Episode 4
Why Some SaaS CMOs Flourish in PE-Backed Orgs, and Others Flame Out
How are PE-backed environments unique for SaaS CMOs? And what's the difference between the CMOs who flourish in PE-backed companies and those who flounder? This episode is required listening for any current or prospective CMO in a PE-backed company.
This week on The Get, Erica Seidel dives into the nuances of marketing leadership in PE-backed B2B SaaS orgs with guest Julie Zadow, Growth Marketing Leader at The Riverside Company. They explore Julie's role in private equity as a marketing operating partner, insights into aligning marketing strategies with investment firm goals, and the impact of AI on marketing roles and operations.
You will learn about:
- What it's like to be a marketing operating partner in a PE shop: As Julie describes it, she offers "battle scars for hire" and brings a mix of empathy, speed, and practicality
- How to speak marketing in a way that aligns with the investor's lens
- How to talk about brand in a way that doesn't make your investors run screaming
- How the different phases of the hold period matter for marketing – and how conversations with investors should evolve as the end of the hold period approaches
- Coaching junior employees in an AI+ environment, and a shortcut for contextualizing things for your most junior employees so they don't just 'do' with AI but 'learn' as well: Julie asks her interns: "Where did you feel you were parroting AI without understanding what it was saying?" and "What do you recommend that AI didn't think of?"
- The role that is hardest to disintermediate with AI
- The line of questioning CEOs are likely to pose to CMO candidates about their AI fluency
- Advice to CEOs who have failed at hiring marketing leaders
00:00 Welcome to The Get: Introduction and Overview
00:58 Introducing Julie Zadow: A Marketing Leader's Journey
02:10 The Role of a Marketing Operating Partner in Private Equity
03:58 Aligning Marketing Strategies with Investor Expectations
14:30 The Impact of AI on SaaS Marketing Organizations
26:18 Advice for CMOs in Private Equity-Backed Companies
34:21 Final Thoughts and Conclusion
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 how SaaS marketing organizations are changing — in both seismic and subtle ways.
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
Hello and welcome to The Get.
Speaker:I'm your host, Erica Seidel.
Speaker:The Get is all about driving smart decisions around recruiting and
Speaker:leadership in B2B SaaS marketing.
Speaker:This season's theme, SaaS marketing orgs, and how they're changing
Speaker:in both seismic and subtle ways.
Speaker:There are a lot of people in my network who say, I have loved being a marketing
Speaker:leader from within a company, but I'd like to eventually serve as an operating
Speaker:partner at an investment firm looking across a portfolio of companies,
Speaker:helping them to uplevel their marketing.
Speaker:There's sort of a mystique around this kind of role.
Speaker:I've interacted with several of these marketing operating partners
Speaker:in my searches, and I can say firsthand that they, like our
Speaker:guest today, are great assets.
Speaker:They can really help to ensure alignment between a CEO and a marketing
Speaker:leader, both before and after the marketing leader joins the business.
Speaker:I am excited to introduce you to Julie Zadow.
Speaker:Julie serves as Growth Marketing Leader at The Riverside Company, which is a private
Speaker:equity firm investing across a range of businesses, including many in software.
Speaker:Previously, Julie was CMO at Reward Gateway, the HR tech platform.
Speaker:She has earlier foundational experience from Workhuman, Harte-Hanks, Yankee
Speaker:Group, and Aberdeen, just to name a few.
Speaker:She has a great skill at not just speaking marketing, but speaking marketing in
Speaker:a way that resonates with investors.
Speaker:This is a really important thing.
Speaker:I am excited to hear her talk about the nature of her role and how
Speaker:CMOs can be successful in private equity backed environments and about
Speaker:the patterns that she's seeing in SaaS marketing orgs, whether with
Speaker:AI or with skillsets in general.
Speaker:And just a note, the perspectives that Julie will be sharing today
Speaker:are her own, they don't formally represent The Riverside Company.
Speaker:Julie, welcome to the show.
Speaker:Thanks for having me.
Speaker:It's great to see you again, Erica.
Speaker:Great to be with you.
Speaker:I am excited for this.
Speaker:I love your energy.
Speaker:Last time I talked with you, we covered all kinds of fun things.
Speaker:I would love to get started.
Speaker:Just introduce yourself a little bit.
Speaker:I'd love to know the nature of your role.
Speaker:It's a very cool role, like I've said.
Speaker:Many people want a role like yours, and I'm wondering if
Speaker:you could tell us about it.
Speaker:And also, what would somebody interested in becoming a marketing
Speaker:operating partner need to know that might not be evident from the outside.
Speaker:Yeah, sure.
Speaker:I'm happy to give the best description that I can.
Speaker:As you mentioned, this opportunity for PE to think about bringing on
Speaker:operational partners with functional discipline expertise in things like
Speaker:marketing or sales or rev ops, I do think is becoming more and more common.
Speaker:My role currently as a marketing operational partner at a PE
Speaker:firm, at The Riverside Company, I think of as an evolution of the
Speaker:work that I've done for decades.
Speaker:As you mentioned, I've been the CMO of a few different organizations,
Speaker:but many years ago I also founded my own fractional marketing leadership
Speaker:company called PinchHitCMO.
Speaker:I jokingly say I had a fractional marketing leadership company
Speaker:before fractional was cool.
Speaker:It was my opportunity to really lean into taking what I had been learning
Speaker:as a marketing leader and certified in the fundamentals of executive coaching,
Speaker:and then really transitioning that into being a marketing executive coach.
Speaker:As a result of my particular background being actually a blend, frankly, in the
Speaker:last decade or so of CMO experience and marketing executive coaching experience,
Speaker:that combination, I would say, made this transition for me to work as a marketing
Speaker:operational partner really natural.
Speaker:So I do work very closely with some exceptionally capable CMOs, and what
Speaker:I like about the work is that each engagement is actually pretty bespoke.
Speaker:These are great leaders.
Speaker:I love the analogy of the fact that, just like top athletes have coaches,
Speaker:so do the best executives, and that is absolutely true for marketing executives.
Speaker:What makes my role unique is it is about helping CMOs align with their
Speaker:C-suite's point of view, but since I am coming in with Riverside, I am actually
Speaker:trying to help CMOs go beyond what matters to their customer, what matters
Speaker:to the C-suite they work with on a day-to-day basis, but also think about
Speaker:their marketing strategy, resourcing, budgeting decisions through the lens
Speaker:of how the PE firm that may own their company sees their business right now.
Speaker:How do we look at marketing through the lens of business growth?
Speaker:How do we look at marketing through the lens of the investment
Speaker:thesis and the stage of the hold?
Speaker:And how can I help the marketing leaders in the Riverside portfolio companies
Speaker:be more successful, taking that pretty expansive purview into account?
Speaker:I've been the CMO of a PE-backed company before, multiple PE-backed companies.
Speaker:I have the battle scars.
Speaker:So I jokingly say, hey, Julie Zadow - battle scars for hire.
Speaker:You can bring me in and I will help your CMOs, and I will lead with a lot
Speaker:of empathy, speed, and practicality, and help them use those same skills
Speaker:to get better in their own roles.
Speaker:That's great.
Speaker:I have so much to pick up on from that.
Speaker:One is that I think when people have gone back and forth between
Speaker:running all of marketing at a company versus being a fractional leader
Speaker:or some kind of consultant, it's almost like they don't typically get
Speaker:credit for those stints where they have been fractional or advising.
Speaker:It's almost like you're homeschooled during those times.
Speaker:Then when you go back to an operational role, you don't
Speaker:really get credit for them.
Speaker:But in your case, you're actually saying, I'm drawing equally from
Speaker:my role running marketing at company X, Y, Z and my experience
Speaker:coaching, being more interstitial.
Speaker:Does that make sense?
Speaker:Yeah, and to some degree, I actually do think the benefit that I can bring
Speaker:to the table is balancing that outside in and inside out lens simultaneously.
Speaker:Being a CMO is an incredibly challenging role.
Speaker:I always joke, I, as a CMO, have certainly never walked into the CFO's office and
Speaker:said, you know what, Frank, I'm pretty good at balancing a checkbook, so I
Speaker:think I'm gonna give you some ideas on how you can do your job better.
Speaker:But I have absolutely had the experience as a CMO of having every other C-suite
Speaker:functional leader try to quote unquote, "tell me how to do my job," because
Speaker:they are looking from the inside of the company and trying to basically tell
Speaker:you how you could potentially be more successful in your job looking out.
Speaker:The same thing happens when you bump into someone on the street who
Speaker:might be in a role that in some ways involves the market, and then they'll
Speaker:suddenly have an opinion of how you could do your job from the outside in.
Speaker:I almost try to come to the table and say, hey, this is a hard job.
Speaker:Everybody has an opinion on how to get it done well.
Speaker:The opportunity here is to figure out where your company is in its hold
Speaker:relative to its market and through the lens that the PE firm that has
Speaker:invested in your company is looking at.
Speaker:What do we need to focus on now?
Speaker:How do we prioritize that and get as clear as we possibly can on the direction we're
Speaker:taking and the fires we're gonna let burn?
Speaker:That is a huge part of how I try to show up and partner with the
Speaker:CMOs in our portfolio companies.
Speaker:Yeah, I like that.
Speaker:Can you double click on that and maybe give an example from a recent
Speaker:experience where you helped a marketing leader not just talk in terms of like
Speaker:marketing speak and marketing jargon, but really align it to an investor?
Speaker:'Cause I think that's a key skill that you have that I've seen in your content, I've
Speaker:seen in our conversations, but I bet our listeners would love to hear an example.
Speaker:Yeah, so one of the portfolio CMOs that I've been working with recently
Speaker:has just done some absolutely critical and necessary foundational brand work.
Speaker:And the company has won major awards and has really, absolutely, cranking
Speaker:in a sense of the market, knows who they are, and understands the
Speaker:unique value proposition of this particular company compared to their
Speaker:competitors, which is excellent.
Speaker:But like many companies, they're not getting the results that
Speaker:they're absolutely looking for through the throughput of brand
Speaker:to demand to leads to pipeline.
Speaker:So that's an area of opportunity.
Speaker:And this particular CMO had been trying for a long period of time to help - this
Speaker:is an earlier stage company - help the investors understand the value of standing
Speaker:up a marketing automation platform.
Speaker:But she was framing it all through the lens of the leads that she could create.
Speaker:And in a sense, missed the throughput and the opportunity to really calibrate
Speaker:what that journey is like from brand to an MQL, to an SAL, to an SQL, to
Speaker:pipeline to bookings and how, if it were as equally as important to this company
Speaker:to have a brand that they understood and to also have, for example, Salesforce.com
Speaker:instance where they could measure sales impact, they actually didn't have a
Speaker:marketing automation platform stood up.
Speaker:My ability to come in and partner with her and explain where that messy middle
Speaker:could get clarified by bringing in a tool that would enable her to reorient the
Speaker:great marketing work they were already doing through the lens of its impact on
Speaker:sales forecasted pipeline wasn't a skill that she had yet, but she had done all
Speaker:of the foundational work so necessary to set the organization up to create
Speaker:that kind of opportunity, but wasn't necessarily very skilled in explaining
Speaker:what kind of MarTech stack would actually make this scale and run and how that
Speaker:would have an impact on business growth.
Speaker:So that's an example of something that I came in and partnered with her
Speaker:on and we've worked on and they've made that investment and now we're
Speaker:in the guts of architecting it all.
Speaker:And because there's already a really strong brand foundation there, I'm
Speaker:exceedingly bullish on how successful this brand to demand to pipeline
Speaker:conversion opportunity will become.
Speaker:Obviously, I wouldn't have necessarily leaned into that with an early stage
Speaker:company that was still struggling with identifying their ICP and really
Speaker:knowing their unique value proposition and how to bring that messaging to
Speaker:life because in a sense you're just gonna measure your ineffectiveness
Speaker:of your starting point then.
Speaker:So they were the right company.
Speaker:It was the right time to make that investment, and I felt like I was in
Speaker:a unique position to not just help her understand what her PE investors were
Speaker:likely looking for to help justify an investment like that, but also helping
Speaker:her PE investors understand how ready her marketing organization was to
Speaker:put this kind of fuel into the tank.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:That's great.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:It's interesting that you use the word brand because I feel like brand could
Speaker:be a four-letter word, I know, [Erica laughs] in a lot of different shops.
Speaker:So I think some people are still talking more about influence
Speaker:and authority, and presence and messaging and positioning and such.
Speaker:So, good for you.
Speaker:Any thoughts on that?
Speaker:And the whole is brand a four-letter word in your circles?
Speaker:Well, I think it can be because, obviously, people always say, let's
Speaker:harken back for a moment to the Don Draper days when marketing was
Speaker:equal parts liquor and guessing.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:We've evolved past the liquor and guessing days.
Speaker:I would say now we're still straddling the arc from art to science.
Speaker:Is marketing art?
Speaker:Is marketing science?
Speaker:People tend to think that brand is only on the art side and demand
Speaker:is only on the science side.
Speaker:But the truth of the matter is, because, as we've all heard this stat a million
Speaker:times already, the percentage of B2B buyers who show up already knowing
Speaker:what they need before they're ready to talk to a salesperson, your brand
Speaker:has been showing up incognito as part of the process by which a prospect is
Speaker:deciding whether you are the company they're gonna get a demo from or not.
Speaker:So one of the things that I think is so important about brand is to
Speaker:remember not everything measurable is by definition impactful.
Speaker:There are many things that will be impactful that may not yet be quite
Speaker:measurable, but we can't throw the baby out with the bath water and we
Speaker:still actually need to lean into both.
Speaker:The challenge is figuring out, again, taking this full circle, how to calibrate
Speaker:the moment you're in and what matters to the stage of growth your company is at
Speaker:in terms of your marketing resource, your budget, your org design, figuring out what
Speaker:brand to demand ecosystem will best get you the results that your company needs.
Speaker:When you talk about the moment that you're in, do you mean, for instance, that if
Speaker:you're doing pretty well, but the PE shop's in year four of a five-year hold
Speaker:period and they're probably gonna exit the business in a year, then maybe you
Speaker:focus more on just that, like you do less branding and more demanding, or what?
Speaker:I think, historically, that has actually been an element of being a PE-backed CMO
Speaker:that has potentially been underserved a little bit, which is, if your goal
Speaker:as a CMO is to look as strategic as possible, and you're doubling down on
Speaker:the argument about rebuilding your entire website in year four and five of a hold,
Speaker:you really need to step back and try to understand what that conversation
Speaker:sounds like to your PE investors who are probably in their stage of a hold where
Speaker:their goal is to basically say they've done all the foundational building.
Speaker:This is probably about optimizing, if not reducing, spend to basically
Speaker:make top line growth look as powerful as possible, as well as EBITDA.
Speaker:However, if you are a brand new CMO and you run in guns blazing and decide
Speaker:that you're basically gonna focus on how fast you can speed up MQL to SAL
Speaker:conversion rates, but you're not taking a moment to stop and say, how much of
Speaker:our traffic and leads do we believe are being generated through digital?
Speaker:How much is our website a huge part of how we show up in the
Speaker:digital universe for our prospects?
Speaker:And when was the last time anybody looked at whether this website
Speaker:accurately reflects who we are today, and, more importantly, who we believe
Speaker:we can be in three to five years?
Speaker:That's the right conversation to have in year one of your hold.
Speaker:It's not necessarily the right conversation to have in year five.
Speaker:Don't decide that you know.
Speaker:Ask the questions of your CEO and your PE investors and help them understand
Speaker:the lens that you are looking at and the pivots you're willing to take
Speaker:relative to them bringing you into the conversation around what matters
Speaker:most right now to the business.
Speaker:Yeah, that's great.
Speaker:I'm imagining like a piece of content.
Speaker:I'm such a content person, but year one, year three, year five, and what the goal
Speaker:is and what the typical or, perhaps, usual types of marketing focus areas are.
Speaker:I don't know if it can be that reduced, but that's where my head is going.
Speaker:Anyway, cool.
Speaker:Let's talk about SaaS marketing organizations and how they are evolving.
Speaker:I'm curious to look at it from both junior levels and senior levels.
Speaker:I know you have some interesting perspectives on this about how
Speaker:AI is changing the game for jobs.
Speaker:I remember you said you had some interns at Riverside and you had to
Speaker:think about what to do with them and how to give them a good experience.
Speaker:Can you talk about that?
Speaker:Yeah, sure.
Speaker:Obviously there's so much going on in the market right now, people talking about
Speaker:the degree to which AI is potentially replacing junior roles, and frankly,
Speaker:this isn't across just marketing.
Speaker:This is probably across all levers.
Speaker:I've had a unique opportunity to reflect on what that might mean
Speaker:relative to summer interns, for example.
Speaker:I have the privilege of working with two fantastic interns this summer through
Speaker:my role at Riverside, and I think it's been eye-opening for both sides.
Speaker:You and I had chatted before about when I reflect back on the internships that
Speaker:I had many years ago, I put them in a three-part bucket and my role as an
Speaker:intern was work, and then as a result learn, and then as a result network.
Speaker:What that really meant is there was usually some kind of grunt work for me to
Speaker:basically lean into and work at and do.
Speaker:And then hopefully as a result of doing that work, I learned something, but then
Speaker:because someone was giving me that work, it meant I had the chance to network
Speaker:with someone that I might not have had the chance to network with before.
Speaker:That being said, I definitely have memories of being in internships where
Speaker:I over-indexed on part one and part two where like I was doing a lot of work
Speaker:and I was trying to learn, but no one was really pulling me into meetings or
Speaker:letting me listen in on strategy sessions or giving me the opportunity to take my
Speaker:work and try to imagine what it meant in context to the broader organization.
Speaker:Nowadays, because of the way in which the entry-level roles are changing,
Speaker:AI influenced and otherwise, we're not necessarily needing junior level people,
Speaker:or interns for that matter, to do a lot of number crunching in some of the ways they
Speaker:might have done, or editing some copy, which can be done very quickly using AI.
Speaker:But obviously we still recognize at a macro level the importance of bringing
Speaker:in the next stage of the workforce.
Speaker:And even if we're not indexing as much as we maybe had in the
Speaker:past on the work part of it.
Speaker:I don't have a library full of paper that needs to be alphabetized and put into
Speaker:a storage room, which actually is a job I did in New York City many moons ago.
Speaker:But I believe that, therefore, my responsibility as someone working right
Speaker:now if I have interns, is to find what they can do, but lean into the opportunity
Speaker:to chat with them every day and help them focus on the learning and the networking,
Speaker:and then pull that through and give them the opportunity to be in meetings and
Speaker:try to understand the context and how we collaborate to make things happen.
Speaker:The one thing that AI is not going to change moving forward is the
Speaker:criticality of context and collaboration for our ability to achieve success
Speaker:cross-functionally, and exposing interns and more junior level people
Speaker:to more of how the work is getting done today gives us two benefits.
Speaker:Number one, we're basically planting the seeds for future growth inside
Speaker:our company with these new people that are bringing great new perspective.
Speaker:And frankly, I've heard many a story lately where it's the more junior people
Speaker:that actually have more functional experience leaning into the entire
Speaker:cornucopia of opportunity with AI.
Speaker:We're missing the chance to learn from them because we're not pulling them
Speaker:into the context of how we're working enough for them to share something
Speaker:that they might know that we don't yet.
Speaker:So I've been trying to work with our interns to basically say there's
Speaker:learning on both sides here and we just need to contextualize it for the
Speaker:AI+ plus environment we're in today.
Speaker:Well said.
Speaker:I remember you mentioned one thing that you asked an intern,
Speaker:and you said I anticipate you're gonna use AI to get this done.
Speaker:And it was something like what are you regurgitating and not understanding here?
Speaker:I loved that.
Speaker:Can you mention that a little bit?
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:One of my interns, I actually put them on a project of looking at a couple of
Speaker:our Portcos and using our AI instance to get AI's recommendations of what
Speaker:AI believed each Portco should do to improve their website for better
Speaker:conversion and business outcomes.
Speaker:And then to compare and contrast the different feedback that AI gave across
Speaker:different Portcos and she did an excellent job of pulling this information together.
Speaker:When we talked about it, I paused her and I said, okay, I gave the parameters of
Speaker:this project around using AI for insight.
Speaker:Tell me now, now that you've just gone through this presentation, where
Speaker:you felt like you were parroting AI or regurgitating AI, or whether you
Speaker:were able to synthesize what AI was recommending you tell me, and now
Speaker:this is actually what you think.
Speaker:We had a great conversation, and it enabled me to see some areas where
Speaker:probably the feedback was laced with jargon that she hadn't been exposed to
Speaker:yet in her business career so she didn't have any context for, and it also gave
Speaker:me a really interesting opportunity to say at the end, what did you end
Speaker:up thinking that AI didn't recommend?
Speaker:She actually had some excellent suggestions for the user experience on
Speaker:the website that AI hadn't surfaced.
Speaker:It almost gave her a thought partner and helped her realize she had an
Speaker:opinion to share and it was well served and I was glad to receive it.
Speaker:I'm leaning into sharing it beyond the conversation that she
Speaker:and I had, further down into the organizations that I'm working with.
Speaker:That's a great story.
Speaker:I love that.
Speaker:I love the specifics here.
Speaker:Can you take a broader view on SaaS marketing orgs in general, and
Speaker:how do you think we will see them being reimagined or reinvented?
Speaker:You know, thanks to AI.
Speaker:Yeah, I do think we are in a - I dunno what to call it.
Speaker:Maybe like a re-architecture moment.
Speaker:And I don't just mean the tools that SaaS marketers use or B2B marketers use.
Speaker:I really mean the very functions of the workflows that define
Speaker:go-to-market organizations.
Speaker:Everybody talks about AI through the lens of speed and efficiency, but I think
Speaker:it's actually changing how marketing gets done and who you need to do it.
Speaker:One example for me of a very quickly shifting role that has
Speaker:been very disintermediated by AI is probably the BDR role.
Speaker:Still critical, but that notion of how AI can change the job description of
Speaker:what a BDR does or what exact skills are most important, I think is something we
Speaker:really need to look at because the tools are there to really lean into making BDRs
Speaker:much more efficient and effective with the impact of an actual conversation as
Speaker:a result of the early stage engagement that, for example, an AI SDR can do.
Speaker:For example, one of our Portcos has recently instituted a really interesting
Speaker:AI SDR, and while it didn't necessarily drive an incredible volume of, for
Speaker:example, net new meetings, what we've seen in terms of the quality of the meetings
Speaker:generated as a result of partnering an AI SDR with a BDR has been unbelievable.
Speaker:We've actually seen, I believe it's like a 33% increase in qualified pipeline as a
Speaker:result of partnering an AI SDR with a BDR.
Speaker:This isn't the elimination of the BDR role.
Speaker:It's critical for one of our Portcos, but it is an opportunity to not just prove
Speaker:the volume of what they can produce in terms of meetings generated, but actually
Speaker:the quality of the meetings themselves.
Speaker:That, to me, is super powerful and I see a lot of disruption happening there.
Speaker:If I was gonna put a counterpoint on that and think about where do I see a role
Speaker:where AI won't easily replace, the area I lean into now is product marketing.
Speaker:You know, product marketing is not just messaging.
Speaker:It's not just positioning.
Speaker:It's that interconnected strategic orchestration.
Speaker:PMNs, they translate the product value into market impact.
Speaker:Then they have to do that hard work of corralling product teams, sales teams,
Speaker:customer success teams, the market.
Speaker:Any role where I think a huge part of leadership success at this point is very
Speaker:tied to pattern recognition, stakeholder navigation, more in, maybe I'll call
Speaker:it like more narrative leadership.
Speaker:Those are the areas that I don't think AI is able to disintermediate quite yet.
Speaker:So product marketing stands out for me as an area that, still safe, we'll call it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's great.
Speaker:"Narrative leadership." I like that.
Speaker:Do you see any particular expectations from Portco CEOs about AI skill
Speaker:sets for marketing leaders?
Speaker:Because I sometimes see job specs floating around asking for things like AI first
Speaker:marketing acumen or AI fluency, et cetera.
Speaker:I'm wondering are you seeing that, what does that mean, and how is it showing up?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I see a lot of it as well, you know what I mean?
Speaker:It's just coming into the dialogue of interview processes and job
Speaker:descriptions left and right these days.
Speaker:And I certainly understand why, but I think we need to back it up
Speaker:a little if we really wanna think about how to be effective here.
Speaker:If I'm being honest, like here's what I actually think.
Speaker:Okay, fine, everything with AI is unprecedented, but maybe when we
Speaker:think about what this means for our candidates, I think there's maybe
Speaker:more a dose of everything old is new again than we might be realizing.
Speaker:For example, I remember how we thought everything was forever
Speaker:changed when ABM swept the scene.
Speaker:But what really changed there, other than marketing leaders needing to get
Speaker:super intentional about defining and aligning, what it meant to partner with
Speaker:sales for growth or we were suddenly swamped with all the capabilities
Speaker:and the exploding MarTech stack.
Speaker:But ultimately, we realized something very granular and foundational,
Speaker:which is, okay, what are our data hygiene processes inside this company?
Speaker:How do we police data hygiene at an enterprise level so that the insights
Speaker:from our MarTech data are actually useful and not directionally hallucinogenic?
Speaker:Which is basically what they often became.
Speaker:I can harken back even more recently to what I've seen when SEO and PPC
Speaker:blew up marketing budgets because they were so incredibly measurable.
Speaker:But over time we learned a million impressions don't amount to much,
Speaker:if a mere fraction of them convert to actual leads or pipeline.
Speaker:I say all this by saying, it's too soon.
Speaker:It feels too soon, to me, for a CEO to over index on saying, tell
Speaker:me how you've wrestled AI to the ground as a marketing leader.
Speaker:I think a better opportunity is to say, let's look at the moments where the
Speaker:sands under marketing leadership feet started shifting, and tell me what your
Speaker:change management approach was for that in terms of your go-to market approach,
Speaker:your calibration of your team, and your collaboration with the C-suite.
Speaker:We have periods of time in SaaS marketing history of, just in the
Speaker:last two decades, that we can pull from here and we can learn from there.
Speaker:So yes, there may be a couple unicorn SaaS marketing leaders available right
Speaker:now who will leave wherever they are to come to your company to deploy their
Speaker:unbelievably excellent AI impact charter.
Speaker:Amazing.
Speaker:But if they don't have those skills yet, and an executive recruiter or a
Speaker:CEO recognizes they've got someone who is skilled at change management, who
Speaker:understands how to adapt themselves and their teams and the organization
Speaker:around them for change, and they're willing to lean into thinking through
Speaker:and collaborating on, number one, how AI is changing go-to-market, and
Speaker:number two, how AI could potentially make the product or the service that
Speaker:this company is bringing to market more effective or more measurable.
Speaker:Maybe that's the starting point.
Speaker:Align on your starting point and take it from there.
Speaker:Great.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:So like you're saying, AI is big, but it's not everything.
Speaker:Can we talk maybe more broadly?
Speaker:Can you give a piece of advice to CMOs who are considering joining private
Speaker:equity backed companies on how they could be successful in that environment?
Speaker:When I think about the CMOs that seem the most successful in PE-backed
Speaker:organizations today, I think it's all about discovery and infrastructure.
Speaker:You need to lean into, if you're just new and you're showing up,
Speaker:don't trust that the organization is completely aligned on the ICP.
Speaker:Clarify that ICP.
Speaker:Lean in.
Speaker:Make sure that that is a reset and refresh moment where needed.
Speaker:Look at the foundational definitions of an MQL, an SAL, an SQL.
Speaker:You'd be surprised how much tribal knowledge might be wrapped up in
Speaker:those definitions that may not be serving your customer well today.
Speaker:And again, coming back to really understanding the
Speaker:hold year that you're in.
Speaker:If year one is that discovery and infrastructure phase, I think year three
Speaker:is, maybe, your acceleration phase.
Speaker:Year five is exit prep, right?
Speaker:And you need to understand each of those stages of hold relative to your
Speaker:stages of growth and understand how to show up for the CEO, and the PE
Speaker:firm, and your teams accordingly.
Speaker:That's an area that I think B2B and SaaS CMOs are getting
Speaker:smarter and smarter about.
Speaker:But I think it's newer knowledge.
Speaker:So it hasn't been quite as pressure tested as maybe we need it to be.
Speaker:When you're interviewing people, do you have a favorite
Speaker:question that you like to ask?
Speaker:Something particularly revealing?
Speaker:I do.
Speaker:One of my favorite questions, once you get through all of the obvious stuff, is
Speaker:that I love to just ground prospective CMOs for some of our Portcos in trying to
Speaker:ask them, really, when they think about themselves professionally, the arc of
Speaker:their professional marketing leadership career, when do they feel the most useful?
Speaker:And to see how they unpack that question because you can learn a lot
Speaker:about their style of leadership, their style of collaboration, their penchant
Speaker:for risk, their willingness to learn.
Speaker:So much of marketing today really comes from you could be good
Speaker:without those skills, but you can't be great without those skills.
Speaker:So asking somebody to deconstruct where they feel the most useful, when they've
Speaker:felt the most useful, why they felt the most useful, can really unpack the core of
Speaker:the CMO you're potentially bringing into your organization in a really nuanced way.
Speaker:I like that.
Speaker:I haven't asked that one yet, and you're giving me a good idea here
Speaker:'cause I have probably dozens of people every week who contact me.
Speaker:"Oh, I'm looking for a job. I wanna get on your radar."
Speaker:I talk to people and I just go through these particular questions.
Speaker:Why now?
Speaker:What do you wanna do next?
Speaker:What are your criteria?
Speaker:And I always ask, what do you do that's easier than breathing?
Speaker:Which is good, but then people always interpret it
Speaker:as, oh, this is my superpower.
Speaker:And that's fine, but it's just like a overdone kind of question.
Speaker:I might sub in this question.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:Oh, I'm flattered.
Speaker:[she laughs]
Speaker:I like it.
Speaker:I like it.
Speaker:That could be a whole interview right there because there's
Speaker:all the different Ws, right?
Speaker:What are you doing?
Speaker:Why are you doing it?
Speaker:When?
Speaker:How long does it take for you to be producing that very useful value?
Speaker:Et cetera.
Speaker:I like it.
Speaker:I like it.
Speaker:Now, some CEOs are kind of gun shy about hiring CMOs because they might have failed
Speaker:in the past or had somebody that didn't last as long as the CEO would've liked.
Speaker:This is just a very touchy subject in the CMO world right now, but
Speaker:what's your advice to a CEO who has failed at hiring a CMO in the past?
Speaker:I would say if you failed at hiring a CMO before, first, you're not alone.
Speaker:A lot of CEOs have.
Speaker:But my advice is before you rush in to hire another CMO, let's take a step back.
Speaker:Ask yourself, were you really clear on what success was meant to look like?
Speaker:And have you now created the conditions for that success to
Speaker:happen if it didn't happen before?
Speaker:That's a pretty loaded question, but I do think that gives us the opportunity
Speaker:to look at where that misalignment might have more of an origin point
Speaker:than we might have otherwise realized.
Speaker:At the end of the day, the CMO role is tough, but frankly, not to be
Speaker:outdone by the CEO role itself.
Speaker:If a CEO is expecting a marketing leader to understand what it means to champion
Speaker:brand and demand and pipeline against very specific growth goals and they
Speaker:haven't worked together to formulate what that means, and, each quarter of
Speaker:the year, what the trade-offs will be for getting to that outcome, and, to
Speaker:reference something I said earlier as a result of that prioritization, deciding
Speaker:which fires you're gonna let burn?
Speaker:If they don't have clarity on that, more often than not, I think CMOs are set up
Speaker:to fail and really leaning into a CEO's understanding of their responsibility
Speaker:to bring clarity to their expectations of that role is a critical part of
Speaker:getting it right the second time, if it didn't go well the first time.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Just devil's advocate here, I could picture a CEO saying, alright,
Speaker:it's not on me to create every single condition for success.
Speaker:I need the CMO to do that too.
Speaker:I wonder what you would say to that?
Speaker:Because in my experience, I feel like it's not just what needs to happen, it's
Speaker:what needs to happen over what timeframe and what's reasonable to expect in the
Speaker:short term versus medium and long term.
Speaker:Any thoughts on that?
Speaker:My advice on that would probably split between whether I was dealing with
Speaker:a founder CEO or a non founder CEO, because I do feel that the archetype
Speaker:shows up a little differently each time.
Speaker:I think founder CEOs, I've often had to advise or work with founder CEOs
Speaker:to understand that there may have been a time where they themselves were the
Speaker:singular personification of the brand.
Speaker:They are not anymore based on the goals of this next stage of growth.
Speaker:So you do need to lean into setting certain success parameters with your CMO.
Speaker:That is still your job, but how they get to those outcomes needs
Speaker:to be something you step away from.
Speaker:I often find that founder CEOs try to get too much into the guts of how
Speaker:marketing leaders are planning to get to the outcomes they need, and that
Speaker:often throws off a marketing leader's sense of purpose and engagement
Speaker:for being in the role at all.
Speaker:I do think that more experienced CEOs are a little more comfortable,
Speaker:often, letting marketing come up with the how to get to the outcomes
Speaker:that qualify as business success.
Speaker:But I think what often happens is that there's a lack of clarity
Speaker:when CEOs often feel like, I don't understand why we're doing that.
Speaker:I, myself, have had circumstances where I basically said to a CEO that I was
Speaker:working with, you don't like this?
Speaker:And I can tell, tell me why.
Speaker:And they deconstructed why they didn't like an entire campaign.
Speaker:And I said let me ask you something, is this how you would define yourself?
Speaker:And I rattled off exactly who our ICP was and they said, no, not at all.
Speaker:And I said, well, I know because this campaign isn't for you.
Speaker:This campaign is for somebody who defines themself like this.
Speaker:That is our ICP.
Speaker:And that was a real "Ah ha!" moment for this person, and it helped them
Speaker:realize it may be better to give their marketing leader a little more rope to
Speaker:go do what they do before they decided they needed to pull on the rope too hard.
Speaker:That's a great story.
Speaker:How does it occur to you to do that?
Speaker:Is this a skillset set of a learned thing of okay, let me step into questioning
Speaker:mode and let me, I don't know, put the CEO in the shoes of the ICP?
Speaker:How does that occur to you to do that?
Speaker:Well, the benefit of being someone who's worked in a lot of different
Speaker:environments and worked for or with a lot of different CEOs is that it has
Speaker:given me a better opportunity to pause.
Speaker:I try to think of a question before I get defensive with an
Speaker:answer and see what happens next.
Speaker:And yes, to reference a point I made earlier in this discussion,
Speaker:that definitely comes from a place of battle scars for hire.
Speaker:So I'm just trying to take what I've learned and repackage it
Speaker:in a way that someone else gets to a better outcome faster.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's great.
Speaker:We are running out of time, so I have one final question for you, Julie.
Speaker:This season, again, our theme is how SaaS marketing orgs are changing
Speaker:in both seismic and subtle ways.
Speaker:I like alliteration.
Speaker:In one sentence or so, can you describe how SaaS marketing orgs are changing in
Speaker:either seismic or subtle, or both, ways?
Speaker:Yes, I will do my best.
Speaker:I probably will end up manifesting a sentence that has a lot of dashes and
Speaker:commas to get to your one sentence goal.
Speaker:But I guess what I would say is AI can do a lot, but if it's automating a bad
Speaker:campaign strategy, we're not winning.
Speaker:If it's generating leads that your account execs can't convert, what's the point?
Speaker:And if it's eating SEO for lunch, but we're still not actually creating
Speaker:content that's interesting or relevant, then really nothing's changed.
Speaker:At the end of the day, context and collaboration still matter more than ever.
Speaker:AI is changing SaaS marketing and B2B marketing in ways that we've never
Speaker:before seen, but to some degree, it is just amplifying the importance
Speaker:of leaning into change management one initiative at a time in ways
Speaker:that we actually do know how to do.
Speaker:And we've got this.
Speaker:Great.
Speaker:Thank you so much, Julie, for joining the show.
Speaker:Thanks for having me.
Speaker:This has been a really fun conversation.
Speaker:That was Julie Zadow from the Riverside Company.
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.
