GTM Confessions – Détails, épisodes et analyse

How did we get there? Marketing has gone from being responsible for building brand awareness to now being responsible for almost every interaction from when a prospect first hears about your brand until they are a qualified opportunity and passed along to the sales team. More responsibilities with higher expectations, but rarely a significant increase in resources. 

That’s why we’re talking with Connie Glover, GTM Strategist, at CMarie Marketing Studio. She’s been in the marketing and P.R. game for a long time and brings brands to life through a mix of grassroots efforts and cutting-edge digital practices. 

In this episode, Stephanie and Connie talk about the impossible expectations of marketing in SaaS, what marketing really needs to deliver to sales, why leads are worthless, and so much more. and so much more. 

Key Takeaways:

1. Marketing has evolved tremendously causing marketing teams to be responsible for everything from when a prospect first hears about the brand through qualifying an opportunity for the sales team. 
2. Most CEOs and board members don’t understand the real role of marketing. They tend to focus on the visual aspect of marketing or lead quantity rather than understanding the importance of creating brand awareness. 
3. CEOs will never stop sharing random ideas about marketing. That doesn’t mean you have to implement any of them. 
4. Marketers have to stop falling victim to the reaction rabbit hole where they’re constantly reacting to feedback from countless people in the organization. 
5. MQLs, SQLs, and leads should die. Sales doesn’t really want any of them. They want handraisers who are in the market and ready to evaluate software solutions. Not people who looked at your content, visited your tradeshow booth, etc. 
6. The expectation for speed that companies have related to marketing doesn’t equate with the amount of effort that is required or the reality of how long it takes to drive results. 
7. Demand generation is NOT possible. You can’t create demand because you can’t make people buy when they’re not in the market to buy. Marketing can build a brand that will drive demand when people are in the market for a solution. 

In this GTM Advice episode, Jack Wilson, EVP of North America at amplify5, answers a fast round of questions and shares her go-to-market advice with you. 

Check out how Jack answered the following questions:

1. What is the biggest go-to-market challenge today? How would you tackle this challenge?
2. Where would you focus your efforts if you had limited resources and had to drive immediate results?
3. How do you ensure there is alignment across all go-to-market functional teams? (i.e. sales, marketing, product, and customer success)
4. What’s the one “dirty little secret” in go-to-market that nobody talks about, but everyone needs to know? 
5. What do you think is the biggest misconception about having a career in go-to-market? 
6. What is one skill that all GTM professionals need to have mastered to be successful? 
7. What is one thing you wish you knew sooner? 
8. What is one piece of advice you would give to someone looking to grow their career in go-to-market?

Blog posts. Ebooks. Webinars. Podcasts. And the list goes on and on. There are so many different ways to create content today and distribute it. Oftentimes, we tend to think of content marketing success as hitting the publish button on a new piece of content. The reality is that content marketing isn’t about publishing new content all the time. It’s about growing mindshare. 

That’s why we’re talking with Jillian Hoefer, Senior Content Marketing Manager at UserEvidence. She’s so dedicated she is to creating different, memorable, and impactful content that she once got in a REAL dumpster for B2B content. Throughout her nearly 10-year career in content marketing, she's worked for brands in the tech and e-commerce spaces and helped them create content that not only earned mindshare, but drove demand. Some of her proudest career moments include hanging with Saxsquatch for a virtual event called "Break Sh*t", acting alongside a puppet, wearing the coveted Disney name tag, getting a cease and desist from Cards Against Humanity, and seeing the word "EVERYWHERE!" as someone's self-reported response for where they heard about us while booking a demo.

In this episode, Stephanie and Jillian talk about what she’s learned from a career in and out of tech, the value of original research, how content marketers should define success,  and how to get content marketing a seat at the table.

In this GTM Advice episode, Mason Cosby, CEO of Scrappy ABM, answers a fast round of questions and shares his go-to-market advice with you. 

Product market fit. Account-based marketing (ABM). Ideal Customer Profile. Target Accounts. These are the most critical and talked about topics for go-to-market leaders. And they’re also most misunderstood and oftentimes poorly executed. 

That’s why we’re talking with Mason Cobsy, CEO of Scrappy ABM. Mason has built scrappy marketing programs that deliver millions in revenue. While serving as a marketing leader at numerous boutique and bootstrapped businesses, Mason saw firsthand the power of trading a shiny ABM program with all the fancy tech tools for a scrappy account-based program that instead sourced over $15M in the three years, driving a 20x ROI.

In this episode, Stephanie and Mason talk about what it means to really have product market fit (PMF), why ABM strategy requires PMF, who should be in the room to define your ICP and target accounts, and a bunch of acronyms you need to know. 

Key Takeaways:

1. Product market fit means sales is EASY. If it isn’t easy to sell your product, then you don’t have it. No exceptions. 
2. It doesn’t make sense to launch an ABM program until you have product market fit.
3. Marketing, sales, customer success, and finance need to collaborate on defining your ICP and creating a target account list. It cannot be owned by only one functional area. It’s also imperative that you consider how many customers you want to add within the next five years when you create the target account list. 
4. Content marketing should make up half of your ABM strategy because it’s both destination and distribution.
5. Five plays can help your business consistently create pipeline: closed lost, customer winback, website engagement, event activations, and podcasting. You should be running these plays every single month. 

Welcome to GTM Confessions. The show where we share what it takes to be a go-to-market (GTM) professional today…because it’s freaking hard and it’s far from the glamorous picture that social media often paints.

Each week, we’ll have a go-to-market professional on the show to share real examples of what’s worked and what’s failed spectacularly…the extreme highs of this career, the lowest of lows, and everything in between.  Think of it as your weekly go-to-market therapy session…where you realize you’re not alone in trying to figure it all out.

How do you balance a changing buying process, countless technologies to use, unrealistic expectations, and an extremely crowded market? That’s the challenge facing Chief Revenue Officers (CROs). Not to mention that there seems to be significant debate about what the role of CRO actually entails and where CROs should focus their attention. 

That’s why we’re talking with Jack Wilson, EVP of North America, at amplify5 leveraging his extensive experience in developing strategies, building high-performance teams, and delivering revenue and profitable growth. Jack is an accomplished senior executive, entrepreneur, and advisory board member with more than 25 years of successful executive leadership experience in various industries. He has experience in international market development, closing multi-million dollar deals, and building international sales teams. He’s been a part of six successful exits including an IPO with triple-digit growth with every venture. He’s also an avid runner who has participated in numerous marathons and Ultra Marathons including the Moab 240, and placed in the top 20 in the Ironman.

In this episode, Stephanie and Jack talk about when it’s time to hire your first sales leader, the role of a Chief Revenue Officer, what sales really wants from marketing, dealing with unattainable quotas, and so much more. and so much more. 

Key Takeaways:

1. The CRO role is more than just sales. It should oversee all revenue functional areas including sales, marketing, and customer success. 
2. Executives need to have more open and honest communication with each other. Executive team meetings should be a healthy debate each week to hold each other accountable and bring out the best ideas. 
3. Never hire a sales leader until you have at least three sales reps consistently hitting their quota. A player/coach sales leader will never be successful.
4. Companies need to invest significantly more in marketing. Bringing in an experienced sales leader won’t result in more sales if you have an existing pipeline problem. Invest in marketing and fix your pipeline problem first. 
5. Prospects have become highly sophisticated in the buying process and want clear information from your company available to them. Start with your website and make it easy to understand. 
6. Sales professionals are closers. They don’t want your leads. They want REAL opportunities that need to be worked. 
7. Most sales quotas are spreadsheet exercises based on how much the company theoretically wants to grow rather than how much growth is realistic. Financial targets shouldn’t be created in a vacuum without significant input from your sales, marketing, and customer success leaders. 
8. Don’t underestimate the impact of personal communication such as handwritten thank-you notes.

In this GTM Advice episode, Maureen West, VP of Marketing at Brillion, answers a fast round of questions and shares her go-to-market advice with you. 

Check out how Maureen answered the following questions:

1. What is the biggest go-to-market challenge that exists today? How would you tackle this challenge?
2. Where would you focus your efforts if you had limited resources and had to drive immediate results?
3. How do you ensure there is alignment across all go-to-market functional teams? (i.e. sales, marketing, product, and customer success)
4. What’s the one “dirty little secret” in go-to-market that nobody talks about, but everyone needs to know? 
5. What do you think is the biggest misconception about having a career in go-to-market? 
6. What is one skill that all GTM professionals need to have mastered to be successful? 
7. What is one thing you wish you knew sooner? 
8. What is one piece of advice you would give to someone looking to grow their career in go-to-market?

Product marketing is one of the most misunderstood roles in SaaS. Most companies avoid hiring the role until they’ve achieved millions in ARR. There is an ongoing debate on where product marketing should lie with the most common answers being product or marketing. Product marketers are often seen as the creators of countless slide decks and old-school sell sheets. It’s an interesting dichotomy because product marketing should actually be at the center of everything a SaaS company does. So, what should the role of product marketing look like?  

That’s why we’re talking with Maureen West, VP of Marketing at Brillion, an accomplished product marketing leader with over 15 years of experience in the B2B SaaS industry. She has a proven track record of driving company growth by developing and executing go-to-market strategies, streamlining product launches, and building strong relationships across teams. Maureen excels at creating integrated marketing campaigns, enabling sales teams, and conducting market analysis to refine product positioning and messaging. She’s also held leadership positions at various companies, including Cytel, Uberflip, 6sense, Conga, and Emarsys. 

In this episode, Stephanie and Maureen talk about why product marketing should report directly to the CEO, the biggest misconceptions around product launches, how to create messaging that resonates with buyers, and so much more. 

Key Takeaways:

1. Product marketing should be the first marketing-related hire. You can’t build demand for a product no one effectively understands. That’s why you need to hire a product marketer first. 
2. Product marketing should report to the CEO. Not product. Not marketing. Directly to the CEO.
3. Brand marketers and product marketing should work collaboratively to build the brand 
4. Use your customer’s language on your website. Stop trying to be creative with words. Talk like your customers. 
5. Stop making slides. Buyers don’t want them. Sales doesn’t love them either. Have a conversation instead. If your product requires slides to explain, then your messaging needs work. 
6. Continuous software deployment can lead to a lack of accountability and challenges with planning product launches. 
7. Product launches should last 90 days and align with your business goals. Don't have a product launch just to have one. 

In this GTM Advice episode, Kate VanLue, VP of Revenue at AudiencePlus, answers a fast round of questions and shares her go-to-market advice with you. 

Check out how Kate answered the following questions:

1. What is the biggest go-to-market challenge that exists today? How would you tackle this challenge?
2. Where would you focus your efforts if you had limited resources and had to drive immediate results?
3. How do you ensure there is alignment across all go-to-market functional teams? (i.e. sales, marketing, product, and customer success)
4. What’s the one “dirty little secret” in go-to-market that nobody talks about, but everyone needs to know? 
5. What do you think is the biggest misconception about having a career in go-to-market? 
6. What is one skill that all GTM professionals need to have mastered to be successful? 
7. What is one thing you wish you knew sooner? 
8. What is one piece of advice you would give to someone looking to grow their career in go-to-market?