How CMO Candidates Choose CEOs

Erica Sheehan is a cybersecurity marketing whiz and the VP of Marketing at Guardsquare, a Belgian mobile application security company that she is helping to expand to the US market. Aside from stints at Novell and Oracle, Erica was most recently VP of marketing at ObserveIT. During her tenure, the company quickly grew 4X and was recently acquired.

Erica is a great example of a marketing leader who has successfully gone from larger to smaller companies. Hear what it means to make that switch, why being analytical is crucial to the marketing leadership role, how high-performing marketing leaders should evaluate a potential employer; and what it’s like to build a marketing team in a rapidly-growing company.

Here are some of the themes from the conversation:

1. The difference between average and great in a B2B marketing leadership role

2. Why analytical skills and field marketing experience are both important in shaping a marketing leader

3. How CEOs can assess if a marketing leader coming from a large enterprise to a high-growth smaller company can ‘scrap’

4. The trend of the CMO or VP of Marketing reporting into the CRO (as opposed to the CEO)

5. How to know whether you need a marketing leader who is more demand-oriented, more brand-oriented, or more product marketing-oriented

6. And finally, some unmissable insights into hiring and building a marketing team in a high-growth environment

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy