June 5, 2025 • 15 mins
In this special episode of Sales Pipeline Radio from the Forrester B2B Summit 2025 marketplace floor, Matt spoke with Jim Williams, CMO at Uptempo.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Matt Heinz (00:16):
All right, back here.
Day two, Forrester B2B Summiton the marketplace floor.
Thanks again to Forresterfor making this possible.
I think this is our 12th recording,Jim so far here the last couple days.
Just got an amazing amount of content.
So we've got some analysts,got some ROI award winners.
Lots of CMOs, including you.
Jim Williams, CMO at Uptempo.
Thanks for stopping by.
Jim Williams (00:34):
Thanks for having me, Matt.
Matt Heinz (00:35):
Excited to see you here.
As always, you guys have an activationacross the street doing a bunch of
panels and sessions on your own.
Wanna talk about today, this relationshipbetween the go-to market teams and finance
because that is not always a, let'ssay, productive, positive conversation.
Yeah.
Maybe start with why is there somuch friction between those teams?
And why does that persist?
Jim Williams (00:56):
Yeah.
It's really a really goodquestion and it's a topic that
I'm pretty passionate about.
Why am I passionate about that?
First, I'm with Uptempo and we providemarketing planning and spend management
software, budget management software.
Yep.
It's funny, one of the, uh, sessionsthat we had here focused squarely on this
disconnect between marketing and finance.
Mm-hmm.
And we were talking earlier aboutlike, hey, it used to be about a
(01:18):
disconnect between marketing and sales.
You spent the last 15 yearstrying to patch that up.
Yep.
With agreements, frameworks,and SLAs and everything else.
But that investment has notbeen made in the relationship
between marketing and finance.
So what you end up with is marketersand certainly sales and other folks
that really don't understand thebasics of financial management.
Right.
(01:38):
Much less the specifics of whatyour FP&A team, your controller,
actually has to deal with.
And lot of wasted time,poor forecast accuracy.
Mm-hmm.
Wasted spend.
Mm-hmm.
Lack of trust, disconnects, et cetera.
You know, the financeteam views marketing.
I'll be specific to marketing.
You're talking about go to market team?
Yeah.
So kind of views marketing aslike, you know, the children Yeah.
(02:03):
That can't get their shit together.
Yeah.
Once a month to close the books.
So they come with a stack of spreadsheetsthat have errors in them, or the wrong
versions, or whatever the case may be.
And don't even have basic visibilityinto the state of their spend.
Matt Heinz (02:19):
And when we don't solve for that, what happens is you've got marketers
that don't have trust from finance.
You've got marketers that to financelook like you're just spending money
willy nilly and not having fiscalresponsibility for the business.
So when you come back and want moremoney, of course the answer's no.
Like even if you come back say, oh, I needto focus on demand gen, or, oh, we need to
go after this new market, like that soundsgreat, but that is a nebulous objective.
(02:42):
And I'm sitting here saying weonly have X amount of money.
Yeah.
What is it really gonna take to do that?
And so I feel like the planningprocess between marketing and
finance is completely disconnectedwithout better tools, processes,
systems to make that happen.
Jim Williams (02:55):
Yeah, totally.
That is definitely a challenge.
And it causes all types ofdownstream implications, right.
So.
Marketers in B2B, 'cause we're heretalking about B2B, like are myopically
focused on creating pipeline?
Mm-hmm.
Pipeline that convertsinto sales, obviously.
Yeah.
There is a lot of talk of ROI, like if youtalk to a marketer, they'll be like, oh
my God, we got great ROI on that campaign.
(03:16):
Right?
But they actually don'tcalculate return on investment.
And if they did, they don't actuallycalculate it against their actual
spend because a lot of times theydon't know their actual spend so.
There's the whole ROI in return you'regetting, but then that cascades and
a whole bunch of things, you know,like finance leaders want people to
think about their customer acquisitioncosts and marketers are far from
(03:37):
understanding the implications there.
Or salespeople just wanna know first,what are you doing to support me?
Mm-hmm.
Like what campaigns are yourunning to support me, my
territory, my products, et cetera.
Matt Heinz (03:48):
Right.
Jim Williams (03:48):
And marketers first of all have a hard time answering that.
Yeah.
'cause they don't have a calendar.
But even deeper, like they shouldbe able to say, actually we're
investing this amount of money todrive growth in your particular area.
Yeah.
And this is how we'veallocated to do that.
Matt Heinz (04:04):
That planning gap seems like something that should be solvable.
And I know Uptempo obviously hassolutions around that, but it gets
even harder when you get out of sortof the hard ROI quote unquote areas.
Like if I'm focusing on building pipeline,even if I'm not just counting on like
one channel versus another, even ifI say it's gonna take a body of work.
I need to invest in these fieldactivations, this conference, these
(04:25):
lists, these digital plays on this market.
Okay, that's still, you can addthose numbers together and say like,
does that give us enough pipeline?
Was it worth it?
Did it pan out?
Should we do it again?
Now you've got marketersstarting to talk this year about
reinvesting in brand and content.
Yeah.
And sort of the longer term plays, right?
So now we're saying, I've got moneyallocated in 2024 that I expect to
(04:45):
give back to the business over thenext two to three plus years, not
just in the next selling period.
Like how does that change the dynamicof planning and accountability
between marketing and finance?
Jim Williams (04:55):
It has a huge impact on us.
So like, it's funny what.
Brand is not only suddenly the new demand.
Mm-hmm.
I love that.
But again, put yourselfon the seat of a CFO.
They don't get into nuances of brandversus demand, versus reputation,
versus engagement, and much less havea way to manage their expectations
on the ROI for each of thoseclasses of marketing programs.
(05:18):
Mm-hmm.
And so, marketing needs to do that.
And it's really difficult to dothat if they don't understand
the basics of spend management.
Like, think about it, we have a customer,we just did a webinar with a company
named Reckitt, which by the way, I didn'tknow who Reckitt was, but they're Lysol.
They manage Lysol brands.
Matt Heinz (05:37):
Wow, okay.
Jim Williams (05:38):
Right.
And Durex Brands andother things like that.
They literally sell 30million products a day.
Yeah.
Pretty crazy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And this guy is basically runninga $700 million budget for North
America and trying to get to like0.005% forecast accuracy against it.
Wow.
You know, because 1% accuracyis $7 million of waste Yeah.
(06:00):
In that budget.
Yeah.
That's what finance is expecting.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And take those dollars and redirect'em to the highest performing channels.
And the way you figure that outobviously is connection between
financial allocation, marketing budgets,marketing planning, marketing results.
Mm-hmm.
To get to ROI.
Matt Heinz (06:18):
Got Jim Williams with us today, he's the CMO at Uptempo, and
talking about really planning andaccountability and following through
on what you said you're gonna do.
I mean, simple concepts that sortof are, I mean, again, without the
right systems, without the rightdiscipline, and without the right
tools, it becomes incredibly difficult.
I imagine you've seen some beforeand after interesting stories.
Of companies that have good intentionbut fail in the execution of that.
(06:43):
Can you talk about the before and after?
What that means in terms of thefinance, marketing relationship
and what it unlocks in terms ofmarketing, being able to really
accelerate its impact on the business?
Jim Williams (06:54):
Yeah, sure.
It's funny, we were doing these paneldiscussions and we have a customer
that we've been working with thatyou may be familiar with, Indeed.
Matt Heinz (07:01):
Oh, of course.
Yeah.
Jim Williams (07:02):
Yeah.
It's funny, I was talking withtheir chief of staff to the CMO
and she talked about the triggerevent, like the watershed moment.
Mm-hmm.
When the CMO was asked prettystraightforward question about
like, is the plan working?
Yeah.
Those are the hardest questions to answer.
Like so high, so nebulous.
Yeah.
It's like where do I start looking fordata to answer if the plan is working?
(07:24):
And when she went looking for the data,she realized that the plan is locked up
and dozens of spreadsheets, many versionsof PowerPoint, Slack messages, et cetera.
Yep.
There is no system of recordtoday in the modern business.
For, you might say marketing.
If you think about marketing as abusiness, there is not a system of
(07:45):
record for that much less a system ofrecord for where your official plans are.
Mm-hmm.
And if you don't have a systemof record, then how can this
large team be on the same page?
Yeah.
Be collaborating, et cetera.
Yeah.
And what do you do when youneed to change the plan?
Right.
Which plan are you changing?
Right.
Which is nonstop, right?
We're living the world, likethe era of nonstop pivots.
Yep.
So they went through a wholeprocess to redefine their planning.
(08:08):
Mm-hmm.
Not just through Uptempo.
They worked with all types of mm-hmm.
Experts around this.
And they did something like reduce theamount of documentation involved in
planning by, I think they said 60%.
Wow.
You know, like all of these spreadsheetsand PowerPoints at different groups
and field marketing teams areusing, et cetera, they did that.
They have a very rigid structure, ataxonomy and a hierarchy that describes
(08:32):
what their intent is, like wheredo they intend to spend the money?
Well, that's a plan.
And a plan is bounded by timelines andtargets and personas and everything else.
Yep.
They created a rigid structure aroundthat and their planning process, they
shrunk from seven months to four months.
So think about that too.
Like you're a larger enterprise.
You literally plan for seven months,then launch the plan, and at the
(08:55):
end of the first quarter, youstart planning for the next year.
Yeah.
Right.
So they're trying to compress that asmuch as possible so they can be agile.
Matt Heinz (09:02):
So you cut almost 50% of the time and you cut the majority
of the paperwork to get there.
Jim Williams (09:09):
Yeah.
Silo sprawl.
Matt Heinz (09:10):
Yeah.
What's exciting about that to meis like we have a lot of clients,
we do a lot of work in what we callmarketing orchestration, right?
Yep.
So just like the act of gettingmarketing work done and as the
complexity and the agility requiredto do go to market, motions grows,
it just means more meetings, morework, more getting things done.
And if you don't have a system, ifyou don't have a workflow, a taxonomy,
it gets kind of boring quickly.
(09:31):
Yeah.
But if you don't havethat stuff nailed down.
This is what happens.
You're gonna have paperwork up towazoo, you're gonna have everyone
with different planning processes.
You're gonna speak a differentlanguage than what the rest
of the business wants to hear.
And then, I mean, we see this inbig companies all the time where
they're constantly in planning mode.
And guess what's happens then?
They're not doing work.
Yeah.
They're not getting the stuff done.
So to me, like this feels like a hugemissing part for organizations as they
(09:54):
grow that to unlock the agility, thespeed to market, the professionalism,
and the accountability of themarketing work that they're doing.
And if all you wanna do is decreasethe time and the paperwork, and if
you decrease the paperwork, thatmeans fewer meetings, fewer Slack
messages, fewer email threads.
I'm hoping I'm speaking alot of people's language now.
Yeah, totally.
It doesn't make this good.
And the icing on the cake isnow like finance trusts you.
(10:17):
Finance understands what you'retrying to do, and they're
not looking for perfection.
They're not looking for everything towork, but they just want everybody to
understand what is and isn't workingso you can make adjustments and
create more predictable outcomes next.
Jim Williams (10:29):
Right, and share a common language.
Yeah.
Again, like you focus onpipeline, go to market.
Like, think about that, 15 years agothere was this revolution in just
establishing an accepted languageto describe the things you're doing.
Right.
Is this an MQL or SAL or SQO andnow it's a six QA or whatever
you want to call it, right?
Yeah.
There's a language that forges alignmentbetween these groups, and that hasn't
(10:54):
really existed between marketing, finance.
Just getting to that is really important'cause that boring stuff, taxonomy and
hierarchy and nomenclature, whatever,is actually really, really important to
become more agile and more effective.
Matt Heinz (11:06):
So we're talking about all this as if it's kind
of a foregone conclusion, right?
I mean like, hey, less paperwork,less time, better accountability.
Finance loves you.
I'm assuming that means like ahundred percent of your pipeline
converts right at Uptempo.
So assuming that isn't the case, whatare the obstacles that you find for
companies that, like if they hearall this and say, that's amazing.
Is it status quo?
Is it just institutional inertia?
(11:26):
And I'm asking this because I wantcompanies that are listening to this, to
self-identify with things that they mightrecognize in their own organizations might
be hidden barriers to making this kind ofleap in accountability and performance.
Jim Williams (11:38):
Yeah.
No, a hundred percent of ourpipeline does not convert.
Matt Heinz (11:43):
Breaking news.
Jim Williams (11:43):
Yeah, breaking news.
I'm not converting all my pipeline.
Sure.
We run into all those obstacles.
So number one is, at avery, very large enterprise.
Yeah, right.
Ikea as a customer, right?
You're talking about 500 stores and 60,000employees and X number of marketers,
whatever, it is incredibly complex.
(12:04):
Yeah.
And just trying to wrangle the processstuff so you can get onto planning better.
Matt Heinz (12:08):
Yeah.
Jim Williams (12:09):
It requires some digital transformation.
Yeah.
That affects a whole bunch ofpeople we just talked about.
Well, certainly affects marketing.
Yeah.
It affects finance.
Yeah.
It affects your go-to marketteams, your production, how
you work with agencies, right.
How you work with resell.
Like there's a lot involved.
So it can get pretty complex.
That creates some friction for sure.
Yeah.
Another issue is that you're A CMO,here's all the list of things that
(12:31):
frankly are a pain in the ass and alwaysplanning is up there on the list, but
then you start to think, all right,where am I gonna invest my dollars?
What am I gonna fix right now?
Mm-hmm.
And you're pressured by sales and marginand pipeline, and it's always like,
oh, let's throw the dollar more intothe execution side of the business.
Yeah.
And we'll get by with thisheadless series of programs and
(12:52):
campaigns that are happening.
That's definitely a problem too.
Matt Heinz (12:55):
Why is this coming outta the marketing budget?
Is finance paying for this in some cases?
Jim Williams (12:59):
Almost never does finance pay for it.
But in large companies finance sends anambassador of sorts and attaches them to
marketing what's called literally Yeah.
Marketing finance.
You pluck someone on a FPA.
Yeah.
And then they go sit with marketingto try and make sure that they're
being a very good steward Yeah.
Of the company's resources.
(13:20):
And so that role, marketingfinance, is almost always involved.
Yeah.
In our deals.
Yeah.
Does finance pay for it?
No.
It comes outta marketing because, thereal driver is when the CMO gets asked
a question like, how's the plan going?
Yeah.
Is the plan working?
Should we consider changing the plan?
(13:41):
Those types of questions, or even whena new CMO comes in and has so much
more specific questions like, whatare we spending on what initiatives?
And suddenly everyone goes silent.
Yeah.
Matt Heinz (13:52):
Yeah here at Forrester, there's been a lot of talk about this
broader like buying groups, right?
Yeah.
The internally andexternally, the ecosystems.
And so when we think about buyingcommittees, I think 9 times outta 10,
we think about the people internallythat are making those decisions.
Mm-hmm.
So you think about the people inmarketing specifically, they're gonna
buy this 'cause if they're payingfor it, what about that controller
that's pulling their hair out?
Right.
That may not have the budget,but it certainly has the pain and
(14:13):
might be able to still go rattlesome chains within marketing.
What about the governancecommittee on the board right.
That is frustrated with this, thatmight actually, from the top down have
at least say like, go look at thisstuff because it's important to us.
Jim Williams (14:24):
Yeah, no, I mean, absolutely.
Those are factors.
They're involved.
They're part of the new buyingnetwork, if you call it that.
Yeah.
It was buying groups.
No, it was buying network.
Yeah.
They're definitely a factor,but the impetus to make change
has to come from the top.
Mm-hmm.
Because it does require change management.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There is some digital transformation,there's some integration that needs
(14:46):
to done so IT gets involved, right?
At a minimum, you have to integratewith your financial infrastructure
and you have to integrate withyour performance infrastructure.
And often we integrate with workmanagement infrastructure, right?
So it often comes from the top.
Typically a champion for us is someonethat's very strategic in marketing
operations or also, often it's the rolethat I mentioned earlier, like a chief
(15:09):
of staff to the CMO is very influentialin bringing in infrastructure so people
can plan better and spend smarter.
Matt Heinz (15:17):
Well, I know you guys have a busy schedule across the
street, so I wanna let you get backto that Jim Williams CMO at Uptempo.
Thanks so much for joining us.
Jim Williams (15:23):
I appreciate it, Matt.
Thank you.
All right, back here.
Day two, Forrester B2B Summiton the marketplace floor.
Thanks again to Forresterfor making this possible.
I think this is our 12th recording,Jim so far here the last couple days.
Just got an amazing amount of content.
So we've got some analysts,got some ROI award winners.
Lots of CMOs, including you.
Jim Williams, CMO at Uptempo.
Thanks for stopping by.
Jim Williams (00:34):
Thanks for having me, Matt.
Matt Heinz (00:35):
Excited to see you here.
As always, you guys have an activationacross the street doing a bunch of
panels and sessions on your own.
Wanna talk about today, this relationshipbetween the go-to market teams and finance
because that is not always a, let'ssay, productive, positive conversation.
Yeah.
Maybe start with why is there somuch friction between those teams?
And why does that persist?
Jim Williams (00:56):
Yeah.
It's really a really goodquestion and it's a topic that
I'm pretty passionate about.
Why am I passionate about that?
First, I'm with Uptempo and we providemarketing planning and spend management
software, budget management software.
Yep.
It's funny, one of the, uh, sessionsthat we had here focused squarely on this
disconnect between marketing and finance.
Mm-hmm.
And we were talking earlier aboutlike, hey, it used to be about a
(01:18):
disconnect between marketing and sales.
You spent the last 15 yearstrying to patch that up.
Yep.
With agreements, frameworks,and SLAs and everything else.
But that investment has notbeen made in the relationship
between marketing and finance.
So what you end up with is marketersand certainly sales and other folks
that really don't understand thebasics of financial management.
Right.
(01:38):
Much less the specifics of whatyour FP&A team, your controller,
actually has to deal with.
And lot of wasted time,poor forecast accuracy.
Mm-hmm.
Wasted spend.
Mm-hmm.
Lack of trust, disconnects, et cetera.
You know, the financeteam views marketing.
I'll be specific to marketing.
You're talking about go to market team?
Yeah.
So kind of views marketing aslike, you know, the children Yeah.
(02:03):
That can't get their shit together.
Yeah.
Once a month to close the books.
So they come with a stack of spreadsheetsthat have errors in them, or the wrong
versions, or whatever the case may be.
And don't even have basic visibilityinto the state of their spend.
Matt Heinz (02:19):
And when we don't solve for that, what happens is you've got marketers
that don't have trust from finance.
You've got marketers that to financelook like you're just spending money
willy nilly and not having fiscalresponsibility for the business.
So when you come back and want moremoney, of course the answer's no.
Like even if you come back say, oh, I needto focus on demand gen, or, oh, we need to
go after this new market, like that soundsgreat, but that is a nebulous objective.
(02:42):
And I'm sitting here saying weonly have X amount of money.
Yeah.
What is it really gonna take to do that?
And so I feel like the planningprocess between marketing and
finance is completely disconnectedwithout better tools, processes,
systems to make that happen.
Jim Williams (02:55):
Yeah, totally.
That is definitely a challenge.
And it causes all types ofdownstream implications, right.
So.
Marketers in B2B, 'cause we're heretalking about B2B, like are myopically
focused on creating pipeline?
Mm-hmm.
Pipeline that convertsinto sales, obviously.
Yeah.
There is a lot of talk of ROI, like if youtalk to a marketer, they'll be like, oh
my God, we got great ROI on that campaign.
(03:16):
Right?
But they actually don'tcalculate return on investment.
And if they did, they don't actuallycalculate it against their actual
spend because a lot of times theydon't know their actual spend so.
There's the whole ROI in return you'regetting, but then that cascades and
a whole bunch of things, you know,like finance leaders want people to
think about their customer acquisitioncosts and marketers are far from
(03:37):
understanding the implications there.
Or salespeople just wanna know first,what are you doing to support me?
Mm-hmm.
Like what campaigns are yourunning to support me, my
territory, my products, et cetera.
Matt Heinz (03:48):
Right.
Jim Williams (03:48):
And marketers first of all have a hard time answering that.
Yeah.
'cause they don't have a calendar.
But even deeper, like they shouldbe able to say, actually we're
investing this amount of money todrive growth in your particular area.
Yeah.
And this is how we'veallocated to do that.
Matt Heinz (04:04):
That planning gap seems like something that should be solvable.
And I know Uptempo obviously hassolutions around that, but it gets
even harder when you get out of sortof the hard ROI quote unquote areas.
Like if I'm focusing on building pipeline,even if I'm not just counting on like
one channel versus another, even ifI say it's gonna take a body of work.
I need to invest in these fieldactivations, this conference, these
(04:25):
lists, these digital plays on this market.
Okay, that's still, you can addthose numbers together and say like,
does that give us enough pipeline?
Was it worth it?
Did it pan out?
Should we do it again?
Now you've got marketersstarting to talk this year about
reinvesting in brand and content.
Yeah.
And sort of the longer term plays, right?
So now we're saying, I've got moneyallocated in 2024 that I expect to
(04:45):
give back to the business over thenext two to three plus years, not
just in the next selling period.
Like how does that change the dynamicof planning and accountability
between marketing and finance?
Jim Williams (04:55):
It has a huge impact on us.
So like, it's funny what.
Brand is not only suddenly the new demand.
Mm-hmm.
I love that.
But again, put yourselfon the seat of a CFO.
They don't get into nuances of brandversus demand, versus reputation,
versus engagement, and much less havea way to manage their expectations
on the ROI for each of thoseclasses of marketing programs.
(05:18):
Mm-hmm.
And so, marketing needs to do that.
And it's really difficult to dothat if they don't understand
the basics of spend management.
Like, think about it, we have a customer,we just did a webinar with a company
named Reckitt, which by the way, I didn'tknow who Reckitt was, but they're Lysol.
They manage Lysol brands.
Matt Heinz (05:37):
Wow, okay.
Jim Williams (05:38):
Right.
And Durex Brands andother things like that.
They literally sell 30million products a day.
Yeah.
Pretty crazy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And this guy is basically runninga $700 million budget for North
America and trying to get to like0.005% forecast accuracy against it.
Wow.
You know, because 1% accuracyis $7 million of waste Yeah.
(06:00):
In that budget.
Yeah.
That's what finance is expecting.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And take those dollars and redirect'em to the highest performing channels.
And the way you figure that outobviously is connection between
financial allocation, marketing budgets,marketing planning, marketing results.
Mm-hmm.
To get to ROI.
Matt Heinz (06:18):
Got Jim Williams with us today, he's the CMO at Uptempo, and
talking about really planning andaccountability and following through
on what you said you're gonna do.
I mean, simple concepts that sortof are, I mean, again, without the
right systems, without the rightdiscipline, and without the right
tools, it becomes incredibly difficult.
I imagine you've seen some beforeand after interesting stories.
Of companies that have good intentionbut fail in the execution of that.
(06:43):
Can you talk about the before and after?
What that means in terms of thefinance, marketing relationship
and what it unlocks in terms ofmarketing, being able to really
accelerate its impact on the business?
Jim Williams (06:54):
Yeah, sure.
It's funny, we were doing these paneldiscussions and we have a customer
that we've been working with thatyou may be familiar with, Indeed.
Matt Heinz (07:01):
Oh, of course.
Yeah.
Jim Williams (07:02):
Yeah.
It's funny, I was talking withtheir chief of staff to the CMO
and she talked about the triggerevent, like the watershed moment.
Mm-hmm.
When the CMO was asked prettystraightforward question about
like, is the plan working?
Yeah.
Those are the hardest questions to answer.
Like so high, so nebulous.
Yeah.
It's like where do I start looking fordata to answer if the plan is working?
(07:24):
And when she went looking for the data,she realized that the plan is locked up
and dozens of spreadsheets, many versionsof PowerPoint, Slack messages, et cetera.
Yep.
There is no system of recordtoday in the modern business.
For, you might say marketing.
If you think about marketing as abusiness, there is not a system of
(07:45):
record for that much less a system ofrecord for where your official plans are.
Mm-hmm.
And if you don't have a systemof record, then how can this
large team be on the same page?
Yeah.
Be collaborating, et cetera.
Yeah.
And what do you do when youneed to change the plan?
Right.
Which plan are you changing?
Right.
Which is nonstop, right?
We're living the world, likethe era of nonstop pivots.
Yep.
So they went through a wholeprocess to redefine their planning.
(08:08):
Mm-hmm.
Not just through Uptempo.
They worked with all types of mm-hmm.
Experts around this.
And they did something like reduce theamount of documentation involved in
planning by, I think they said 60%.
Wow.
You know, like all of these spreadsheetsand PowerPoints at different groups
and field marketing teams areusing, et cetera, they did that.
They have a very rigid structure, ataxonomy and a hierarchy that describes
(08:32):
what their intent is, like wheredo they intend to spend the money?
Well, that's a plan.
And a plan is bounded by timelines andtargets and personas and everything else.
Yep.
They created a rigid structure aroundthat and their planning process, they
shrunk from seven months to four months.
So think about that too.
Like you're a larger enterprise.
You literally plan for seven months,then launch the plan, and at the
(08:55):
end of the first quarter, youstart planning for the next year.
Yeah.
Right.
So they're trying to compress that asmuch as possible so they can be agile.
Matt Heinz (09:02):
So you cut almost 50% of the time and you cut the majority
of the paperwork to get there.
Jim Williams (09:09):
Yeah.
Silo sprawl.
Matt Heinz (09:10):
Yeah.
What's exciting about that to meis like we have a lot of clients,
we do a lot of work in what we callmarketing orchestration, right?
Yep.
So just like the act of gettingmarketing work done and as the
complexity and the agility requiredto do go to market, motions grows,
it just means more meetings, morework, more getting things done.
And if you don't have a system, ifyou don't have a workflow, a taxonomy,
it gets kind of boring quickly.
(09:31):
Yeah.
But if you don't havethat stuff nailed down.
This is what happens.
You're gonna have paperwork up towazoo, you're gonna have everyone
with different planning processes.
You're gonna speak a differentlanguage than what the rest
of the business wants to hear.
And then, I mean, we see this inbig companies all the time where
they're constantly in planning mode.
And guess what's happens then?
They're not doing work.
Yeah.
They're not getting the stuff done.
So to me, like this feels like a hugemissing part for organizations as they
(09:54):
grow that to unlock the agility, thespeed to market, the professionalism,
and the accountability of themarketing work that they're doing.
And if all you wanna do is decreasethe time and the paperwork, and if
you decrease the paperwork, thatmeans fewer meetings, fewer Slack
messages, fewer email threads.
I'm hoping I'm speaking alot of people's language now.
Yeah, totally.
It doesn't make this good.
And the icing on the cake isnow like finance trusts you.
(10:17):
Finance understands what you'retrying to do, and they're
not looking for perfection.
They're not looking for everything towork, but they just want everybody to
understand what is and isn't workingso you can make adjustments and
create more predictable outcomes next.
Jim Williams (10:29):
Right, and share a common language.
Yeah.
Again, like you focus onpipeline, go to market.
Like, think about that, 15 years agothere was this revolution in just
establishing an accepted languageto describe the things you're doing.
Right.
Is this an MQL or SAL or SQO andnow it's a six QA or whatever
you want to call it, right?
Yeah.
There's a language that forges alignmentbetween these groups, and that hasn't
(10:54):
really existed between marketing, finance.
Just getting to that is really important'cause that boring stuff, taxonomy and
hierarchy and nomenclature, whatever,is actually really, really important to
become more agile and more effective.
Matt Heinz (11:06):
So we're talking about all this as if it's kind
of a foregone conclusion, right?
I mean like, hey, less paperwork,less time, better accountability.
Finance loves you.
I'm assuming that means like ahundred percent of your pipeline
converts right at Uptempo.
So assuming that isn't the case, whatare the obstacles that you find for
companies that, like if they hearall this and say, that's amazing.
Is it status quo?
Is it just institutional inertia?
(11:26):
And I'm asking this because I wantcompanies that are listening to this, to
self-identify with things that they mightrecognize in their own organizations might
be hidden barriers to making this kind ofleap in accountability and performance.
Jim Williams (11:38):
Yeah.
No, a hundred percent of ourpipeline does not convert.
Matt Heinz (11:43):
Breaking news.
Jim Williams (11:43):
Yeah, breaking news.
I'm not converting all my pipeline.
Sure.
We run into all those obstacles.
So number one is, at avery, very large enterprise.
Yeah, right.
Ikea as a customer, right?
You're talking about 500 stores and 60,000employees and X number of marketers,
whatever, it is incredibly complex.
(12:04):
Yeah.
And just trying to wrangle the processstuff so you can get onto planning better.
Matt Heinz (12:08):
Yeah.
Jim Williams (12:09):
It requires some digital transformation.
Yeah.
That affects a whole bunch ofpeople we just talked about.
Well, certainly affects marketing.
Yeah.
It affects finance.
Yeah.
It affects your go-to marketteams, your production, how
you work with agencies, right.
How you work with resell.
Like there's a lot involved.
So it can get pretty complex.
That creates some friction for sure.
Yeah.
Another issue is that you're A CMO,here's all the list of things that
(12:31):
frankly are a pain in the ass and alwaysplanning is up there on the list, but
then you start to think, all right,where am I gonna invest my dollars?
What am I gonna fix right now?
Mm-hmm.
And you're pressured by sales and marginand pipeline, and it's always like,
oh, let's throw the dollar more intothe execution side of the business.
Yeah.
And we'll get by with thisheadless series of programs and
(12:52):
campaigns that are happening.
That's definitely a problem too.
Matt Heinz (12:55):
Why is this coming outta the marketing budget?
Is finance paying for this in some cases?
Jim Williams (12:59):
Almost never does finance pay for it.
But in large companies finance sends anambassador of sorts and attaches them to
marketing what's called literally Yeah.
Marketing finance.
You pluck someone on a FPA.
Yeah.
And then they go sit with marketingto try and make sure that they're
being a very good steward Yeah.
Of the company's resources.
(13:20):
And so that role, marketingfinance, is almost always involved.
Yeah.
In our deals.
Yeah.
Does finance pay for it?
No.
It comes outta marketing because, thereal driver is when the CMO gets asked
a question like, how's the plan going?
Yeah.
Is the plan working?
Should we consider changing the plan?
(13:41):
Those types of questions, or even whena new CMO comes in and has so much
more specific questions like, whatare we spending on what initiatives?
And suddenly everyone goes silent.
Yeah.
Matt Heinz (13:52):
Yeah here at Forrester, there's been a lot of talk about this
broader like buying groups, right?
Yeah.
The internally andexternally, the ecosystems.
And so when we think about buyingcommittees, I think 9 times outta 10,
we think about the people internallythat are making those decisions.
Mm-hmm.
So you think about the people inmarketing specifically, they're gonna
buy this 'cause if they're payingfor it, what about that controller
that's pulling their hair out?
Right.
That may not have the budget,but it certainly has the pain and
(14:13):
might be able to still go rattlesome chains within marketing.
What about the governancecommittee on the board right.
That is frustrated with this, thatmight actually, from the top down have
at least say like, go look at thisstuff because it's important to us.
Jim Williams (14:24):
Yeah, no, I mean, absolutely.
Those are factors.
They're involved.
They're part of the new buyingnetwork, if you call it that.
Yeah.
It was buying groups.
No, it was buying network.
Yeah.
They're definitely a factor,but the impetus to make change
has to come from the top.
Mm-hmm.
Because it does require change management.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There is some digital transformation,there's some integration that needs
(14:46):
to done so IT gets involved, right?
At a minimum, you have to integratewith your financial infrastructure
and you have to integrate withyour performance infrastructure.
And often we integrate with workmanagement infrastructure, right?
So it often comes from the top.
Typically a champion for us is someonethat's very strategic in marketing
operations or also, often it's the rolethat I mentioned earlier, like a chief
(15:09):
of staff to the CMO is very influentialin bringing in infrastructure so people
can plan better and spend smarter.
Matt Heinz (15:17):
Well, I know you guys have a busy schedule across the
street, so I wanna let you get backto that Jim Williams CMO at Uptempo.
Thanks so much for joining us.
Jim Williams (15:23):
I appreciate it, Matt.
Thank you.
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