Building the Case for Brand as a New CMO with Latané Conant

The B2B CMO Podcast with Jon Miller and Sydney Sloan · 2026-08-11 · 48 min

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Topics in this episode

SaaS B2B chief marketing officer CMO marketing leader

Episode notes

Latané Conant is the Chief Market Officer of Parloa, AI agents that turn customer conversations into lasting loyalty. Prior to Parloa, she led both global sales and marketing teams in both CMO and CRO roles at 6Sense, Appirio, and Ariba. She wrote the book No Forms. No Spam. No Cold Calls. Latané joins co-hosts Jon Miller and Sydney Sloan to discuss how being a sales leader can make you a more empathetic marketing leader, why benchmarking and research are key to building the business case to invest in marketing, and what you can do as a marketing leader to upskill your team and attain outsized results. Episode Takeaways Win the stage, not the deal. Marketing leaders should map their specific sales process stage-by-stage and ask "what needs to happen to win this stage," rather than focusing only on closing. By treating each stage as its own objective, it lets marketing provide targeted "air cover" instead of generic support, at the right time. Pre-socialize big asks individually before the board meeting. Rather than pitching a major brand investment cold, secure CEO or CFO support first, then bring specific, but not overly prescriptive, pillars to the board.