People, Purpose, and Performance with Melissa Puls of Ivanti

Speaker A: The Next CMO podcast explores topics that are on the minds of forward thinking marketing leaders. From vision and strategy to leadership in emerging technologies. The Next CMO is sponsored by Planful, a platform to build, manage and measure your marketing plan. Track all your marketing spend and connect your budget with outcomes to measure your ROI. Check it out at planful.com marketing. Your CFO will love you for it. I'm your host, Scott Todaro, a 32 year marketing veteran, seven time head of marketing and co author of the book the Next cmo. Welcome to another exciting podcast we have today on the Next cmo. We have a great guest for you today. Melissa Pulse is going to be joining us today and uh, she has an amazing background. I think you guys are going to learn a tremendous amount. Now, uh, what I like about this conversation today, so Melissa is going to get a little personal. She's going to talk about not only some of her successes, but also some of our failures. And I think, you know, this is really important for marketers to learn because let's face it, we fail a lot. Right? You know, the old expression is 50% of my marketing is going to work. I just don't know which half. Well, you know, we can all sympathize with, uh, with each other's failings in that area. But you know, Melissa has got an amazing background, 30 years in marketing, uh, you know, so she's already got her little purple heart, uh, for bleeding out for that. Um, but what's most impressive is that 25 of those 30 years she has been a marketing leader. Uh, you know, for those of you that are marketing leaders, uh, you know that probably you're three or four years into this. If you're listening to this podcast, you're probably looking to get some more education. How would you like to add another two decades on top of that, right? She looks great considering how much time and energy she's put into this. So, uh, she's persevered pretty well with it. Uh, but she's worked for some amazing companies. For those of you that have worked in the tech space, especially B2B tech, Avid, progress, Iron Mountain, Infor. I'm m sure you're all familiar with these brands. Very large companies have made their way dating back to, I think these may be the late 90s. Some of these companies popped up and grew up to fairly large multimillion dollar companies. Um, but now she's doing a pretty big job too. It's not ending here. Right now she's at Avanti and she's had A nice long run for five years. She's also doing other things at her company. So for those of you that you already think that your marketing job is really big, how about adding on some customer success and renewals to your job as well? Then, uh, you can really feel some additional pain as you're being pulled in 35 different directions with a fairly big team. So, uh, she's got a big job, so her company works in the IT space, and they have over 40,000 customers. So needless, uh, to say, not only does she have to manage a bunch of people, but a lot of expectation on the other side. So welcome, Melissa. We're excited to talk to you today, and I know that this conversation's going to be phenomenal.

Speaker B: Thanks, Scott. I'm psyched to be here today. And thanks for the introduction. That was very nice.

Speaker A: Oh, look, I try, right? You know, uh, it's amazing what you can learn on LinkedIn. There's. There's a lot of information on people up there, so I only did a mild amount of stalking. All right, so let. Let's jump right into it. So you've been doing this for 30 years, as I mentioned, you know, at some pretty prominent companies over the last decade. You know, what are some interesting facts, uh, that have contributed to your passion to be able to do this for 30 years?

Speaker B: Well, I love that, uh, question, because I like to say marketing runs through my veins, Scott. Uh, and I come by it. Uh, I've been in marketing 30 years, but I've actually been exposed to it a lot longer than that because my mother, um, was a. They didn't call them CMOs at the time, but that's essentially what she was. She was the CMO of a little company called Kronos that some of you might know it's now ukg. Uh, and she was employee number four or five there. Um, and she did the ipo, the initial, um, public offering for Kronos, way back in the day. Um, and what was really interesting, or I find interesting about it, is that she would bring things home in the good way, right? She would have ideas or decisions she was making or problems she would solve and looking to solve, and she would bring that into our home. And I was always on kind of the edge of my seat as a kid, you know, really excited and engaged and wanting to have her hear my opinion. And, um, my sister, who is my older sister, it's just her and I, um, a couple years older than me, she, um, ended up, um, becoming a teacher, a special needs teacher. She's just a remarkable, um, educator. But she was totally uninterested, uh, so it would be having the same discussion, and she's like, rolling her eyes and I'm like, on the edge of my seat. So listen, I think I started young at this with the passion for marketing, and I learned very, very early on that marketing can have a profound, profound impact on a company's ability to grow. And that really has become a theme of mine, really, throughout my entire career. So, you know, I guess a little fact about me is it runs through my veins. And I was lucky to have a great role model in, you know, in days when, honestly, women, we still have to fight the good fight, uh, to have our spot here in this, uh, this executive world. But that was a time when very few women, uh, were sitting around the, uh, the boardroom table. So I had a great role model.

Speaker A: Well, that's great. Well, it. Clearly she blazed the path because I think there are actually more female CMOs now than there are men. So kick our butts right out of those seats. I'll tell you right now. Uh, but you know, Kronos, I mean, that's rocking it. Old school. I mean, that was pre Internet, wasn't it?

Speaker B: Yeah,

Speaker A: kids, there was technology before the Internet.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Time clocks. Time clocks. But what was interesting, and this is a little marketing play for you. So then the, uh, original was the time clock, right? You see the time punch chain clock. Well, my mom came in as the marketer and said, we're not doing time clocks. We're doing time and attendance. We're managing people and driving effectiveness and efficiencies around what people you have on what, you know, what projects and so on and so forth. So it became not about a time clock, but time and attendance and really talent management. So it's an interesting, you know, the power that marketing can have.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, it's interesting you bring up that evolution. What other things have you seen as far as how tech has evolved and in the marketing role in that industry?

Speaker B: Yeah, listen, I think there's. There's been a, um. Well, as it pertains to marketing, um, you know, marketing can have and does have a profound impact on a company's ability to grow, as I said earlier, and the way customers are buying or buyers are buying now, they're looking at, you know, getting the right information at the right moment to make. To make their decision. So, you know, I like to say that, and this may be a little controversial, But I think B2B marketing is dead. I don't and I think B2C marketing is dead. I think it's about B2H business to humans. And that's where I'm seeing like a big. It used to be that, you know, marketing was just making sure you had a general theme M and a brand and a level of awareness. And, you know, you're working with sellers to try to drive the selling. Selling motion. Um, but now the buyer is expecting you to understand who you are as a person based on what you're doing through the buying motion and serving up information that's cutting through all the noise and just delivering what they need as a human, as a person, as me sitting in the seat. And all CMOs have themes of things they care about, of course, just as an example of a buyer. But I care about different things than the CMO that may be sitting right over there in a. In a. In a different chair. Right. Because my business pains and my issues are slightly different. So when a buyer is buying something, they're looking to understand truly, I'm a human, I'm a person. Don't give me all this language of, you know, whatever. Give me it in the way, in the format and in the message or the content that I need to know to accelerate the buying motion. And I think AI is accelerating that even more. Right. Um, we think about AI being something that's maybe a little scary. It makes it less personal. Um, but I actually think there's opportunity to have AI make it more personal. And because you're using data and information that can give the information to the customer that they really, really need. Um, so, you know, there's lots of big changes that have happened over the 30 years that, that I've been. That I've been sitting in this seat. But I think the one we're facing now is. Is a really, really exciting, exciting moment for us.

Speaker A: Yes. Uh, only I'll have to change the name of this podcast to the the Not Next cmo because it is now dead. All the people now are all panicking and working on their resumes halfway through, through this podcast.

Speaker B: I'm saying that the key part is to connect with the human, and that's the way you're going to break through.

Speaker A: So I'm going to explore this a little bit, because you make an excellent point. Right. Is that, you know, we, A lot of heads of marketing go into companies and never really bother to learn who the target audience is. And you've worked for some very technical companies. Right. Uh, you know, I know the products at these companies, and they're you know, Infor's got some pretty technical stuff. You need a sales engineer that's steeped in the product to go out and sell a lot of their products. And so you, you, you look at that kind of approach on it and you find that some CMOs rise to their level of competence, uh, primarily because they're really good at demand generation. But they don't really, because of the technical nature of the product and the needs of the buyer, they don't fully understand that. They let somebody else tell them instead of living that. And like you said, connecting with that audience is so critical, it always has been. And the tech, for some reason, because of the complexity of a lot of the products, I tend to see that some CMOs try to shy away from it and kind of lean into the tactical execution of it, which obviously makes you less strategic in your role. So. Excellent point that you're making there. So let's talk now. We're talking about tech and AI and you know, and we'll talk about all that kind of wonderful stuff as we go through this. Because everybody's talking about AI and what does it mean? Let's talk about the more human centric component of this. You've been doing it for a while, so you've worked with a lot of humans with different backgrounds. And I'm sure there's some pretty quirky people that you've worked with in marketing. What's the importance right now of the human aspect in marketing?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Well, listen, I think from a CMO perspective and this kind of ties back to, you know, leadership. If you're sitting in this seat, um, what does it mean to really be a leader for a bunch of talented marketing people that are out there? And how do you kind of drive that, um, a successful team? Um, and you know, first, I think there's um, people first leaders and they're task first leaders and all that. I am definitely, um, at least I hope my team will say, ah, a people first leader. Right? You put the best people in the best roles to make sure that they're successful. But I think there's really three things that you need to do in order to really be a successful leader. To connect with your teams and get, uh, get the entire organization to kind of take the hill, right? To drive to where you need them to be. And I think the first thing is to create a really clear vision for your team. A vision that you're not just creating in a vacuum in the back, you know, the back room, but you're working with Your leaders to develop. What is our vision and our mission for this marketing team and this moment in time, okay? And everybody in the organization needs to know what that is. So whether you have a team of five or whether you have a team of 500, everybody needs to understand what they're waking up to do every single day. Right? As a collective. As a collective team. And then the second thing is to define initiatives that support that vision. Okay? So you have a clear vision. You know where we're going as an organization. Now, here's key initiatives that we're all going to line to. I don't care whether you're a designer or, you know, or someone who's doing growth marketing or someone who's. And it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what you're doing. We're clear on the initiatives collectively across the team. And then the third is the Metrics that matter framework. So again, we are all aligned to a common set of goals. Right? Um, and you have your piece of that. Maybe that's unique and special and super important. But you need to understand the impact of, uh, if we achieve the vision we drive towards the initiatives, what's the metrics that matter that allows us to inspect what we expect? Not in the spirit of being critical, of saying, hey, this didn't. In fact, I love when things don't work, because then, you know, as you were saying earlier, 50% of this stuff doesn't ever work. That's awesome. Identify it, move on. Um, it's really in the spirit of continuous improvement, for sure. So create a clear vision that all those humans out there are thinking, yes, I got this. I know where we're going. Define the initiatives. Create a metrics that matter framework that allows you to inspect what you inspect in the spirit of continuous improvement. And the most important thing, which I said earlier, is I am never, ever, ever, ever, ever afraid to hire my replacement. I think you have to have incredibly talented people around you who can work collaboratively with you that are diverse in their perspective. So they bring to the table a unique point of view that you can leverage all of that perspective to make sure you're refining your vision, you're refining your initiatives, and you're getting to the outcomes you want for the business. So I say that in context of marketing, but even higher than that, in order to be successful, you have to have that same thing at the company level. And you're tying the dots, connecting the dots between the company vision, purpose, mission, all that to what our mission is day in and day out. So that's kind of how I think about motivating teams, getting people excited, and then of course, celebrating wins along the way.

Speaker A: I couldn't agree more. I mean, I think two things that you really outlined there in graphic detail that I want to reinforce for the audience here is that setting goals, right, that are, that tie to the company goals that will help you enact a vision and putting those initiatives in place, whether those strategies or other things to accomplish those goals and making sure that everyone on the team understands what they need to do in order to accomplish them is absolutely critical. Marketing can go off the rails so quickly because there's so many different functions inside of marketing, so many different skill sets, so many different silos. And if you don't figure out how to wrestle that all together, exactly what Melissa just said, you're going to find yourself in a world of hurt. So now that we talked about all these wonderful humans, you know, we got AI coming in, like to get some thoughts on what you think there, because everybody's talking about it.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: No one knows what's, what it's going to do. Lower level marketers are terrified that it's going to take away all the tactical positions of things that they're going to do. And it, uh, in my opinion, it will never really take away from management or decision making, but it actually can probably replace some of the more menial tasks or at least reduce the time frame where your team isn't going to grow. Right. Um, and so that obviously scares people, especially as a college professor. You know, a lot of the students struggling to find jobs as they're coming out now because companies are putting the brakes to see what AI can do for them. So what's your perspective on it right now, Melissa? How are you approaching it?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. I look at it from two angles. One is the internal efficiency gains that you can get by using the tools to be more effective as a team. Um, and, uh, I am, and my team knows this very, very well. Um, every company right now is trying to do more with less. Right. And this has happened for a long time now. You have a finite amount of resources that you can leverage to get the job done. And we use AI in a bunch of different ways, um, within our team to allow us to be more effective and more efficient. And those, the obvious things are, you know, creative design and writing and some of those tactical things. And we found that the team, and especially in this world when, if you look outside in now, um, you know, the old way of looking at search engine Optimization, it's just not the same anymore. Right. You have to optimize for chat GPT and by optimizing for chat GPT you have to build content that has that in mind. Right. So you have to use the tools that allow you to make that happen faster at a scale that we've never seen before. Right. So if you want to be um, competitive and, and, and you know click is, it's a non click thing anymore. Right. You don't have to click to get information and we used to measure by, by all those clicks. Now it's just information. So if you're using the tools internally that can make you more efficient and more effective, that's going to, that's going to be, you know, allow, allow, allow uh, you to, to deliver faster. Right. For your, for your team. So um, I don't think we should be as scared of it at all. I think we need to embrace it like crazy and all be more efficient and effective so we can be decision makers and you know, drive strategy and things like that. And then you have the outside in. Right. I talked a little bit earlier about the business to humans and AI. There's like oh they' the human effect. I actually think it's going to allow us because we're getting information from the buyers. If you take machine learning, all the analytics information that we gather from the customer journey that they're going through and use that to provide content to a buyer that's going to make it easier for them to buy at the buying cycle and we can talk more about the life cycle of the customer if you'd like. But the buying cycle, but also when they own it, when they own the product that they're getting the information to maximize the ownership phase. So there's lots of tools you can use that is going to make that more effective for the buyer too during the process. One of the things we have an account based experience and precision demand model that's our kind of growth marketing model that we use. Um, and we use a tool called Six Sense. Maybe there's lots out there that's the one that we personally use. Um, and we're in the process of implementing the conversational email um, technology new ah feature that they've come out with. We're just in the process of implementing it now that's going to allow BDRs and sellers where we don't have targeted BDRs on certain accounts to have faster follow up through customized emails that are specific to what that buyer just did. Okay. So if they visit your Website. They've done X, Y and Z. Now they're going to get an email that's personalized from the rep outlining the things that they went through, the benefits, and how we can help them solve those problems easier. So the rep isn't sitting there doing that. The technology is allowing that to happen, but it's still personalized to what that buyer just went through. Right. In fact, it's probably more effective than if the rep or the BDR was doing it themselves. So, um, I don't think. And that allows now a BDR and a sales rep to spend more time with that actual customer and trying to get them to have a dialogue, um, by, you know, interacting with them more closely. So those are just a few examples. I think we, we need to embrace it for sure. Uh, and we've already seen, uh, on my team, how we can be more effective by doing so.

Speaker A: Good. So don't be as scared. All right?

Speaker B: Don't be scared. Try some stuff. See what happens.

Speaker A: See what happens. Right. Well, you know that the reality is, uh, the AI still needs some prompts. And so you have to know something about marketing in order to trigger those prompts and make sure that you're getting the right information.

Speaker B: I think it applies to any industry. I just had, um, this morning. Um, my husband, who's a math teacher by day, but he's also a musician by night. Uh, and, uh, and then I'm a groupie by night, too. I like to follow him around to his gigs. But anyway, that's not here or there. Um, but they have this new, new app now. Now he. He writes a lot. He doesn't necessarily write music, but he writes a lot of, like, poems and lyrics. So he now this, just this morning, he's like, I'm going to get this new A app, AI app. Toss some lyrics. It's all his lyrics, Right. It's his personal lyrics that he hasn't been able to transform into music. And he's like, I'm gonna try this app. And all of a sudden he's like, I have 10 songs. He's like, this is amazing. Because he's never been able to translate his own personal connection with the words into the music in effective way. And now he's able to do that. So I'm just using that as an example of, like, he leaned into that. And he's a little older than me, so, you know, he's, um. But anyway, I think it applies to a whole bunch of different industries, including ours.

Speaker A: Yeah. And look, everybody panicked when you Know, the online world started to explode and, you know, people were looking at what is the Internet going to do? And is this going to simplify things? Are jobs going to change? And we found that it actually opened up more channels for us to market through one, uh, of the things that was interesting. I don't know whether you're seeing this, but I just was, uh, attending a CMO roundtable recently and all of the CMOs said that the most effective marketing channel that they're using these days are actually trade shows and events. Because I think, uh, you know, a lot of people, they're saying now want face to face interactions of working from home. It's an opportunity to get out there and network and meet with other people. And so they have found them to be more effective than some of the other more.

Speaker B: Coming. It's coming full circle once again, right?

Speaker A: What?

Speaker B: Yeah, Coming full circle once again, full circle. Yeah, yeah. Which is good. That's great.

Speaker A: Hey, unfortunately, it's so damn expensive. Right? You know, the roi, you know, is it there?

Speaker B: Oh, I know. But listen, I think going back to the first statement about humans, first, you know, uh, some people love, they want to go to those events, they want to connect with people. Other people don't want to do that. They just want to do their research. They want to have the information in front of them that they can bring to the board to help make decisions. And they don't even want to really talk to anyone about it. So, you know, the point is, what do you need M. Mr. And Mrs. So and so. Right. In order to make the process go as smooth as possible. And now we have a lot of tools that enable that to happen way, way, way better than it used to.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think I know who those people are that don't want to go. Gen Z. Welcome Gen Z. It's all going to come full circle. You're going to figure out how to get on a plane. All right? So you have a big team. You're running marketing, customer success and renewals, being a leader, running all of those different functions and getting them all work together, being pulled in different directions. How do you keep it all sane?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And listen, I alluded to this already, um, in our, in our discussion. And I, and I'll just reiterate it, I think from a leadership perspective. And I could talk more, if you want, about how that scope kind of became more, if you want me to.

Speaker A: Uh, I love stories. Go ahead.

Speaker B: Well, you know, so with the marketing today, I believe, and my company believes that, you know, it's no longer enough to build pipeline that converts to revenue. Especially with SaaS technology based products, you have got to be able to maintain them, keep the customers with you, and then grow them to ultimately become advocates. Right. Because customers want to buy from other customers. That's sort of what, what we, what we want to do. So, um, or what customers want to do, they want to hear from other customers. They don't necessarily even want to hear from us. Even better when you have a whole bunch of customers screaming from the hilltops how amazing your products are. Right. Um, so when I first joined Avanti, I really build this framework of how do we build pipeline that's predictable, that is growing the business and that was like my laser sharp focus. So we built a team that was really focused on building pipeline, converting revenue and being like, you know, screaming from the hilltops when we were helping the sellers get to their number. Awesome, right? Great. Account based experience, precision demand, using a lot of technology and tools to make that happen, content driven strategy, blah, blah, blah. Well, we got that model set and then we're like, oh, shoot, now we might. Do we have a churn problem? Could we have a churn problem now that we've got this all like, oh, no. Okay, so now we got to look at the own phase and make sure we're maximizing the own phase of the customer life cycle. Right. So then, which was amazing, we started using the similar tools and technology with different content to help maximize that own phase. Right. As an example, if a, uh, renewal is coming up for a customer and they're searching a competitive website for the same product, alerts go off. Right. So we are now sending content to that buyer saying, hey, not that we noticed here because we don't want to stalk them, but are you getting the value out of this product? This is the kind of thing we should expect. There's new features, blah, blah, blah. Right. So it's it's own, um, based content, like when they're actual customer, to try to drive the value. Um, so then it's like, all right, now we got to build an advocacy program around that. So if they're happy customers there now have an advocacy program where they can scream from the hilltops how great you are. So now the marketing organization is no longer thinking about how do I build pipeline? They're thinking about the entire customer life cycle, the buy the own, and ultimately becoming advocates. So it became this evolution of the team with it. And I talked earlier about having a clear vision, having key initiatives, having metrics that matter that are associated with those things. Right. We're looking that through the lens of the customer lifecycle, the entire team. So it's unifying the team against the life cycle, which by the way, what does the company want? They want us to grow ARR. And they want us to minimize, churn and grow Grr and nrr. That's essentially what the business wants us to do. So if we're looking at what we're doing under the lens of this customer life cycle, it unifies us all against a common purpose, which is awesome. Right? It's rooted in the customer.

Speaker A: So one thing I want to add on to that is that, um, are you measuring your success by ltv?

Speaker B: Yes. Yes, by ltv. So we have, um, ltv, ARR, grr, nrr. Like that. For the marketing organization, that's ultimately our success criteria. Now there's tactical metrics that go underneath that. That's our strategic metrics. The tactical metrics are account engagement. Are they for, as an example, during the buy phase, account engagement, who's engaged, who is not. Uh, for the own phase, it's okay, they are now bought this new product, have they signed on yet? Then you go, have they used it yet? Do you see the usage? Right. So we're measuring against the strategic, which are the things I just talked about and the tactical to say, are the actual activities. Activities happening in order for us to get to those strategic metrics, but how that kind of evolved over time. So first we put this customer lifecycle model in place and then we're like, ooh, can we combine that own phase where we're reaching out to customers, providing insights into the value of their products. Right. With the one on one engagements with customer success. If those two things, we're delivering similar messages, we're making sure we're in lock stuff step with how we're positioning it. Um, can that impact churn in a positive way? So that's when my expansion I was able to take on customer success. Right. Because I showed the connection between the marketing machine and engine and the people talking to the customers one on one to drive that message. And then, and then from there it became an expansion to renewal. Right. Like how do we minimize churn by ensuring we have renewal. So that's how it all came together.

Speaker A: That's interesting. And one of the things that you talked about earlier is really understanding the buyer and understanding the customer and what their needs are. And by going through this process of renewals and customer success, you're getting that unified feedback back to the organization and to your team as you're starting to create messages in order to reach these audiences. That's really impressive. Yeah, I would. I recommend every CMO out there to try to pull in as much responsibility as you possibly can. If you're just doing demand gen PR and, and, uh, branding, you don't really have a lot of control. And I think what Melissa's talking about here, um, is absolutely critical. I think I became a better marketer when I ran sales along with it. Right. That gave me a lot more insight. And then I picked up partnerships and then product management. Um, you know, those are the types of things that give you a more holistic view of what exactly the buyer is doing with the product, what the product is, how it fits, um, what that product market fit is. And that's absolutely critical. Otherwise, you're just not going to be all that effective.

Speaker B: And Scott, you said just to play that for one minute, you had said earlier about CMOs, understanding the customer and the importance of that, uh, and, you know, and the buyer, I think by approaching the whole marketing motion through the lens of the buyer, through their exact experience, where all the interactions and connections are with your customers, you're going to be a way more effective cmo, um, versus, like, you know, taking the pieces of it. Like, you got each individual function within marketing. Step back from that and put the customer at the forefront of it all.

Speaker A: It really makes your life so much easier. Like I say this on a lot of my podcasts, marketing is really simple. When you say the right thing to the right people. And if you say the right thing to the wrong people or the wrong thing to the right people, it still doesn't work. Yeah, you got to say the right thing to the right people. So the only way to say the right thing to the right people is to understand them. And so I love what you've done here. Everyone should go out there and fight to get customer, uh, success on their team, if they have it, because they'll become a better marketer. They'll understand the buyer at an intimate level. And understanding the buyer and understanding the market gives you power. Right. Gives you power at the executive table to shape the strategic direction of the company. You don't know it. You'll be sitting there in the back with the head of hr, you know, hoping that nobody asks you to do anything. All right.

Speaker B: Yeah. And that's when the, the average tenure shrinks to 18 months. Pretty.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. If you're lucky. Right. You know, there are a lot of people that are like nine months and out. I feel bad for them. But, you know, look, here's the good news, is that if you had a bad experience, you can learn from it. Watch this podcast a couple of times. The next thing you know, you'll be running the place.

Speaker B: That's right.

Speaker A: All right.

Speaker B: That's right.

Speaker A: So we've talked a little bit about the human nature, everything. Let's talk about work, life and blending and prioritizing that into what matters. You know, what do you, what do you look at when it comes to these types of terms? How do you look at your job and try, uh, to put it into practice? What, what are, how are you going about it these days?

Speaker B: Yeah, Yeah. I mean, I think it's. I think it's tough when, you know, it's all the time. Everywhere around us, work is right. Um, which I happen to love what I do, so I don't mind it too much, but I do. I'm a big, big believer in this concept of sort of blending it all. To what, to your needs. Right. What's going to make you, um, happy. And that's really the starting point. And often the most difficult thing is like, where's my joy? What is going to make me happy? And what are my guardrails and expectations in order for me to be a happy person and then be able to, you know, I always say, take. Gotta take care of yourself, right, before you can take care of others. So for me, just as an example, I, um, was working in Boston, um, right out of college and really enjoying working in the city. But I was like, you know, I wanna live by the ocean. That was one of the things. And I wanted to live closer to my parents as I was having children. And I now have a blended family of five kids with, like, lots going on. They're all in different stages of their life, which is amazing. Um, but at this, I prioritized. I said, I want to live by, closer to the ocean because it fuels my, my soul. And I want to be, um, near my parents so they can help co. Co parent with me, if you will, and help raise my children. So I ended up quitting my job from. That was a great job. I was kind of, you know, making a, Making a leap there. And, um, got a job at the only tech company on Cape Cod, Massachusetts at the time, which is where I still live, um, called Infinium Software. Uh, and it was a risk. It's like, what are you doing? You're like, Lee. They called it the Silicon Sandbar for a little while there, because people were Trying to pop up some, some, some tech companies. But um, so I moved to the cape. Uh, Infinium Software was bought by a company called SSA Global. SSA was bought by Infor. And that's how that whole thing happened. In terms of working for Infor. I tell this story because once I kind of said, all right, here's my guardrails, here's what's going to, what's important to me and what I need to be happy for the long term. I'm not saying every moment is, is, is full of joy and bliss. But what are the big guardrails of things that are gonna make you happy in your life? And then you push forward to making sure that, that maintain that becomes a priority. So now, you know, by living, I've been able to raise my, my five children here in an environment that I really wanna be in, which is most important thing for me. I'm around my parents and I'm able to do this everywhere work thing. And I have um, uh, so I got an expert, became an expert at that before COVID even hit. So listen, I think it starts with happiness, right? It starts with like following your bliss, setting healthy guardrails for you and that's different for everybody. And then your company, whatever company you go to work for, needs to respect those boundaries, uh, and reward you really for having them. Um, because I truly believe you'll be a better employee if you're living, working, doing the things that ultimately, ultimately make you happy.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's always great until you get the over caffeinated CEO.

Speaker B: Well, you know, listen, I've had to, um, I've had to make some choices quite frankly, where you think that you're aligned with these types of things with CEOs. And then you're like, oh, maybe I'm not. And then you have to make a choice, right, to change where it is you, you want to go keeping those guardrails in mind. Yeah.

Speaker A: Well, now that you've told us about your happy place, let's go to a dark place. So in your career, you may have had a couple of failures. I don't know. We. Right. You know, everything's all great in marketing, we only show the good, good news. Right? Um, but you may have had a couple of failures and what did you learn from them?

Speaker B: Well, I think, I think I'll highlight at least one, um, because there's been a ton. But this one was probably the most profound and the earliest on in my career. Um, so I was working at Infor at the time um, it was my first real, like, VP job. I, um, was in maybe my late 20s, early 30s. Um, and. And I, I was, I was. If you think I'm eager now, you should have seen me back then, right? I was like, I was probably annoying, uh, to most people, but anyway, um, I had to present, ah, in an executive team meeting. Um, it was a qbr and I had to present progress, how we were doing against our goals, blah, blah, blah. And we had a decent quarter. Not a great quarter as a company, but a decent quarter. And I stood up there and I'm like, look at all the green on my slides. You know where this is going. I'm like, look at all this green on my slides. And, man, we're making so much progress. And gosh, I'm so excited about, you know, all the impact we're making. And we were, we were doing some great things. Um, my CEO stood up. Not going to say who it was, but he stood up and he slammed his hand on the ground on the table, and he said, I don't give a flying beep, beep, beep how marketing is doing. If the company is not winning, you're not winning. And, uh, I had a choice to make. I mean, I'm starting to sweat right now just thinking about that moment. But, you know, the blood rushes out of your head and you're saying, they're like. And I had a choice to make at that time. I could get defensive and say, wait, you don't understand. Like, we're busting our butts. We've created all this pipeline, it's sales issue, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Which is never the way to go. But I could have at that moment, but I didn't. I took a deep breath and I looked at him. I said, you're right. I'm, um, excited about some of the things we're doing. But if the company's not nailing it, kicking it out of the park, marketing. If I believe in my heart of hearts that marketing can make a profound impact on a company's ability to grow, which is what I said at the beginning, huge impact. Right? I truly believe that then if the company's not meeting those goals, then I can't claim victory yet. So my entire career, I've had that mentality. Everybody on my. In my organizations are, uh, always measured, ultimately their success on the company's success, always 100% of the time. Now, again, that doesn't mean we don't celebrate some wins along the way, but if the company's not getting There, we're not getting there. So it's a mentality thing. And I think if you look in the whites, if you're on an ELT and you're looking in the whites of the eyes of your CRO, your cfo, your CEO, they need to know that that's where you come from and how are you participating in breaking down any barriers across the organization to get to the ultimate goals for the business. So that was a big lesson for me, um, and it really, really shaped my entire career. And I think it turned me into, you know, a CMO that could really connect and relate to the business needs versus my own, uh, functional needs or successes or impact.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I think everybody has been there and gone through it. Um, you know, but, you know, this goes back to the goals and the company goals. And if you align your marketing towards the company goals and show your progress against the company goals, then usually people will be, first of all, they'll know what you're doing, why you're doing it. Um, and then also on the other side, you'll probably have a direct impact to helping it succeed. And, you know, I've always said with marketing is that, you know, you're the, you're the tip of the spear, right? You're out there creating the awareness, you're shaping the perception. You're driving the initial sales of the organization in addition to doing other things. But, but those are the key things that you're pushing. Um, and nothing can happen until those things start working in earnest. And so if marketing is celebrating wins that are upstream, top of the funnel, those things, they should eventually shake out over time. But any CEO that turns around and says to you, I hired you six months ago. Why haven't you filled our pipeline? Why haven't you done, like, look, if you fired the last person that was running marketing, right, then that tells me something. It tells me that you guys don't have product market fit, that they didn't understand the market, they didn't write the right messages in order to connect. It's going to take me six months to figure out what the problems are, understand the buyer, be able to write the right messages and be able to drive this function. You'll. Because marketing is the long game. No quick fixes here. I didn't come with a bunch of leads, uh, in my pocket that I can just lay out on the table for you. That's not the way this works. Right. So feel free to say that to your CEO on your first day. It's a great way to Set a perfect relationship with your CEO. Like, I'm not going to do squat you for six months. How do you like that?

Speaker B: Anything at all?

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to ask questions. How you like that?

Speaker B: I'm going to do a bunch of discovery for a while. Yeah.

Speaker A: Uh, we're going to do an audit.

Speaker B: Well, but, but I love that. I know you're, you're, you're being, you're being funny there with that statement. But I will say that, that, that if you're, if you can buy yourself some time, if you really understand what the company's looking to do, what the customer, the problems the customer as is having, and what the life cycle of the customer looks like, if you start, if you're grounded in that and you can articulate that to your CEO in an authentic and credible way, and you do that on a regular, consistent basis, you won't have the whiplash of the, oh, my God, why haven't you done this? Why haven't you do that? Because you're able to actually root yourself in what the business needs. And then you build your strategy, you build your key initiatives, you put your metrics that matter framework in place. And then you put a phenomenal team, uh, with who you know, you're not afraid to hire your replacement. So they got to be top of the top to make sure that you're getting those outcomes that you've committed to the business that you do.

Speaker A: Yeah. And by the way, I think a lot of CMOs just, this is really important around hiring the replacement people. They're usually not cheap. So here's my recommendation for you. In marketing, I think a lot of marketers out there want to build these empires. I want to have 30, 40, 50, 100 people on my team. Look how big my team is. Uh, a lot of marketing leaders will measure themselves on two aspects. What's the size of my team? What's the size of my budget? And I'm telling you right now, the better you can do with the less money you spend and the more that you can achieve with the fewer number of people, that's good for the company. Right. And so now the company's going to grow faster, it's going to be more profitable. You hopefully will have a successful IPO or acquisition at some point that will put more money into your pocket. Focus on the things that are most important, not just about your own personal resume. I say, and I get six zillion people working for you. Marketing does not scale like sales. Right. And so take if you have two hires, because a lot of times they won't give you the money that you want for that superstar. Take two roles and merge that together to get one superstar. It's better to have one superstar on your team than two rookies or people that are still trying to learn because they. You as a marketing leader need to be focused on the market, not on reviewing emails. Right. And so you need to have those, those studs on your team that actually can take the reins and drive things while you're focused on how to drive the business.

Speaker B: I totally agree, totally agree. And then that comes back to A.I. right? You can, you can leverage tools to do some of those things so you can have the most talented people that are making a real impact on the business.

Speaker A: That's exactly it. So that brings us to our last and final question. Okay, if you had advice for either somebody that was aspiring CMO or an existing CMO that just needs a little help, what would it be?

Speaker B: Well, I think I already said kind of one based on my experience was don't claim victory until you get to the outcomes for the business. Don't make that mistake that I did. Learn from me. The other is transparency. Oftentimes I feel like there's a um, you're not hoarding information, but you're only kind of showcasing the like the success because there's so much pressure on marketers to be successful, right? To like to deliver the pipeline, to minimize the churn, blah, blah, blah that you're like. You don't want to be fully transparent about all the stuff that's going on. The more transparent you can be and you use the data to spot the opportunities for improvement and you're totally um, uh, you know, transparent about that. Um, the more credible you are and the better decision making you're going to make. So I think transparency is using data to make decisions, decisions and being really transparent about that at all level of the company and not be defensive about the red on your slides. Like the red is good because red shows that there's areas that you know, you got to focus on to drive improvement. So I think transparency is something that we sometimes suffer or worried about, perception and so on, but it's actually your superpower if you can identify the reds in the moments and turn them to green.

Speaker A: I can't agree with this more and I really want to make sure that everybody understands this. Guys m not your marketing. Not all your marketing is going to work. We already established that early in the discussion. To be an executive means that you're able to identify what is not working right now. You don't want to go in there and say, oh, I did all these programs and they didn't work. How do you like me now? But what you do want to do is turn around and say, we did this. This was the outcome. The outcome was not positive, and either we're going to kill it or improve it, right? And then that says, okay, look, this executive has, has their eyes focused on what is realistic here. They understand what the problems are, they have solutions to the problems, and that's what an executive does. If there were no problems, you wouldn't have a job, right? Uh, that's pretty much why you're there. Um, and so embrace it, lean into it, share it, because you may get ideas. Or maybe the problems reside in other groups inside the organization that need fixing too, that can help you do your job better. Usually sales. Um, sorry, I know why I take a shot at sales. I ran sales four times. But anyways, I mean, those are the things that you should be. You should be looking at really breaking down what's working, what's not, and understanding it. And by the way, if you're not measuring ROI or sales or profit based on the marketing, the spend that you have today, and you're just saying, oh, look at this influence pipeline I got, which nobody understands at the company, I'm telling you right now, you're going to get a good punch in the face. And nobody needs that, right? Nobody needs the, the CEO slamming their hand down on the table saying, you're not looking at the right things. Right? So look at the right things. Share it with everyone. Then everybody will have confidence in you. And then once you have confidence, you'll have power. 70% of all CEOs do not trust their head of marketing. And the reason why is because they are not transparent as to what's working, what's not. They only see the happy horse, you know what? And as a result of it, they just, they're like, uh, this can't be all going well. I mean, the company isn't exploding. Like, there's got to be some problems here. And like, oh, no, no problem. Nothing to see here. And that just shows your lack of confidence, right? And you have to come across confident. And the only way to do that is to fully understand what the problems are. So that concludes our session today. Melissa, thank you so much for, uh, taking the time today. I will say this. We went longer than we've ever gone before, so that's how much great content came out. Of your wonderful mouth today. Uh, it was wonderful pearls of wisdom for people to take away. And hopefully we can get you on another podcast episode at some point. It was great to have you here.

Speaker B: Thank you, Scott, so much. I appreciate the time.

Speaker A: Well, thanks again. And for those of you go to the next CMO.com uh, you join the community there. There's a whole bunch of great information. It's all free for you, templates on how to build out your plans and budgets and campaigns and all that wonderful stuff. There's articles up there. There's best practices documents. And obviously, you can go get the book the next CMO for free up there once you join. So hopefully we'll see you in the community. Or hopefully we'll see you on another wonderful episode of the next CMO podcast. Thanks again.