This episode features an interview with Stephen Gold, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at SparkCognition (Previous), a company providing AI solutions that allow organizations to predict future outcomes, prescribe next actions, empower people, and protect assets.

In this episode, Stephen discusses experimenting to find the best combination of elements to engage prospects through a long sales cycle. He also dives into the healthy tension between marketing and sales, and how he is thinking about using AI tools in his marketing.

Key Takeaways:

• Experiment to find the right mix of tactics to engage with prospects and customers. Continue to test and tweak to find the right combination for your prospects and sales cycle.
• Use AI and other tools with a specific objective in mind; don’t get distracted by shiny new toys with little pragmatic use.
• Marketers will always be challenged to demonstrate their value to their organization. Even in smaller organizations, this takes a concerted effort and CMOs would be remiss to forget the importance of internal marketing.

Quote:

• “There's always a question, the proverbial question that hangs over marketers heads, that says, am I really getting a return on my investment? Maybe we can cut the budget and we're not going to feel the effect. And marketing, unlike other areas of the business, it's probably harder to quantify the impact because it touches so many parts of the business. Marketers are constantly, or should constantly be thinking about, how do I demonstrate to my organization, qualitatively and quantitatively, the value we bring? We work really hard to produce content internally for consumption by other executive members, by the rank and file. Who doesn't want to work at a business where the brand matters? Who doesn't want to work at a business where they're doing social good? We're a small company, approaching 400, but it's still important that you get the word out. And it's not easy. You have to put a concerted effort to do that.”

Episode Timestamps:

*(6:20) The Trust Tree: The importance of education

*(16:35) The Playbook: Finding the combination of tactics that work

*(37:08) The Dust Up: Inviting friction between sales and marketing

*(39:14) Quick Hits: Stephen’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 Stephen on LinkedIn
• Learn more about SparkCognition
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Tom Wentworth, CMO at Recorded Future, the world’s largest threat intelligence company, working with over 1,600 businesses and government organizations across more than 74 countries.

In this episode, Tom talks about building Recorded Future News, a separate P&L that has become one of the largest cyber intelligence news sites, and a trusted media entity that breaks important news in the cybersecurity/intelligence world.

Key Takeaways:

• Brand building is not just about creating awareness, it is about building trust and building relationships.
• Sometimes, the only information you need to determine ROI is whether your clients and prospects feel your initiative provides them with value.
• A quick way to fail as a CMO is to run someone else’s playbook. Make sure that you understand the current company and context; create a bespoke plan.

Quote: “If you think about brand building, what most people do in cyber security, when they get to be Recorded Future size, we're about over 300 million in ARR, which makes us a pretty good sized company. What most companies our size do, is they go buy an F1 sponsorship, or they go put their logo on some sports team's jersey. And that's cool. That's a cool way to get in front of people, but I don't think it builds trust. Like, why would I trust this vendor just because their logo is on a jersey or their logo is on a car? That just tells me they’ve got a lot of money to spend. So we said, instead of going to do that, the way that we're going to build awareness for Recorded Future and build a relationship with our audience is through news and then through a podcast, which I'll talk about a little bit too. So that's our brand awareness investment. We feel very confident that people who fall in love with our news are also going to like our product. I don't have to prove it, in the sense that I don't have to have this super complicated attribution scheme. We just ask our clients and our prospects, ‘Hey, do you like Recorded Future News?’ And they love it. That's just about enough for us.”

Episode Timestamps:
*(04:22) The Trust Tree: Becoming a fan of account-based marketing

*(25:34) The Playbook: Building Recorded Future News

*(43:45) Quick Hits: Tom’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 Tom on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Recorded Future
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

In this episode, Eric shares with us how to effectively tailor marketing messaging, why it’s important to push the boundaries of content design, and leveraging tools like ChatGPT for brainstorming ideas. Eric also talks about why fighting pieces of collateral to get to the point is often done in vain and his approach to creating better content.

Key Takeaways:

• Balance products and personas: You need to adeptly balance different products, verticals, and personas to create a cohesive marketing strategy. Segmenting your audience based on their product install base allows you to tailor your messaging and approach more effectively, fostering stronger connections and driving better results.
• Be innovative with design: Emphasize innovative and boundary-pushing design in your content. Think of new ways to deliver your message and make your content stand out from the competition. Creativity in design can significantly enhance your brand's appeal and memorability.
• AI is a tool - use it: Use tools like Chat GPT for brainstorming ideas. AI can help you generate creative concepts and refine your strategies, making your campaigns more dynamic and innovative.

Quote:

• “I think the design is so important, and as someone who, I run the marketing team here, I'm personally probably on a lot of sales lists and distributions. I get hit up constantly by SDRs who are sending me things. If it doesn't look good, I'm not going to open it. I don't really care what it is. Like I'm so busy drifting between emails and Slacks and meetings. And then, my personal life as well, that if it's not designed in a compelling, intuitive way, I'm not going to fight with a piece of collateral to get to the point. And so I think we have really tripled down on brand, visual identity, how the different pieces of our story come together…But when you're getting into thought leadership, I think the era of attaching a PDF or a static white paper, one pager, like those are so long gone. And I think in an industry that is a bit old school as well, I think standing out as a more dynamic marketing function where we're putting out pieces of collateral that not only does the user want to read the insight because the data we have is so unique to us, no one else is putting out content that looks like ours does.”

Episode Timestamps:

*(03:57) - Trust Tree: It’s all about balance

*(16:20) - The Playbook: The data is the hook

*(41:56) - The Dust Up: Approaching product launches thoughtfully

*(44:02) - Eric’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 Eric on LinkedIn
• Learn more about VTS
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

In this episode, Chris dives into his go-to-market strategy at Wrike, and discusses how they are leveraging AI internally to become more efficient. He also discusses how their marketing strategy allows them to go after different types of companies within a very large market.

Key Takeaways:

• Efficiency in Performance Marketing: There is no time wasted on optimizing marketing budgets to ensure each dollar spent yields a satisfactory ROI.
• ABM: Your ABM tactics are increasingly important for targeting enterprise clients. Start by focusing on refining your org’s ICP and leveraging existing customer advocates to engage potential buyers effectively.
• Metrics and Measurement: It often comes down to data. Continuously monitoring key funnel metrics like lead quality, conversion rates, and cost per lead, to quickly identify and address issues and improve overall performance for your customers.

Quote:

• “From a product perspective, we're looking at how do we leverage AI to take, in some cases, a massive amount of data that sits in our system around work and tasks and projects and things that are happening and how to use AI to help people summarize a big thread of communication and collaboration that's happened over a period of time. And using AI to use natural language to create project plans rather than creating a project plan from scratch saying, hey, I have a project to do to launch this new product in this type of market. And here's what the product consists of. Build me a project plan and it can leverage data that exists both publicly for similar types of projects, as well as within that customer's, set of historical projects. Like, how do you generate content that way, and then how do you use AI to predict risks on a project or how do you use AI to identify resources to staff on a project. So it's interesting: both our internal workers are using AI that's available to us to help us internally. And then we're also looking at our AI strategy from a product and innovation perspective and figuring out how do we make our system more powerful, more intelligent to automate some things, to help people, focus on more creative, human-centric work.”

Episode Timestamps:

*(03:28) - The Trust Tree: Land and expand

*(12:47) - The Playbook: Chris’ uncuttables

*(35:51) - The Dust Up: Defining your ICP company-wide

*(39:06) - Chris' 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 Chris Mills on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Wrike
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Alison Lindland, CMO at Movable Ink, a SaaS MarTech platform that empowers marketers with scalable, omni-channel personalization through data activation and AI decisioning.

In this episode, Alison discusses the importance of a customer advisory board and of personally spending time with your customers. She also talks about the flywheel they have built through their unique strategy team and how they incorporate customer insights back into their content.

Key Takeaways:

• It is worth investing in a customer advisory board and building a community there. The insights and feedback that you gain can be fed back into the company to improve the product and create authentic marketing.
• Movable Ink has built a unique strategy team, made up of former clients that interact closely with their senior clients and bring back insights to their teams. This team has become one of the most sought after resources in the company.
• Having the outbound function sit under the CMO bring them closer to other marketing functions and creates alignment.

Quote:

•  ”I think you really can never spend too much time with your customers. So making sure that you are out there personally talking to your clients. I'd say is really just the number one piece and, I onboard every new member to our cab and it's a considerable investment of time, but it's my absolute favorite thing to do. And in every single conversation that I have, there's always some light bulb moment opportunity that comes out of it. Some piece of feedback that goes back to the account team. Some personal connection we didn't know we had. It's just always something great or an opportunity for them to speak at Think Summit, just something terrific comes from it. So I'd say making sure that you're investing in building those relationships and just laying those tracks.”

Episode Timestamps:

*(09:16) The Trust Tree: ABM playbook as a team sport

*(16: 53) The Playbook: THe value of a customer advisory board

*(29:27) The Dust Up: Turning disappointment into a big opportunity

*(32:14) Quick Hits: Alison’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 Alison on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Movable Ink
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Andy Raskin, Strategic Narrative Consultant, who aligns CEOs and their teams around a strategic narrative — to power success in sales, marketing, fundraising, product and recruiting.

In this episode, Andy shares what a strategic narrative is, how CMOs should think about it, and how to get CEO-buy-in.

Key Takeaways:

• Clarifying and developing your strategic narrative is a leadership level task that requires buy-in from the full executive team, and buy-in from the CEO is crucial.
• A successful strategic narrative transforms the act of buying into that of joining a movement.
• The process of developing a strategic narrative often reveals misalignment within leadership teams, even amongst teams who think they are on the same page.

Quote:

“I always start asking, okay, what are the pieces of this story? I’d say there's always, there's like a little bit of alignment, but almost every time there's, people are going in different directions, and very often I'll get, oh yeah, the CEO will say, yeah, me and the CMO or me and the CFO we're totally on the same page, like talking to the same person. And then I'll ask and it turns out quite different about how they want to talk about the company and build this narrative. So it's a very common thing, yes. When I send out a proposal, I used to say like strategic narrative creation or something like that, and I changed it to strategic narrative alignment. Because I really do think that, at the end of the day, that's the work.”

Episode Timestamps:

*(02:26) What is a strategic narrative?

*(08:10) How should CMOs think about strategic narrative?

*(16:52 ) How to get CEO buy-in

*(40:15 ) Quick Hits: Andy’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 Andy on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Andy’s work
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Kelly Hopping, CMO at Demandbase, a go-to-market company for B2B brands. They help marketing and sales teams overcome the disruptive data and technology fragmentation that inhibits insight and forces them to spam prospects.

In this episode, Kelly talks about her strategy to make sales love the marketing team and to collaborate with sales on their ABM strategy. She also discusses the ROI on retaining a customer, versus getting a new customer, and how the brand is really the full customer journey.

Key Takeaways:

• Account based marketing only works as a collaborative effort between sales and marketing. It’s marketing’s job to make the sales team love them, providing them with a brand they are proud to represent and high intent leads.
• The ROI on retaining a customer is much better than on getting a new customer. Taking great care of the customers is not just a sales or customer experience responsibility.
• Part of retaining customers is building brand loyalty by making sure customers love the product and building community.

Quote:

“ I have a general belief, I tell my team, my number one goal is to make sales love us. And that doesn't mean that we do all bottom of the funnel, like pipe create, but it means we're going to give them a brand that they're proud to represent. We're going to give them great air cover at events and through social. We're going to give them high-quality pipeline that has good intent. We're going to focus, so we're not going to try to boil the ocean. We're going to be laser-focused on an ICP and we're going to work together on conquering them. We're going to give them content that's usable versus like a thousand pieces and they have to sort through it. We're going to give them five pieces and a really clean bill of materials that they need to close the deal. And we're just gonna be really, really, really focused on those things. So, to me, that's ultimately the strategy is if sales is successful, then we've done our job right.”

Episode Timestamps:
*(3:53) The Trust Tree: Building sales and marketing alignment

*(23:26) The Playbook: Your brand is the full customer journey

*(34:41) The Dust Up: Tensions with sales and ensuring you send them good opportunities

*(37:33) Quick Hits: Kelly’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 Kelly on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Demandbase
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Katie Berg, VP of Marketing at Klue, an AI-powered Competitive Enablement platform designed to help product marketers collect, curate, and deliver actionable competitor insights to empower revenue teams to win more business.

In this episode, Katie dives into all things content, discussing building high quality content for your core audience and avoiding the trap of trying to reach all audiences right away. She talks about the meaning of community and building authentic relationships.

Key Takeaways:

• You can’t reach every audience authentically through your content, at first. Trying to include too many personas at once results in general content that is not of interest to any of them.
• It’s difficult to create entertaining content and you don’t need to have a perfect launch. The discipline of constant iteration and learning is the path to excellence.
• Identity is a core component of community. Build a community that people want to identify with.

Quote: “I agree with you on the point that you don't have to have a perfect launch. And actually that's like a great, nice-to-have that comes from a bunch of different cycles and learnings of running shows. But the most important thing I think we ever did with our flagship podcast was we started it. If you went back and listened to those first episodes, I'm sure they were trash, but every single time we would listen to them. And we take down notes on what do we need to improve for next time? How do you ask better questions? How do we cut this better? How do we create better social clips? And literally just the pure discipline of constant iteration and constant learning, it is like the surest thing to getting to excellence.  It just requires the discipline of being open to learning and trying to improve a single inch every time.”

Episode Timestamps:

*(16:54) The Trust Tree: Strategy founded on content and education

*(41:01) The Playbook: Media driving organic and direct pipeline

*(46:06) Quick Hits: Katie’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 Katie on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Klue
• Learn more about Caspian Studios