The Get: Finding And Keeping The Best Marketing Leaders in B2B SaaS

 Hello, and welcome back to The Get. The Get is here to drive smart decisions around recruiting and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing. We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today’s top marketing leaders in B2B SaaS. I'm your host, Erica Seidel. 

This is our fifth season! And in this season, we dive into the relationship between CMOs and Boards. How can that relationship go from fraught to functional and maybe even fantastic?

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Produced by Simpler Media

This season on The Get podcast, we have stayed close to the theme 'Solving for the Scale Journey.' We have talked with marketing leaders who have scaled… and, in one case someone on the investor side who hires marketing leaders for scale-ups. We've looked at different dimensions around scaling: Hiring. Budgeting. Aligning with the Board. Getting the balance of brand and demand right. Balancing aspirational goals with achievable goals. 

Obviously, every scale journey is different. Just because someone did a scale-up in one place doesn't mean they will be successful somewhere else. But there are some themes that emerged. This episode is a recap of 10 of those themes.

If you are a CEO or investor looking to know what good looks like when hiring the CMO for a scale-up, you've come to the right place. And if you're a CMO or VP of Marketing who is solving for a scale journey, you too have come to the right place.

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Hiring great marketing leaders is not easy. The Get is a podcast designed to inspire smart decisions around recruiting and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing. 

We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today’s top marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.

This season’s theme is Solving for the Scale Journey.

The Get’s host is Erica Seidel, who runs The Connective Good, an executive search practice with a hyper-focus on recruiting CMOs and VPs of Marketing, especially in B2B SaaS. 

If you are looking to hire a CMO or VP of Marketing of the ‘make money’ variety - rather than the ‘make it pretty’ variety, contact Erica at [email protected]. You can also follow Erica on LinkedIn, or sign up for her newsletter at TheConnectiveGood.com. 

The Get is produced by Evo Terra and Simpler Media Productions.

Sydney Sloan is a scale savant! I talked with Sydney as she wrapped up her CMO role at Salesloft, contributing to a huge scale-up. She has since joined Zoom as Head of Product & Industry Marketing.

Sydney had so much insight to share. It was hard to pick out just a few highlights. I asked her how a CMO can balance "getting oars in the water quickly" while managing expectations that "Rome wasn't built in a day." You'll hear about achievable goals versus aspirational goals and when to use each. You'll also learn about how to build organizational excitement around your vision.

Highlights:

• "Be a true market leader, not just a marketing leader."
• Look at your budget as "buying outcomes."
• Balance achievable goals and aspirational goals when you are scaling. The purpose of an aspirational goal is to remove barriers from what you're doing now and think differently about how you might achieve results. "Transformational growth is different from incremental growth."
• Design your org charts 18 months out: The org chart for the 100MM business is different from the org chart for the 250MM business.
• Resist the default of having only your direct reports be on your marketing leadership team. Rather, look for emerging talent or people taking on special projects to join the team and get exposure.
• Surface red flags when hiring and talk to the candidates about them; you can then have a development plan for them in place on day 1.
• "Everyone says marketing and sales should be aligned, but no CMO wants to report to sales."

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Key Links

• Sydney Sloan on LinkedIn
• Zoom Website
• Salesloft Website

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Hiring great marketing leaders is not easy. The Get is a podcast designed to inspire smart decisions around recruiting and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing. 

We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today’s top marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.

This season’s theme is Solving for the Scale Journey.

The Get’s host is Erica Seidel, who runs The Connective Good, an executive search practice with a hyper-focus on recruiting CMOs and VPs of Marketing, especially in B2B SaaS. 

If you are looking to hire a CMO or VP of Marketing of the ‘make money’ variety - rather than the ‘make it pretty’ variety, contact Erica at [email protected]. You can also follow Erica on LinkedIn or sign up for her newsletter at TheConnectiveGood.com. 

The Get is produced by Evo Terra and Simpler Media Productions.

Khalid El Khatib is the Head of Marketing and Communications for Stack Overflow, which reaches 100MM people per month -- more traffic than the New York Times website! Khalid shares how his career path prepared him for this role, and how he has structured his organization to serve not just Stack Overflow's developer community, but also its paid SaaS products.

You'll hear about:

• Avoiding the mistake of underinvesting in brand awareness, especially in PE-backed companies
• The wisdom of mastering how to articulate the value of a brand investment to CEOs and CFOs
• How to respond when CEOs say they need a CMO but you suspect they really need a demand gen director
• Looking around the corners when hiring, and staffing up ahead of a growth curve
• Experimenting with freelancers before hiring in-house
• Reserving regular time on the calendar for marketing to meet with other business functions – creating a forcing function for "finding synergies wherever they exist"
• The wisdom of hiring someone who fulfills the job 90% and is motivated to stay long enough to fulfill all of the job

Favorite quote: "If you don't make a brand investment, you can wonder why competitors are beating you and why demand generation isn't working….A rising tide lifts all boats and an investment in brand awareness is that rising tide."

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Key Links

• Khalid El Khatib on LinkedIn
• Stack Overflow website

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Hiring great marketing leaders is not easy. The Get is a podcast designed to inspire smart decisions around recruiting and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing. 

We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today’s top marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.

This season’s theme is Solving for the Scale Journey.

The Get’s host is Erica Seidel, who runs The Connective Good, an executive search practice with a hyper-focus on recruiting CMOs and VPs of Marketing, especially in B2B SaaS. 

If you are looking to hire a CMO or VP of Marketing of the ‘make money’ variety - rather than the ‘make it pretty’ variety, contact Erica at [email protected]. You can also follow Erica on LinkedIn, or sign up for her newsletter at TheConnectiveGood.com. 

The Get is produced by Evo Terra and Simpler Media Productions.

Cynthia Gumbert is the CMO of SmartBear, the ~750-person PE-backed SaaS company that is on a growth tear, serving more and more software developers every day.

Cynthia reflects on her transition from VP of Marketing to CMO. We discuss the difference between a marketing-centric mindset and a 'business first, marketing second' mindset. It's this 'business first' mindset that is key for a CMO in scaling mode. That mindset entails putting yourself into the CEO's shoes and thinking about how to help the whole company grow, not just how to grow marketing's results. In other words, change your frame from 'what marketing is doing' to 'what the company is doing.'

A big part of scaling is creating discomfort with the status quo. You'll hear these learnings:

• Expect to hit plateaus as you scale. When you do, ask, “How do we double doing well here?”
• Hire for 'cultural add' as opposed to 'cultural fit' as you scale… even when that involves overcoming some discomfort.
• Look for ways to organize to reflect the full arc of the customer experience. In Cynthia's case, she expanded the marketing org to include communities and the training academy, as part of one web and digital experience team. This led to a 400% increase in academy enrollments.

Cynthia also touched on an interesting trend for 2022: the need for micro market research. With product-led growth, customers will follow the journey of website --> trial → product. Marketers must be hyper-aware of micro customer segments and the messages that will help customers accomplish their specific goals.

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Key Links

• Cynthia Gumbert on LinkedIn
• SmartBear website

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Hiring great marketing leaders is not easy. The Get is a podcast designed to inspire smart decisions around recruiting and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing. 

We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today’s top marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.

This season’s theme is Solving for the Scale Journey.

The Get’s host is Erica Seidel, who runs The Connective Good, an executive search practice with a hyper-focus on recruiting CMOs and VPs of Marketing, especially in B2B SaaS. 

If you are looking to hire a CMO or VP of Marketing of the ‘make money’ variety - rather than the ‘make it pretty’ variety, contact Erica at [email protected]. You can also follow Erica on LinkedIn, or sign up for her newsletter at TheConnectiveGood.com. 

The Get is produced by Evo Terra and Simpler Media Productions.

It’s every CMO’s complaint: “Everyone thinks they’re a marketer.” With so many people outside of marketing weighing in, this can make the CMO job challenging. Our guest today shows how you can harness the emotional investment that others in the company have. 

Our guest is Justin Steinman, CMO of Definitive Healthcare, the healthcare commercial intelligence company. Justin joined the company to help fuel a scale-up to the $500MM mark and went through an IPO already. He shares:

• What it’s like to do a rebrand, a marketing transformation, and an IPO all at once
• How to do a marketing transformation that actually leads to the rest of the org respecting marketing
• How to acknowledge and embrace the emotional investment in the brand that people outside of marketing have
• Why a CMO should never use the phrase ‘my marketing budget’
• How to tell whether a company that has not traditionally invested in marketing is ready for it
• How to bring in practices from big companies to companies that are scaling up… without overpowering the business
• How one particular interview question will reveal a lot about someone’s view of marketing and their ability to structure their thoughts

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Key Links

• Justin Steinman on LinkedIn
• 
  
• Definitive Healthcare website

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Hiring great marketing leaders is not easy. The Get is a podcast designed to inspire smart decisions around recruiting and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing. 

We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today’s top marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.

This season’s theme is Solving for the Scale Journey.

The Get’s host is Erica Seidel, who runs The Connective Good, an executive search practice with a hyper-focus on recruiting CMOs and VPs of Marketing, especially in B2B SaaS. 

If you are looking to hire a CMO or VP of Marketing of the ‘make money’ variety - rather than the ‘make it pretty’ variety, contact Erica at [email protected]. You can also follow Erica on LinkedIn, or sign up for her newsletter at TheConnectiveGood.com. 

The Get is produced by Evo Terra and Simpler Media Productions.

It's not in our nature to move slowly as marketers. We like to act, move, go, and grow, especially when there’s a scale mandate. But there’s wisdom and value in assessing first, like just pro athletes surveying the field of play to let the game come to them. We discuss the formula for successful scaling:

• Aligning on what scale means to your CEO and Board
• Avoiding overselling what marketing can do/determining what you are capable of achieving
• Assessing the resources you have at your disposal, both within and outside marketing 

We also discuss:

• How the 10MM-15MM scale-up is different from the 50MM-100MM scaleup 
• Key questions to ask the Board before saying yes to the marketing leadership job
• How to lead your board on a journey of where marketing is taking them 
• How to not get offended by Board members who don’t understand marketing
• “Moneyball” hiring
• Embracing the fact that your team members may only expect to be with you for a defined amount of time 

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Key Links

• Guy Weismantel on LinkedIn
• Ncontracts website

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Hiring great marketing leaders is not easy. The Get is a podcast designed to inspire smart decisions around recruiting and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing. 

We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today’s top marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.

This season’s theme is Solving for the Scale Journey.

The Get’s host is Erica Seidel, who runs The Connective Good, an executive search practice with a hyper-focus on recruiting CMOs and VPs of Marketing, especially in B2B SaaS. 

If you are looking to hire a CMO or VP of Marketing of the ‘make money’ variety - rather than the ‘make it pretty’ variety, contact Erica at [email protected]. You can also follow Erica on LinkedIn or sign up for her newsletter at TheConnectiveGood.com. 

The Get is produced by Evo Terra and Simpler Media Productions.

Kristin Hambelton, CMO scaleup queen now running marketing for MineralTree, takes us on a deep dive of budgeting for marketing during a scale journey. You’ll learn:

• How do you communicate to a CEO and CFO that you are investing efficiently… without overspending
• When do you give budget back versus ask for more
• How to remind your peers of what marketing will and won’t do: “You won't get to scale saying yes to everything!” 
• How your budget should change through expansions and acquisitions

From a hiring standpoint, we discuss:

• The wisdom of Swiss Army knife hiring - when 1 marketer manages multiple functions
• How to do ‘lookalike’ training with your recruiter
• The one person on a marketing team who should NOT be remote
• The best question a CMO candidate could ask the recruiter: How do I rank on the scorecard for the job?
• How to experiment with hiring, not just with programs, and the wisdom of having some experimental people on the team whose backgrounds may initially make you squint  

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Key Links

• Kristin Hambelton on LinkedIn
• MineralTree website

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Hiring great marketing leaders is not easy. The Get is a podcast designed to inspire smart decisions around recruiting and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing. 

We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today’s top marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.

This season’s theme is Solving for the Scale Journey.

The Get’s host is Erica Seidel, who runs The Connective Good, an executive search practice with a hyper-focus on recruiting CMOs and VPs of Marketing, especially in B2B SaaS. 

If you are looking to hire a CMO or VP of Marketing of the ‘make money’ variety - rather than the ‘make it pretty’ variety, contact Erica at [email protected]. You can also follow Erica on LinkedIn, or sign up for her newsletter at TheConnectiveGood.com. 

The Get is produced by Evo Terra and Simpler Media Productions.

The CMO’s most important job when scaling? To create focus, protect focus, and seize control of the strategic planning process - not just for marketing but for the company as a whole. Here’s how to do that.

Join Erica and her guest Jay Gaines, who runs marketing at insurance tech scale-up AgentSync,  as they discuss:

• How to avoid ‘random acts of marketing,’ reinforce the role of marketing as the business scales, and drive a shared common understanding of what marketing is there to do for the business.
• How marketing can -- and should -- seize control of the strategic planning process for the company as a whole
• How to respond to a CEO who over-rotates on a demand-first view of marketing 
• The one question the best CMO candidates ask the CEO before they say yes to a scale job: “How exactly do you plan to expand?” 
• How to avoid a surprisingly tantalizing organization misstep when scaling
• How employees’ values are changing away from ‘growth at all costs’ - which means companies need to be pitching themselves differently
• How a tangible commitment to work/life balance and DEI, embodied from the top-down, can accelerate hiring in the long run

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Key Links

• Jay Gaines on LinkedIn
• AgentSync website

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Hiring great marketing leaders is not easy. The Get is a podcast designed to inspire smart decisions around recruiting and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing. 

We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today’s top marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.

This season’s theme is Solving for the Scale Journey.

The Get’s host is Erica Seidel, who runs The Connective Good, an executive search practice with a hyper-focus on recruiting CMOs and VPs of Marketing, especially in B2B SaaS. 

If you are looking to hire a CMO or VP of Marketing of the ‘make money’ variety - rather than the ‘make it pretty’ variety, contact Erica at [email protected]. You can also follow Erica on LinkedIn or sign up for her newsletter at TheConnectiveGood.com. 

The Get is produced by Evo Terra and Simpler Media Productions.

What’s it like behind the scenes when CEOs hire CMOs in PE-backed companies? Hear from a ‘talent whisperer’ from a PE firm.

If you’re a CMO looking to work in a private-equity-backed business, or a hiring leader in a PE-backed company, you will come across the PE talent partner. Learn about the role of the PE talent partner in recruiting CMOs. 

You’ll hear about the soft skills framework Bryan uses to vet CMO candidates. In particular, listen for his definition of agility: not just being adaptable, but being PROACTIVELY adaptable. 

We unpack the difference between a candidate who can go into a new situation and figure it out versus a candidate who has a plan of attack. 

We discuss whether prior experience with scaling is or is not the best predictor of future scaling success.

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Key Links

• Bryan West on LinkedIn
• Resurgens Tech Partners

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Hiring great marketing leaders is not easy. The Get is a podcast designed to inspire smart decisions around recruiting and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing. 

We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today’s top marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.

This season’s theme is Solving for the Scale Journey.

The Get’s host is Erica Seidel, who runs The Connective Good, an executive search practice with a hyper-focus on recruiting CMOs and VPs of Marketing, especially in B2B SaaS. 

If you are looking to hire a CMO or VP of Marketing of the ‘make money’ variety - rather than the ‘make it pretty’ variety, contact Erica at [email protected]. You can also follow Erica on LinkedIn or sign up for her newsletter at TheConnectiveGood.com. 

The Get is produced by Evo Terra and Simpler Media Productions.