Teams Built for Growth and Grit

Drew: Hello, Renegade Marketers! If this is your first time, welcome, and 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, Dan Lowden, Marni Puente, and Amy King share how they build high-performing marketing teams. They talk about hiring for culture and capability, giving people clear priorities and room to grow, and using coaching, experimentation, and AI to free up time for higher-value work. 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 CMO Huddle Studio, the live streaming show dedicated to inspiring B2B greatness. I'm your host, Drew Neisser, live from my home studio in New York. Today, building a high-performance marketing team isn't as easy as, say, lining up penguins on an iceberg. Sure, they all look sharp in tuxedos, but some dive in headfirst, while others waddle away at the first sign of trouble. Do you hire superstars who dazzle for one season but bolt at the next shiny opportunity, or load up with senior leaders only to discover no one's left to actually execute? Today, we're going to wrestle with those trade-offs and explore what it really takes to build a high-performing team that soars and sticks together and probably uses a lot of AI with that. Let's bring on Dan Lowden, CMO of Blackbird and advisory board member of CMO Huddles and a returning guest who's previously appeared on so many shows, including Analyst Relations, Cybersecurity, and Marketing as a Business Driver. Hello, Dan, how are you, and where are you this fine day?

Dan: Hello, Drew. This is always a pleasure. I always really appreciate being invited to these conversations. I am in Summit, New Jersey today, working out of the house.

Drew: Rainy Summit, I am imagining, but it's gloomy. Gloomy, but it's sunny in here in the studio. Let's get into it. What is your overall approach to building a high-performing marketing team at Blackbird? And I know you started as a department of one, so this gets really interesting fast.

Dan: Yeah, I mean, it's one that's near and dear to my heart. I have been leader of teams for now—I hate to say it—almost 30 years, starting back at IBM. So I've done a lot of the big company thing, leading big teams, and then, as you just said, with Blackbird, I was a team of one when I joined them as a startup, and I have since grown it to five people. So I have learned over the years what's critically important is to hire the right people, the right culture, the right fit, the right diversity of talents and all that goes along with that, and bring the best on board to help me create a successful brand, to help create leadership, and to make us look like a billion-dollar company, even though we're small to begin with, right? So to me, I personally have played a role in hiring every person that's been a part of my teams. I'm still friends with people from 30 years ago and watched them grow and become even more successful and mentor them, and they've mentored me over the years. But to me, it's building a team that works really hard, that trusts each other, that complements each other, that challenges each other, that works together to improve on everything that we do, and have fun together. To me, that's critical, because we're all working so hard. We put, you know, blood, sweat, and tears into this. We have to have fun along the way, and that's been my approach of creating high-performing teams: giving them the tools, giving them the freedom to do a lot of great work, but doing it together in a way that really makes marketing shine and becomes a strategic part of the company's success.

Drew: So there's a lot of ground, you know, lots of details in there that I want to go into, but first I'm imagining that hiring—you're a virtual company, right, for the most part?

Dan: Pretty much based out of New York City, but yeah, we're spread out all over the world.

Drew: So as a result, that's got to add another dimension to it, because you're not seeing them in the office every day. So it creates a little bit of a leadership challenge for you, but I also imagine it impacts the type of people you might hire. I don't know, because you really have to trust that they're putting in the work.

Dan: Yeah, I mean, that's to me hiring the right people. I don't necessarily worry about where they are based. If it's the right people with the right attitudes and the right hunger and curiosity to learn and do better, like that's what I love, right? And I will help them. My goal is to help them be successful, not only with my current company but also in the future. So yes, there's a trust factor, but at the same time, they have to show great work, right, and show progress and share their work. And we create and are very, very effective in creating a lot of different content and campaigns and testing things through AI that we're all helping each other on a regular basis. But what's also important is every quarter we come in together, right? So they would fly in or take the train or drive up, and we'd come and spend two days in New York City together. We'd go out to dinner, so we get to know each other personally, yes, personally, as well as professionally. And that's what builds trust. That's what builds excitement and to show the impact that we're having on helping the company, helping sales drive, you know, all the top-of-the-funnel activity all the way down the customer journey. We show impact, and to me, that proves the team's doing great work together, and it's worked out really well. This is my 12th startup over the years. You know, we've gone through a lot of successes, a lot of acquisitions because of it.

Drew: Well, and you have a track record of doing this, and I'm guessing your percentage of hires—because leaders are notoriously poor at hiring, you know, in the sense that maybe a 50% ratio of hiring really people that you want to stick around—and so I'm curious, is there any question or thing that you do in the hiring process that increases the odds that this person is going to be able to do what you're hiring them for?

Dan: Yeah, I mean, they do meet the team. I do talk to them at length. We look at their history. We look at, you know, things that they've accomplished, both personally and professionally, right? I don't know. I've gotten a good sense of the people that I feel can be very strong performers and can be additive to the culture, additive to the success of the company. And yes, there's always ones that don't pan out or for some reason aren't a great fit. And some of those, I've actually helped get the next job because they just weren't a good fit in our company, but they might be a good fit at somewhere else, right? And I've done that. But to me, the large majority—I feel very fortunate—I've worked with some amazing people that teach me, that keep me on the innovative cycle, just as I teach them and help them based off of all my experience. So I've had really good success keeping strong people because, one, I work for companies that have a strong mission. Two, the work we do means a lot and impacts the company a lot, and that's really fulfilling. And then just opportunity for growth, not only with their own individual skills but growth where they can become more senior within the company or move to other parts of the company. And to me, if you show that opportunity for growth and they continue to learn, just like it is for me—I want to continue to learn and have more growth and experience more things, hard things—if I do that for my team, they're going to operate well, and they're going to stick around because they like what they're doing.

Drew: I love it. Lots of little good morsels in there. I want to—this is a weird moment in the world where, in theory, we all have access to abundant information. And I'm curious right now, as you think about—I know that you hired specialized expertise when you first got going and so forth, and some very specific hires—and I'm curious, as you think about this moving forward, is it going to continue to be about specialized expertise, or are we going to have people who are just really good judgment and critical thinkers who can do a lot of things? And I don't know if you've thought about that much, but let's just talk about your first hires in the specialized expertise that you were looking for.

Dan: Yeah, so again, I was the first marketing person within Blackbird, but the team had built a great brand on their own with the CEO, and I came in to go elevate that in a massive way. So the first thing for me was content. So I hired a great individual, former reporter, CBS News and many other outlets, who was fantastic at creating content. Not only creating content—you create it once, but then you use it 100 different ways, right? And that's critical, and we're leveraging AI to help with that, but we really have to make sure it's personal. We have to make sure it has our company's voice, because we're in cybersecurity, and you have to be very authentic. So content was critical for me, and I needed somebody senior to really own it, run it, understand it, and the power of it. My second hire was around demand generation and hired an incredible woman to come and help us own the whole process. And yes, she's senior, but she does everything, just like I have to do everything I have to do in startups. You have to wear many hats, right? So I do everything from the most tactical to the most strategic. She does that on a demand generation perspective, knows all the tools, knows the tech stack, knows how to create campaigns that are personalized, and we've crushed it with great content and great demand gen. You have to have both in order to be successful. You need the content first, and then my, you know, really next hire was around events because we do a lot of events and experiential events, and we have to stand out. We have to look different. And that's really it. We've hired an intern that's helping us, that's learning, and she's doing amazing as well. I have one BDR on my team, and he does a great job. So to me, that's kind of the baseline, and then we can grow from there. And it's the same thing that I did at HUMAN. When I started at HUMAN, I had two people—that was my previous company—and when I left the company, I had 60-some people on my team.

Drew: Awesome. All right. Well, we'll be back, but right now we're going to bring on Marni Puente, Senior Vice President and CMO of SAIC, and an industry expert who's graced our stage before, to discuss positioning as a growth engine. Hello, Marni, wonderful to see you again. How are you and where are you this fine day?

Marni: Hi, Drew. Yeah, it's great to be here. I am actually at home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, but based in DC. My job is based in DC, so I tend to go back and forth.

Drew: You know, any city that has the word beach in its name makes me happy. I just want you to know. Yes, me too. It just does. That's my roots. So interesting. You're in a very different scenario. You're at a big, you know, Fortune 500 company. I'm wondering if, after listening to Dan in startup mode, anything he said resonated with you.

Marni: 100%. So, I mean, yes, I'm in a Fortune 500 company. It's government contracting. So I went from B2G back to B2B commercial for the last seven, eight years now, back to B2G, which has shifted a lot, right, with this administration and just recently. But yeah, so much of what Dan said resonated with me, because I often say we are a startup marketing department in a Fortune 500 company. And one of the things that actually appealed to me about this position was my fabulous CEO, Toni Townes-Whitley, who came from Microsoft, leading the highly regulated businesses and saw a gap in marketing. It's traditionally been more of a communication shop as a lot of government contractors are heavily focused on comms, and so there's just been a real opportunity to build. And this was exciting to me, because I got to really start from scratch with a blank slate, which not all CMOs have the luxury of doing. And so I've had the opportunity to really hire the talent I need while building a marketing function and bring in new capability skill sets that have never existed at SAIC before, and also bring in what I've learned from commercial best practices into government contracting. So it's been quite exciting.

Drew: And so let's get specific and talk about some of the things, some of the hires that you've made, and how they filled some of the gaps that you saw.

Marni: 100%. So when I came, because it was more focused on communications, minimal advertising and website and trade shows was, is very big. It was more in that awareness realm, if you think about the marketing funnel, very little around differentiation, not a lot of thought leadership or marketing campaigns. No down funnel, so in terms of demand gen and even, you know, ABM and deal-based marketing. So I've really had the opportunity to hire the best of the best from, you know, previous roles, people I've known and some I haven't known, but to really lay out, starting from scratch, what the marketing function, what good looks like. And as I said to Toni, my CEO, when I interviewed and when I first started, I don't just want to play catch up in B2G. I want to do something different. And so bringing in a high-performing team from, you know, former companies I've worked with, Accenture, KPMG, and others, Fortune 100 that really know what good looks like, and bring pretty sophisticated skill sets around those capability areas that I mentioned, and starting small and piloting and starting to prove out the real value of marketing beyond the more traditional, you know, government contracting practices, trade shows, advertising, etc. It's been an incredible opportunity, and we're still scaling, we're still building, we're still growing. Again, I think where I was fortunate was I really had an opportunity to bring in talent that I knew had the right culture fit and the desire to build with me.

Drew: And it's so interesting. As you were talking, I was thinking about as a marketing leader going up through the ranks, if you start to think about everybody that works for you as a potential hire at the next company you go to, you're going to spend more time mentoring, you're going to spend more time helping. You're going to spend more time as opposed to just thinking about you and your role. And I think that's one thing if, and it's funny, because oftentimes, if you're interviewing for a VC-backed company, the VC might snarkily ask you, you know, name 10 people that will come and join you. I mean, they're asking because they want to save the recruitment fees, but they're also asking, are you the kind of leader that people will want to follow? And I think that's a really important thing to be thinking about, right?

Marni: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, Drew. And I think what I've been fortunate—I mean, I've had incredible employees in the past. And I love this topic because I'm so passionate about team building. So I actually did have a number of people that wanted to follow, and some, you know, really savvy marketers. No question, they could do the job. They're competent. I know we'll probably talk a little bit about culture. For me, the culture fit is as, if not more, important, particularly when you're coming from a large company, which many of my folks have, like myself, and you're building from the ground up. So they needed to also have that entrepreneurial spirit and willingness to roll up their sleeves and meet the business where they're at. And so that culture fit has been really important. But yes, 100% agree. I think what I'm finding, and I'm so excited to hear from my employees that have come from massive, you know, Fortune 100 companies like myself, is wow, I'm learning more here than I ever learned there, and they're getting opportunities that they wouldn't have gotten there. And I think that's the beauty of working in more of a startup-type environment.

Drew: Interesting. I want to go, and we will, we will talk about the culture of it, but I think that's so interesting in that, in some ways, there's the marketing department culture, which you are changing and evolving and turning into something that is, you said, is more of a demand gen engine, and both big picture differentiation and, you know, little M marketing in terms of just tactically getting out there in different ways. That's a department level. But at the same time, you're probably thinking about this giant company that has a culture that may be very different.

Marni: Very different. And I really have to say, kudos. And I'll be honest, I think it would have been harder to come in before Toni Townes-Whitley and the leadership team that she's built that's so fantastic, that really rally behind marketing. Because this is—I think I mentioned to my boss at one point, this is change management. He said, no, this is a tidal wave. This is sea change. So we are, like, you know, movers. We are disruptive. And he said, I want you to continue to be disruptive, because especially with the evolving landscape in government contracting, what got us here won't get us there. And so I feel like it just, quite honestly, ended up being fortuitous that I had brought in a lot of commercial talent into government contracting, because that's really where government's headed. And so we have a little bit of a leg up, but we also have to meet the business where they're at, because, to your point, you know, it's the way it's always been done. You know, that's changing, right? And marketing is very new to many of them, right? And so we've had to prove out value quickly, lots of pilots, a lot of meeting them where they're at. And that's why that culture piece is so important. Because if you bring in someone who is, you know, well, this is the way we do it, or, you know, this is—without meeting the business and that sort of compromise and bringing them along. That's been so important for the folks that I've hired, that they have that willingness and desire to educate. And we have something at SAIC, my team we call "we market marketing," and that's one of our biggest priorities. So there's a lot of education, there's a lot of change management, proving value quickly.

Drew: So one last question before we move on. I want to get to the sense of you brought in a lot of good talent, and you want to get that talent to mesh and sort of work in sync. And I'm curious if there are any specific things that you did to sort of help, besides market the marketing, which is a great thing in and of itself, to sort of help this team be high performance. Yeah, in its own little way, anything that you can think of that would help do that.

Marni: Oh, yeah. I mean, I think so many things. One, I'm very transparent, right? And I think it's really important to set, as the CMO, right, the leader, to set clear expectations, priorities, consistent communication, trust, all of that, shared goals and vision, but then also really humble ourselves. And I think this is where the role of the CMO has changed significantly is that we now need to be, you know, not just a CMO, but we need to know strategy. We need to be a technologist. We need to work cross-functionally more than ever before, and we need to be a lifelong learner. And that last part, I don't want to underestimate how important that is. And so when they see that I'm in the trenches with them, like I stood up this AI committee, and we are the model for the company on AI transformation, which is phenomenal, but really being in the trenches with them quite honestly and humbling myself and saying, look, I don't have all the answers, right, and I empower them to be able to do their jobs. And I think that's something that has really motivated them, because they might not have had that in a more sophisticated Fortune 100 company, well-oiled machine. So I think that's served a tremendous amount in terms of motivating, aligning, and just even retention. It's really exciting to hear employees just say, gosh, I learned more this past year around AI, or I've just learned so much. I came from a, you know, top Fortune 100 technology consulting firm. I've learned more here in the last year than I did there. That is so gratifying for me, and I want to keep that up, because it's a fine balance of keeping them motivated and interested when they come from really what good looks like, right? But I think they're very excited about the opportunity to build and, you know, I always say too, when you win over skeptics, that, to me, is the most rewarding thing. And so I think there's a lot of that, right? And so we have what we call glimmers, and it's amazing glimmers every week in terms of, oh, hey, we were able to convince so-and-so, you know, the value of account-based marketing when they were skeptical, etc. So I think those wins that you wouldn't necessarily see in a large company, where this is just standard, that's really motivated people to keep doing what they're doing.

Drew: Okay, well, we need to bring on Amy King, CMO of Relias, who's been waiting patiently, who is joining the show for the first time. Hello, Amy. Welcome. How are you and where are you this fine day?

Amy: Hi, Drew. It's great to be here. I'm not sure if I was waiting patiently as much as enjoying everyone else's conversation. It's really been great to be on the back end of this. I am here in the Raleigh area of North Carolina. Our company, Relias, actually has its own podcast studio because we produce content for healthcare learning and training, so I get to actually be part of our own production system today.

Drew: I love it. That's awesome. Yes, and you sound good, and you look good, so all of those things are fine. I'm curious, as you heard Dan and Marni, there were some themes that really struck you.

Amy: There are a lot of themes that really struck me. When I joined Relias, marketing had not been a huge priority for the business, and we're a team of over 100 marketers at this point, but that was something that we had to build. And in doing that, a lot of the things that Dan and Marni said, especially about embracing vulnerability, change, and a growth mindset, managing resilience through change, and really thinking about how we were going to structure teams that were ready for whatever was coming. It also required us to really be very intentional about leadership hires. It kind of broke down what we had to do. We really had a full marketing reset, and that really had to—we had to look at our strategy as a business and then figure out how do we need to structure our marketing team in order to be able to achieve that strategy? And then we had to make sure we had the right leaders in place, ones that would be able to do a lot of what Dan and Marni mentioned. They embrace change. They are very open to being humble and vulnerable. They're really willing to celebrate wins and failures and learn from those. So it took us a little bit to get that kind of team in place, and then once we had it, we had to really look at the problems across the business, especially from our stakeholders. So we really consider ourselves a service organization serving sales, client care, and other areas within the business. So what did they need from us, and where were we not meeting those needs? And then how did we need to upskill, hire, develop, and really understand what we then needed to do in order to meet those challenges that the business was facing? And then lastly, I think it was two areas of measuring our success, so making sure we were transparent with the business about what we were doing and how it was performing and where we were going to go, and then making sure that we are continuously, periodically, but regularly surveying our teams as we've hired those people. Are they happy? Are we helping them grow professionally? Are we providing the opportunity for them to be lifelong learners? All of that was a journey, and it's something that all of those areas are ones we continually want to improve. It was definitely a process, I think, to get there.

Drew: Well, there's a lot to unpack there. I want to maybe focus on a couple of things, like the lifelong learning thing is really interesting, and it's funny—Amy introduced me to Amy Edmondson, author of The Right Kind of Wrong. We have secured her for a Career Huddle coming up in December, and she talks about experimentation and culture and failure, and I'm curious if that's part of your modus operandi as a result of having read that book and studying that.

Amy: 100%. One of my favorite examples from the book, because it's actually very relevant to healthcare and the nurses that we work with—but she found that nurses too often in care settings were unwilling to submit when an incident or a negative event had happened because they were worried that would affect them personally in terms of how they were ranked for their performance. And you can imagine, if hospitals aren't willing to know where incidents are occurring, then how are you ever going to improve? How are you going to make your workforce better and your floor better? And that was a lesson we really brought back to our own marketing teams, and what we've started doing, both at our marketing all-hands and then within team meetings, is having a section for every meeting where someone brings up an intelligent failure as an example or a case study, and not just the failure, but then what they then changed in terms of their behavior. How did they learn from it? And what are they now doing differently as a result of that? And we found that that culturally has had a big effect on our marketing team. People are much more willing to identify areas that we need to quit doing things because I think too often marketing organizations can get in the habit of, "Well, we do this because we've always done this." So they're much more willing to say, "Hey, we should stop this because it's not working," or they're much more willing to say, "Hey, you know, this is something that went wrong, but I want us all to learn from this so that we don't all make the same mistake." And, you know, they're celebrated for that. And I think the more you can create that kind of culture, the better you're going to be able to improve. And to the point of the theme we're talking about here, that's really how you're going to get to growth.

Drew: And it's interesting. My guess is that initially, when you launched that program about intelligent failure, there was a lot of reluctance, and it took some time that people could be confident that it was okay.

Amy: Yes, definitely, and it has to come from the top, right? Myself talking about failure, my leaders talking about their examples of failure. It requires everyone to buy in. And yes, it takes a little time. Everyone isn't going to jump on the intelligent failure bandwagon right from the beginning, but as you institute it as a regular practice and people start to see that there's no downside, there's no penalty, and it really fosters respect for colleagues. So we've definitely found, too, that it creates a culture of respect as people are willing to do that, as well as more vulnerability within the team. So I won't say necessarily every single 100% person is willing to jump up there, but we've created enough of a movement around that that I think it's definitely made a difference within our team.

Drew: It was so interesting. I have like two minutes left of the book that I'm listening to, and towards the end of the book, she mentions a Google leader who went to the team and said, "Yeah, there could be layoffs, but I promise you that the first will be the ones who have not made a single mistake." And I thought that was such an interesting way of framing it because if you haven't made a mistake, then you're really not trying to do anything new. But creating a culture of intelligent failure. So, all right, I got down into the weeds a little bit. I'm wondering, from just on a high level—oh, I know you also mentioned tracking and surveying. Do you use a tool or anything for that for employees, I meant?

Amy: Yeah. So we usually do two major company surveys a year, one surveying our entire employees, and it's pretty extensive, another surveying all of our employees about specifically about their manager so that we can use it for leadership improvement. And then we'll do periodic ones throughout, but the large company survey is something that's done across the business, and it's something we take very seriously. We have to make commitments as leaders and departments about, based on survey results, what we're going to do with that information and how we're going to change behavior based on the issues that we're finding that our teams are most frustrated with.

Drew: Yeah, I was reading somewhere that some of that data is often inaccurate, right? And that sometimes someone—because there's a recency bias, and, "Oh, I just had a bad conversation with the boss, so that boss is terrible, right? And they don't listen, right?" And so it's so difficult in this world of measurement because you do one moment in time. But nonetheless, I'm imagining that there is good learning, and there are things that come up, that bubble up, that you realize, yeah, this probably is an issue.

Amy: Yeah, that's a great point, and we're not using it to target any individual. That's much more done through performance reviews. And we have a whole—we can talk about competencies and skills, but we do a lot of skills and competency assessment as well. The survey is really for us to find more larger trends. Some of the ones we're working through right now that the survey has found that we need to improve, or "the workflow within my team is well organized." So there's an example of where we're finding that there's probably some—as we've made a lot of changes quickly, there are some areas where a process needs to be improved. It can highlight areas that we're struggling with as a team. When it comes to empowerment, we actually score really well on that one, and I'm really proud of that, but we find that the major trends that we're having issues with across a department or across a company, the survey can be pretty accurate for pointing those out, and then we can dig in more as a leadership team on specifics. But you're right. We don't use it to try and isolate things that are often, to your point, time-bound and could be, you know, moment-in-time kinds of things.

Drew: I love it. All right. Well, we're going to take a little tiny bit of a break so I can talk about CMO Huddles, and then we will come back to you. And actually, all of you—launched in 2020, CMO Huddles is the only community of flocking us B2B marketing leaders, and that has a logo featuring penguins. Wait, what? Yes, well, a group of these curious, adaptable, and problem-solving birds is called a huddle. And the leaders of CMO Huddles are all that and more, huddling together to conquer the toughest job in the C-suite. So Dan, Marni, Amy, you're all incredibly busy marketing leaders. I'm wondering, no pressure, if you could share a specific example of how CMO Huddles has helped you. Dan, you're the longest veteran here from the very beginning. Feel free to share something.

Dan: Yeah. I mean, to me, it's all about the community and sharing the challenges and the successes, and we get to talk to our peers who are going through the same things that we are and learning from that, right? And building friendships from it, but also helping us do our jobs better. So to me, CMO Huddles has been incredibly impactful to me and the companies I serve.

Drew: I love it. I appreciate that, and I appreciate you. Marni, any thoughts?

Marni: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, ditto to everything Dan said. I think also moving into a CMO role, there's a lot of CMO peer exchanges out there. What I find so beneficial about this particular one is the focus on B2B, because we are unique, right? And being able to learn from others. And even some of the, you know, not just the huddles, right, Drew, that you run, which I always find incredibly insightful, but some of the side conversations I've had, you know, where I've had either mentoring sessions with you, Drew, or you put me in touch with someone who maybe is, you know, struggling with a similar issue. I actually had a call earlier this week on that. I think that both community, but also the one-to-one opportunities to interact with your peers and learn from them, and being in the same sort of industry, B2B, has been really beneficial. And I have to give a plug too for the CMO Huddle event that you run in Palo Alto in November. That's just an incredible opportunity.

Drew: I really appreciated that. It's funny, we just did launch a mentoring program for—and all the advisory boards volunteered to do this—to help first-time CMOs in their roles. Amy, you're new to CMO Huddles. Any thoughts? But we did have an in-person huddle.

Amy: We did, and I love that. I will echo what Dan and Marni said, but I will also say the in-person huddles have been super amazing for me. It's sometimes hard, and I should be better about always giving Slack channels and others the time that I need to carve out, but if I put an event on my schedule, I'm going to go, and I have met some incredible people. To Marni's point, there's nothing like learning from other marketing leaders, and that is just so valuable. I think as you get up to C-suite and senior levels within your career, it can be hard without a network like CMO Huddles to know who to go to, to really get some of the answers, perspectives, trends, all of the things that are happening in the marketplace that you really need to know about to stay innovative and on top of what's happening. So I really valued that.

Drew: Well, we value you. And if you're a B2B marketing leader who wants to build a strong peer network, gain recognition as a thought leader, and get your very own stress penguin, please join us at cmohuddles.com. Okay, so let's bring everybody back, and I feel like we're at this moment where AI and AI usage is redefining your relationship with your employees, your employees' jobs. And I'm curious if I'm overstating that at the moment, but talk a little bit about how you are approaching AI usage across the team. And just for one thing that this came up, one of the folks actually monitors the usage of the software and discovered that they had a writer on the team that had not used the Jasper tool in six months, and that was a red flag, because that's what they're supposed to be doing. So I'm curious how, as you look at high-performance team, your thoughts about that are changing related to how your employees are using AI.

Marni: I'll jump in if it's okay, Drew. I'm actually speaking on this topic at a conference next week, but I think given government contracting, building a team from scratch, limited budget, having to walk the talk with COUCH, right, which is focused on efficiencies and leveraging emerging tech, I am hiring people who have AI skill sets, and I've implemented an AI committee across marketing and comms with the goal of 100% adoption, which I'm really proud to say we've reached. I guess what surprised me the most was there was some absolute resistance in the beginning, but it's ended up creating a higher-performing team, and even a result that I didn't really expect, which is it's really turned into a retention strategy. And so instead of my employees feeling fearful, and I think part of this is a leader saying, "Look, I don't have all the answers either. It's kind of an equal playing field when it comes to AI, right?" I'm part of our battle buddies program together, the peer exchange we put in place. So I have a battle buddy. I'm doing everything I'm asking my team to do, and then we're in the trenches together, doing it and learning from each other. And then they don't feel silly, but they're starting to go, "Oh, wow, this is really a powerful tool that's freeing me up." I think we average like four to six hours a week. It's freeing up individuals on the team to be able to focus on more strategic work, and the bonds that have been formed—so talk about teamwork and collaboration—it has really strengthened that because we're all learning together. We're all bonding over this. We're sharing our funny stories, best practices. People are starting to even use it for personal things like fantasy football predictions, etc., and it's really taken off, and the connections that have formed across the team have been really outstanding, while also really using it, you know, to increase productivity and, more importantly, value, right? And so that's kind of where we are. Now, okay, we've increased productivity efficiency. Now let's focus on the actual value that it can bring to the team.

Drew: Amy, I think a battle buddy came up on our dinner huddle for some reason. Is that—was that from you? Are you doing the same program, or is that with someone else?

Amy: I think it might be somebody else, but now I'm intrigued, so I want to know more.

Drew: Yeah. So what is a battle buddy program, Marni?

Marni: Oh yeah. So I should have explained that right off. So we have had several initiatives, 30 Days of AI, where we kind of experimented with different tools, but also to increase adoption and educate, and then came up with a battle buddies program, where it's basically a peer mentoring program. And so we took individuals that, you know, had just worked with AI longer, a little more savvy with prompt engineering, etc., and paired them with more novice folks, and no shame whatsoever, right? Again, I'm participating in it. I'll purposely, whenever we need a name or, like, think, just various initiatives, work with your battle buddy on this. We've had contests. It's been a lot of fun. So we're all kind of learning together. And we offer AI office hours too with some of my more experienced AI users, so they can get help. But it's really been fun, and I found that some of the folks that really weren't using AI have become my strongest users of it through this.

Drew: Right, when they sort of convert and the light bulb goes off. It's funny. I now remember, so you happen to be in a peer huddle, and you mentioned it. I think I mentioned it. Keep everything in those huddles confidential and anonymized. When I was looking at editing the recap, I went, "Oh, that was it." So thank you for that bit of clarification. Dan, you know, one of the things I've been thinking about a lot, and I wonder if you have an opinion on this—it's harder with a smaller team—but right now, a lot of folks are relying on the volunteer who sort of was AI-first and knows a little bit of programming, might have been a vibe coder or something. Do you anticipate that you're going to have an AI Ops person on your team at some point soon?

Dan: That's a good question. I mean, I think that is definitely in the works and would help. But I think the key thing for me is like, "Hey, we're Blackbird.AI. We are an AI company, and we use AI across every department and to serve our customers, because we're pulling together, you know, trillions of data points of things that are happening across the internet, and then making them useful, valuable in a summarized form, using AI to help them understand what risks they're facing, right?" So it's inbred in our culture, in our DNA. From a marketing perspective, every image on our website is AI-created, AI-generated. It's everywhere, right? We felt, let's be true to the brand. Let's be true to what we do. And it's really set us apart, like we've been aggressive in how to use it. And the team learns new things every day. They get excited when they understand a new AI-based tool that they can use to be more productive or to create more value. As Marni said, to the customer, right? If we can provide more customized, valuable information to educate a prospect or a customer to help them solve their problem, the better off we're going to be. All of our blog posts, all of our content that we create has AI as part of the base of it, right? We certainly prioritize and customize it and make sure it's our voice, because you have to do that, right? But at the same time, it's made our team more productive and happier, because they can do more of the things that they want to do better instead of doing the things that, you know, take a lot of time that aren't as much fun. So to me, we're AI-first in everything that we do, but it has to provide value. It has to be our voice, and it has to be authentic, because in our world, you have to build trust and friendships and partnerships in cybersecurity, and you can't blow that. You have one shot at that. So it's got to be a balance.

Drew: It's so funny. People reach out all the time to be on the podcast. And I got an email from somebody who wanted to be on my show because they invented a new kind of toilet seat or something like that. It was a B2C offer. They sent three notes to me saying, "Oh, we love your show. I think it'd be a perfect guest." And I wrote back to the guy and said, after the third time, "You have obviously never listened to my show." The guy wrote back immediately and said, "You're right. I haven't. My bad. I've been using an AI service to do this." And that is where it goes wrong, off the rails. I just had to share that publicly, because these are the things that you need to worry about. But I want to get to a larger issue. I think people feel stressed about all the things. And ironically, while it is amazing that we are getting more done, there are so many tools to learn. You know, there's a new tool every day. "Oh, you can do this for presentations." "Oh, you can create a Notebook LM to help your salespeople understand a certain quote." That's so cool, and it's endless. So I'm curious how you help your teams manage their priorities and don't get to the point where they feel like they have to work 14 hours a day, or just, or like, "Oh," you know, they're pulling their hair out because there's so much on their to-do list. You want them to be productive. So I'm curious how you're dealing with prioritization. Amy, you want to take that one?

Amy: Sure, I'll start. So we've, over the past two years, embarked on a major transformation across the business where we're going from being a point solution B2B SaaS business, which was really focused on learning and training in healthcare, to one that's a healthcare workforce management platform that's really providing multi-solution, multi-product ways in which our healthcare customers can solve key challenges. I say that because going from a point solution company to a multi-solution, multi-product company has been a significant transformation. And the number of work streams that come out from that—everything from marketing to sales enablement to pricing to how we design pitches and do discovery—it's really changed most of the, not only from a technology perspective, but the way our front of house operates. And that can lead to a lot of lack of focus if you aren't really careful about keeping teams focused, to your point, on what are the core goals. First, making sure everyone's aligned on strategy, what is it? Then, making sure you're very transparent with timelines and what's happening when, and then making sure the teams that are in charge of getting everyone ready for all of those—for us, a lot of that lives in our market intelligence and product marketing teams—are super clear with everybody on focus, so that people know that they don't have to get all spun up on all of the things that might seem a little chaotic. They know a plan, they know how to follow it, and they know what the priority is in what order, and we all reinforce that through a lot of meetings and alignment. I think that's really important in situations where you're undergoing change quickly and it can seem disruptive. It's just really important to keep that kind of structure in place, and then again, make sure that you're measuring outcomes. We've been really happy to see about a 20 to 40% lift in our average deal size as we've rolled out additional solutions. And we want to make sure that we're driving the right kind of outcomes with the things that we're releasing and then sharing those wins with the team, so that everyone can feel excited and know that maybe a few of those chaotic days are worth it for what, for the impact that they're making on the business.

Drew: I'm curious, Dan or Marni, do you guys have an operating system, like OKRs or EOS that you use? Marni, you're shaking your head, yes?

Marni: Yeah, yeah. We have standardized OKRs, which are great. I will say I do separately have marketing metrics, so because they're standardized OKRs across enterprise operations, which is right, all, you know, I've got the OKRs. It's not, I don't want to say it's a check the box. It's more than that, super helpful to track. But then I also have a separate kind of marketing dashboard that I monitor to get down into very specific marketing KPIs. But yes, we do have, and then we have a corporate scorecard, and I have two key brand metrics that are tracked that might for my CEO and the board on those.

Drew: So Dan, I'm gonna throw this one at you. There's, because it's a small team and everybody has to be a high performer, but I'm curious about that, the challenge of managing high performers as a specific thing. And then I'll get to Amy and Marni, because I'm sure you have a mix. You have people who are good at their job, but they're, you know, good performers. And then there are people extraordinary. In your case, Dan, it feels like you have no choice but you have to have high performers in your four spots.

Dan: That's 100% right. We all help each other out. Like we all have strengths, we all have weaknesses, and it's a definite team effort. I did like what Amy said about intelligent failure. Like with all these tools coming so quickly, the team's excited to try them, and they'll quickly realize, hey, this will provide value or not, right? We call it an experimental culture that we live in, right? And if they find something that they like, they bring it to the team. We meet weekly, we share regularly, and that way everybody understands, hey, this is a new opportunity to enhance the marketing that we do. To me, yes, I've got, you know, four or five people on the team that are all high performers. We're all still learning. I'm asking them to do a lot. They understand coming in that this is the role in the startup. You have to wear many hats. You have to work really hard, but we have fun. Like we have a good time. We know each other. When we have challenges, we all help each other out. When we have successes, we all support them, right? And to me, you build a team like that, they're not going to want to go anywhere else, because they're enjoying what they're doing, and they feel they have purpose, they're learning, and they see the success of the company growing and a bigger opportunity for themselves. So that's what's worked for me over the years. And, you know, thrilled that I've been able to work with some amazing people.

Drew: I love it. So, Marni, you have a bigger team, okay? Not everybody. I mean, you know, having had big teams, not everybody is that the superstar, right? And you can't have an entire functioning department of superstars. It's just one, it's impossible to hire at that kind of ratio and two, not every role needs it. How do you think about that? And how do you manage your top performers relative to your good performers?

Marni: It's so timely, Drew, because literally my last leadership team meeting I went through and I said, I want to talk about our top performers and how we have a nurture plan for each of them, and make sure to invest in our top performers, spend time with them, etc. But to your point, those top performers are people that I brought on because often they have AI expertise, because that's the state of where we're going. But I brought them on to build because I'm in that position where I can't have a mediocre person, I mean to be blunt, like come in and ask them to build a deal-based marketing program, right? So there are those, and I, you know, sort of more steady Eddie, maybe more operational, great at what they do, not poor performers by any means. But that's great, right? Let them keep doing what they're doing, where I'm bringing in more of the, I would say, top performers, kind of outside thinking, those new capable, new strategic growth capabilities. So I'm talking customer-centric marketing, which is our term for ABM, deal-based marketing, business group marketing, solution services campaigns, because it's, you know, feeds the engine. So I think that really trying to double down on where I need those top performers and make sure, like I said earlier, the right culture fit. They're entrepreneurial. Because in a startup-like environment, even though I'm in a Fortune 500 company, I need them to be willing to build, right? And so, but I'm really looking at, and they don't, not all of them report to me, so I'm working with my leadership team to say, okay, what is our plan for nurturing this person and making sure that we're giving them what they need? And some of that is direct in their day job, and some of it's outside of it. One of them, probably one of my very top performers, leads our AI committee, right? And so I think looking for those stretch opportunities for them and investing time in them is key.

Drew: I love it. All right. Well, we're getting to the point where it's, yeah, it's time for final words of wisdom for other CMOs when it comes to growing high-performing teams. And Amy, since you were so patient in the beginning, you get to go first.

Amy: Thanks, Drew. I think there's a few things as you have put the team in place, and you feel like they're there, and then you need to keep, sometimes growth then becomes harder to sustain. So I think that sustain word is really important, and to do that well, especially as your teams get larger and larger, thing is really important for our top performers and to know who they are. So make sure you have a great framework in place for competencies and skills assessments, and then use those to help develop transparent career path and professional development plans with your employees, so they know here's how I'm going to grow with the business. Here are the resources that are available to me. And then I think as leaders, it's really important as you have those people like Marni was talking about, your AI-forward, your innovation-forward people, that you become their fast follower, and you say, as a senior leader, you're an expert in this, and I know you're excited about it, and our organization needs to do this, so I'm going to be your fast follower, and I'm going to support you with what you need, get you the resources you need, empower you to work with the teams that you need to make sure you can do this. I'm lucky to have a leader who used to be an engineer, and as he came over to marketing, which isn't always a typical path, he had great ideas. There's a lot of AI tied to automation, innovation was coming up that we could use as a marketing organization to transform the way we do campaigns. And it's my job to have him lay out a good plan and knock it in his way, and really make sure he's ready to take that forward.

Drew: Okay, a lot of words of wisdom there. Marni, your turn.

Marni: Yeah. I mean, ditto to everything Amy said. I think, you know, I often say in the most simplistic terms, being a good leader is hiring really great people that have strengths and talents that you don't have, and empowering them to do their job. I mean, really, in the most simplistic terms, but I do think it's delegating authority, empowering team members to take ownership of problems and find creative solutions. Serve as their guide 100%, but let them find the creative solution. And I think also celebrating successes. So no matter how big or small, that's particularly important for me and my team right now, because we've had a lot of uphill battles, right? We're coming in. It's marketing. It's still kind of fairly new. We're lean, and so a lot of those celebrations, what, maybe elsewhere, Fortune 100 where we've been before, just are sort of table stakes. We really do need to celebrate that. And the other thing, I think, as a leader that's really important, and also in sort of nurturing that next generation of talent, is I'm not always the spokesperson. And so if I've got my deal-based marketer or my account-based marketer leading an initiative, I invite them to speak to leadership. I may introduce, of course, and set the context, but giving them those opportunities. So I think giving them those stretch opportunities, empowering them and being there, you've got their back, right, and helping to guide them when needed.

Drew: I love it, okay? Dan, yeah, that was a lot to follow. Any other words of wisdom?

Dan: Yeah. I mean, I love what Amy and Marni said. Let me just add that my goal is to make every one of my team members successful, right, not only within marketing and show the impact that we can have, but across the organization, how they engage with sales, how they engage with executive team, to ensure that we're doing all we can to help the company be successful, not only when they're with the company, but afterwards, throughout their career. I will stay in touch with them if they need help. I can mentor them. They can mentor me. To me, this is all about helping grow strong marketers that can help companies throughout their career. And to me that, you know, especially in my stage of my career, I find that really, really beneficial and rewarding.

Drew: I love it. All right. Well, gosh, there's so many jewels in this, in this show, I feel like we could basically write the high-performing teams playbook. So thank you. Dan, Marni, Amy, you're all flocking awesome. 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!