Who knew one word could create so much confusion?

Bill Macaitis, who served as a marketing executive for 3 of the fastest ever growing SaaS companies (Slack (CRO/CMO), Zendesk (CMO) and Salesforce (SVP Marketing)), shares how a drop in website sales caused mayhem and how he discovered the culprit by getting feedback from strangers in 5 seconds.

You might not associate the Silicon Valley culture with putting people first, yet the story Bill is going to share with you is deeply rooted in human-centricity.

In today’s episode, you’ll learn about the effect that one word can have on a marketing strategy, and how the reactions of strangers who have spent only five seconds looking at a site can explain a lot about how potential customers are reacting to that site.

You’ll also learn what Bill uses to align entire teams around one core strategy, what a cohort is and why it’s important to your business, and what a five-second test is.

Topics Discussed in Today’s Episode:

• [00:02:02] Bill’s role at Salesforce in 2010-2011
• [00:03:20] The V2MOM acronym
• [00:04:32] Marc Benioff and his vision for Salesforce
• [00:08:05] The messaging around Salesforce at the time of Bill’s story
• [00:09:35] Bill’s feelings and concerns about Marc’s new idea for Salesforce
• [00:12:38] What made Bill realize something was wrong with the new messaging for Salesforce
• [00:14:32] The size of the drop in leads at Salesforce
• [00:16:52] How Bill decided to approach finding and fixing the messaging problem at Salesforce
• [00:17:33] What is meant by the term “cohort” in marketing
• [00:18:42] The five-second test
• [00:19:37] How confusion over the word “social” was causing Salesforce to lose leads
• [00:22:47] Resources that Bill recommends