Combining Strategic Intent With Hyper-Experimentation: The CMO's Guide

Erica Seidel: 00:00:00

Hello and welcome to The Get.

Erica Seidel: 00:00:01

I'm your host, Erica Seidel.

Erica Seidel: 00:00:04

This is our seventh season.

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Time flies.

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If you're new here, welcome.

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The GET is all about driving smart decisions around recruiting and

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leadership in B2B SaaS marketing.

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You're in good company.

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Our listeners are CMOs, aspiring CMOs, marketing operating partners

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at PE firms and CEOs looking for inspiration as they recruit CMOs.

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I've been told that the get has been helpful to listeners, whether they're

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preparing for a board meeting or thinking about how to structure their teams

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or gearing up for a scaled journey, or simply looking to feel less alone

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as they navigate a very hard job.

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A listener once called me the Terry Gross of Marketing podcasts.

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I was honored this season's theme, SaaS Marketing orgs and how they are

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changing in both seismic and subtle ways.

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If you're leading a SaaS marketing org of any size, you're probably

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thinking of things like, how is AI reshaping your org chart?

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How do you vet a candidate's AI skills when you're still

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learning about AI yourself?

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What's the right mix of full-time fractional and freelance for your team?

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How do you build adaptability and resilience in your org in

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the face of economic disruptions?

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We'll start looking at these topics today.

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Our guest is Claudia Lee.

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I'm talking with Claudia at a rare moment of reflection.

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She's transitioning from one CMO role to another.

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She recently finished up at certified the company that fights fraud for

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the real estate industry through an identity verification SaaS platform.

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Her earlier career spikes were primarily in product

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marketing and partnership, blah.

Erica Seidel: 00:01:41

Her earlier career spikes were primarily in product marketing and

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partnership marketing at companies like Dell and Commvault and Nutanix.

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When I met Claudia a while back, she just stood out.

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I thought, wow.

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Here's someone who's uniquely thoughtful about how she leads

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her marketing team and how she interfaces with the rest of the org.

Erica Seidel: 00:02:00

Claudia, welcome to the show.

Claudia Lee: 00:02:04

Thank you so much for having me.

Claudia Lee: 00:02:05

I'm very excited.

Erica Seidel: 00:02:07

Well, I am excited to chat with you.

Erica Seidel: 00:02:09

Like we say in Boston where you lived for a while, I just

Erica Seidel: 00:02:13

found you " wicked smahht."

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Maybe we could just start with you giving a little intro on you, a little bit

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of a deeper dive on why did you wanna become a CMO, a little bit about your

Erica Seidel: 00:02:22

background, and maybe something that people who haven't gotten to know you too

Erica Seidel: 00:02:29

well would find unique or interesting, or a little bit of a fun fact on you.

Claudia Lee: 00:02:34

Yeah, thanks so much for this opportunity to chat.

Claudia Lee: 00:02:36

I love marketing and I have passion for marketing and that's why I'm

Claudia Lee: 00:02:40

so excited for this conversation.

Claudia Lee: 00:02:41

I became a marketer through a journey of starting in the business world.

Claudia Lee: 00:02:47

I started out in consulting, and through all of these projects consulting

Claudia Lee: 00:02:53

for organizations, I started to realize the power of good marketing.

Claudia Lee: 00:02:57

You can have a great product, but if people don't know about it, if you're

Claudia Lee: 00:03:01

not clear who you're trying to reach, you don't have the right strategies

Claudia Lee: 00:03:04

and tactics to reach those folks to help them understand the value, then

Claudia Lee: 00:03:09

your company or your business doesn't really fulfill its full potential.

Claudia Lee: 00:03:13

I also love marketing just because it is usually the growth engine for the company.

Claudia Lee: 00:03:19

You're out front in terms of thinking ahead of where your company's trying

Claudia Lee: 00:03:25

to go, and painting the vision for what the company's trying to do, painting

Claudia Lee: 00:03:30

the vision for customers and partners, like how you hope to help them.

Claudia Lee: 00:03:34

It's a very growth mindset type of function, and I gravitate towards that.

Claudia Lee: 00:03:39

I'm this sort of entrepreneurial person, but not necessarily for my own things.

Claudia Lee: 00:03:46

Every single role I've ever done is building and starting up businesses

Claudia Lee: 00:03:52

or lines of business, whether it was starting the first consumer PC line

Claudia Lee: 00:03:57

at Dell way back, or helping start a function at CommVault to take the data

Claudia Lee: 00:04:04

management platform and turn it into a service offering for service providers.

Claudia Lee: 00:04:09

Nutanix, I was kind of the first partner marketing person and grew

Claudia Lee: 00:04:14

that team from the ground up.

Claudia Lee: 00:04:16

Then, I came to CertifID 'cause it was such a cool opportunity

Claudia Lee: 00:04:20

to build the marketing function.

Claudia Lee: 00:04:22

When I joined, we were still a Series A company, forty employees, and I was

Claudia Lee: 00:04:28

the first full-time marketing hire, and it was just a really cool challenge

Claudia Lee: 00:04:32

and opportunity for me to build the marketing function from the ground up.

Claudia Lee: 00:04:36

The company had already done a great job of establishing the brand.

Claudia Lee: 00:04:39

It had a great presence in the market, but there was still just so much to

Claudia Lee: 00:04:45

build and that was what attracted me to the company as well as the mission

Claudia Lee: 00:04:49

of fighting fraud, like you described.

Claudia Lee: 00:04:52

As a marketer, you always want to have an impact, and for me, as I've

Claudia Lee: 00:04:56

gone through lots of different roles, I realized that I need to work on

Claudia Lee: 00:05:01

something that I truly believe in.

Claudia Lee: 00:05:03

If I have conviction, that's when I do my best work.

Claudia Lee: 00:05:07

At CertifID, I've had that blend of being able to build, and build something

Claudia Lee: 00:05:12

that I think is super meaningful and makes a difference in this world.

Claudia Lee: 00:05:15

So it's been a cool opportunity and I'm super grateful about it.

Erica Seidel: 00:05:19

That's great.

Erica Seidel: 00:05:20

Any fun facts?

Claudia Lee: 00:05:22

Fun fact, you've probably not met as many people

Claudia Lee: 00:05:25

that have read biographies of US Presidents as me, probably.

Erica Seidel: 00:05:30

I'll just pick up on one thing you said

Erica Seidel: 00:05:31

about being mission-oriented.

Erica Seidel: 00:05:34

I talk to a lot of people in my recruiting and I'll say, what are

Erica Seidel: 00:05:37

your criteria for your next role?

Erica Seidel: 00:05:39

And many of them say, I really want something that I can get excited about.

Erica Seidel: 00:05:42

It's so interesting because I always say, well, what does that mean?

Erica Seidel: 00:05:45

And you have to communicate what that means because if you just say

Erica Seidel: 00:05:49

that, somebody's going to think, oh, they want to, I don't know, save

Erica Seidel: 00:05:53

the world or hug the trees or do something that's nonprofit oriented.

Erica Seidel: 00:05:58

When in reality, things around cyber could be very impactful for one person.

Erica Seidel: 00:06:03

Something about financial services could be very impactful for another

Erica Seidel: 00:06:06

person, and you have to articulate what that means for yourself and

Erica Seidel: 00:06:09

articulate it to other people.

Claudia Lee: 00:06:10

For sure.

Claudia Lee: 00:06:11

Yeah.

Claudia Lee: 00:06:11

Value doesn't have to be working for a nonprofit, although that's, I'm sure, very

Claudia Lee: 00:06:16

rewarding and I've considered it, as well.

Claudia Lee: 00:06:18

To me, value and doing something meaningful is simply that you are helping

Claudia Lee: 00:06:23

grow a company or get a product out in the world that adds value to your customers.

Claudia Lee: 00:06:29

As an example, Nutanix is an amazing company because the intent of Nutanix

Claudia Lee: 00:06:36

was to take incredibly complex siloed data centers and simplify

Claudia Lee: 00:06:42

that, and, in so doing, free up resources for a company to go do

Claudia Lee: 00:06:47

strategic things in their businesses.

Claudia Lee: 00:06:49

Just the act of simplifying data centers was incredibly groundbreaking

Claudia Lee: 00:06:54

and valuable for our customers.

Claudia Lee: 00:06:56

Our prior CIO used to talk about how, before Nutanix, she hadn't had

Claudia Lee: 00:07:03

Thanksgiving dinner with her family for a decade because Thanksgiving was

Claudia Lee: 00:07:07

always a time when IT teams would do migrations and other type of IT projects.

Claudia Lee: 00:07:13

And so Nutanix gives people their holidays and weekends back so they

Claudia Lee: 00:07:17

can spend time with their family.

Claudia Lee: 00:07:19

Those kinds of things are what a marketer's about.

Claudia Lee: 00:07:22

We wanna work on things that are helping customers accomplish their

Claudia Lee: 00:07:27

business goals, enrich their lives.

Claudia Lee: 00:07:29

However, that value is, that needs to be super clear to a marketer 'cause

Claudia Lee: 00:07:34

we have to feel it in our bones.

Claudia Lee: 00:07:37

What is the value of this company?

Claudia Lee: 00:07:39

We have to love our product.

Claudia Lee: 00:07:41

We have to love our company because we are the chief voice for

Claudia Lee: 00:07:46

that story to the outside world.

Claudia Lee: 00:07:48

We are the chief evangelist.

Claudia Lee: 00:07:49

So we have to really love our company and what it does.

Claudia Lee: 00:07:54

Otherwise, you can't do your best work as a marketer, I believe.

Erica Seidel: 00:07:59

I like that.

Erica Seidel: 00:07:59

I can imagine interviewing with you for a more junior role on your team

Erica Seidel: 00:08:03

and being very inspired by that.

Erica Seidel: 00:08:05

That's awesome.

Erica Seidel: 00:08:05

So let's get into some questions.

Erica Seidel: 00:08:07

I know when I first talked with you, we talked about this concept of CMO

Erica Seidel: 00:08:11

needs to be like a chief marketing education officer, and you told me

Erica Seidel: 00:08:14

about this Slack channel that you had called Enabling Conversations.

Erica Seidel: 00:08:18

You said, you know, this is what marketers are here to do, to enable

Erica Seidel: 00:08:22

conversations, not just with customers, not just with prospects, but with

Erica Seidel: 00:08:26

partners, and also internally.

Erica Seidel: 00:08:29

I was very taken by that idea and so would love to hear you double click on

Erica Seidel: 00:08:34

that and talk about what you think about that, how that shows up, how that works,

Erica Seidel: 00:08:38

and what value you've gotten from that kind of mindset and communication channel.

Claudia Lee: 00:08:43

Yeah.

Claudia Lee: 00:08:43

I think enabling conversations, I came upon it during my

Claudia Lee: 00:08:48

time starting at CertifID.

Claudia Lee: 00:08:50

It kind of crystallized a belief that I've had in every marketing role,

Claudia Lee: 00:08:55

and that is, if you really think about why every function at a company

Claudia Lee: 00:08:59

exists, like, why does finance exist?

Claudia Lee: 00:09:02

Why does the product team exist?

Claudia Lee: 00:09:04

For marketers, marketing exists at a company to enable conversations.

Claudia Lee: 00:09:09

What I mean by that is pretty broad.

Claudia Lee: 00:09:11

Marketing is not just talking to people.

Claudia Lee: 00:09:14

Marketing is not just building messaging and broadcasting the messaging.

Claudia Lee: 00:09:19

Our job as marketers is to create the story and all the aspects of

Claudia Lee: 00:09:25

the story and create the conditions and vehicles and places where these

Claudia Lee: 00:09:30

ideas show up so that it sparks interest or ideas or conversation with

Claudia Lee: 00:09:38

partners and customers and prospects.

Claudia Lee: 00:09:39

That's a super broad, ambiguous way to describe it.

Claudia Lee: 00:09:42

But that is really our job.

Claudia Lee: 00:09:45

We are there to spark conversation, to enable conversations, to enable

Claudia Lee: 00:09:50

ongoing conversations with ideas and the ways we tell the story and that

Claudia Lee: 00:09:56

just shows up in so many different ways.

Claudia Lee: 00:09:58

And it depends on your market and your company.

Claudia Lee: 00:10:00

That's why we exist and how it comes out is demos and opportunities and

Claudia Lee: 00:10:05

pipeline and close one, but you don't have that without really understanding

Claudia Lee: 00:10:11

what you're trying to do, what your company does, why it's so special.

Claudia Lee: 00:10:16

How do you tell that story in all the ways?

Claudia Lee: 00:10:18

How do you tell that story with all the audiences?

Claudia Lee: 00:10:20

How do you find ways to reach your audiences with those stories?

Claudia Lee: 00:10:24

So that's why I came up with this description of what we do as we are

Claudia Lee: 00:10:28

here to enable the right conversations with the right people at the right time.

Claudia Lee: 00:10:32

So it's about enabling conversations, and the Slack channel that we started

Claudia Lee: 00:10:36

at my current company is really just a place where we put new stories, new

Claudia Lee: 00:10:43

content ,even just industry articles.

Claudia Lee: 00:10:46

All these things are just fodder for our go-to-market teams to leverage to engage

Claudia Lee: 00:10:52

their prospects, customers, and partners.

Claudia Lee: 00:10:55

It's giving them fodder to spark conversation because we all know it's hard

Claudia Lee: 00:10:59

to get into the door of a large prospect.

Claudia Lee: 00:11:03

It's hard to get people to wanna engage with you.

Claudia Lee: 00:11:06

So you have to provide things of value for them.

Claudia Lee: 00:11:09

You have to.

Claudia Lee: 00:11:10

Find things that you think they would be interested in, that they're

Claudia Lee: 00:11:14

learning about something new, or they're learning about something

Claudia Lee: 00:11:17

that they needed to research anyway, or "Did you know?" kinds of things.

Claudia Lee: 00:11:21

Those are all fodder to spark that conversation.

Claudia Lee: 00:11:24

So that's how that channel started.

Claudia Lee: 00:11:25

We just put in news articles that are about our launches as well

Claudia Lee: 00:11:31

as industry articles as well as customer stories, that kind of thing.

Claudia Lee: 00:11:35

So it's just a place a go-to-market person can go to pick up ideas and turn

Claudia Lee: 00:11:39

that into outreach and things like that.

Erica Seidel: 00:11:42

Follow up question, when you talk with the CEO or the board, do you use

Erica Seidel: 00:11:47

this concept of enabling conversations, and if you do, how does that fly?

Claudia Lee: 00:11:52

It depends on the situation.

Claudia Lee: 00:11:53

That's the macro why we exist, but, obviously, it shows

Claudia Lee: 00:11:56

up in the numbers, right?

Claudia Lee: 00:11:58

So, if we're reaching the right audiences with the right conversations and we're

Claudia Lee: 00:12:02

helping them go through that buyer's journey, or the account buyer's journey

Claudia Lee: 00:12:08

with those conversations, then it shows up in those numbers that I mentioned.

Claudia Lee: 00:12:11

Are we picking up new contacts?

Claudia Lee: 00:12:12

Are they engaging?

Claudia Lee: 00:12:15

Are they requesting demos?

Claudia Lee: 00:12:17

Is that turning into opportunities?

Claudia Lee: 00:12:18

Et cetera.

Claudia Lee: 00:12:20

So it's more of an ethos as to why we exist, and then that becomes

Claudia Lee: 00:12:25

strategies and plans and execution, and it shows up in the numbers.

Erica Seidel: 00:12:28

Yeah.

Erica Seidel: 00:12:29

Great.

Erica Seidel: 00:12:30

So this season, with the podcast, we're looking at ways that the SaaS

Erica Seidel: 00:12:35

marketing organization is changing both seismic ways and in subtle ways.

Erica Seidel: 00:12:42

I like alliteration, so that's why I picked that.

Erica Seidel: 00:12:44

Anyway ,can you pick one or both of these things and talk through what

Erica Seidel: 00:12:48

you think and what you observe and what you're fermenting, either a

Erica Seidel: 00:12:52

seismic or a subtle changer, or both?

Claudia Lee: 00:12:55

Yeah, I think it's subtle and seismic, but I think that marketing orgs

Claudia Lee: 00:12:58

are changing in a couple ways in terms of how flexible and adaptable we have to be.

Claudia Lee: 00:13:05

I think marketing has always been about testing and having a mindset of testing

Claudia Lee: 00:13:12

and learning and experimentation.

Claudia Lee: 00:13:14

But I think that that is like 10x now, just because of all the technologies

Claudia Lee: 00:13:21

that are impacting how we do our work and how we reach our audiences and how our

Claudia Lee: 00:13:26

audiences consume content and engage now.

Claudia Lee: 00:13:30

So I would just say the number one theme that I think about a lot is

Claudia Lee: 00:13:34

just how to stay even more flexible and adaptable than ever before.

Claudia Lee: 00:13:41

There are certain phases I think of tech and tech marketing where

Claudia Lee: 00:13:46

there were certain things that were seen as working really well and

Claudia Lee: 00:13:49

it was more about scaling that.

Claudia Lee: 00:13:51

Now we're in this world where everyone's trying everything, trying

Claudia Lee: 00:13:55

to figure out what is the road ahead?

Claudia Lee: 00:13:57

Harnessing these technologies in order to gain an advantage.

Claudia Lee: 00:14:02

And I don't think anyone has completely figured out the playbook yet.

Claudia Lee: 00:14:05

So it's this era of experimentation that we're all going through, I believe.

Claudia Lee: 00:14:09

I see it a lot.

Claudia Lee: 00:14:10

We're all hungry and learning from each other in terms of teams that

Claudia Lee: 00:14:15

have had success leveraging different tools that are enabled by AI.

Claudia Lee: 00:14:21

That's gonna be the name of the game for the next few years.

Erica Seidel: 00:14:25

That's interesting.

Erica Seidel: 00:14:25

So an era of kind of hyper experimentation.

Erica Seidel: 00:14:28

Can you talk about a recent experiment that you wouldn't have

Erica Seidel: 00:14:32

done, I don't know, a few years ago?

Claudia Lee: 00:14:35

Yeah, I think all marketing teams are experimenting

Claudia Lee: 00:14:38

with how to derive value from AI.

Claudia Lee: 00:14:42

So one of the things that we have done as a team is we created our own content GPT.

Claudia Lee: 00:14:51

We actually fed it with proprietary content because what we do is so

Claudia Lee: 00:14:57

unique and there are proprietary aspects of it in order to fuel our

Claudia Lee: 00:15:02

content development more efficiently.

Claudia Lee: 00:15:04

It doesn't replace humans.

Claudia Lee: 00:15:05

It doesn't replace the strategic intent.

Claudia Lee: 00:15:08

It doesn't replace the more overreaching stories that we build, but it can take

Claudia Lee: 00:15:14

everything we've ever written before and help us actually produce more

Claudia Lee: 00:15:19

bite-sized content in an efficient way.

Claudia Lee: 00:15:22

So that's something that our team's been working on.

Erica Seidel: 00:15:26

Very cool.

Erica Seidel: 00:15:27

Awesome.

Erica Seidel: 00:15:28

One thing I remember about your background, when we first met, I

Erica Seidel: 00:15:32

was doing the search that was all around ecosystem-led growth and a

Erica Seidel: 00:15:37

very partner-oriented go-to-market motion, which I just thought was cool.

Erica Seidel: 00:15:42

And because it seems like that's just a faster path to market and everything.

Erica Seidel: 00:15:46

You have a background in this, and I remember you said that at CertifID your

Erica Seidel: 00:15:50

first hire was a partner marketing hire.

Erica Seidel: 00:15:53

I think it's rare for somebody to get to the CMO role from having a

Erica Seidel: 00:15:58

partner marketing kind of background.

Erica Seidel: 00:16:01

Can you talk about where are we with the maturity of ecosystem-led

Erica Seidel: 00:16:07

growth or partner-led growth, the arc of maturity, and what's your

Erica Seidel: 00:16:11

forecast for where that's going?

Erica Seidel: 00:16:13

Sorry, that's kind of a clunky question.

Claudia Lee: 00:16:15

Yeah, partner marketing is really unique and cool.

Claudia Lee: 00:16:19

I fell into partner marketing because I started out in product marketing,

Claudia Lee: 00:16:22

which became solutions marketing.

Claudia Lee: 00:16:24

In any kind of robust portfolio solutions, you want your technology to work with

Claudia Lee: 00:16:30

other folks' technologies, and that's how I fell into working with other tech

Claudia Lee: 00:16:36

partners and working on go-to-market together on these joint solutions.

Claudia Lee: 00:16:42

I was very lucky.

Claudia Lee: 00:16:43

I think the timing of that evolution of my experience was very much in parallel

Claudia Lee: 00:16:49

with the entire tech industry realizing, exactly what I said, that your reach and

Claudia Lee: 00:16:57

the capabilities of your technologies will improve immensely if your technologies

Claudia Lee: 00:17:03

work with other folks' technologies.

Claudia Lee: 00:17:05

It was this time when so many companies realized that partnering was going to

Claudia Lee: 00:17:09

be valuable, not only for the strength of the solution, but the reach.

Claudia Lee: 00:17:13

I just had great timing.

Claudia Lee: 00:17:16

My skills and experience and knowledge building around partner marketing

Claudia Lee: 00:17:20

just mapped with that really well.

Claudia Lee: 00:17:23

So that was a really nice benefit for me and my career growth because that type of

Claudia Lee: 00:17:28

skillset was valued and was searched for, and there really weren't that many people

Claudia Lee: 00:17:34

that had that type of experience yet.

Claudia Lee: 00:17:36

Partner marketing wasn't even really a discipline.

Claudia Lee: 00:17:38

If you go back, I'm aging myself a little bit, but way back if you intentionally

Claudia Lee: 00:17:43

said, "I wanna be in marketing," partner marketing was not even a thing

Claudia Lee: 00:17:46

people said, "I wanna do that." It just evolved as its own discipline.

Claudia Lee: 00:17:51

Now, the interesting thing is so many people have gravitated towards

Claudia Lee: 00:17:56

that idea, but it's not that easy to work with outside companies.

Claudia Lee: 00:18:01

Partnering in general, whether it's just partner, BD, sales, or marketing,

Claudia Lee: 00:18:07

these are just disciplines that are challenging 'cause you're trying to get

Claudia Lee: 00:18:12

alignment between two companies to do something together and stay together and

Claudia Lee: 00:18:18

keep that momentum going for a sustained enough period of time to see revenue.

Claudia Lee: 00:18:22

That just takes a very certain intentionality and strategy and mindset

Claudia Lee: 00:18:27

and sustained resource to do that.

Claudia Lee: 00:18:30

So there was this massive ramp in desire for partner marketing and

Claudia Lee: 00:18:35

partner teams, and I think now it's become a little bit more mature.

Claudia Lee: 00:18:39

A lot of the companies understand now how it can be challenging, but how it

Claudia Lee: 00:18:45

can lead to outcomes if you can invest and sustain that effort for enough of

Claudia Lee: 00:18:51

a period of time to see the results.

Claudia Lee: 00:18:53

My trajectory has gone with a trajectory of partner marketing even being a thing.

Claudia Lee: 00:18:58

It didn't even exist then companies started to see the

Claudia Lee: 00:19:01

value, started to invest.

Claudia Lee: 00:19:04

The great thing is, is its own discipline now, and now there's

Claudia Lee: 00:19:08

this period of companies who have become really great at it.

Claudia Lee: 00:19:11

There are still a lot of companies that are still trying to figure it out.

Claudia Lee: 00:19:14

We've realized that partnering was going to be our most effective and

Claudia Lee: 00:19:19

most efficient path to reaching our ICP audiences because these large companies

Claudia Lee: 00:19:24

already had the relationships, had the decades of experience and success

Claudia Lee: 00:19:28

working with our customers, and were very respected in terms of their

Claudia Lee: 00:19:34

recommendations on technologies to use, partners, and just all aspects of a deal.

Claudia Lee: 00:19:40

So that is why we have continued to invest in partner marketing 'cause it's a value

Claudia Lee: 00:19:46

to all sides, to us and to our customers.

Erica Seidel: 00:19:49

Really cool.

Erica Seidel: 00:19:49

If somebody has a stagnant partner marketing program, what would be the

Erica Seidel: 00:19:54

first question you would ask them?

Erica Seidel: 00:19:56

If you had your consulting hat on, 'cause you know so much about this,

Erica Seidel: 00:19:59

what would be the first question you would ask them to diagnose what the

Erica Seidel: 00:20:03

problem was and how they could fix that?

Claudia Lee: 00:20:05

That's a great question.

Claudia Lee: 00:20:06

I guess my first question would be tell me about your partner ecosystem.

Claudia Lee: 00:20:12

Tell me, who are your strategic partners and why?

Claudia Lee: 00:20:16

What categories do you hope to serve by working with your sets of partners?

Claudia Lee: 00:20:22

What does success look like with these strategic partners?

Claudia Lee: 00:20:26

Just understanding the intent because if intent is clear, then, it's not

Claudia Lee: 00:20:31

easy, but if intent is clear, then you can build a path toward that.

Claudia Lee: 00:20:35

It's hard work to get there, but that intent and focus and

Claudia Lee: 00:20:40

prioritization is really important.

Erica Seidel: 00:20:43

I like that.

Erica Seidel: 00:20:43

Make sure the intent is clear.

Erica Seidel: 00:20:45

You bring up something that I think is so huge in marketing these days, this

Erica Seidel: 00:20:48

kind of tension between short-term results and long-term patience.

Erica Seidel: 00:20:53

To your point, it could take time for anything in marketing to work, but

Erica Seidel: 00:20:57

partner marketing results is one of those things that can take a lot of time.

Erica Seidel: 00:21:01

Meanwhile, companies are so anxious for short-term results

Erica Seidel: 00:21:05

that you're fighting time.

Claudia Lee: 00:21:07

I feel like you can do both.

Claudia Lee: 00:21:09

It's not easy, and I'm being pretty optimistic, which I am generally

Claudia Lee: 00:21:12

an optimistic person, but I think you can do both because you do

Claudia Lee: 00:21:17

need to find the early wins.

Claudia Lee: 00:21:18

If you can get some early wins, whether it's a few large customers that you

Claudia Lee: 00:21:23

close together, those kinds of early wins, then that becomes fuel to get to

Claudia Lee: 00:21:29

your next stage of growth as a partner.

Claudia Lee: 00:21:31

You take those as examples of what good looks like and teams that work together

Claudia Lee: 00:21:36

and how they achieve that success together in order to spark more and more of your

Claudia Lee: 00:21:42

joint sales and marketing teams to want to work together to see that result.

Claudia Lee: 00:21:48

Then you can build that into a scalable program.

Claudia Lee: 00:21:51

But it has to be seen as urgent.

Claudia Lee: 00:21:53

Getting some of those early wins is incredibly urgent because if your

Claudia Lee: 00:21:58

partnership launches and you don't have enough fuel, after a certain

Claudia Lee: 00:22:04

time, that momentum will dissipate.

Claudia Lee: 00:22:06

That excitement and energy of launching together will dissipate without more fuel.

Claudia Lee: 00:22:11

So I think there's a way to do both.

Claudia Lee: 00:22:12

In fact, you have to do both.

Claudia Lee: 00:22:14

You have to find those early wins so that you can sustain the momentum

Claudia Lee: 00:22:18

and turn that into a scalable effort.

Erica Seidel: 00:22:20

Okay, great.

Erica Seidel: 00:22:22

Thank you.

Erica Seidel: 00:22:22

Let's talk about AI.

Erica Seidel: 00:22:23

You know no conversation these days is complete without some topics of AI.

Erica Seidel: 00:22:28

There's a lot of talk about AI is gonna take over entry level jobs, or

Erica Seidel: 00:22:31

at the very least, change them a lot.

Erica Seidel: 00:22:34

How do you think that's gonna look?

Erica Seidel: 00:22:35

What kinds of people are gonna get the few jobs that are the relatively,

Erica Seidel: 00:22:39

comparatively few jobs that are out there?

Claudia Lee: 00:22:42

It's obvious that AI's going to change roles and

Claudia Lee: 00:22:46

how teams are staffed and whatnot.

Claudia Lee: 00:22:49

The main things that I see is just the elevation of that thought around

Claudia Lee: 00:22:58

intent and having more of a thought process on what are we trying to

Claudia Lee: 00:23:05

do, build the strategy around it, that culture of experimentation.

Claudia Lee: 00:23:09

A lot of other folks have probably described this to you, as well.

Claudia Lee: 00:23:13

I think AI is simply another, I'm oversimplifying, but AI is another

Claudia Lee: 00:23:19

category of technology that aids us.

Claudia Lee: 00:23:22

So marketers have to continue to uplevel our thinking and our skillset

Claudia Lee: 00:23:30

and our ability to understand the technology and figure out how to

Claudia Lee: 00:23:34

leverage the technology for our purpose.

Claudia Lee: 00:23:37

It's a tool, right?

Claudia Lee: 00:23:38

Effective, successful marketers and marketing leaders will view it

Claudia Lee: 00:23:42

that way as this cool opportunity to find new ways to do things.

Claudia Lee: 00:23:47

So it just continues to elevate that strategic thinking,

Claudia Lee: 00:23:52

understanding your company and why we're doing what we're doing.

Claudia Lee: 00:23:56

That flexibility, adaptability, that culture of experimentation becomes even

Claudia Lee: 00:24:00

more important because it can feel chaotic when we're on the ground, in day-to-day.

Claudia Lee: 00:24:05

and we see posts constantly about " AI created this for me," or "AI

Claudia Lee: 00:24:10

created that for me," or, "I didn't do this anymore 'cause of AI."

Claudia Lee: 00:24:12

Those are all true things, but to turn that into a scalable motion will take the

Claudia Lee: 00:24:17

right strategic folks to build that out.

Claudia Lee: 00:24:20

So I think it just continues to uplevel the type of talent and the strategic

Claudia Lee: 00:24:26

acumen of the talent that you hire.

Erica Seidel: 00:24:29

It's interesting, I feel like the theme coming out here

Erica Seidel: 00:24:32

is intent plus experimentation.

Claudia Lee: 00:24:35

Every single team or role I've ever had, I think

Claudia Lee: 00:24:40

if you were to choose two words that describe me as a marketing

Claudia Lee: 00:24:43

leader, it's " strategic execution."

Claudia Lee: 00:24:46

Because nothing happens without execution, but execution without

Claudia Lee: 00:24:51

a strategy is just busy work.

Claudia Lee: 00:24:53

But then strategy without the execution chops doesn't actually lead to progress.

Claudia Lee: 00:24:58

So it's the blend of both.

Claudia Lee: 00:25:00

Understanding what you're trying to do, but then having that grit to execute.

Erica Seidel: 00:25:04

That's a great segue to the thing I wanted to talk about

Erica Seidel: 00:25:07

next, which is about bringing up the next crop of marketing leaders.

Erica Seidel: 00:25:10

You are a very intentional person like we've been talking about.

Erica Seidel: 00:25:14

I'm wondering if you could talk about the three most important skills that, whether

Erica Seidel: 00:25:19

they're hard skills or soft skills, that you like to create in your team.

Erica Seidel: 00:25:24

If we talked to people who worked for you, what would they

Erica Seidel: 00:25:26

say they had learned from you?

Claudia Lee: 00:25:27

You won't be surprised at my first one.

Claudia Lee: 00:25:29

It's that strategic acumen, or just thoughtfulness is a better word for it.

Claudia Lee: 00:25:34

I always look for folks that are super thoughtful in how they think about and

Claudia Lee: 00:25:40

talk about what they've done before and what they've learned and what

Claudia Lee: 00:25:43

they're trying to do in their next role.

Claudia Lee: 00:25:46

To me, that indicates intellectual curiosity, which

Claudia Lee: 00:25:51

is pivotal to any marketer.

Claudia Lee: 00:25:53

You have to be asking questions and trying to understand the why of things because

Claudia Lee: 00:25:58

metrics in marketing are simply clues.

Claudia Lee: 00:26:01

We don't always know why somebody decided to buy.

Claudia Lee: 00:26:04

Sometimes you're lucky and they'll tell you exactly, but we're in the

Claudia Lee: 00:26:07

business of looking at all the clues, all the engagements along the buyer's

Claudia Lee: 00:26:12

journey, and, " Okay, I think this might improve conversion rates."

Claudia Lee: 00:26:16

You just need that intellectual curiosity to ask, " Why did conversion

Claudia Lee: 00:26:21

of leads into demo requests only have this percent here, but this percent

Claudia Lee: 00:26:28

there?" So intellectual curiosity is super important for any marketer.

Claudia Lee: 00:26:32

I also think that no matter what your role is in marketing, it could be

Claudia Lee: 00:26:37

ops, it could be events, it could be brand, even though your role could be

Claudia Lee: 00:26:42

very specific, I always look for folks that are pretty well-rounded because

Claudia Lee: 00:26:47

the world we live in is changing.

Claudia Lee: 00:26:50

You're gonna want somebody that's able to think out of the box and think

Claudia Lee: 00:26:53

beyond their current scope in order to keep evolving what they do, how

Claudia Lee: 00:26:58

they do it, how they do it better, and how it fits into the bigger picture.

Claudia Lee: 00:27:02

So I always look for folks that are really well-rounded because any

Claudia Lee: 00:27:06

well-rounded marketing person needs to understand the story, needs to be able

Claudia Lee: 00:27:11

to understand how demand is created, needs to understand their numbers.

Claudia Lee: 00:27:16

You need that full facet across any role.

Claudia Lee: 00:27:20

Maybe you're more indexed in certain things that you're an expert on in

Claudia Lee: 00:27:23

your role, but you still need to understand how all of it works together.

Claudia Lee: 00:27:28

Those are the qualities that I always look for.

Claudia Lee: 00:27:32

I think the last thing goes without saying, but just that collaborative

Claudia Lee: 00:27:35

spirit is also so important in marketing because everything we do is so contextual.

Claudia Lee: 00:27:42

We do our work better if we understand what our teammates are doing, because

Claudia Lee: 00:27:47

then how we show up at a trade show or how we show up in a digital ad is more

Claudia Lee: 00:27:53

informed because of learnings that we're all gathering as a go-to-market team.

Claudia Lee: 00:27:57

Not just our team, but working with sales and customer success.

Claudia Lee: 00:28:01

So that spirit of collaboration, that I'm not alone, I'm not doing this in a silo.

Claudia Lee: 00:28:07

I can get more lift and effectiveness if I understand what others are doing.

Claudia Lee: 00:28:13

Then I also just need to understand what others are doing so I know how my

Claudia Lee: 00:28:17

piece of the puzzle shows up in front of our audience that I'm trying to target.

Claudia Lee: 00:28:22

Just understanding how you're connected is super important.

Claudia Lee: 00:28:25

You can't just be in your lane.

Erica Seidel: 00:28:28

I love that.

Erica Seidel: 00:28:29

I think that's so well articulated.

Erica Seidel: 00:28:32

How do you tell if somebody's collaborative?

Erica Seidel: 00:28:34

I'll just pick up that third one.

Erica Seidel: 00:28:35

If you're interviewing somebody, people often just say, "Oh, I'm collaborative."

Erica Seidel: 00:28:40

And I always think are you collaborative in terms of, okay, I do my piece, you do

Erica Seidel: 00:28:43

your piece, and then we put it together?

Erica Seidel: 00:28:45

Are you collaborative in terms of we come to the same mind and we're joined at the

Erica Seidel: 00:28:48

hip to come up with something, which could be you know, maybe more time consuming?

Erica Seidel: 00:28:52

How do you tell?

Claudia Lee: 00:28:53

Interviewing is so hard because you're trying to test for

Claudia Lee: 00:28:55

things that are really hard to test for.

Claudia Lee: 00:28:57

I think the tells are little things, like as they describe their experiences, did

Claudia Lee: 00:29:02

they describe how they worked with others?

Claudia Lee: 00:29:06

This is a really hard one to test for, but are they generous in giving credit

Claudia Lee: 00:29:09

to the others that they worked with?

Claudia Lee: 00:29:11

Because you never do anything alone.

Claudia Lee: 00:29:13

Just that generous spirit of " I did this because there was a broader

Claudia Lee: 00:29:17

team that I worked with." And how they describe their accomplishments.

Claudia Lee: 00:29:21

One of my questions that I ask folks is how would your manager describe you?

Claudia Lee: 00:29:26

Or how would your former team describe you?

Claudia Lee: 00:29:28

And you see, like, how do they see themselves?

Claudia Lee: 00:29:31

Does anything indicating great teamwork or collaboration or that kind of thing

Claudia Lee: 00:29:36

pop up in their description of themselves?

Claudia Lee: 00:29:38

Those are like little proxy clues, I would say, but yeah, it's a really

Claudia Lee: 00:29:43

hard thing to test for in an interview.

Claudia Lee: 00:29:45

Agreed.

Erica Seidel: 00:29:46

That's cool.

Erica Seidel: 00:29:47

Any other tips about how you hire, or other favorite interview

Erica Seidel: 00:29:51

questions that you have?

Claudia Lee: 00:29:52

I love to ask folks, tell me about one or two of your

Claudia Lee: 00:29:55

accomplishments that you feel was most successful in your prior role.

Claudia Lee: 00:29:59

Tell me about a project that you thought was very successful and

Claudia Lee: 00:30:05

tell me what it was, your role in it, what did you accomplish?

Claudia Lee: 00:30:10

I love to start with the best of someone, and if they can tell me what

Claudia Lee: 00:30:15

they're highly proud of, that gives me a sense of what they value and how they

Claudia Lee: 00:30:20

did it and just about them, basically.

Erica Seidel: 00:30:25

I like that.

Erica Seidel: 00:30:26

I used to have a client who would ask that, and then she would ask, " Tell

Erica Seidel: 00:30:30

me about an accomplishment you were proud of at the time, but you're

Erica Seidel: 00:30:34

less proud now looking back."

Claudia Lee: 00:30:37

Hmm.

Erica Seidel: 00:30:37

So I give that to you as another, like extension for yours,

Erica Seidel: 00:30:40

because people evolve over time.

Erica Seidel: 00:30:42

Like, oh, I thought that was so cool.

Erica Seidel: 00:30:43

I did that ten years ago, or five years ago, whatever.

Erica Seidel: 00:30:46

But now with this lens, I would've done X, Y, Z differently.

Erica Seidel: 00:30:49

And of course, if they don't say they'd anything differently - right?

Erica Seidel: 00:30:52

- Like, then you know.

Claudia Lee: 00:30:54

Totally.

Claudia Lee: 00:30:54

Yeah, because that indicates self-awareness and thoughtfulness

Claudia Lee: 00:30:58

and intellectual curiosity, which are so important to the adaptability

Claudia Lee: 00:31:02

that we just talked about.

Erica Seidel: 00:31:03

Yeah, yeah.

Erica Seidel: 00:31:04

Cool.

Erica Seidel: 00:31:05

I know we're getting to the end of our time, but I wanted to ask you

Erica Seidel: 00:31:07

one thing, since you're in career transition and you, clearly, were

Erica Seidel: 00:31:14

meeting with at least one CEO.

Erica Seidel: 00:31:17

I'm wondering what were you asked in your interviews for your next CMO gig?

Erica Seidel: 00:31:23

Was there anything that was surprising to you or that you think would

Erica Seidel: 00:31:27

be interesting for other CMOs in transition to hear and to prepare for?

Claudia Lee: 00:31:31

Mm-hmm.

Claudia Lee: 00:31:33

Wow.

Claudia Lee: 00:31:33

That's such a great question.

Claudia Lee: 00:31:34

It's a big question.

Claudia Lee: 00:31:35

I think for a CMO, a CMO role is obviously going to be multi-step.

Claudia Lee: 00:31:42

There's a pretty lengthy conversation, set of conversations.

Claudia Lee: 00:31:47

So that's why it's a big question because I do think that when a CEO is looking to

Claudia Lee: 00:31:53

hire a CMO, they really wanna understand that person as well as they possibly can,

Claudia Lee: 00:32:01

in as efficient a way as possible because you're envisioning taking somebody into

Claudia Lee: 00:32:06

your leadership team that you can count on and can be by your side and make the

Claudia Lee: 00:32:12

right decisions and that you can trust.

Claudia Lee: 00:32:15

That's really hard to interview for.

Claudia Lee: 00:32:18

So in that process there's a lot of "How would you solve these

Claudia Lee: 00:32:25

problems?" kinds of conversations.

Claudia Lee: 00:32:27

But then there's also the how questions.

Claudia Lee: 00:32:30

So I do think that how you show up in the process in terms of how you think

Claudia Lee: 00:32:36

about team building and how you think about your approach to leadership and

Claudia Lee: 00:32:42

how you would approach either building or growing or evolving a team helps folks

Claudia Lee: 00:32:51

envision what would you do in the role.

Claudia Lee: 00:32:53

That's really what everyone's always trying to do in an interview process.

Claudia Lee: 00:32:57

Could I envision this person in the seat at my company doing the right things, and

Claudia Lee: 00:33:04

that I can trust to do the right things?

Claudia Lee: 00:33:05

That's just so hard.

Claudia Lee: 00:33:06

So it's the strategy, it's the marketing philosophy, it's the how would you

Claudia Lee: 00:33:13

build our brand and our presence?

Claudia Lee: 00:33:15

Feeling like you have passion and some semblance of understanding of

Claudia Lee: 00:33:22

the product is super important, too.

Claudia Lee: 00:33:24

Don't just jump to the marketing tactics.

Claudia Lee: 00:33:26

Try to understand, okay, how could marketing tell this story better?

Claudia Lee: 00:33:31

I think an important part of the thought process is could I

Claudia Lee: 00:33:34

envision this person being my chief evangelist for why our company is

Claudia Lee: 00:33:39

doing great work for our customers?

Claudia Lee: 00:33:41

There's so many facets, I think, to that process of a CEO deciding on

Claudia Lee: 00:33:46

is the CMO the right person for us?

Erica Seidel: 00:33:49

Right, right.

Erica Seidel: 00:33:50

And interesting, follow up on that.

Erica Seidel: 00:33:51

You didn't say anything about AI, so I'm wondering, did CEOs ask about your

Erica Seidel: 00:33:58

perspective on AI or your forecast on how it could change marketing?

Claudia Lee: 00:34:01

For sure.

Erica Seidel: 00:34:02

Or, or was it like, what are you using?

Erica Seidel: 00:34:04

What types of questions?

Erica Seidel: 00:34:05

'Cause I feel like everybody's, oh, everybody else is further ahead

Erica Seidel: 00:34:08

than me and they're trying to suss that out and learn in real time.

Claudia Lee: 00:34:10

For sure.

Claudia Lee: 00:34:11

It's in every conversation.

Claudia Lee: 00:34:12

It's almost implied in every conversation.

Claudia Lee: 00:34:15

I think AI is in every conversation.

Claudia Lee: 00:34:18

I think that there is a deep understanding on all sides that it's

Claudia Lee: 00:34:22

going to change how we all execute.

Claudia Lee: 00:34:25

I do also think that we also need to still focus on the fundamentals, like

Claudia Lee: 00:34:32

all those things that we just described.

Claudia Lee: 00:34:34

Strategic intent - do you understand the product and what it does?

Claudia Lee: 00:34:37

What's the value for our customers?

Claudia Lee: 00:34:39

And then AI is a new set of technologies that can help you do that better.

Claudia Lee: 00:34:44

Don't get me wrong, it is groundbreaking.

Claudia Lee: 00:34:46

It is changing our lives for good and bad already as marketers.

Claudia Lee: 00:34:51

I just hope that we balance that it is a set of tools that we can leverage, but

Claudia Lee: 00:34:57

it's not going to eliminate the need for smart people to be doing the right things

Claudia Lee: 00:35:03

to get your story to the right people.

Claudia Lee: 00:35:06

There's always gonna be these ways of new technology that

Claudia Lee: 00:35:08

changes how we do our work.

Claudia Lee: 00:35:10

But again, it all comes down to thinking about how you

Claudia Lee: 00:35:13

enable the right conversations.

Claudia Lee: 00:35:15

So that's what I always come back to, because otherwise you'll just

Claudia Lee: 00:35:19

lose yourself in chasing tools.

Claudia Lee: 00:35:22

Always come back to that.

Claudia Lee: 00:35:23

Why are we here and what are we trying to do?

Erica Seidel: 00:35:26

I love that.

Erica Seidel: 00:35:27

Yeah.

Erica Seidel: 00:35:27

Strategic intent and experimentation.

Erica Seidel: 00:35:30

You know

Erica Seidel: 00:35:30

- Claudia Lee: Thanks for marketing me.

Erica Seidel: 00:35:32

I appreciate that.

Erica Seidel: 00:35:34

[They laugh]

Erica Seidel: 00:35:35

this has been great, Claudia.

Erica Seidel: 00:35:36

Thank you so much for sharing your perspectives.

Erica Seidel: 00:35:38

I love the thoughtfulness that you put into your career and I can imagine

Erica Seidel: 00:35:42

your teams really appreciate you.

Erica Seidel: 00:35:43

Thank you so much and good luck in the next role.

Claudia Lee: 00:35:46

Yeah.

Claudia Lee: 00:35:46

Thank you so much.

Erica Seidel: 00:35:47

That was Claudia Lee.

Erica Seidel: 00:35:48

Stay tuned for the next episode of the Get Coming in a couple of weeks.

Erica Seidel: 00:35:52

Thanks for listening to the Get I'm your host, Erica Seidel.

Erica Seidel: 00:35:56

The GET is here to drive Smart Decisions or, ah.

Erica Seidel: 00:36:00

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Erica Seidel: 00:36:03

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Erica Seidel: 00:36:06

We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today's top

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Erica Seidel: 00:36:14

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Erica Seidel: 00:36:20

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