Episode 7
What CEOs Fear Most When Hiring CMOs
In this episode of The Get, host Erica Seidel discusses the intricacies and challenges of hiring CMOs in B2B SaaS companies. She highlights why the CMO role is particularly tough to fill, the high stakes involved, and the common concerns among CEOs and investors.
Erica is joined by Peter Mahoney, Chief Commercial Officer at GoTo and author of The Next CMO. Peter has been a GM, CMO, CEO, and now at GoTo has recently transitioned from CMO to Chief Commercial Officer. He offers practical advice on organizational structure, fostering CEO-CMO trust, and managing expectations.
You’ll learn about:
- The complexities and fears that CEOs face when hiring CMOs
- Distinctions between roles such as Chief Commercial Officer and Chief Revenue Officer
- How "everyone at the C-level thinks they understand marketing but at the same time fears that they don't understand it"
- The skills required to succeed in a small versus a big company as a CMO
- The wisdom of spending some of your career outside of marketing…. even if it is a sideways move
- Strategies for candidates to effectively communicate their impact during the hiring process
- Advice for rising CMOs
00:00 Introduction: The Hardest C-Level Role to Hire
00:41 Welcome to The Get: Reducing Risk in CMO Recruitment
01:14 Meet Peter Mahoney: A Journey from CMO to CCO
01:59 Understanding the Chief Commercial Officer Role
06:20 The Fears and Risks in Hiring a CMO
10:01 The Perfect Fit: Balancing Experience and Potential
13:19 Stage Experience: Scaling Up and Complexity
16:33 Embracing Flexibility and Depth in Marketing Roles
17:10 Navigating Revenue and Complexity in Marketing
17:57 Understanding Marketing Maturity and Budget Constraints
19:15 The Evolving Technical Landscape of Marketing
20:03 Effective Leadership and Strategy Alignment
23:17 Addressing CMO Candidate Concerns
24:41 Key Interview Insights for CMO Candidates
27:34 Advice for Aspiring CMOs
30:01 Career Growth and Risk Management
32:24 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
The Get is here to drive smart decisions around recruiting and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing. We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today’s top marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.
This season’s theme is The Race to Reduce Risk in CMO Recruiting.
The Get’s host is Erica Seidel, who runs The Connective Good, an executive search practice with a hyper-focus on recruiting CMOs and VPs of Marketing, especially in B2B SaaS.
If you are looking to hire a CMO or VP of Marketing of the ‘make money’ variety - rather than the ‘make it pretty’ variety, contact Erica at erica@theconnectivegood.com. You can also follow Erica on LinkedIn or sign up for her newsletter at TheConnectiveGood.com.
The Get is produced by the team at Simpler Media Productions.
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy
Transcript
What is the hardest role to hire for at the C-level?
Speaker:Many CEOs will say the hardest role by far to fill is the CMO role.
Speaker:You probably have seen this through experience yourself.
Speaker:Knowledge of marketing can be quite scant at the C-level.
Speaker:And, of course, everyone has an opinion on marketing, which means
Speaker:that there are often a lot of cooks in the kitchen for a CMO search.
Speaker:The CMO role is also very high stakes because companies are
Speaker:often looking to marketing as the foundation for their growth story.
Speaker:So it's hard for non-marketers to know what good looks
Speaker:like in a marketing leader.
Speaker:And all of this can create this stew of uncertainty, which can make searches
Speaker:for CMOs much more fraught than others.
Speaker:Hello, and welcome to The Get.
Speaker:I'm your host, Erica Seidel.
Speaker:This season, we focus on the race to reduce risk when it comes to a
Speaker:match between a company and a CMO.
Speaker:How can you find out what you need to find out before saying yes, so
Speaker:that you make a match that sticks?
Speaker:Today, we'll look at the risks that CEOs and investors feel they are
Speaker:taking when they recruit a CMO.
Speaker:What are they afraid of?
Speaker:Are those fears warranted?
Speaker:And on the flip side, how can CMO candidates anticipate those fears
Speaker:and maybe even quiet them to help both sides get to a good match?
Speaker:Today, we'll talk about all of this with Peter Mahoney.
Speaker:Peter is currently the Chief Commercial Officer for GoTo, the Unified
Speaker:Business Communications Company.
Speaker:Previously, Peter rose up to the ranks of CMO and GM at Nuance Communications, and
Speaker:then became a startup CEO for a marketing optimization platform called Plannuh.
Speaker:I love that name.
Speaker:He sold that business, then wanted another CMO gig, which is very interesting, so
Speaker:got back into the CMO fray with GoTo.
Speaker:He then got promoted recently to Chief Commercial Officer.
Speaker:So he has this great range of perspectives to bring to bear and
Speaker:you're going to learn a ton from him.
Speaker:Let's go.
Speaker:Peter, welcome to the show.
Speaker:Hey, thanks very much for having me, Erica.
Speaker:It's a thrill to be here.
Speaker:Great.
Speaker:So now you are Chief Commercial Officer.
Speaker:Two sub questions for that.
Speaker:Wondering what the distinction is between Chief Commercial
Speaker:Officer and Chief Revenue Officer?
Speaker:Maybe it's the same thing.
Speaker:Secondly, I know you have marketing reporting to you.
Speaker:So obviously very hot topic these days.
Speaker:Curious about pros and cons of that structure versus marketing
Speaker:reporting to the CEO directly?
Speaker:Let me try to take the first one first, Erica.
Speaker:The title is one that I had about an hour to come up with a thing because we were
Speaker:making some changes at the company and we decided it was the right thing to combine
Speaker:the sales and marketing organization.
Speaker:And I thought, do I want to be a Chief Revenue Officer?
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:I don't know what that means.
Speaker:It felt like it was a little bit of a loaded term.
Speaker:I felt like it was a funny message to give marketers because it's
Speaker:not only about revenue, although revenue is pretty important.
Speaker:So I looked around, I did a couple of Google searches, and
Speaker:I came up with something that I thought was maybe a compromise.
Speaker:I have no idea if it's a good idea or not, but that's what I call it now.
Speaker:It really is the combination of sales and marketing.
Speaker:In some cases, it's a good idea - to get into the second part of your question.
Speaker:I think in some cases, it's a good idea.
Speaker:Some cases it's not a good idea, and it's driven by a couple of things.
Speaker:Some is the background and the complexion of the overall management
Speaker:team and of that leader in particular.
Speaker:But I think even more importantly is the kind of business that you're in.
Speaker:The business that I'm supporting right now, GoTo, is a business
Speaker:that is largely transactional.
Speaker:We sell from everyone from prosumers all the way up to large businesses.
Speaker:But the vast weight of our business is actually pretty transactional, which
Speaker:means that it's this really tight collaboration between sales and marketing.
Speaker:And therefore it makes a lot of sense to be able to optimize across
Speaker:those functions pretty clearly.
Speaker:Mm hmm.
Speaker:Any concern with hiring people on the marketing team, knowing that they
Speaker:are reporting into a Chief Commercial Officer, or is it too soon for data?
Speaker:No, so in fact, I just hired a VP of Corporate Marketing - who's amazing,
Speaker:by the way - and in the middle of the recruiting process, I had to tell her
Speaker:what was going on that, oh, by the way I'm going to be taking on this broader role.
Speaker:She was totally fine with it.
Speaker:And it probably was okay for her because we started the conversation
Speaker:when I was the Chief Marketing Officer.
Speaker:It felt like a natural progression along the way.
Speaker:And yeah, I think we'll see.
Speaker:There probably are some people who might give it pause a little bit,
Speaker:especially if they don't know me.
Speaker:I think a lot of people who know me, know me as someone who I literally
Speaker:call myself a marketing nerd.
Speaker:I'm pretty into the marketing side of the world.
Speaker:I wrote a book about it, as you may know, called The Next CMO.
Speaker:Hold on, I have props.
Speaker:For those of you who are watching this on
Speaker:Yay!
Speaker:you see a handy picture of The Next CMO.
Speaker:So for that, I think that might make people a little bit more comfortable,
Speaker:but I think some people have the perspective of, hey, I'm working for a
Speaker:sales guy, and they're not really going to respect or understand marketing.
Speaker:But I think people who know me understand that I certainly respect
Speaker:and understand the marketing function.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That does seem to be a bit of a trend of marketing leaders becoming
Speaker:Chief Commercial or Chief Revenue Officers or Chief Growth Officers.
Speaker:Those are the three ones that you might find in a Google search.
Speaker:I think you're right.
Speaker:Other than maybe the salespeople can get concerned, not with somebody like
Speaker:you, but with somebody who's only been in a marketing function, that
Speaker:could be their concern in a structure where a CMO becomes a CRO or a CCO.
Speaker:You can almost say that about any function.
Speaker:The reality is people want to know that their boss appreciates
Speaker:what they're doing at some level.
Speaker:Although, it's interesting because I've heard two different points of view
Speaker:about the CEO understanding marketing or not understanding marketing.
Speaker:Sometimes it's a good thing if they understand marketing, but sometimes I've
Speaker:heard people say, eh, it can actually be a bad thing if they're too much
Speaker:because they get too invested in it.
Speaker:They don't just let me do my thing.
Speaker:It can be a little bit of a double-edged sword.
Speaker:But in general, you want people to have an appreciation, some level of respect,
Speaker:some level of understanding for the role that you have in your organization.
Speaker:Let's talk about the fears that CEOs and investors have, based on your experience,
Speaker:like when they're hiring a CMO.
Speaker:So what are those big fears, first of all?
Speaker:Fundamentally, it's about risk and the unknown.
Speaker:It's funny, you and I were talking about this a little bit, Erica.
Speaker:It's a funny thing where everyone thinks they understand marketing, and everyone
Speaker:fears that they don't understand it.
Speaker:It's one of those things that is complicated, it's hard to really,
Speaker:truly understand what's going on.
Speaker:And you're often hiring a marketing leader because you've got a problem.
Speaker:So that's often the issue.
Speaker:It's not always.
Speaker:There are lots of cases where, hey, someone just moves on because they got
Speaker:another role, and there's an opening.
Speaker:But a lot of senior roles happen because there's an issue.
Speaker:Because you're not growing enough.
Speaker:You don't have enough visibility.
Speaker:Whatever the issue is that you have.
Speaker:That issue tends to be one that's, for this kind of a role, pretty profound.
Speaker:Which means that it's a very high stake kind of thing.
Speaker:I think that's where the fear comes from.
Speaker:People say that, wow, this is a really big, important
Speaker:decision for this kind of role.
Speaker:I don't really understand what it's going to take.
Speaker:So in the sales role, as an example, for some reason, I think people assume, hey,
Speaker:this person was a great sales executive and they drove growth in the business.
Speaker:They must be able to do it at this other place.
Speaker:And the reality is that, as you know, every company is different,
Speaker:every situation is different, every industry is different.
Speaker:Just because an executive was successful in one area, it doesn't mean they're
Speaker:going to be successful in another.
Speaker:Just because an executive had an unsuccessful outing, it
Speaker:doesn't mean they're not going to be successful somewhere else.
Speaker:But people tend to ascribe a little bit more predictability to the sales
Speaker:function because they don't fully understand marketing and the way that
Speaker:it works and what goes behind it.
Speaker:So I think that's fundamentally the fear that's underneath it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So they're kind of afraid, like they have opinions on it, but they know they
Speaker:don't understand it so fully and they might not trust the kind of applicability
Speaker:of one experience to another.
Speaker:Is there any, like, afraid that a marketing person is slick and snazzy and
Speaker:is gonna, I don't know, pull the wool over the eyes of others on the team?
Speaker:Yeah, maybe that's why I've done so well in this environment.
Speaker:No one has ever accused me of being slick and snazzy.
Speaker:I think that is some of it.
Speaker:I think there's a fear that, hey, this is a smooth talker.
Speaker:They're going to be able to tell me what they think they want me to hear.
Speaker:Do I really trust what's going on?
Speaker:I think that may be some of it.
Speaker:You could say the same for sales professionals, as an example.
Speaker:That may be where some of it comes in.
Speaker:I think the big fear that people have, fundamentally,
Speaker:is that it's a big investment.
Speaker:They don't want to make the wrong decision.
Speaker:In a lot of cases, they're worried that, hey, this person is going to
Speaker:need like massive sums of money to do things, especially if they're
Speaker:talking about moving the needle.
Speaker:They come in and say they can do it with a modest approach, but there's often this
Speaker:fear that, hey, they're going to come in, they're going to peel back the onion a
Speaker:little bit and realize that, oh my god, there's more work to be done here, and
Speaker:it's going to cost me, eight, nine figures to get out of this thing in one piece.
Speaker:So that's probably the big issue you get when you're, if you're a board
Speaker:member or a CEO interviewing a CMO saying, is it really, am I really
Speaker:going to be able to get the results without spending ridiculous sums of
Speaker:Got it.
Speaker:Any other fears that you've seen, just to lay them all out?
Speaker:Those are, I think, key ones.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I think the biggest ones, as I said, it's whether they understand what's going on.
Speaker:Is this person really credible?
Speaker:Can they understand what it is that the issue is?
Speaker:And is it going to cost me more than I expect?
Speaker:I think those are the primary things that people worry about.
Speaker:I'm wondering, as a company is hiring a CMO, to what extent does the
Speaker:complexion of the rest of the executive leadership team govern what type of
Speaker:marketing leader the company needs?
Speaker:You started alluding to this earlier with the whole marketing
Speaker:and sales under one function.
Speaker:'Cause in my search work, it's often okay, do you want the person who's gonna
Speaker:stretch into the role, or who might be stepping up into the role, or the
Speaker:person who's gonna stoop into the role.
Speaker:They could have a much bigger role, but they're gonna start it
Speaker:in an earlier phase in the journey.
Speaker:Sometimes in a search, you go back and forth, okay, what
Speaker:type is the right profile?
Speaker:And so thinking about the rest of the ELT and how the right CMO can
Speaker:fit into that how to think about how to fit a CMO into that structure.
Speaker:It's funny, it reminds me, Erica, that first of all,
Speaker:everyone wants the perfect fit.
Speaker:Everyone wants Goldilocks and you probably hear all the time, people coming to
Speaker:you and say, Erica just find me someone who's got twenty years of experience in
Speaker:generative AI, or something like that.
Speaker:They ask for the impossible, and then what happens is, if you come
Speaker:in too experienced, they say, well, what's wrong with them?
Speaker:Because why do they want this job?
Speaker:Or if you're not experienced enough, they say, oh, this is a big stretch.
Speaker:They're not really proven.
Speaker:I know I've done a lot of hiring like this too, and it's hard, right?
Speaker:Because you always struggle with those things.
Speaker:To the point you made before that we were talking about, in the setup
Speaker:of the rest of the ELT, I think it's important to understand what the
Speaker:strengths and weaknesses are of the ELT.
Speaker:What's the culture of the ELT?
Speaker:How do they work together?
Speaker:Then, fundamentally, it can be okay to give someone a stretch opportunity,
Speaker:but you don't want everyone in the ELT to be stretching for their role.
Speaker:Because in some cases it's great to have people in your organization
Speaker:at all levels who are in the biggest job of their career.
Speaker:But not everybody can be in the biggest job of their career because then there's
Speaker:just too much risk in doing that.
Speaker:You have to find a blend of experience and upward mobility and new ideas.
Speaker:You need diversity in your organization in every way that
Speaker:the word diversity can be applied.
Speaker:And you really need a broad mix of experience and capabilities
Speaker:to make sure that it works.
Speaker:Then culturally, you have to get what is, for a CMO, as an example,
Speaker:what do you expect marketing to be and do in your company?
Speaker:What's the role of the marketing function?
Speaker:In some organizations, it's less important.
Speaker:You need to understand that and communicate that to the marketing
Speaker:executive you're trying to hear, that you're trying to hire.
Speaker:In other cases, it's the most important thing in the world.
Speaker:So you have to understand the relative role of marketing, what the role of
Speaker:that executive is, what the experience base of that executive is, et cetera,
Speaker:to make sure you have the right fit.
Speaker:Yeah, and it's funny you talk about that unicorn.
Speaker:Oh, the person has to be just, not too much experience, not
Speaker:too little, not too much.
Speaker:It's very Goldilocks-y, and I always tell people, go for the eighty percent fit
Speaker:because if you're going for the hundred percent fit, A, it's going to take a while
Speaker:to get there, and B, once that person is in place, you're going to realize
Speaker:that they're an eighty percent fit.
Speaker:Because you're going to get to know them and realize everybody has
Speaker:their kind of soft spots and things.
Speaker:It's very much like getting married, right?
Speaker:There are some things you're going to fight about over the course of your
Speaker:marriage that can just make it like where an eighty percent fit is - I
Speaker:don't want to say good enough, but like as good as it gets in many cases.
Speaker:And it's the same with jobs, I think.
Speaker:Anyway, let's talk about stage experience.
Speaker:So you've done different kinds of smaller companies, bigger
Speaker:companies, this nice range.
Speaker:One thing that I see, and I'm sure you've seen this too, that stage experience
Speaker:that's relevant to a company's journey, like, is a really important thing.
Speaker:You know, oh, we're twenty million, we want to scale-up to a hundred million.
Speaker:We're five hundred million, we want to get to a billion or what have you.
Speaker:But of course, not every five hundred million company is the same.
Speaker:Just because somebody's done it in one context, like you said before, they might
Speaker:not be able to do that in another context.
Speaker:Are we thinking too literally?
Speaker:About stage experience and specific scale-up experience
Speaker:when we hire, in your view?
Speaker:I think there's a lot to be said for different stages
Speaker:because the job's fundamentally different in different stages.
Speaker:You made a really good point, Erica, that sometimes it's not exactly the number,
Speaker:but it's where the company is in its degree of complexity, as an example.
Speaker:So I tend to like to work at companies that are of reasonable scale for
Speaker:a bunch of different reasons.
Speaker:The biggest one that I like about being at the billion dollar plus scale, where
Speaker:GoTo is, where I spent a long time as the CMO of Nuance, as an example, is that
Speaker:frankly, I don't have to be very smart.
Speaker:The good news is that because literally you can hire really world leading experts
Speaker:in their functional domain of marketing.
Speaker:Because you can afford to bring them in because you've got
Speaker:a fairly large organization.
Speaker:They have a meaty role that gets very specific, and each functional
Speaker:area within marketing can be really detailed and specific and you
Speaker:can bring in all these experts.
Speaker:So it's a very different kind of role in a lot of cases because
Speaker:it makes sense when you reach a certain scale to be able to do that.
Speaker:Now, in other cases, you may decide that, hey, I don't want
Speaker:to buy that kind of expertise.
Speaker:I want to rent it.
Speaker:So if you're an early stage, you bring in a consultant to do certain things.
Speaker:In fact, I use consultants today, even at a billion dollar company.
Speaker:Because there's some areas where I don't want to own that particular
Speaker:kind of expertise, but I need to rent it every once in a while
Speaker:because it's important to have.
Speaker:So at that scale, that's where a large scale experience is useful.
Speaker:One, I like it, but why is it different?
Speaker:Why is it hard?
Speaker:Actually, don't tell anyone, but I think anyone can do this job.
Speaker:If you're a smart and organized person who's good at the numbers,
Speaker:then anyone can do my job, frankly.
Speaker:You're given a chance to do this job if you've proven to be able to operate
Speaker:in the level of complexity and deal with a lot of big hairy issues that
Speaker:are happening all at the same time.
Speaker:Because that happens in any kind of environment.
Speaker:You don't get flustered.
Speaker:That's the most important thing, right?
Speaker:You can keep your heading.
Speaker:Keep on going.
Speaker:Keep on delivering while you're dealing with any number of major
Speaker:crises going on at any given time.
Speaker:Because in a big enough company, you're constantly going to have issues.
Speaker:Now, in a smaller company, if you're on the complete other side, if you're
Speaker:in a five, ten million dollar company, as an example, you need to be an
Speaker:expert at rapidly testing and trying to understand and find that magic for the
Speaker:way that growth happens in your company.
Speaker:So it means you need to be really good at spinning up and trying new things.
Speaker:You can do it really light and simply, and then you need to quickly
Speaker:assess whether it's working or not, and then lock in on the particular
Speaker:areas that make a lot of sense.
Speaker:You also need to be deep enough in each of the domains so you can kind
Speaker:of roll up your sleeves and figure out each individual domain to understand
Speaker:whether it's hiring a specific person who's a digital marketing expert or
Speaker:a messaging expert, or diagnosing and helping someone who's more junior, who's
Speaker:going to need more hands on experience.
Speaker:That's the way that I think about it.
Speaker:They're both fun jobs.
Speaker:I've operated at everywhere from zero revenue up to
Speaker:billions of dollars of revenue.
Speaker:They're different jobs.
Speaker:I think they're all fun, but they are very different experiences you
Speaker:go throughout those different stages.
Speaker:The biggest factors are not specifically the number of
Speaker:revenue that you're dealing with.
Speaker:It's often the kind of complexity that you're dealing with, the kind
Speaker:of expertise that you need to have to engage with the people you're
Speaker:working with on a day-to-day basis.
Speaker:Do you have senior managers who can actually understand all the detail?
Speaker:Or do you need to go into that practitioner level and be able to
Speaker:really understand what each person is doing on a detailed day-to-day basis?
Speaker:That's most of the difference for me.
Speaker:Yeah, that's well articulated.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:It's funny because something I talk about in my searches is, okay, so you're five
Speaker:hundred million, but maybe your marketing function is a little more similar
Speaker:to a hundred-million-dollar company.
Speaker:And maybe it's a little more similar to a billion-dollar company.
Speaker:But you have to understand the relative maturity of marketing in comparison
Speaker:to the rest of the organization.
Speaker:And if it is a little less mature, you're right, you have
Speaker:to lean in and maybe coach more.
Speaker:I'm curious to hear your take on this, but today I've been talking to more CMOs
Speaker:who say, Oh, I have to get into the weeds a little bit more with my team because my
Speaker:budget has to be stretched more thinly, and ergo, I'm hiring more junior people,
Speaker:and so I have to teach them a little bit more than I would have if I had the
Speaker:budget to hire somebody a click or two up.
Speaker:Have you seen that?
Speaker:Well, I've seen elements of that.
Speaker:First of all, I've been doing this for, I don't know, thirty-seven
Speaker:years now or something like that.
Speaker:So everyone always says it's like an unprecedented time with
Speaker:budget restrictions and - come on.
Speaker:It's always going to be a challenge.
Speaker:Budget is always going to be an issue.
Speaker:So there's nothing that new about this.
Speaker:There are, you've been around for a moment or two, Erica, you know that
Speaker:there are cycles that we go through in every environment, in every economy.
Speaker:You just have to be flexible like that.
Speaker:The thing that is different about marketing that may be driving some of
Speaker:this is that it's becoming very, very technical and very, very detailed in the
Speaker:way things have to happen in marketing.
Speaker:So if you think back fifty years ago, marketing was a lot of advertising
Speaker:and it was PR, and maybe it was some events and things like that.
Speaker:But it's a very technical and analytical role in a lot of ways these days.
Speaker:That may be what some of the people are talking about.
Speaker:You definitely need to understand, and as I was saying before, with
Speaker:somewhat tongue in cheek, the idea that you don't really have to know
Speaker:anything with a more senior team.
Speaker:The reality is that you have to be able to dive down to the appropriate
Speaker:level of detail for understanding.
Speaker:When I just took over this go-to-market organization, there was a lot of questions
Speaker:about, well, what's he going to be like?
Speaker:How is he going to be as a leader?
Speaker:And I spent a lot of time telling people that I like as a leader myself,
Speaker:I like to start by understanding.
Speaker:I like to dive into a lot of detail to understand what's going on.
Speaker:So I'm going to ask a lot of questions.
Speaker:I'm going to really try to understand, maybe peel back the onion, push on you
Speaker:a little bit to really understand what's going on within your particular domain.
Speaker:And then I'm going to back off.
Speaker:Ideally, I want to get to the point where I give you a set of guardrails,
Speaker:give you a goal, say this is what I want you to achieve for your particular area,
Speaker:give you some guardrails, and those guardrails are things like these are the
Speaker:behaviors that we accept, and this is the way that we operate as a company,
Speaker:this is how you need to communicate, etc.
Speaker:But it's really important to be able to have that beginning part, be able
Speaker:to really dive down and understand the specific domain, and that's one
Speaker:of the things that I find some of the most effective executives can do.
Speaker:Even if they're not an engineering leader, as an example, you should absolutely
Speaker:be able to ask provocative questions that are at least logical questions.
Speaker:It doesn't have to be about a specific line of code.
Speaker:You should be able to understand and question people to the level
Speaker:that you understand what their level of understanding is, how confident
Speaker:they are, and whether they really have a plan to achieve what they're
Speaker:saying they're trying to achieve.
Speaker:I don't think that's particularly new either, but the complexity of marketing
Speaker:these days, I think that is getting more and more complex over the years.
Speaker:So I can see where people would feel the difference over time as it's
Speaker:getting a little bit more technical and
Speaker:That's great.
Speaker:I like that framing of how you're coaching people, and it sounds like
Speaker:almost half is more behavioral?
Speaker:And you can get to the right result by setting up the right cultural, behavioral
Speaker:mores for the people on the team.
Speaker:That's interesting.
Speaker:Well, it's funny, the other way to think about that - by the way, I tell people
Speaker:all the time, it's the difference between a goal and a strategy . A goal may be, I
Speaker:want to get to the top of the mountain.
Speaker:You can employ different strategies to get to the top of the mountain.
Speaker:A strategy, basically, it's your general approach on how you're
Speaker:going to achieve the goal.
Speaker:One strategy to get to the top of the mountain may be
Speaker:to climb up the steep face.
Speaker:Another strategy might be going around the long path around the back.
Speaker:And why is this strategy important?
Speaker:Why is it important to get aligned around this strategy?
Speaker:Because you need different tools to get there.
Speaker:If you're climbing up the steep face of the mountain, you need
Speaker:those clippy things and you need ropes and a good insurance policy.
Speaker:If you're going around the long path around the back, you need comfy shoes
Speaker:and plenty of water, [Erica laughs] and maybe some sunscreen, right?
Speaker:So understanding the strategy and getting aligned around the strategy
Speaker:and how you're going to achieve those goals is incredibly important.
Speaker:That's one thing that a lot of leaders miss.
Speaker:They say, those are the goals, go do it.
Speaker:But you really need to align behind those strategies at the same time.
Speaker:Mm mm.
Speaker:I would love to pivot.
Speaker:We talked a little bit about the risks that companies take when hiring CMOs.
Speaker:Would love to pivot more specifically to the CMO candidate side of things.
Speaker:If you think about these risks that we've talked about, oh, you're
Speaker:going to spend a lot of money.
Speaker:Oh, you're going to maybe be the wrong fit.
Speaker:Oh, all of these things.
Speaker:How can CMO candidates quiet the concerns or address, that might be a better way
Speaker:to put it, address and allay the concerns that CEOs and investors have when CMO
Speaker:candidate finds himself in the middle of a search where people are like, oh my
Speaker:god, we're afraid you're going to be X.
Speaker:One is you want to be as transparent and clear with the people you're communicating
Speaker:to about, not only the results that you might have achieved, but how specifically
Speaker:you've achieved those results.
Speaker:An important factor here, by the way, is that it actually has
Speaker:to be truthful and meaningful.
Speaker:You'd be surprised how many people - you wouldn't be surprised, you've been
Speaker:around this world a lot - how many people just really exaggerate a lot of things.
Speaker:The reality is people can tell when you exaggerate your impact because
Speaker:you can't really describe what you personally did to drive that outcome.
Speaker:So I think communicating at the right level of specificity is incredibly
Speaker:important to help people understand, walk them through the logic path that
Speaker:you went through to achieve what you did.
Speaker:I'll tell you one of my favorite interview questions that I ask almost everybody.
Speaker:I hope nobody's listening who's going to interview with me sometime because
Speaker:it's supposed to be a surprise.
Speaker:I always ask them, I say, tell me about a time when you convinced
Speaker:a company to make a major change.
Speaker:I find that really helpful to have people walk through how they got a
Speaker:company to do something different that they weren't doing before.
Speaker:It does a couple of things.
Speaker:One, it shows how people research and think about a problem and identify
Speaker:a problem in an organization.
Speaker:Two, it helps you figure out how they actually built up their case.
Speaker:What was the logic chain that they used to actually build that logical case, or
Speaker:a financial case if that's necessary too?
Speaker:How do they communicate that?
Speaker:Then how do they actually deliver the change across an organization?
Speaker:Because one of the most important things that any executive can do is actually
Speaker:drive change in an organization.
Speaker:So that's why I like to ask that kind of thing.
Speaker:And if someone can explain that, how you've driven change in an
Speaker:organization, you allay a lot of those fears because it's a shortcut
Speaker:to tell whether someone is effective.
Speaker:I think that's fundamentally what people are looking at when they
Speaker:are unsure about hiring someone.
Speaker:It's effectiveness.
Speaker:That idea of being able to reliably and predictably deliver the results they said
Speaker:they were going to be able to deliver versus waving their arms and saying,
Speaker:yeah, we should do something better.
Speaker:We should grow more.
Speaker:Effectiveness is really important to understand.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's interesting.
Speaker:So I feel like there's three T's right.
Speaker:Being transparent, being truthful, and meaningful, that's not a T, and then
Speaker:the third one is transformation IQ, maybe that's a way to think about it.
Speaker:Just practically in an interview, it feels like you could spend half an hour on just
Speaker:that kind of approach to change-making.
Speaker:Is that what you do?
Speaker:Or is it like, a five-minute
Speaker:- If it's a short conversation, then I find out a lot.
Speaker:[Erica laughs] Seriously.
Speaker:You should be able to spend an hour talking about that.
Speaker:So you often do have to cut people off, that's enough, right?
Speaker:Can we summarize?
Speaker:The point is, you will understand very quickly how people really had an impact
Speaker:on driving change in an organization when they describe to you how they did it.
Speaker:And if they can't do that, then you'll learn a lot.
Speaker:The way they communicate, the way they get excited about it or not.
Speaker:So that tells me a lot.
Speaker:Is it, "Oh, my god, that was terrible.
Speaker:Yeah, I can tell you."
Speaker:Or do they have a spring in their step when they're communicating?
Speaker:You just learn a ton about people when you ask them that kind of question.
Speaker:I like that.
Speaker:Thank you for sharing.
Speaker:That's a question I always ask everybody on the podcast is, you know, what
Speaker:is your favorite interview question?
Speaker:So that's great.
Speaker:Final question for you, because I know we're running out of time
Speaker:. Given the current climate, what's the advice that you would give your pre-CMO
Speaker:self, if you look back, as relates to reducing risk in hiring and getting hired?
Speaker:Or advice in general for the pre-CMO Peter?
Speaker:I'd say there are a few things that were helpful for me.
Speaker:Let me put it that way, if that's useful.
Speaker:One is I think it's really helpful that you have some diversity in experience.
Speaker:What I mean by that is that it's useful that you spend
Speaker:some time outside of marketing.
Speaker:Sometimes that's hard for people who are in a role where they feel
Speaker:like, I just want to keep going up.
Speaker:Sometimes you need to go sideways to go up.
Speaker:Sometimes you need to go back to go up.
Speaker:So, I took a role, as an example, I was the head of corporate
Speaker:marketing, for some reason.
Speaker:I'm not a corporate marketing guy, but they gave me the job.
Speaker:I was the head of corporate marketing for a public company.
Speaker:And I decided, because I was a lover of product, I actually have degrees
Speaker:in physics and computer science, but I've never been paid to write a
Speaker:line of code, which is pretty sad.
Speaker:I really wanted to get closer to product, and what I decided to do is
Speaker:I had a big group of people running this corporate marketing function,
Speaker:and I took a job as an individual contributor as a product manager.
Speaker:It was a really important time in my career because it teed me up
Speaker:to understand the way the product development process worked.
Speaker:It made me build business plans that were implemented, and it gave me a ton
Speaker:of experience that was really useful when I wanted to do things like be a GM
Speaker:and that GM experience was important.
Speaker:It highlights the second area.
Speaker:It's critically important to understand the financials of the business.
Speaker:By the way, if you can understand eighth grade math, you can
Speaker:understand the financials.
Speaker:This is not high math.
Speaker:Literally, it's addition and subtraction.
Speaker:But it's really important to understand what the financial workings are of
Speaker:the organization that you work in.
Speaker:And I guarantee you, if you call up any head of FP&A and say, hey,
Speaker:can you spend half an hour with me and just walk me through the P&L?
Speaker:They will be delighted to walk you through that.
Speaker:That understanding of the finances of a company and this willingness to
Speaker:take not exactly the straight path.
Speaker:Those are probably the two things that were most important to me as I looked
Speaker:at growth opportunities in my career.
Speaker:Wonderful.
Speaker:I love that.
Speaker:Thank you for sharing.
Speaker:Quick question on the move to PM, effectively.
Speaker:Did you feel like you had to explain away at the time?
Speaker:Whether it was when you're moving into that role or for the next role you got?
Speaker:Because I think that's sometimes people's concern.
Speaker:Oh, I like the jungle gym idea of career development, but if I go backwards now,
Speaker:is that going to preclude future growth?
Speaker:Yeah, it's a great question, Erica.
Speaker:I have to say there, I'm sure there's a little bit of risk in doing that, because
Speaker:people think that, oh, wait a minute, they're going backwards in their career.
Speaker:In my case, it wasn't really.
Speaker:It was a senior-level and individual contributor, was
Speaker:one thing that was useful.
Speaker:I think I probably went into it with a fair amount of bravado, whether it was
Speaker:advised or not, that, hey, I'll be able to just move on here and do the next thing.
Speaker:And I happened to.
Speaker:But the third thing that I'd recommend to people all the time in their careers,
Speaker:especially in the meat of their careers, and that you're in year like five to
Speaker:fifteen in your career, as an example, spend some time with the same company.
Speaker:If you can find a company that you can grow with, by far, the times in
Speaker:my career where I grew the most were these times where I was committed
Speaker:to a company for a number of years.
Speaker:What happens is, people will give you a chance.
Speaker:If you get in there, you work hard, you prove yourself, they're much more likely
Speaker:to give you a chance to take that stretch assignment than they are to give someone
Speaker:from the outside a stretch assignment.
Speaker:And those are the areas where you really grow.
Speaker:Sometimes you take a little risk if you do something that's a little bit non-linear
Speaker:in your choices, but if you're there for the long term, think four or five,
Speaker:six, seven years with a company, as an example, don't hop around for a year at
Speaker:a time, then they're much more likely to want to protect you and do the right
Speaker:thing by you over a long period of time.
Speaker:So I think for me, that really worked out because I've had a number of
Speaker:opportunities where I've been with a company for many years that's actually
Speaker:given me lots of opportunity to try new things and have that opportunity to grow.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:Yeah, I love that.
Speaker:Just own it.
Speaker:Don't present it as a weakness.
Speaker:It's, oh, this is a strategic choice for me to do this and own it.
Speaker:I bet the bravado took you far in that situation.
Speaker:Wonderful.
Speaker:Thank you so much for joining the show, Peter.
Speaker:This has been great.
Speaker:Do you want to flash your book up for our video folks?
Speaker:Peter wrote the next CMO So that's one thing.
Speaker:We'll put that into the show notes as well.
Speaker:Along with Scott and Dan, they wrote it with me.
Speaker:So I can't
Speaker:This trio of guys.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I don't
Speaker:I'll have to tell you that when I sold my company, Plannuh, I
Speaker:actually sold the right to my book.
Speaker:So, I don't make any money on this, so don't worry about having
Speaker:to buy this to make me happy.
Speaker:I do think it was a useful tool for lots of CMOs out there along the way,
Speaker:but that's, I have nothing else to promote, so, I guess I'll try and
Speaker:promote the book because I think I'm doing a good thing for CMOs in general.
Speaker:Awesome.
Speaker:Well, thank you again for joining the show, Peter.
Speaker:This has been great hearing from you.
Speaker:Great.
Speaker:Thanks for having me.
Speaker:That was Peter Mahoney, Chief Commercial Officer of GoTo
Speaker:and author of The Next CMO.
Speaker:Stay tuned for the next episode of The Get, coming in a couple of weeks.
Speaker:Thanks for listening to The Get.
Speaker:I'm your host, Erica Seidel.
Speaker:The Get is here to drive smart decisions around recruiting and
Speaker:leadership in B2B SaaS marketing.
Speaker:We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today's top
Speaker:marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.
Speaker:If you liked this episode, please share it.
Speaker:For more about The Get, visit TheGetPodcast.com.
Speaker:To learn more about my executive search practice, which focuses on recruiting the
Speaker:make-money marketing leaders rather than the make-it-pretty ones, follow me on
Speaker:LinkedIn or visit TheConnectiveGood.com.
Speaker:The Get is produced by Evo Terra and the team at Simpler Media Productions.
