Shonodeep Modak of Schneider Electric discusses the challenges faced by many industrial B2B CMOs who have to market less tangible products or services.
Danny:
All right, so let's jump into today's episode. Shonodeep, thank you so much for joining us today on IndustrialSage.

Shonodeep:
Danny, great to be here, good to be here.

Danny:
Now we're super excited. So we've got Shonodeep Modak, Chief Marketing Officer in North America for Schneider Electric. And so we just, again, really thank you so much for spending some time, I know you're super busy to share some information and some insights with the IndustrialSage nation or our audience here. So before we jump into all the really cool fun techie stuff, for those who aren't familiar with Schneider Electric, tell us, who is Schneider electric?

Shonodeep:
Yeah, Schneider Electric is a leader in industrial automation and energy management products. So much like, you think about your house, how there's a load center, where you turn the circuit breakers on and off, that's just the very basics of what Schneider Electric does, it goes all the way around smart manufacturing to building management and energy management systems, to newly announced joint ventures, with infrastructure companies. And so we span the space of buildings, data centers, infrastructure and industry and helping out those customers control, protect, and monetize a better experience for their customers.

Danny:
Excellent. So that's kind of a big deal. A lot of things going on in that digital transformation piece, talk about industrial automation, a lot of big buzz words, rightly so, a lot of transformation happening now in manufacturing. Maybe give me a little bit of your background, as Chief Marketing Officer, so second day on the job and market, you know.

Shonodeep:
Yeah, no, I'm officially a year in Schneider now, so loving it, it's a great organization, lots of great leadership. My responsibility is essentially across North America, so Mexico, Canada, United States, and I'm essentially responsible for how we market to our customers and build a seamless experience to help customers understand awareness of our products, help challenge them and solve solutions for their biggest problems, and then work on the how do we keep them engaged through both the aftermarket and through this great service experience.

Danny:
Big challenges that we can all focus on. I didn't ask you this before, so let me throw a little curveball, but it should be an easy question, tell me a little about your marketing background, like how did you get into marketing, like, did you go to school for it, or well, do you have a different background, just curious.

Shonodeep:
Yeah, no, good curveball. Interesting story there. So I mean, I'm an engineer, I'm a chemical engineer. You may not tell by my deep southern drawl, but while I'm a resident of Atlanta, I actually grew up in Mississippi, so I went to Mississippi State University, and while I was there in my internship in my last year, I did a fantastic internship with a power generation manufacturer, and got to go crawl around boilers and nuclear power plants and cell service solutions. And I said, "You know what, this is much more exciting "than being in a plant "and potentially blowing it up with my engineering skills." So I said, I'm probably better off, and I actually enjoy the value sale, and how you define what makes your product make either intrinsic or economic sense for the customer and benefits. And so that got me into marketing and sales.
My first job, when I left, was I joined a big oil and gas company, and I did sales for about three years, crawling around more boilers, making recommendations in the industrial customers...