Episode 7

What Private Equity (PE) Investors want from Marketing Leaders

Prital Kadakia leads the Growth team at Serent Capital, helping portfolio companies to scale up, drive results, and find the right leadership talent. As a sales and marketing expert at a PE firm, Prital’s work with portfolio companies spans sales force effectiveness, pricing, operational efficiencies, strategic partnerships, strategy development, procurement, and digital marketing.

In this episode, we talk about how PE investors work side by side with portfolio companies, including how they look for the ideal marketing talent, what they expect the CEO and CMO to know about growth marketing, and how to navigate the challenges of hypergrowth.

Here are our top themes and takeaways from the conversation:

1.Things for CEOs to think about when finding the right marketing leader

● Context in which the marketing leaders were successful in earlier roles

● Ability to own the bookings and results (something which is not core to every marketer’s DNA, but is a crucial flag for PE investors, who are focused on close alignment between marketing and sales), ability to forecast into the future - most B2B tech companies have long sales cycles, so focusing on the right metrics that will have a material impact in 6/12/18 months is crucial

2. Common pitfalls for CEOs to avoid as they search for their marketing leader

● Not having clarity about what you want

● Hiring a CMO when a VP of Marketing would be more aligned to the stage and pattern of growth

3. Tips for marketing leadership candidates: what to keep in mind if you are a potential CMO being interviewed with someone from the PE investor side for your dream B2B SaaS job! (Hint: know thy investor, and thy ROI!)



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

OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

About the Podcast

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The Get: Finding And Keeping The Best Marketing Leaders in B2B SaaS
Your inspiration from the best marketing leaders in B2B SaaS today... from hiring, getting hired, leading, organizing, and more!

About your host

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Erica Seidel

Erica Seidel recruits the marketing leaders of the 'make money' variety – not the 'make it pretty' variety. As the Founder of The Connective Good, a boutique executive search firm, she is retained to recruit CMOs and VPs in marketing, growth, product marketing, demand generation, marketing operations, and corporate marketing. She also hosts The Get podcast. Previously, she led Forrester Research's global peer-to-peer executive education businesses for CMOs and digital marketing executives of Fortune 500 companies. Erica has an MBA in Marketing from Wharton, and a BA in International Relations from Brown. One of her favorite jobs ever was serving as the Brown Bear mascot.

You can find her on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericaseidel/, or on her website/blog at www.theconnectivegood.com.