This episode features an interview with Kady Srinivasan, CMO at Lightspeed Commerce, a commerce platform that helps merchants innovate to simplify, scale and provide exceptional customer experiences.

In this episode, Kady discusses the importance of understanding your segments so you can talk about the value proposition for each segment appropriately. She also dives into the process of determining where to play and how to win at Lightspeed Commerce.

Key Takeaways:

• You need to understand your segments in order to ensure that you are talking appropriately about the value proposition for each segment.
• Go through the exercise of determining where to play in the market and how you can win there. Gain clarity regarding the choices that you are making and where you should say no.
• Position yourselves as a partner, instead of the provider of a product or service, when you are building your brand.

Quote:

“The short-term focus on the short-term ROI is a big problem. And then the second thing is like the unattributable spend and how to make the right business case for it. I'll say as a tee up to our budget masterclass, when we do it, there are three segments of metrics that I've realized, uh, CFOs care about: there's volume, which is usually your MQL, SQL, closed one, you know, whatever that is, right? Then there is the velocity bucket, which is time to close, or time to first transaction, time to XYZ, whatever that is, time to first touch. And then the third one is efficiency. So it could be ROAS, it could be sales and marketing as a spend, as a percentage of spend. If you can convincingly present these three buckets or the right kind of information in these three buckets, you get a lot of mileage out of your conversations.”

Episode Timestamps:

*(02:49) The Trust Tree: Leading the shift towards prioritizing higher value ICPs

*(23:45) The Playbook: Managing brand building as CMO at different companies

*(36:08) The Dust Up: The translation problem

*(38:50) Quit Hits: Kady’s Quick Hits

Sponsor:

Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links:

• Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
• Connect with Kady on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Lightspeed Commerce

Learn more about

Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Smita Wadhawan, CMO at SimplePractice, a leading practice management software company for health and wellness professionals.

In this episode, Smita discusses the importance of keeping your customers at the center and incorporating their voice. She also dives into educating the customer about the value of your product and then showing up for them through that product.

Key Takeaways:

• Customer feedback should be taken very seriously and it is worth creating a formal process to give customers a chance to share their thoughts.
• It’s important to arm yourself with data and examples when trying to sell your ideas internally, or you won’t be able to push them through.
• The website can serve as your sales function and you should experiment with how the website can “work harder for you”.

Quote:

“So I would literally think of the marketing strategy as the full funnel from building the right product to getting the product in the hands of our customers, to making sure they use the product and get the most value out of it. And then last but not the least using our communications and our creative to tell the stories which put our customers front and center. We don't use models. We don't use actors. All our creative is telling authentic stories and they are all our customers. That is something that's really key to our brand, always honing in on our customer and having them do the storytelling for us.”

Episode Timestamps:

*(4:43) The Trust Tree: Fulfilling your obligation to your customers, who rely on your product

*(15:42) The Playbook: Customer referrals as the largest source of acquisition

*(34:45) The Dust Up: Advocating for staff to support conversion rates on the website

*(38:03) Quick Hits: Smita’s Quick Hits

Sponsor:

Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links:

• Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
• Connect with Smita on LinkedIn
• Learn more about SimplePractice
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Kristin Russel, CMO at symplr, a company that offers healthcare operations solutions, anchored in governance, risk management, and compliance.

In this episode, Kristin talks about not only creating a category, but also creating roles for the people who work in that category, in an effort to organize their customers. She also discusses going to market with the human in mind and authentic marketing.

Key Takeaways:

• Creating a category involves driving brand recognition, but it also requires educating your customers and thinking about creating jobs within the category you are building.
• If you have a smaller budget, “brandquisition”, focusing on brand acquisition efforts with a very recognizable brand, can be a useful strategy.
• Prioritize featuring real people on your website. Focus on creating content and going to market authentically with real people in mind.

Quote:

“When you think about creating a category, we're also thinking about how do we create people who work in that category? How do I create a healthcare operations director or the manager of healthcare operations for workforce? And so, crazily enough, thinking about not just our content, but also working with our training team, working with the ways that we're reaching out and organizing our own customers.”

Episode Timestamps:

*(5:56) The Trust Tree: Going to market with the human in mind
*(20:58) The Playbook: “Brandquisition” and SEO

*(38:13) The Dust-up: Using the “Lencioni approach” to work through disagreements

Sponsor:

Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links:

• Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
• Connect with Kristin on LinkedIn
• Learn more about symplr
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Shane Murphy-Reuter, CMO at Webflow, a company that offers non-coders the ability to design, build, and launch powerful websites.

Shane discusses the importance of the website and the value of being able to build quickly without coding knowledge and without making sacrifices in quality. He also dives into the efficacy of paid and organic search investments and the niche media approach.

Key Takeaways:

• You should align your content strategy with how people consume content, which is in a more niche way.
• Invest in the conversion rate on your website. Can you support the people who come to your website? How much are you spending on traffic generation versus conversion rate optimization?
• Across marketing and sales, pace is important. Think about how to organize your team and empower them to go from concept to execution quickly.

Quote:
“This concept of niche media is to align our media buying strategy with how people consume content, which is a much more niche way. So right now we've just done, I think, five different podcast sponsorship deals with podcasts that are consumed by CMOs, which is our new target market. Marketing events, right? Talk about Forrester, Gartner. Where are CMOs? Where are they consuming content? Where are they listening to things? Go be there.”

Episode Timestamps:

*(14:05) The Trust Tree: Creating a bifurcated marketing team

*(31:49) The Playbook: The efficacy of paid and organic search

*(40:48) Quick Hits: Shane’s Quick Hits

Sponsor:

Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links:

• Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
• Connect with Shane on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Webflow
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Narine Galstian, CMO at SADA, an IT Services and Consulting company that helps customers move to the cloud and then innovate and explore what is possible on the cloud.

In this episode, Narine discusses fostering ongoing conversations with customers and focusing on getting customers for life. She also dives into the importance of providing value at each stage of the customer journey and meeting customers where they are.

Key Takeaways:

• It’s important to ensure that you are providing value to your customers at every stage of their journey and having ongoing conversations with them.
• You need to meet your customers where they are and be very mindful of their time. Customers may no longer be near their company headquarters, so you need to know where your decision makers are really sitting.
• Going to your customers allows you to create a more intimate experience and have a more captive audience.

Quote:

“ I think you have to kind of go where the customer is. While travel budgets are being cut everywhere right now, right? Everybody's very budget-conscious. You have to be mindful of everyone's time and make sure that you're bringing value to them. When we go on these roadshows, we're really investing time into putting these together and making sure that when the customer is coming to sit with us for 2, 3, 4 hours, that we're bringing value to them at every stage. And they appreciate that. They appreciate the fact that we're coming to them and they're not having to take time out of their schedule to fly across the country to sit in sessions that may not be relevant for them because they're too general at some of the big conferences, right?”

Episode Timestamps:

*(03:38) The Trust Tree: Ensure the marketing strategy is in sync with sales

*(10:24) The Playbook: Investing in events and digital tools

*(25:23) The Dust-Up: Being accountable and taking ownership of failures

*(26:48) Quick Hits: Narine’s Quick Hits

Sponsor:

Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links:

• Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
• Connect with Narine on LinkedIn
• Learn more about SADA
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Kris Rudeegraap, Co-CEO, Sendoso, the leading gift sending platform that helps companies stand out by giving them new ways to engage with customers throughout the buyer’s journey.

Kris talks about the value and the future of gifting, diving into how AI will enhance gifting efforts and creative ways companies use gifting to build trust with their customers.

Key Takeaways:

• Gifting allows companies to engage with their customers in creative ways throughout the buying journey, helping them stand out from the competition.
• Utilizing data allows companies to send the right gift to the right person, and to be thoughtful with timing, messaging and the location it is sent to.
• The future of gifting will be enhanced by AI and will be automated.

Quote:

“How AI can affect, what is the right gift to send? So, I think the plethora of data that we're sitting on from tens of millions of sends and what we're having access to through a lot of really interesting data that we've built from AI, but also through data that's available through third party enrichments. We'll be able to say, hey, does Kris like golfing? Or does Kris like tennis? And so there's interest graphs that we've built that will really help decide, okay, Kris gets this, it's going to resonate with him more. Then it's like, okay, where's the best place to send it?

Is it his house? Is it an office? So, we can use data for that. We can say the timing, is it good to send it today for this prospect, or do we think that timing when they just went to your website, looked at your pricing page, and we want to trigger that. So, there's different reasons why you want to have timing be important.

The message. So, we launched last year, a gift message rider, either the e-gift message or the handwritten note message. And so now we can craft a better message than, say, an SDR can write, by using AI. And I think writing is a key area there. So all that will make it easier to get the right gift to the right person and drive better results.”

Episode Timestamps:

*(37:26) Quick Hits: Kris’s Quick Hits

Sponsor:

Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links:

• Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
• Connect with Kris on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Sendoso
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with April Moh, CMO at Kyriba, leader in cloud treasury and finance solutions, delivering mission-critical capabilities for cash and risk management, payments and working capital solutions.

In this episode, April shares her expertise on managing perceptions through PR and building a demand creation arm from scratch. She also dives into the process of rebranding, and the framework they used when crafting their strategic narrative.

Key Takeaways:

• To maximize your PR efforts, make sure you have a clear idea of the perceptions that you want to drive and how you are currently perceived among your audiences.
• When rebranding and recrafting your strategic narrative, define who the enemy is, and who the hero is.
• Find ways to quantify your demand creation arm beyond just direct ties to short-term revenue and be prepared to see results from that engine two years down the line.

Quote:

“A rebrand is more than just look and feel. A lot of it is also about what is that story and what is that strategic narrative? And for us, we worked through a very simple framework, which is to define what the enemy is. So the enemy represents the current way of work that is not productive for CFOs or treasurers. And then what the hero is. So how do we position ourselves as being able to really add value in solving that problem?”

Episode Timestamps:

*(12:21) The Trust Tree: Creating a scalable, repeatable marketing engine

*(19:02) The Playbook: Paid media, PR and events

*(34:18) The Dust Up: Changing a beloved mascot

*(37:41) Quick Hits: April’s Quick Hits

Sponsor:

Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links:

• Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
• Connect with April on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Kyriba
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with John Solomon, CMO at Therabody, the wellness tech pioneer that brought us the Theragun, among other products that optimize human performance and unlock the body's natural ability to achieve health and well-being.

In this episode, John shares his strategy to overcome the “Kleenex problem”and dives into how they prioritize the entry point to their brand. He also talks about how he structures his team with the brand at the center to avoid silos and strengthen their go-to market strategy.

Key Takeaways:

• Focus on the product that serves as the entry to your brand to get customers into your ecosystem.
• Distinctive brand assets are essential and need to be protected, especially for companies facing the “Kleenex problem”, when their product name becomes synonymous with the product and less associated with the company brand.
• Structuring your brand team at the center of the marketing function helps avoid siloes and strengthens your go-to-market strategy.

Quote:

I'm a big believer that your kind of brand team has to sit in the middle. It's the hub of your going to market approach, right? And so I have the brand team really thinking about it in those three areas that I talked to you about before, the performance, wellness, and beauty. And then we have specific brand managers that really think about specific audiences. But that's who's driving the integrated process. That’s who is bringing the functions together, saying, hey, we're launching this product, or, hey, we got Mother's Day, or, hey, this week we have sleep week. And then bringing together what's influencer, what's PR, what's the site, what's email, what's media, what all of those teams are doing to drive that integrated process.

So that's what I'm a really big believer in and how you structure things. Or else it becomes really siloed. It becomes fragmented. You have one team going over there shooting that content. Another team going over there doing that and it oesn't hang together. It's not bigger. It's not like 1 plus 1 equals 4 or 5.

Episode Timestamps:

*(13:19) The Trust Tree: Addressing the “Kleenex problem”

*(34:27) The Playbook: Capturing attention through television

*(45:03) Quick Hits: John’s Quick Hits

Sponsor:

Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links:

• Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
• Connect with John Solomonon LinkedIn
• Learn more about Therabody
• Learn more about Caspian Studios