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

great marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.

I'm Erica Seidel, your host.

About eighteen months ago, I got a call from a SaaS fintech company

in Nashville called Ncontracts.

They wanted a new marketing leader.

I was a bit nervous about doing the search because my network in Nashville

is not huge, but I'm so glad I did.

I ended up placing Guy Weismantel into that role; he

transplanted himself from Seattle.

The company has doubled since then.

Guy joins us today.

You'll hear some great lessons about scaling, like when to

fight the urge to move too fast.

You'll also learn two questions that you can ask as a CMO candidate to diagnose

how the board views marketing and how not to get offended when board members

don't understand what marketing can do.

We talk about the Moneyball hiring approach for a scale-up

and Guy shares what I think is my favorite quote so far: "Pipeline

doesn't pay the bills; ARR does."

Let's get to it.

Guy, it's great to have you on the show.

Welcome!

Thanks, Erica.

Thanks for having me.

I'm really excited to talk to you today.

This is fun.

I'd love to get right into it and ask you maybe to talk about

a few mistakes to avoid when scaling a marketing function for a B2B SaaS company.

So if somebody is a little bit earlier in their CMO journey than you have been

in your career, what kind of mistakes or hard-won learnings can you share that

stick out to you from your experiences?

Yeah, I've certainly made a few along the journey and

anything I could pass along to someone that can avoid I'm really happy to do.

One of the things that I think is just an impulse for all of us that take on

marketing roles and, you know, see a big opportunity in front of us is a little

bit to try to do too much too soon.

And that sounds a little bit counterproductive because when

you're trying to scale, you are trying to get a lot done.

There's always an interesting analogy like a caterpillar can only move

as fast as its back legs, right?

Like the front legs make one move really, really fast, but it can only

go as fast as the back legs are going.

And I think there's a tendency, I know I've certainly had it, to think,

oh, I'm here, we need to invest in a ton of tech and invest in a ton

of people and really start to scale.

And, in a lot of cases, the org is not quite ready or can't

handle that much change that fast.

And so you have this idea of scaling means more or bigger or faster

and could actually mean doing more things under the waterline

to allow you to move faster later.

And so, the bright, shiny object to get the new toys and get the things

that help you get better attribution - you just want to start doing all

these things so you can go faster.

But in my experience sometimes, you know, they can fall over, like you

don't have someone to implement those tools or who's going to administer those

tools, or is the data even actionable out of these things that you buy?

Or, you want to invest in a person, but do you have enough for them to

do or the right thing for them to do?

And so I think that's a mistake I've made where you just go, okay, I get

it, let's go, but sometimes taking a breath and kind of assessing, you

know, what is going to work in this org, in the structure that I'm in and

what can I be effective implementing?

That's kind of one.

A bigger one, and it'll sound cliched, but making sure you're aligned on

scale, what scale means to your CEO, to your CRO and even to the

board, I think is super important.

Because again, we can attach ourselves to, I need to double growth or triple

this, and I go, okay, great, let me go put a plan together to do that.

But I think when I hear that, like I've learned to just take a beat and go,

okay, well, what does that really mean?

Like how do we think about doing that and how are we beyond

marketing resources to get there?

Because it's client services, do we have people to implement the product?

Do we have people to support the product?

And so I, you know, sales and marketing can maybe grow, but if the rest of

the org isn't aligned with that, I mean, you can get yourself in trouble.

And I've seen that where you oversell, you over promise, and then you can't deliver.

And so scale is not just about how many new marketing campaigns or ads we get

into the market to try to generate leads.

It's about can the organization keep up and are you all

aligned on what that means?

You know, what I've also found is that as marketers, we tend to want to move

fast, but the rest of the org maybe has a little bit different expectation.

And so doubling the growth, it might not mean in the next year, maybe

it's over the next eighteen months.

So really understanding what that looks like.

And then, I think that the last is, really, what you're capable of achieving.

Again, we feel like we're super men, super women, that we can kind of do it all, but

there are just some things that a scale involves that we're not resourced for.

We don't have the things in place that are gonna allow us to achieve those things.

I know I've gotten in over my head by over promising, thinking I can do it

all, when actually there are just other pieces that I don't have access to or I

can't get in place that inhibit scale.

So I think those are some learnings that I've picked up along the way.

But I think that tendency to want to, almost like tortoise and hare,

like just run, you know, you start going after the scale, right away.

Slowing down a little bit and understanding, okay, what do

we need to put in place now?

What can we live with?

A lot of times it's almost smarter to survey the scene and kind of

go, okay, what people do I have?

Maybe there's people not in my org, but they're in the

organization that can help me.

What tools are maybe we not utilizing that are sitting on the shelf that I

can repurpose and use rather than just buying another license for something?

And I think that's where I probably got smarter in my job is, you know,

allow myself to, even with aggressive goals and aggressive targets, to kind

of take a step back, take a breath, almost let the game come to you.

Like a lot of veterans sports people, they don't rush out.

They go okay, what am I seeing here?

And the ability to assess that I think is going to ultimately help

you scale faster going forward.

That's what I've learned.

I love that.

I love this kind of go slow to go fast, almost.

And I like what you're talking about aligning on what scale means.

Can you double click on that?

Like how should a marketing leader tackle that conversation or set of

conversations, most likely, within the company on what scale means?

Because it's the marketing leader is often the chief diplomat of the

organization, you know, aligning everybody like a shuttle diplomat.

I always like to think of a CMO that way.

What do those conversations need to look like for them to be successful?

I think it's a really interesting point because

scale means different things to different people, right?

And so, we may say, hey, we want to double our ARR in the next twelve months.

Maybe there's new products that are going to come to market and help us grow faster.

Is there a new part of the addressable market that we're not in right now

that we've got to develop awareness and give it air cover to sales

so they are able to sell easier?

There's a lot of variables that go into scale and I reference in just

what we were saying, you know, what's the rest of the organization, how

are they going to support this scale?

Our NPS starts tanking and we have to start having a lot more churn, that's

as big an issue as growing the top line that our board's going to care about if

stuff's falling out the bottom as well.

So I think the key is you're going to be part of that executive team, like

really all understand what it's going to take or what do we have at our

disposal that can help us achieve the scale that maybe the board is saying,

hey, here's what we want to have you guys go do in the next 12-24 months.

As a newer person on the team, where I came into a team that was together for

awhile, it was in my best interest to listen to their experience on what they'd

been able to achieve before I got there and leverage that a little bit more.

And I think the other, you know, it's not a mistake, but it is a learning

that goes with this is, again, there's a tendency to if you're the

new person you've got to prove that you can scale with everybody else.

But I think kind of taking out that hat a little bit and going, okay, well,

how can I leverage about of things that have already being done that I

can either do better or more of, or just let someone else take the lead

on some of these things and sit in the passenger chair and help them drive scale?

And I mentioned product specifically because in many cases on marketing,

it's our job to, you know, whether it's getting a product in market or to

find a new market and push the pedal down on getting more opportunities

in the hands of the sales people, but in many cases, the product team has

done a lot of this thinking already.

They already have the roadmap that you don't have to build

something from scratch.

They've already identified who the ICP is and the customer feedback as they're

going through the development process.

And instead of me creating that from scratch, we can scale faster if I

leverage the work that this team has been working on for the last twelve

months to get this product out.

So there are lots of little examples and I think making sure everyone

is aligned on how we go achieve it and not just the CEO going, hey,

we're going to go make this number.

That's the worst case, right?

You've got to have everyone bought in and as a marketer, to

your point, our work touches all these other different departments.

And so if we can get everyone to understand the gives and takes and who's

going to be lead, and who's going to be second chair of how we help scale because

marketing will be the lead sometimes and helping other times, supporting.

That's super important to get everyone on the same page.

Again, it is a little bit more like, hey, let's take a beat and make sure

we all know what this looks like, and then we're off to the races.

I think sometimes there's a tendency to just be like, hey, I figured out the

plan of how we're going to go do this.

And it has nothing to do with, you know, what everyone else is thinking.

And that was something I certainly did early in my career as well.

You also had this great analogy when we talked before about

scaling being like Tarzan on a swing where you're going from one edge of the river

to the, I don't know if it was a river, but like this idea of sticking with,

you know, sometimes this is the theme of going slow to go fast, but sticking with

the tools and processes of yesterday and stretching them as far as they can go.

Then, you know, that might be some people, some tools and processes versus

jump to the next iteration of them.

And I think that's just an interesting way to think about it.

Do you think that's common for people to think about it that way?

You know, I don't know.

I must have been watching the Jungle Cruise with my son or something and picked

it up, but I'm like, it's an interesting cause I think it's our tendancy, with

10,000 marketing tools out there and, you know, a lot of different best practices

that we're, oh, we should do that.

Oh, they ran this campaign.

Let's run this campaign too and try it.

The shiny object syndrome in marketing is as great as it has probably ever been in,

in the history of the discipline, right?

So there's always a new thing to go try or to go do.

And I just learned, like Tarzan, you can't stay on the branch too long, right?

Because your arm gets tired.

The goal is to get to the other side of the river, but I think there's some

wisdom and value in not just grabbing the next branch that comes along.

Because I think, then, I won't torture the metaphor any further, but I think

sometimes doing that, you actually end up farther off the path than you would

if you just waited a little bit longer.

Because the way that, not only marketing, but business changes so quickly that

sometimes making too many short-term decisions just to show advancement or

show progress or "see I'm doing my part to help scale" actually gets you in a

corner where you've got to back out and now I've got to rehire, I've got to

retool, or I've got to revert back to what we were doing, cause this didn't work.

And so, I've seen that, you know, certainly friends and

peers that that's happened to.

I've done it myself.

And I think there is some benefit to hanging back a little bit.

And not, again, you need to get to the next branch, but it's not just

the next one you've got to go grab.

And that's not, the next email you get from some tech vendor that

says we can improve this by 25%.

It's like, oh yeah, we want 25%.

Let's go do that.

And that's how I try to think about these things and evaluate them with

the eye on yeah, I've got to get across that river at some point here.

Yeah.

It's so funny.

At the risk of killing this metaphor, it's like sometimes you swing up the riverbank

as opposed to across to the otherside.

Yeah, or you just miss it altogether.

And that happens, but it's not in our nature to go slow as marketing

because marketing moves so fast.

There's so much data.

There's so much insight that we should be able to glean, but

trends are different - think fads.

Like fads are like the supernova just happens and you're like,

oh my gosh, look at this thing that's happening, let's pivot.

A trend is something that just happens a little bit over a

longer period of time, right?

So if I can not just overreact to the thing that just happened, but okay, let's

see if it happened again and then twice, maybe it isn't a fluke and then three

times, okay, now we've got something here.

Now let's go do it.

And I can back that up with data.

And if it's me going to my CEO saying, hey, I need another X number

of dollars to go fund this, I'll have the data points cause I'll have

waited to see yep, this is something I think we can really go exploit and

that's going to help us go faster.

That's a conversation that any CEO or board is going to want to have

with you when you can show up having waited and seen it through, and

maybe done some testing to get there.

But you are confident in and you're backed up by what you saw

and then they're going to want to pour some gas on the fire for you.

And that's the best part.

Can you talk about how the board questions marketing change

as you go from, say, fifteen million all the way up to a hundred million?

They do change.

You know, you have a different, I want to use this word carefully,

but a different type of investor.

I was going to say quality, and it's not that people aren't smart at any level,

but why they're on the board, the return they're looking to get, the holding

period they're looking to get, the pace at which they want to scale, all those

things can be very different as you are at companies of different levels.

I've been lucky enough in the career that I've been able to build to have some

experiences at these different levels.

Part of the change that you tend to see is in the depth in the strategic nature of

what the board's actually looking to do.

Of course earlier stage, assuming you've proven out the product

market fit and you've got a market and you have some infrastructure.

I'm not talking about maybe you're the first marketer of a three-person

company, you know, but going concern.

We said fifteen million, that's a going concern company.

That's a product that's growing fast, but that's still a little bit

more tactical in terms of how we take advantage of a new market that

we're in that we can get market share and get to the top of the mountain.

And as you get farther up, what I've noticed, is you have

a different type of investor.

You tend to get out of the VC world and into the private equity world.

Those folks are holding for a different reason than a VC that's trying to get

maybe a little bit shorter return.

And so they're going to care about shorter return metrics.

If a P firm is in the typical five, three to five-year holding period,

they're going to want to see what's the progression during the time that

we have ownership of this company?

If it's longer, shorter, whatever, but just average.

How are you guys building to help us hit the ultimate goal?

We've got some time to get there.

We don't have to get it all in the first twenty-four months.

But that's also, as you get in the higher end, you know, for marketers

looking to take advantage of those opportunities or get into those

opportunities, the expectation of the CMO is also very different as well.

Again, at an earlier stage, they are looking for someone who tactically can

help get the programs in market that can help achieve that growth, partner with

sales, and really go grab marketshare cause that's really what you're all about.

But when you get into that 50 to 100, you know, they're looking for marketers

that are going to come with some sort of a playbook, some sort of a vision,

some sort of a way to know, hey, here's how you do scale this organization.

It's not just putting more campaigns and more ad dollars in marketing.

It's the integrated process of how you use all the marketing engines at your

disposal because by 50 million you should have most of them at your disposal.

You may not be running Dreamforce type of events, but you're going to

have opportunities to engage with your prospects and your customers,

and in many, many different ways versus when you're really small,

you've just got a few channels.

Then, you know that you're probably going to be able to

afford to get in front of them on.

So having this ability to get in sync, in alignment with your CEO,

with the board, of what this growth looks like and how you can lead the

marketing organization to help achieve it becomes increasingly important.

At a smaller level, they're not going to ask you to detail the

playbook and present out the plan.

At a larger level, like where I've been placed and, you know, other

companies, they want you to arrive and they want to see your thinking.

They don't necessarily care about the answer.

It's like the teacher who wants to see your work and they don't care as much

if the answer was a little bit wrong.

But they want to see how do you plan to help them get there?

And again, it doesn't have to all be in the first six weeks of you

arriving, but they want to see how you're going to be able to do it.

And that's the big difference as you get a little bit bigger, you've

got to, you know the cliche, you've got to have seen the play before.

You don't have to know everything about everything.

It's impossible in marketing.

But you do have to know where you've got blind spots or weak spots.

And if they happen to be areas that you think are going to be important to the

growth of the company and to the scale of the company, how you hire people

around you, how you fill those gaps, how you think about addressing them.

Because we all come to these roles if we're interviewing

as imperfect candidates, very, you know, none of us have every

single thing and check in the box.

There's always something that they're going to want to do that we haven't

done before, we haven't done for awhile.

So part of this scaling exercise is showing them how you fill those

gaps and how you can take advantage of them as well going forward.

They'll want to see that.

Once they see that, then you've got that adherent alignment once

you're on the other side of the fence in the role to have them help

you implement it because this is the plan that you kind of laid out.

This is the approach that you think you want to take.

Now, when they see the tactics behind that, it's going to make a lot more sense

and you'll have that buy in right away.

And that expectation is there when you get it to a higher level, it's

something you can kind of work concurrently with the board, you

know, in smaller type of companies.

You're not making it up as you go along, but you are developing

it as the company grows.

Versus as you got to scale from like 50 to a hundred that's way

different than scaling from 10 to 15.

And so that playbook and that background in that the understanding

of how you help the company get there is super, super important.

That's so interesting because I've been thinking a lot about

the playbook versus adaptability and how I think there's this sweet spot.

And you're right at different points and from different investors, you know,

you have a different expectation for that playbook, but you also want to

show that adaptability to the situation because every situation is different.

And one question that I heard from somebody which I've started asking

myself before I take on a search and also I suggest candidates ask this

is what are the questions that came up at the last board meeting about

marketing that you struggled to answer?

Because that way, if you're a CMO candidate interviewing with a CEO,

you get a sense of what the level of discussion is and what the big

question marks are and you can kind of fill in the blanks and go from there.

I love that.

I think that's so true.

I think at a level where you're coming into these roles, you're going to be

interviewing with the board anyway, right?

You're going to be in front of the board and the CEO.

So I think getting in that head of the CEO of what role marketing needs to play

in the growth of the company is super important as you think about joining.

I'm very lucky that I work for a CEO, hasn't always been the case, but it

certainly is here, someone who really views marketing as a part of our

growth story and the growth engine.

It's not in support of, you know, does it roll up to sales or roll up to the CEO?

It's got a seat at the table.

It's a full partner in how we scale our organization.

I think that's super important to look for.

But the corollary to that is as you talk to the board, or the CEO, same

thing, what are you looking for?

Like, what questions do you look for the CMO to be able to answer?

Or what do you expect from marketing in this role?

And those could be scary cause, you know, I've been in some areas where I'm not

sure I know how to answer that question.

That's not a question I've actually had before.

So how would I answer that?

And that can be like, yeah, maybe I just want to stay away from that question.

And I would say no.

The opposite.

You've got to lean into finding out what is on the minds of the key board people.

If they have those board people interviewing you, that's who's going to

be questioning you in the board meeting.

Because that's the person who's going to be closest to marketing,

they may be a marketing expert.

They may have past experience being a marketer.

So they're interviewing you for a reason.

So really getting into their heads and understanding how do you know

that marketing is performing?

What does good look like?

What about your other portfolio companies?

What does a great marketing presentation look like?

Kind of get into their heads.

And then, to your point, what has been missing?

You're obviously hiring for this role for a reason.

What are you not getting from marketing that you are looking for this role to

help fulfill and actually exceed on?

If you can get that, that's going to be part of, you know, hopefully

if you get to present to the board, or present to the management team,

incorporate that into your presentation.

But even more importantly, if you're going to put together a 30-60-90 plan as you

get onboard, making sure that you know how to go answer those questions, or you

have the prioritization to go get those questions or those metrics answered.

So you can at least establish a baseline and then go, okay, we're here, I know

we've got to get here, now let's put the plan together cause we know that this

is actually what we need to go measure.

And sometimes scale is about just understanding the starting

point or what hasn't happened.

And again, going back to what I started with, sometimes we've got these grand

visions of what we've actually got to achieve and once you do the math, it's

like, oh, actually we're not that bad.

We just aren't showing it the right way.

Or we just haven't thought about this in the right way.

We don't have to increase by a hundred percent, we have to increase by thirty,

and that's still a lot, but it's not as impossible as you might think.

So I think that alignment with the board is hyper-critical.

We all know that, we read the stats that CMOs tend to have a shorter

tenure in the executive suite than some of our counterparts.

But I think one of the ways we can overcome that is by getting on the

same page before we come in the door with the CEO, to your point, and

the board to understand what those expectations are, and then make

sure we're going to be resourced to actually achieve those expectations.

And then that allows us to scale.

So a question, say you have that conversation with the board

members and you say, what's your expectation of marketing and what

you get back as something absurdly, tactical or absurdly, you know, 'make

it pretty' department, or what have you.

Do you recommend that a CMO candidate should say, pardon my French, "Screw

that, I don't want to do this job because their vision is not mine?"

Or, do you recommend they try to evolve that perception in the interview process?

That's a really interesting way to think about that

because there is a strain of thought, which is if you're just wanting a

good-looking website and you think our brand colors should be, you know, red

and green instead of blue and gold, then that may not be the job for you.

Right?

And so there are jobs like that.

But again, that goes back to what role does marketing

actually play in the growth?

And if it's those types of questions, then the board maybe isn't thinking

of marketing as this growth engine.

But I do think there is also this other side, which, you know, I

will speak in generalities here.

We shouldn't expect, sometimes I think we do expect, as marketers, the board to know

everything about marketing, like they're in-depth on what all these metrics are.

And they're not, and they shouldn't be.

They're in charge of the whole company, not just marketing, even though there

may be someone on the board who has the background, they're thinking of the

company as a whole entity, not the parts.

So it is our job to say, hey, you're looking at this metric and I want to talk

about that metric, but also here's why we actually are not emphasizing that.

We're actually emphasizing this.

And this is why we think this is more meaningful to us.

I think it's a both-and type of answer.

Yeah, if they just care about how many NQLs are you generating for sales.

Like, okay, it's up by 10%, check the box, Mark Green's doing his job.

That's not marketing these days.

We all know that.

But I do think there is an opportunity to increase our own stature, increase our

credibility with this audience, extend our tenure by leading the board on a journey

of where we're scaling, where we're taking them, and what metrics we are able to

demonstrate are actually contributing to the growth of this business.

And we shouldn't be upset or offended that they may not know those

metrics to the depth of the level or be thinking of them like we are.

That is our job to educate them and not be like, "Well, of course you would

look at this metric or this metric."

Or, "Why are you looking at that metric?

That doesn't matter."

They're bringing their own biases, their own experiences, what happens

at their other companies, you know, to this discussion and part of our

job is to help bring them along on our journey and show them what this number

means and the impact of this number on the pipeline or on the ARR or whatever

the metric is that we're going after.

I think it's both.

Sometimes we don't do a good job of that as marketers because we get offended that

they don't understand our discipline.

And then you kind of have this chasm that develops between the board doesn't

think marketing is doing a good job, marketing is working their butts

off to go ahead and be successful.

But I think there's a middle ground that we can both achieve.

Can you talk about budgets and, you know, has it ever been hard to

get more budget to support the marketing to itself support greater scale?

And any hard-won learnings about that?

Probably more just battle scars on budgeting.

I think we all are, you know, there's just an inherent marketing

as cost center type of mentality that exists in a lot of places.

There's marketing should only get this percent of revenue because

that's what, you know, some analyst firm says it should be this percent.

I think that is part of our job as leaders to educate CEOs, executive

teams, boards on what it's going to take to actually help marketing achieve

the growth goals of the organization.

There's not a hard and fast rule if you are a $10 million company

versus the $100 million company, like you're going to spend differently.

Are you in a growth mode?

Are you in the last year of the private equity company owning you

and they want to show more profit?

Like guess what?

You're getting a budget cut guys.

We're going to be on maximum efficiency in that last year of ownership.

That's just how the cycles go.

So I think that that's where data plays a huge, huge part.

And again, if the cliche understanding is well, marketing I know I throw money

in, but I don't know how it comes out.

I don't know what we're getting for this.

Our ability to associate and get down into the channel and understand, not

just vanity metrics like impressions, even leads, like even pipeline.

Pipeline's great, but actually what turned into ARR?

Like what actually was a booking?

Because even I see people now where it's like, you know, I get we don't

want to just do leads and it's not, you know, how many clicks, it's pipeline.

I'm like, yeah, it is, but actually pipeline doesn't pay the bills.

It's only ARR that pays the bills.

And ultimately, if I can show by investing here, this is what does actually come

out the other side, not just in pipeline, which is also around sales efficiency and

effectiveness, it's not, you know, far less on marketing, but part of a revenue

team, if we want another 100K to invest, I can put it in another sales rep or I

can put it in these marketing programs.

What's the best ROI that actually results in a closed one opportunity?

An ARR, like our ability to trace that through and be able to say, I'm going

to put 50K of it in this, I'm gonna put 25 here and 25 here, and here's what

I know is going to come up the other side with reasonable certainty, that's

going to help you in budget season.

It's going to help you if you want to go after more and not just be stuck

with, oh, you only get X percent cause that's what we always do, and it's

also going to protect you from other people poaching your budget from other

departments because it guess what?

They need more developers.

They need more, you know, success people.

They need more, they're always going to need other people.

And marketing, because we tend to have big numbers in big buckets

like events and advertising.

And it's like, we'll just cut 10% from advertising and we can - No,

if you do that, this is what's going to happen to the lead flow.

This is what, the more you can understand the data and the impact of the levers you

can pull, that's going to make you - You know, we're in budget season right now.

So it's the time where I come armed now with information.

And yes, I want to be a team player.

Yes, we have trade-offs.

Yes, I can't get everything that I put in my first draft, which is just the

kitchen sink, but I know how to defend and what, you know, what is very meaningful.

If we're going to make a trade off, this is the impact of that trade off.

And I think as CMOs, heads of marketing, we've got to know the data because

otherwise marketing is just this glob of money that people go, well, let's just cut

marketing because we don't, you know, we don't know what we're getting out of it.

Let's pivot now into org and hiring.

Now, you are in a situation where you guys have acquired multiple companies,

as I recall, since I placed you there.

Yeah.

Can you talk about maybe an org decision that you made that worked

out well as you went through the scaling and acquiring climb?

You know, when you're a fast-growing company

but still pretty small, we just crossed 300 people at our company.

So we're not huge, but we're growing really, really fast, partly by

acquisition, as you mentioned, and just organically as well,

just our business is growing.

One of the things that I think I've gotten better at is not just

having an eye for talent, but setting up a talent or an org model.

I think that there's, you know, again, a tendency early in the career, it's

like, I want an all-star team, right?

I want five Michael Jordans.

I want people that are just the best at what they do.

And when you're a smaller company, I mean, heck when I was

at Microsoft, you don't have the budget to hire five Michael Jordans.

But especially, you know, in this fast-growing B2B SaaS world, I think one

of the biggest things I've learned is to really place some chips on some people

that can be with you over the longterm and understand that that's going to eat

up a good part of your people budget, your personnel budget, and be willing to live

with some role-players or people earlier in their career who are going to be

more tactical and just more functionally focused and kind of fill them in.

You know, the analogy, I think we've talked about this in the past that I

love the book and the movie Moneyball, and I think as CMOs for this size of

company that's growing really fast, but is still not huge, the analogy really

applies because I don't have the budget to hire five rockstars who have fifteen

years of experience and, you know, want a ton of money and all the things.

I can hire a couple of those people.

And so I need those people that can help you scale faster and who know how

to hire and have a good eye for talent as well as super, super critical.

Because I think we've done a pretty good job, pat myself on the back, I'll

hurt my arm by trying to reach over.

But, you know, finding really great people who are more tenured and then

finding hungry people who want to make a mark and want to learn something.

Like one of the realities of our labor market these days, and the tech market

in general, is just very few people last at a company their whole careers.

That's not a reality anymore.

So, you know, we really focus a lot more, especially when we're finding

people early in their career, what is the experience you're looking to get?

What are you looking to get out of this experience?

What does this experience help you do better?

And if you can find someone who's hungry to learn, who knows something about a

particular area, they might be really good at digital marketing and they really

want to get into the demand gen side, but they want to leverage those skills.

I love those people.

I can coach them, I can teach them.

We can have the director-level people kind of mentor them and scale them up.

I'm lucky enough to have a bunch of those people on the team.

But I also know, and we're very upfront with each other, like, hey, we're going to

be together for a portion of your career.

You've got a long career ahead of you.

My goal is to make this experience a really memorable one for you.

One that you look back and go, that was a fun team.

I learned a lot.

I really had a chance to try a bunch of things and it helped shape me to

be a marketing leader of the future.

I try not to be too sappy about it, but I do think there is merit when you

get to be a marketing leader, like one of the things I do is coach and give

references for people who work for me, who are getting to that level now.

And so I try to put the team together in such a way where I can invest in some

really higher talents, more experienced people who can help me with that

coaching and then fill in with people who have that ambition but are team

players that want to help the team win.

And as they spin out, and sometimes I'm having that conversation with them,

like, hey, you're going to get out of the nest here in the next six months,

so let's work on what that looks like.

Or they come to me and go, hey, I found this great opportunity.

I gotta go do it.

And I'd be like, yeah, you've got to go do that.

I would do that too.

That's great.

But we know that we're going to have this time together, so

how do we make the most of it?

I think getting those questions up ahead of time will help you

put the right pieces in place.

And it doesn't always work.

You know, especially with acquired companies, like you're inheriting

talent you didn't really have a say in it, and if that's the case,

your job is to do a few things.

Like, first of all, have empathy for them coming into a brand new situation.

They didn't ask for this.

They didn't have a say in it.

So now they've got to adjust to a whole new process and

team and boss and expectations.

But I think in those cases, just being transparent, being consistent

between the acquired people and the team that you have so they see this

as there's no special treatment or there's not anything different about it.

And then, you know, as fast as you can, get them up to speed on what

the team's expectations are, is a great way to evaluate if that talent

can come along for the ride or, you know, in some cases they're just

not culturally or just not hardwired how you are going to run your team.

I love a lot of these points.

You know, it makes me think of that book, The Start-up of You by Reid

Hoffman, who talks about the tour of duty and how it's okay to not be at

a company for ten or thirty years.

And I like this idea of creating a nice nest because I think what

candidates are looking for these days, it's really different.

It's like you hire the whole person.

In a sense they want a family, you know, everybody's looking more at culture.

And I've been thinking about, maybe I should start writing job specs where it

starts about the culture and the kind of values of the company, and then gets

into what the company actually does.

Because I think that's what people care about more.

And I think I could just picture you with all of your personality and

oomph, you know, just saying hey, like really earnestly, I want to be the

place that gives you what you want for the next phase of your career.

That alone is huge as opposed to "Tell me why we should hire you," you know?

Yeah, exactly.

Like my dad used to hire, right?

We're redesigning our career site, our current web page, so we're meeting

with the HR team yesterday, and I would say 75% of that hour was on how do we

communicate how important culture is and the great culture we have here?

Everyone is just genuinely excited to be working with each other

and it really is a place where no one's going to stab me in the back.

Everyone really is out for the right reasons.

Like, it's great.

It hasn't always been, you know, I've worked at places where it hasn't

always been that way, so I'm very appreciative, but I think you're right.

Especially today, where there's another job, there's eight jobs you could take.

Like it's not, there's a - it's a very candidate friendly right now.

And a lot of CMOs in my role, I'm not going to be able to compete with Amazons

and the, you know, the Oracles and the Microsofts, like that's a different job.

If you want to get that experience, I'd say go get it.

I got it.

And I'm glad I have it in my background.

So you should go do that.

Cause that's not who I'm going to, I'm not going to worry about it.

If that's really where you want to go, then you go try that.

But I do think more and more it is about what does this experience look like for

you and how does this help you achieve what you want to go do in your career?

Because that is really what we're about here, and we're

going to have fun doing it.

We're going to make some mistakes.

We're going to learn a lot.

And again, the goal is, and this is self-serving, but I've probably been

on, I know I can count on three amazing teams in my career that I was a part of,

not necessarily leading, and it's people I still go on vacations with, you know,

I'm in text strings with, and we still share information with cause we had this

really great shared experience together.

And that's what I try to create for my teams as well.

And I think people today, especially, whether you're here in Nashville, where

I am, or, you know, I'm interviewing you in Seattle, and you know, and

you're still interviewing for the job, I want you to feel like you

are going to be a part of the scene.

You're a full member, no matter where you are, you don't have to be

in the office to feel like you're going to be a part of the experience

that we're going to create together.

And I think that's important for how you feel about filling your team as well.

Do people respond to that?

Are they in that for the right reasons?

And then you have to take all that in consideration before you hire as well.

Awesome.

This has been fabulous.

I've learned so much, so thank you so much for being on the show, Guy.

I loved it, Erica.

Thanks for everything you do.

And I love this podcast and the community that you built, and I

really just feel thankful on this day to be talking to you today.

So thank you very much.

That was Guy Weismantel, the chief marketer from Nashville's

fintech SaaS darling Ncontracts, sharing some great tips on scaling.

Next time on The Get, you'll hear from someone who did a marketing

transformation, a rebranding, and an IPO process - all at the same time.

Join us next time to hear from Justin Steinman, the

CMO at Definitive Healthcare.

Thanks for listening to The Get.

I'm your host, Erica Seidel.

Hiring great marketing leaders is not easy.

The Get is designed to inspire 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 Solving for the Scale Journey.

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For other insights on recruiting great marketing leaders, what I

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