everyone in person, and COVID hit, we couldn’t. We had to pivot really quickly and do it all virtually. But you do have to, as we all know as marketers, prepare for the worst. But I think plans are important, but you also have to be able to pivot when things like a global pandemic come in.

Drew: That small thing. Well, I heard three things, one is this doesn’t happen. This is so fundamental to CMOs. And I’m thinking of you all that are looking for jobs right now, it’s all about the CEO and that if they’re behind you, you can do amazing things, and if they’re not, it’s not going to happen. I heard that. I heard managing expectations of all those folks along the way and saying, “Hey, this is a schedule. This is how it’s going to work.” But and then, of course, I heard pivot. I’m wondering, Paige, Kevin, what else can we add to this list when we’re talking about sort of getting the buy-in and keeping the buy-in?

Paige: I will say I agree with everything that Amy said, but I also am a big proponent of you have to read the room, understand the business climate, and pick your moment. I’ve been at previous companies where we tried to get the board buy-in to do brand campaign for a long time, many years, and then the dynamics changed. Board members changed, executives changed, the business climate changed, and that was the moment. And so you have to understand that, you know, there are times when you want to push for something and make the business case, and you should absolutely do that, but there are also times when you have to read the room and understand this isn’t going to happen right now. So I’ve got to keep building the case, and then when the moment is right, be ready with the data, the business plan, the investment ask, and all the things that you need to get that buy-in.

Drew: Yeah, it’s like, there is this moment you’re describing where you could be asking for the order too early. And so you really have to do that. Kevin, anything else to sort of in this area of either getting the sell-in or keeping it, keeping the buy-in, I think is also part of this.

Kevin: Yeah, I think it’s always, you know, I’m always focused on reminding myself to tap into, you know, how do they think? You know, what do they care about? What are their motivators? And then keeping it at the right level. And, you know, I think it’s, it’s often easy. And I think, you know, it’s a challenge we face as marketers. You go from executive conversations, board conversations, to diving deep with your team at times. And you know, it’s always bringing it up a level. Like, just when you think you got it to the right level, take it up even another level from there is how I try to approach it. And then I think there’s a piece too, Drew, like, don’t get too cute about it. Be open and transparent about it. These are generally very smart people that you’re dealing with. They don’t expect things are going to be perfect. So, you know, own the areas of opportunity, you know, lay out your plans for it, and then do a good job listening and tying it back to their motivations. Put it in that perspective. The final thing I’d throw out there as well, and this might be unique, but, you know, for those who have, you know, I think there’s increasing cases where kind of multiple PE firms partner up as part of some of these investments with their portfolio companies. I’ve tried to tap into an ability to collaborate across those firms. And so, you know, we’re very fortunate. We work with Clearlake, we work with TA, we work with Insight Partners, and they’ve got different benchmarks. And I often find when I come to the board and they all have board seats. If I can reference a TA benchmark to Insight and Clearlake, or if I do work with Insight’s Marketing Center of Excellence and can bring that to Clearlake and TA, it’s just helping to build that collaboration and tap into the best of these firms and what they want to, you know, do, to offer and contribute to the success of the portfolio company.

Drew: And that’s so interesting. And I’m wondering, and this, and so, because you have, and I know, like Gary Survis at Insight Partners, I mean, they’ve got some very sort of, dare I say, prescriptive, they have an approach that they would love to have their companies take. And I wonder, when you have these multiple PE firms, are they a little more flexible?

Kevin: Yeah, I think they are. But it’s funny, you mentioned Gary. I spent an hour earlier this week with Gary. He’s terrific. He’s invaluable to me and to our team. You know, there’s dynamics there where he’s got, you know, infrastructure and expertise that some of the other firms don’t have. And so what you find is they, you know, all these firms have their strengths and ways that they can help you, and I think if you take the best of that and put it together, and at the end of the day, we’ve got to make the decisions as the caretakers of the business, to make the hard calls on what we do and we don’t do. But I think that collaboration piece between them, you know, there’s a role you can play as an executive and a marketing leader, and bringing those together in a thoughtful way that I think has certainly served us very well at Precisely.

Drew: Yeah, I promised that I wouldn’t rant about PE firms, and I’m not talking about any of those three, I’m sure. But I have heard this conversation a lot lately, where the PE firm and it’s just one, will say, not the same one, but to the CMO, “Hey, grow 20 to 30% next year, but you only get 20 to 30% less budget than you had, so you have a 50 point delta.” And so that’s the part where I’m pulling out my hair because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single company do that. And so I don’t expect any of you to answer that question, because there wasn’t a question that was just me ranting. So I am delighted to hear Kevin something positive in this, that you are getting value. 

Kevin: There’s hope.

Paige: And Drew, I will also say that I love what Kevin has said, but I think the flip side of that, and I’ve been able to leverage this with our PE firm, is, you know, there’s a network of other companies in that PE firm’s portfolio. And one of the things that I did when I went into Seismic was I asked them, I said, you know, here’s some benchmarks that I’m trying to get a handle on, and here’s where we are right now at Seismic. You know, do you want to help me pull together this across your portfolio? And let’s share best practices. And so that was an educational exercise, I think, for the PE firm, because they pulled all that together from the portfolio companies. And then we were able to have a discussion amongst the CMOs of what we were being asked and how we were going to kind of show up on those benchmarks. And so that was really informative.

Drew: That would be really interesting. And then what I would want to do is also go deeper and say, which of these high performing companies, what are they doing, and are they taking the same prescriptive 25% on sales and marketing and 50% on net new and, you know, giving these exact numbers and 7% in marketing. Again, another rant. But Amy, you’re public. That must have its own challenges.

Amy: Yes, so we have a fiduciary responsibility to our shareholders to make sure that we are always doing what’s right for the company. So I have a budget. I stick to my budget. We’re very good about forecasting and have clear, transparent reporting. At the end of the day we can talk about brand and fun all because we love it. But you have to be doing what’s right for the business. You have to be able to articulate how your activities and your spend is aiding to the growth of the company, both in which I you know, I think that owned, earned and paid are the three-legged stool that all have to stay together because they all help each other. But at the end of the day, if you’re not helping sell stuff, you gotta pack it up and go home. So it has to be what’s right for the business. It has to be what’s right for your team, and you have to be aiding to the growth of the company and its goals.

Drew: Is the weight of quarterly earnings reports pretty heavy?

Amy: So I would say in the company where I am now, yes, it’s, of course, very important, but we are again blessed with a CEO that is much more of a long-term visionary. So it’s not the kind of culture where people get their knees cut off if they didn’t hit some quarterly number. I have worked like that in the past. I shouldn’t say, but I have. So it is what is right for the business. Yes, we have that responsibility. Yes, we have to work as hard as we can to meet our expectations and our deliverables that are articulated, but it is also a culture where risk-taking is allowed and encouraged, so you fail fast and learn, and it’s always about the long-term vision. Of course, you have to balance that with meeting your short-term deliverables. But it is an awesome culture where we get in the boat and row. We try new things. We have to keep swinging for the fences so that we can hit that scalable growth. We’re still trying to grow and grow and grow. So in the marketing area, I think we’ve built the foundation of the house, and now we do all the cool decoration levels, I guess you would say.

Drew: One of the tricky things about – and we had a really interesting conversation yesterday with Liz Wiseman from Impact Players. And what she talked about is impact is not necessarily owning and being the hero. Impact is making stuff happen. And sometimes you sort of lead, and then you get out of the way and you facilitate. And marketing is always in the middle of the mix here. But you know, you don’t necessarily want to take credit. So I’m curious, as you’re driving change, but you’re not necessarily owning the change, and I’m wondering if that sparks a thought where you can think of a program that you’ve been on where you’ve contributed. You may have even started the ball rolling, but you’ve managed to either make the CEO look like the hero, or the head of sales look like the hero, or somebody else ends up getting the – I won’t say the credit, but you’re a contributor is the point? And again, am I just talking to the wind here? Does that spark something for you?

Paige: I think one area where it’s easy to think about it that way, and I’ve seen this at multiple companies that I’ve been at, is, you know, every company at some point gets on the journey to understand all the customer touchpoints and improve customer experience. I’ve been at a company before where that kind of started in marketing, and we wanted to understand what was the experience that customers were having when they were engaging on our website and our campaigns and, you know, all the various touchpoints. And so we mapped that out, made some improvements, and then that expanded into other areas of the business, and so it kind of took on a life of its own, with the end result being that the company became a lot more customer-focused and a lot more tuned into the experiences customers were having. And what ended up happening was, sure, marketing, we made our improvements, and we had the experiences and digital strategies that we were trying to achieve, but it actually took on an even bigger life in our customer success organization. And so I think that’s a good example where people in other departments see the impact of things that you might be doing in marketing, and they start to breathe life into a project that maybe they were trying to get going, and then they end up taking it over.

Amy: And isn’t that our whole job? My whole career is making other people look good. That doesn’t mean I don’t own something, but that’s the path I chose. I want to make other people look good. That’s our job, right?

Kevin: I agree. I think there’s a piece of it where, you know, one of the things that I think many of us try to do is put marketing in the center of the business and align it tightly to strategy. And, you know, I think the worst thing you could be is sort of the marketing team that’s off to the side of the business doing the marketing things. And so, you know, there is just an element of the cross-functional work we do, the unique point of view that we have from all the information we have access to, the different parts of the business that we get to work with. And I think it’s really finding that intersection of what can advance, you know, marketing and marketing’s mission with what’s really important to the business. And you know, what we’ve found is like, we can tie ourselves to some really interesting, strategic work that maybe isn’t traditional marketing, but because of some of the perspective, skills and talent that we have as a team, we can have a really good impact on leading, and we’ve done that in areas like generative AI and talked a little bit about the modernization of our suite, and we go to market motions related to that. You know, that was more than just kind of traditional marketing, but I think we built off some of the cross-functional, you know, capabilities we built through the brand rollout and process, and we’ve applied that in different ways, and the business has been very receptive to that.

Drew: I love the notion of marketing being at the center of the organization. Obviously, we’re in the marketing world, and getting there feels sometimes like an impossible task, but it sounds like, at least Kevin, as you’re describing it, and in Paige’s ambition, and Amy, you’ve got people recognizing that there’s brand. I’m curious, as we sort of get to the conclusion of this thing, how do you make marketing the center of an organization without, you know, getting product or sales or these other people sort of going, “No, no, we’re not the center.” Or Alan calls it the convener in chief. I love that. Thank you for that, Alan. Alan Gonsenhauser for that comment. How do you – So, Kevin, you gave that example of bringing Gen AI. So talk a little bit more about what it is that you did to sort of be the convener, to help the organization get there.

Kevin: Yeah, I think you know, the example I’d give there, Drew, is, you know, little more than a year ago, right? There’s this iPhone moment for Generative AI, and it was the thing that, quite frankly, we hadn’t planned for as we built our, you know, plans and budgets and you know, where we were going to focus for the year. And so we had to pretty quickly convene. We’ve got a group, our senior leadership team, top 100 leaders or so in the company. We got them together, we did some education, we did some brainstorming, and we had to figure out, how are we going to organize around this opportunity that presented? You know, we’re in the data space. We’re all about trusted data. I mean, Gen AI makes us incredibly relevant and important in that ecosystem. So we’ve got to change our messaging. You know, certainly from a marketing perspective, there were efficiencies we could gain, better ways that we could work, new tools at our disposal. And candidly, because of, you know, some of the work we had done on the branding effort, we were top of mind with our CEO and the executive team. And they asked, you know, the marketing leadership team if we could take a leadership role in standing up our AI Council and putting some process and structure around the strategy and what we’re going to, you know, plan to do. And so I don’t think it was rocket science. It’s just, if you make people’s life easier, if you give them some structure, something they can tap into, you make them look good like Amy was saying, you can kind of earn your way to the center of that business because of the skills and talent and what you can do to, you know, to help other groups.

Drew: I love it. And then so you get a reputation as a change agent. You sort of, we’re the ones. And so the CEO knows, if I tap into the CMO for this, I know I’m going to get results. So you become this impact player, as Liz Weissman would call it. Okay, let’s go for final words of wisdom when it comes to driving big organizational change. And let’s start in reverse order. So I think that’s Amy, final words of wisdom for CMOs when driving organizational change.

Amy: I think it’s really important to listen, first and foremost, do your homework, study up and make sure that you’re understanding the needs of the business, the needs of your team. That’s also really important, the organizational structure and dynamics and what’s good for your team, how your team – you can say convener in chief, collaborator in chief, but how you are working with your peers and other groups in the business and make sure people know, put their patience had on. It does take hard work, and it does take time, and it does take financial investment, but it does pay off in spades if you do it right. And it is hard, just remind yourself it’s emotional and it is hard. There’s a lot of, you know, “Who Moved My Cheese,” Fiefdom syndrome, whatever you want to say, but that all goes along with the emotional part of change and driving change. And you know, at the end of the day, you have to sort of balance all of that. But if you know that you’re doing what’s right for the business and right for the people and right for your customers and your partners, don’t be deterred from your objectives.

Drew: Love it. Okay, Kevin Ruane, final words of wisdom?

Kevin: Leave your ego at the door, and it always, for me, starts with surrounding yourself with great people. And so especially around some of these cross-functional type of initiatives, draft a great team, and that’s not always going to be the team of the most senior, accomplished folks. You know, get a mix and, you know, get some people in different stages of their career opportunities to participate in something that’s important, where they’ll get some exposure to other senior leaders. They’ll get to work with some different people. And I think there’s, you know, something to that. If you organize around that, get the right team, have a specific charter focus, some goals, and you get after it, you’ll be amazed at what can happen.

Drew: I love it, amazing. Okay, Paige O’Neill, bring us home.

Paige: Yeah, I would say, find the common ground. Change can be scary. Some people love it, some people hate it, but if you find the common ground that unites people, and you drive people around that common ground, it’s a great way to bring the organization together, to unlock the passion, and also be mindful of the fact that you got to repeat things again and again and again. When you’re bored with it, it’s probably just taking root within the organization. So stay in there, stay on message, stay consistent, and be the one in there, influencing and kind of negotiating back and forth to make sure that the commonalities come together and the differences are bridged.

Drew: Yeah, so many good words of wisdom from these three folks, but I’m going to summarize it really quickly, which is, yes, you’ve got to do your listening and do your homework. Two: leaving your ego at the door. That’s the thing. Yeah, your title is Chief Marketing Officer, but really your mission is to make major change, and you don’t need the credit for that. You’re going to need great people. I love the notion of finding the common ground which is the way to do it. And then lastly, don’t assume that one email is going to get it done. It’s, as Heidi Bullock would say, seven times, seven ways, and that applies internally and externally. Alright, thank you, Paige, Kevin, Amy, you’re all wonderful sports and 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!