How to Inject Discomfort Into Your Scale Journey

Erica Seidel: 00:00:02

Hi, you're listening to The Get, the podcast about finding and keeping

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great marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.

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I'm Erica Seidel, your host.

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If you're doing well and scaling, it may feel like your path is set.

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Maybe you feel like you have paradoxically less room for experimentation.

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After all, shouldn't you double down on what works and focus there?

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Today, you'll hear about how to thread that needle.

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Today, you'll hear from Cynthia Gumbert.

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She's the CMO of SmartBear, the 750-person PE-backed SaaS company

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that's on a growth tear, serving more and more software developers every day.

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You'll hear about the transition from VP of Marketing to CMO.

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And you'll hear about the difference between a marketing-centric

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mindset and a 'business first, marketing second' mindset.

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Listen for what Cynthia says about putting yourself into the CEO's shoes and thinking

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about how to help the whole company grow, not just how to grow marketing's results.

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Listen for all the different ways in which Cynthia injects

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discomfort into her scale journey.

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expect to hit plateaus as you scale.

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When you do, you need to ask, 'How do we double doing well here?'

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You'll also hear about an important trend for 2022 for product-led growth

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CMOs - the need for micro-market research.

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Here we go.

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So, Cynthia, thank you so much for joining the show.

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I'm so happy to have you on, Cynthia Gumpert, CMO of SmartBear.

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So thank you for joining!

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:01:34

Thank you, Erica.

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Thrilled to be here and appreciate you having me.

Erica Seidel: 00:01:39

So, you have an interesting aspect of scaling in your background.

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You worked at a lot of bigger companies and now you're at SmartBear

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as part of this kind of great scale up, and you were saying, before we

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talked, you're like the PE darling.

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I forget how you said it, a PE dream kind of company.

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Can you talk about your experience going from VP of marketing to CMO?

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Cause, you know, it seems like it's like a different lens and it's a bit

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of a leap from leading all of marketing to kind of thinking business first,

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marketing second, as I like to say.

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I'm curious to hear about that leap that you made, what was hard, how should

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other marketers that are new to the CMO role align with others specifically?

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:02:21

Yeah, I feel like I had to tap way back

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into my history and background.

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I was an engineer before I became a marketer.

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And then I worked in sales, sales engineering, and then went to business

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school, and then went into marketing.

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So, part of it was going back to, okay, I've been in different

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parts of the business and had a perspective beyond marketing.

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So it didn't just come up through the marketing organization and I've had

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to exercise those parts of my brain.

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Not so much like understanding everything engineering is doing,

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but being empathetic to what the whole business is going through.

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Kind of going back to my MBA roots on alright, how do we think about growth

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from all levers perspective and really put yourself in the seat of the CEO and

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what does he or she need to be worried and concerned about and how am I helping that?

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How am I helping the entire company grow and not just managing

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my team and my own department?

Erica Seidel: 00:03:17

That's great.

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So talk a bit about how that comes out in practice.

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Are there different conversations where you're working on that

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alignment with the CEO and the CMO?

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Like, what are those critical conversations that happen or that have

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happened over the course of your time at SmartBear that kind of stick out to you?

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:03:36

You know, I look at just, when I'm thinking with only my

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marketing hat, it really comes out largely when we're doing annual planning

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and budget planning and looking at it in terms of, alright marketing

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needs to do these five things and we really want to start experimenting and

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working on new things and doing this.

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It's reframing that to, "the company needs this."

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And I understand that I'm not going to get every dollar of budget that I'm

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asking for in marketing, and I'm not just looking at building more for myself.

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It's what do we need to do as a business, here's why.

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Oh, product is investing in that, then we should invest in that part of marketing.

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I'm okay giving up these other things here and I get it and I will go and translate

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that back to the team and say, sorry, you know, we can't invest in these new

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tools because they're nice to have, but they're not must-have for the business.

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So, it just helps me frame, you know, we don't all have infinite, unlimited

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budget and have ability to hire.

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We have to make trade-offs.

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And it really helps me give the context back to the team on here's

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why we're making these trade-offs.

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But making sure that you're all working on the most important

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things for the business.

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That's one.

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Another area of just thinking business first is I feel like you can't

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over-communicate with your team and, yeah, there's some things in board

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meetings that we can't share, numbers and whatnot, but I'm very open.

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One of our values of the company at SmartBear is open, our core values.

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And I really take that to heart and try to share immediately after any executive

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or board meetings what is relevant to the team, say here's the context

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that we're having conversations in.

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I don't think there's any level too low that we should

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avoid sharing strategy with.

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I just, I have all-hands meetings with my organization every single week and we have

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a standup and I will share as much as I possibly can without crossing a line and,

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you know, oversharing anything sensitive.

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But I think they really appreciate that because they kind of start to think

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that way too and understand what else is going on at the organization, how

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they can think about getting creative and doing their jobs better in a

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way that's relevant and important.

Erica Seidel: 00:05:58

Yeah, it's so interesting when I talk to candidates lately,

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I don't hear people say so much, "I want to work in this industry," or "I

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want to work in this size company."

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What they say is "I want a transparent culture" and "I

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want a culture with integrity."

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And so I think it's so important.

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Obviously, transparency, it means a lot of things, but I think that's, you know,

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step one is sharing what's going on in conversations where you're not necessarily

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going to be in the conversation.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:06:22

Yeah, transparency's important.

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And I've found that I'll uncover places where they're opportunities to communicate

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more, where I see something happening in a different org and ask a leader of

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that team, do you mind coming in to share with marketing what you're working on?

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Because I liked what I heard, and it's not relevant to every

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single person in my team, but it's going to be interesting to them.

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We have guest speakers all the time coming into our marketing all-hands,

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and that's the other benefit of looking business first is just

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finding opportunities to share more information across different parts of

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the business that wouldn't normally talk.

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It always sparks some new idea from somebody.

Erica Seidel: 00:07:04

So what's an example of a recent guest that you've had

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on the marketing team meeting?

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:07:08

We had the head of channel sales come join us.

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And it was really in the context of we give, every other month, we give our team

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awards for, we have these spot awards, and they're tied to our core values.

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And there's always one given by somebody outside of marketing to someone on our

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team or vice versa, or we invite somebody to give an award to outside of our group.

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This happened to be head of channel sales was giving a team member an

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award, and I asked her, while you're at it, can you just share everything

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going on that you're working on?

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And what's the plan for our partners and what's going on.

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So she ended up speaking for an extra fifteen minutes and it was great.

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It was just very interesting hearing that perspective and people

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had a lot of questions for her.

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So that was fun.

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I'm bringing our CEO into my next all-hands.

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He's got a few things to say also.

Erica Seidel: 00:08:07

That's great.

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I remember talking to a CMO recently, I'm just going to share this idea with

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you cause you might get a kick out of it.

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But he was doing live personas.

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So the idea is like everybody's on zoom these days, so he would get a customer

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to just come to a marketing meeting and then he would invite the whole

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company and bring the persona to life.

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And, you know, anybody could fire questions at the customer and it

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was all about learning and stuff.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:08:30

That's awesome.

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I may end up stealing that.

Erica Seidel: 00:08:31

Yeah, exactly, I thought that might be interesting for you.

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You guys are doing well and I'm going to ask you this kind of funny question.

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You guys are growing, you're profitable, and I've been wondering,

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does this give you paradoxically less room for error and experimentation?

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I'm wondering if this is something that a lot of companies that are

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doing well now are like a little nervous about experimenting.

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Any thoughts on that?

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Like where does the experimentation come in for you?

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:08:58

Yeah.

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I mean, it's very easy to fall into the trap of being very comfortable and saying,

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we're doing fine, don't mess with it.

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Just don't mess with it because we don't want anything to fall off the rails and

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just keep doing more of what we're doing.

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There are these, just like when you're training for an athletic

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thing or, you know, I do Peloton, you get to these plateaus.

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It's like, I'm doing fine, you're doing fine, wait, why can't I PR anymore?

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Why can't I just keep getting a little bit better?

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And I think there are these plateau points where we need to get to that

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next level and we can't get there with just the same exact thinking.

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We gotta start adding stuff on top of what we're doing.

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We absolutely carve out room for experimentation and just saying we need

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to layer in some new things into our mix in order to really find avenues of growth.

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And then there's, at the same time, new products coming out of our

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product team that we've got to find new ways to get those to market.

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There's some new personas.

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So we have to, not just experiment, but find a path to success.

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Also, people are a little scared when things don't work out well.

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So I think building into the culture that part of layering in new things,

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you have to be willing to be okay with failure, celebrate it, you know, even

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share that, hmm, that's not working.

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We've had a few vendors that we've worked with for seven, eight months, and

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we're not getting anything out of them.

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Our director, VPs come to me and say, eh, we're going to kill it.

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Try something new, and I'm totally okay with that.

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I think that's part of the evolution.

Erica Seidel: 00:10:43

So, is it harder to experiment when you're - is

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it like, okay, great, we have more budget for experimentation

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because we're making more money?

Erica Seidel: 00:10:50

Or is it just the same when things are going well?

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:10:52

Yeah, I know what we're doing.

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Our budget, it's never as much as we want to do all the experimentation we want.

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So it's always a balance.

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There's a little bit of baseline of we have to grow by this amount.

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This is our absolute floor just to keep the lights on, keep the growth going.

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And here's over and above.

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And it's that experimentation over and above that always gets shaved,

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but I put my foot down and this is me with our chief financial officer and

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with my boss saying, we can't go below this because we have zero wiggle room.

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So, I always kind of not argue, but just, you know, negotiate for a baseline

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level of experimentation, even though it's not as much as we want, but we

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need to be able to take some risks and have an envelope to do that.

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And there's always room to do some of that.

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And at the same time, there's always something that's not working that it

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might feel like that was our floor, but a vendor that just has never

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produced a single good lead for us.

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So the team's always looking for those to say we can cut here and cut

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there, and then layer in something brand new that might help us.

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So, yeah, it's a balance.

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I don't think, you know, there's no perfect answer.

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If you're a venture-funded very early stage startup that doesn't

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need to look for profitability, you can try a lot of things.

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Honestly, if you're not spending more budget than you have at that

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stage, you're probably not doing your job, according to the board.

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And that's why, at the beginning you said we're kind of the

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perfect Goldilocks P firm.

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I look at it as we have enough wiggle room to try these things, have some

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budget to really play with, and we're super profitable, but we're

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not like cutting budget or not like an incredibly tightly squeezed.

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So I think it is a perfect balance.

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It never feels perfect because there's always more that we can ask

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for that we don't always get, but of course there's some trade-offs.

Erica Seidel: 00:12:58

So let's talk about top lessons for a SaaS CMO to

Erica Seidel: 00:13:02

bear in mind while scaling up.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:13:05

Yeah, I mean, I have three.

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Primary one is scaling does not just mean more of everything.

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It does mean, you know, what are we going to stop doing so that we can really

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put in the things that are growing?

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It doesn't feel, we've got some products we're not investing in marketing as much.

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We have quite a few products and it's painful to cut something that

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someone's put effort into, but I think saying, we're going to focus.

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We're going to focus more and we're going to do better as a result, even though it

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might not feel like everything's scaling up, a few things are scaling up more than

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others, and that is critically important.

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Just to focus and constantly, not narrow, but just make sure you're not doing

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peanut butter, a little bit of everything.

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You've got to say no to a few things.

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And that's true with people's time.

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People can get completely overloaded and overwhelmed with taking on too much.

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So be constantly telling my leaders, you can not go to some of these meetings.

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Just look at how your time is spent.

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So it's just a constant leveling of how much you do take on and how

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much you do take off your plate.

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So that is one.

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Another area for scaling up is we're growing our team.

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There's always people to hire and we've gone through a process of

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looking at our personality preferences, using the predictive index.

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There's several different versions of looking at the personality of

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individuals and of the team as a whole and where we're trying to go.

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There's several ways to do that.

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We've used predictive index.

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And when we're looking at hiring across the team, I think

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hiring for pure culture of fit.

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Do they think and act and behave just like everyone else on the team?

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Or do we actually need somebody or some new people who think and act and behave

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very, very differently, who can help push the envelope and bring in new ideas?

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:15:13

So that's another thing that we're looking at filling out a balance of our hiring,

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not just based on skills, but based on what approaches they take to work.

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And it might be a little different than what we're used to, but we need

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to get a little bit uncomfortable sometimes and shake it up a little bit.

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Again, it gets back to a little bit of new thinking is important to get

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past those plateaus and keep growing.

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So that's the second one.

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And third lesson for scaling up is, and this one I've alluded to before, but

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it feels like just when you get to a comfortable place, you've got to find

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ways to make yourself uncomfortable.

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You know, once we know we're doing really well in a lot of areas

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we have to look at alright, how do we double doing these areas?

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There's a lot of incremental ability to say, we can just do a little

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more of this, a little more of that.

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How do we make ourselves uncomfortable to get past those plateaus?

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We have to do that through some experiments, some of them will fail.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:16:15

Getting new people in the mix who have very, very different backgrounds

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and personas than other folks in the team is another way to do it.

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But growing, especially once we're several hundred million dollars, if

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you think about what we look like when we're double the size we are today,

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there's some discomfort along the way.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:16:35

Not a bad discomfort, but just a little bit of we've got to think in new ways.

Erica Seidel: 00:16:41

It's interesting because you know, often when a company is kind

Erica Seidel: 00:16:44

of earlier, it's all about cultural fit, and then you get to this point where

Erica Seidel: 00:16:47

you realize you need the cultural add.

Erica Seidel: 00:16:49

And that can be really messy and uncomfortable.

Erica Seidel: 00:16:54

I interviewed somebody else on this podcast who said, well, just like my

Erica Seidel: 00:16:58

budget is 20% or 15% or whatever it is for experimental things, I think

Erica Seidel: 00:17:03

of my people budget the same way.

Erica Seidel: 00:17:05

So I make myself uncomfortable with a hire, like, 20% of the time

Erica Seidel: 00:17:09

or whatever, one person in five is a bit of an experimental hire.

Erica Seidel: 00:17:13

I mean, not to make it harder for that person coming in, but like somebody

Erica Seidel: 00:17:17

whose background might be a little bit different and not what you expect.

Erica Seidel: 00:17:21

And I really liked that.

Erica Seidel: 00:17:22

I'm wondering, can you take us into a recent hiring situation and how

Erica Seidel: 00:17:27

you struggled and how you got through the, well, this person doesn't

Erica Seidel: 00:17:31

feel like a fit on paper, but maybe they would help us add and grow

Erica Seidel: 00:17:36

and do that, double the good stuff.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:17:38

Yeah.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:17:38

I mean, I'm right in the middle of the process of doing that right now.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:17:42

So I've had a very stable leadership team for a while.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:17:46

The team has been fantastic and working very well together.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:17:49

And we did the whole predictive index and everybody's in the same quadrant,

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:17:54

outgoing and extrovert, and like to think about big picture and creating new ideas.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:18:00

And I've been interviewing somebody now who's very, very process-oriented

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:18:06

and just, you know, going to hammer things and get it done.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:18:10

And might be some people are like, I don't know if they'll fit in

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:18:14

the culture, but I do think it's going to work out extremely well.

Erica Seidel: 00:18:19

Can you talk a little bit in more depth about hiring and I'm

Erica Seidel: 00:18:23

wondering if there's an organizational decision that you've made that turned

Erica Seidel: 00:18:28

out well, or that didn't turn out well, to support the business as it scales?

Erica Seidel: 00:18:31

Is there something unique about your org chart that you

Erica Seidel: 00:18:34

haven't had in other places?

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:18:37

So we have a team, we have the typical, traditional marketing

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:18:43

functions within the org chart that most people see in product marketing,

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:18:48

growth marketing that has demand digital inbound, some international teams,

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:18:55

communications and PR, creative team and a marketing program operation leader.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:19:01

And then I've got a web and digital experience leader and team.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:19:06

Before I got to SmartBear, it was web developers or our websites.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:19:11

And I changed the name to web and digital experience.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:19:14

We took over our communities and our academy for all of our

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:19:21

training, moved it into that team.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:19:23

I took it out of a different organization altogether.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:19:26

I like that under marketing.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:19:28

I think the experience that customers have online with our communities and

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:19:33

with our training is very related to overall digital experience and marketing.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:19:38

And it's related to our brand and our own web developers can make a

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:19:42

huge impact on the academies and all the experience customers have.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:19:47

And it was sitting in a different part of the org and doing okay, but

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:19:52

bringing that under marketing has made an unbelievable impact on thinking about

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:19:58

community and training and the sense that we think like treating customers

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:20:03

as, not so much leads, but as you know, it's a journey that we're taking them in.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:20:10

It's very cross-functional.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:20:11

We have engineers and product owners and customer support and sales, very

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:20:17

close to those teams, but it's a little bit unusual of an org within marketing.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:20:22

And then I'm seeing more and more people with this sort of customer journey,

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:20:26

variance being coming under marketing, I'm seeing that trending a little bit more.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:20:32

Certainly if you look at e-commerce where we are full B2B company, if

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:20:37

you go look at B2C in e-commerce, that is the marketing function.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:20:42

It's sort of that customer and communities.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:20:44

But with B2B, it's something a little bit new and different.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:20:47

So we're still shaping that.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:20:49

I get so excited when I see, you know, we redesigned the web page based

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:20:54

on best practices and based on our branding and redid all the messaging

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:20:58

and our academy enrollments went up by 400% just because of a redesign.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:21:04

And I don't think outside of marketing people would think

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:21:07

of doing that sort of thing.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:21:08

So it's been great.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:21:11

Our customers are developers themselves.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:21:14

They're on software development teams.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:21:16

They either develop or they test software and having that team made

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:21:20

up of people who look like our customers for us works really well

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:21:26

because they're looking at journeys.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:21:28

If you were technical and you want to get a question answered, you go here,

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:21:32

or they do connect with our social media team, which is under comms.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:21:36

Because we do have a lot of developers just raise their hand on

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:21:39

Twitter and say, "Hey, SmartBear, I have a question about this."

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:21:44

And you know, we'll have to direct them back like that's a great question.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:21:48

It's already answered here on our community.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:21:50

So, come on back over.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:21:52

So we do look at that holistically.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:21:54

It's not the cleanest in terms of product marketing gets involved

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:21:59

and so does technical support.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:22:02

But I feel like the cross-functional aspect works as long as somebody's

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:22:08

looking out for the whole picture.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:22:09

They just know who to go to.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:22:11

We're not big enough that we don't know who to work with on

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:22:14

different teams to get some of these answers or get some of this done.

Erica Seidel: 00:22:18

Well, thanks for giving a view into the organization.

Erica Seidel: 00:22:22

I think that's really cool.

Erica Seidel: 00:22:23

Let's talk about hiring.

Erica Seidel: 00:22:24

Do you have a favorite interview question when you are hiring?

Erica Seidel: 00:22:29

Anything that's surprisingly revealing?

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:22:31

Yeah, I usually ask candidates what accomplishment

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:22:36

are they most proud of, and we'll go through different things in the resume.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:22:41

I don't know if that's the most unique question in an interview, but

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:22:44

to me it's super revealing because I get a sense of, are people going to

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:22:48

share something that they led or they completely did themselves, or they

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:22:54

worked with an entire team to accomplish?

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:22:57

Or are they going to share something that was completely broken that they fixed or

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:23:01

just something that got great results?

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:23:03

So it really gives me insight into how they think in terms of what they value,

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:23:08

their most salient accomplishment.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:23:11

And sometimes I'll get stories that are outside of work.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:23:14

Like, I started volunteering at something, you know, sports coach and

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:23:20

it was so valuable because X, Y, and Z.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:23:23

So it's always a helpful question to ask.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:23:25

A lot of those tend to be just going through, can you do this job?

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:23:29

And tell me about something that relates to what you're going to face here.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:23:34

That's the one question I ask everybody.

Erica Seidel: 00:23:36

Yeah, that's great.

Erica Seidel: 00:23:38

I like it.

Erica Seidel: 00:23:38

I have a friend who asks what are you famous for personally and professionally?

Erica Seidel: 00:23:43

But that's like the famous part and not the proud part.

Erica Seidel: 00:23:47

Cause I think you might get the quiet competence that comes

Erica Seidel: 00:23:49

out through your question.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:23:50

Right, right, right.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:23:51

Yeah, and sometimes, you know, what's your superpower?

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:23:54

And I've had to answer that a few times in my past life interviewing.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:23:59

What kind of CMO are you?

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:24:00

What's your superpower?

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:24:01

Are you a demand gen?

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:24:03

Are you a product marketing?

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:24:04

Are you a brand?

Erica Seidel: 00:24:06

What do you say?

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:24:08

I kind of came up through all of those functions, but my

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:24:12

answer to that has always been primarily demand and driving business, but not

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:24:17

without minding the messaging and how it's coming across to customers.

Erica Seidel: 00:24:22

Right.

Erica Seidel: 00:24:22

So like a major and a minor, or maybe it's like a native language and then a fluency?

Erica Seidel: 00:24:29

Like second language that you speak fluently?

Erica Seidel: 00:24:32

You know, cause it's like you spent 51% of your time with one parent and 49% with

Erica Seidel: 00:24:37

the other that spoke a different language.

Erica Seidel: 00:24:41

So what keeps you there at SmartBear?

Erica Seidel: 00:24:43

You know, the market is so tight, I'm sure you get hit up a lot of times for jobs.

Erica Seidel: 00:24:47

What is it that's sticky for you?

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:24:49

Yeah, I have zero desire to move right now.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:24:52

I'm enjoying it so much at SmartBear.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:24:55

What's kept me at the company is it feels like a new job every six months.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:25:01

I don't need to go anywhere to feel like, oh, I've got to exercise new skills.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:25:07

We're getting to the next level.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:25:08

The team is growing.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:25:10

We're adding a whole product focus.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:25:14

Every growth stage and growth spurt is like being in a new company.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:25:19

At first, it was managing a team at what felt like a startup, now we're at mid-size

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:25:25

company, we're growing in different regions of the world and we're adding ABM

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:25:32

and outbound, which we haven't had before.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:25:35

It's all something new all the time.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:25:37

So it just keeps, you know, it gets back to the idea of you

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:25:42

can't just get too comfortable.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:25:44

You have to make yourself uncomfortable once in a while and start expanding

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:25:48

and exercising skills and muscles that you haven't in a while.

Erica Seidel: 00:25:54

That's great.

Erica Seidel: 00:25:55

So looking ahead to 2022, the arc of that year for B2B SaaS marketing,

Erica Seidel: 00:26:00

are there any particular trends that you forecast for next year?

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:26:05

Yeah, I think there is a bit of, not a return so much as

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:26:10

just reinforcement of, really knowing your ideal customer profile and talking

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:26:18

directly to who your customers are that I see as more important more than ever.

Erica Seidel: 00:26:28

Why?

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:26:29

People are, if they weren't digital, primarily

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:26:34

digital before they're a hundred percent digital first now.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:26:39

And I think every, no matter what, you know, I'm getting bombarded fifty times

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:26:45

a day by emails from various vendors.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:26:47

No matter your role, whether it's me or the new person on my team or the sales

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:26:52

rep or our developer teams, there's so much just vying for their attention

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:27:00

that's just beyond what it's ever been.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:27:03

If it was bad two years ago, it's crazy.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:27:06

And I think nobody's listening to inbound messages like that anymore.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:27:11

They just need to go find what they need online or through reviews

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:27:16

or through peers that they trust.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:27:18

And we need to be there at every digital touch point that our customers are

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:27:25

self-serving to solve their own problems.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:27:29

It's not just digital first, it's faster everything, especially our industry, you

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:27:34

know, we're serving software development team, app development teams, which are

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:27:38

serving the whole market as a whole.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:27:40

And they're running fast to get out the gate faster than competitors

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:27:44

and develop more apps and really faster, just like everyone else is.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:27:49

So as a supplier vendor, getting people what they need quickly and

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:27:54

answers to their questions and finding what they need and speaking

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:27:58

their language is so important.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:27:59

So I think that translates back into marketing as we're doing a

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:28:02

lot of work to make sure we know who that ideal customer profile is.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:28:08

There aren't software developers.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:28:10

There's fifty different kinds of software developers that each

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:28:13

have their own jobs to be done.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:28:14

And product management is working on that.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:28:17

We need to bring that back into marketing.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:28:19

Do we really know what they're trying to do?

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:28:21

You know, our language on our website, on our materials, in our

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:28:26

product, in trial has to translate well to what they're looking for.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:28:31

And that's foundation to, marketing's doing a lot more in trial experience.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:28:38

There's big buzzword in the industry Product-Led Growth,

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:28:42

which you hear about everywhere.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:28:44

And what does that mean to a marketing organization?

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:28:47

It means that all those touch points, again, they're digital

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:28:50

and they're in your product.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:28:52

They go from website straight into trial, straight into product, and

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:28:56

there's language everywhere that the customer is reading, even in trial.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:29:00

What are those little help units?

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:29:03

What messages are they getting along the way to help them get to the next stage?

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:29:07

And marketing's creating a lot of that content.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:29:10

So we need to really know what our customers are trying to do.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:29:13

And for marketing to do well, PLG, in Product-Led Growth, we need to really

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:29:19

know what the customers are trying to do and who they are and what their job

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:29:23

is and what pressures they're under.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:29:25

So I think that's a trend of just market research in a way that's not macro

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:29:31

market, but micro market research.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:29:35

You know, creativity, the strategic value product marketing is right in there too.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:29:40

And that is now I think the hardest role to hire in marketing.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:29:46

Incredibly tough, and having product marketing focused on that, focused on

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:29:51

understanding customers and getting creative beyond just write and create data

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:29:55

sheets and create sales training, there's fundamental set of things they need to do,

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:30:00

but a truly strategic product marketing function is an incredible advantage.

Erica Seidel: 00:30:06

So final question for you, just bonus question.

Erica Seidel: 00:30:08

CEOs hiring CMOs, do you have a piece of advice for a CEO who has not hired

Erica Seidel: 00:30:15

a CMO before in B2B SaaS, and what should that person think of or know

Erica Seidel: 00:30:22

about to make a successful hire?

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:30:25

Yeah, I think, CEO, just thinking first about

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:30:29

what their business needs the most.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:30:32

What do they really need from a marketer at that stage of the company and what

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:30:37

do they need from a marketing lead?

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:30:41

That stage plus a year or two years ahead of time.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:30:45

Especially if it's the first hire then there might be some very short-term,

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:30:50

you know, we need to rebrand.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:30:53

So you look for somebody who can rebrand the company.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:30:56

And then when that's done, wait a minute, now we need some growth

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:31:00

marketing and demand, and this person doesn't know how to do that.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:31:03

I need

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:31:04

another CMO.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:31:05

So, I think

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:31:06

there's some of that going on in the industry.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:31:08

So really think about what are the next two to three years look like for

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:31:14

how the company's going to evolve, how the needs of the marketing leader are

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:31:21

going to evolve, and frame both the job description and what you're looking for

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:31:26

in terms of somebody who could do all of that, and not just the one thing.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:31:30

Sometimes it's just pure, oh, leads, our salespeople need more leads.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:31:33

Can we bring in a CMO who can do that?

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:31:35

And then you're going to have mismatched expectations when

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:31:38

something else becomes important.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:31:40

So I think really matching the expectations with what stage of

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:31:45

growth you're in and we'll be in for a little bit of foreseeable future.

Erica Seidel: 00:31:51

Right, right.

Erica Seidel: 00:31:52

But not thinking five years ahead necessarily, but thinking

Erica Seidel: 00:31:54

a couple of years ahead.

Erica Seidel: 00:31:56

I like that.

Erica Seidel: 00:31:57

I like that.

Erica Seidel: 00:31:57

I think sometimes companies trying to hire, you know, oh,

Erica Seidel: 00:32:01

we're the $30 million company.

Erica Seidel: 00:32:02

We want somebody who could take us to a hundred million.

Erica Seidel: 00:32:05

It's like, well, maybe if you focus on the 30 to $50 million range, you're

Erica Seidel: 00:32:10

going to find the person that inhabits that really well, and then you bring in

Erica Seidel: 00:32:13

somebody else or somebody in addition to help you do the fifty to one hundred.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:32:18

Yeah.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:32:19

And also the one company's journey from fifty to a hundred

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:32:22

doesn't look like the next.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:32:24

So just because somebody has done it before doesn't mean, you know,

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:32:30

can they do it at your company?

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:32:31

You might have a completely different go-to-market model,

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:32:33

different product model.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:32:35

So I think looking at what is that track record of that big

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:32:40

hyper-growth phase does not translate from company to company perfectly.

Erica Seidel: 00:32:46

Yeah.

Erica Seidel: 00:32:47

Yeah.

Erica Seidel: 00:32:47

Oh, it's so true.

Erica Seidel: 00:32:48

Yeah.

Erica Seidel: 00:32:49

Well, this was great.

Erica Seidel: 00:32:50

Thank you so much for joining me.

Erica Seidel: 00:32:51

It's been a pleasure chatting with you.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:32:53

Thank you, Erica.

Cynthia Gumbert: 00:32:54

It's been a pleasure.

Erica Seidel: 00:32:57

That was Cynthia Gumbert, the chief marketing

Erica Seidel: 00:32:59

officer from SmartBear.

Erica Seidel: 00:33:01

Now that you've listened, ask yourself: how can you inject

Erica Seidel: 00:33:05

discomfort into your scale journey...

Erica Seidel: 00:33:07

even when things are going well?

Erica Seidel: 00:33:09

Next time on The Get, you'll hear from the head of marketing and communications

Erica Seidel: 00:33:13

for Stack Overflow, Khalid El Khatib, about how to sidestep a CEO or Board's

Erica Seidel: 00:33:19

expectations of marketing being a dollar in/dollar out proposition.

Erica Seidel: 00:33:25

Thanks for listening to The Get.

Erica Seidel: 00:33:27

I'm your host, Erica Seidel.

Erica Seidel: 00:33:29

Hiring great marketing leaders is not easy.

Erica Seidel: 00:33:32

The Get is designed to inspire smart decisions around recruiting and

Erica Seidel: 00:33:36

leadership in B2B SaaS marketing.

Erica Seidel: 00:33:39

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

Erica Seidel: 00:33:42

marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.

Erica Seidel: 00:33:45

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

Erica Seidel: 00:33:49

If you liked this episode, please share it.

Erica Seidel: 00:33:51

For other insights on recruiting great marketing leaders, what I

Erica Seidel: 00:33:54

call the 'make money' marketing leaders rather than the 'make it

Erica Seidel: 00:33:58

pretty' ones, follow me on LinkedIn.

Erica Seidel: 00:34:00

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Erica Seidel: 00:34:05

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