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.

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