August 1, 2024 • 41 mins
In this episode of The Get, host Erica Seidel delves into what it takes to excel at networking and effectively work with recruiters, exploring programmatic ways to engage with professional networks. Erica discusses the best questions candidates ask recruiters and the importance of developing a personal Board of Advisors. She also explains the role of executive search professionals, differentiating them from career coaches and therapists.
Special guest Tracy Eiler, CMO of OpenSesame, discusses her recent experience evaluating marketing leadership opportunities, how today's recruiting climate is unique, the fast-paced pressure-testing playbook she uses to assess roles, and red flags to watch out for. Tracy shares how CEOs can demonstrate their support for marketing, tips for collaborating with recruiters, and how CMO candidates can make a strong impression. The discussion extends to the complexities of career trauma, confidence, and the right level of transparency when delivering your 'career story.' Tracy also emphasizes continuous relationship building within one's network and the importance of having a well-prepared personal narrative.
00:00 Introduction to Networking and Recruiters
00:35 Welcome to The Get with Erica Seidel
01:06 Tips for Working with Executive Recruiters
04:09 Introducing Tracy Eiler
05:02 Tracy Eiler's Journey and Insights
08:57 Pressure Testing a Role
12:47 Evaluating CEOs and Red Flags
17:53 Tracy's First CMO Job and Lessons Learned
20:54 Collaborating with Recruiters
22:24 Navigating Recruiter Relationships
22:50 The Role of Feedback in Shaping Searches
26:24 The Importance of Networking
30:10 Building and Maintaining Meaningful Connections
33:25 Career Trauma and Vulnerability
38:01 Final Thoughts and Key Takeaways
The Get is here to drive smart decisions around recruiting and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing. We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today’s top marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.
This season’s theme is The Race to Reduce Risk in CMO Recruiting.
The Get’s host is Erica Seidel, who runs The Connective Good, an executive search practice with a hyper-focus on recruiting CMOs and VPs of Marketing, especially in B2B SaaS.
If you are looking to hire a CMO or VP of Marketing of the ‘make money’ variety - rather than the ‘make it pretty’ variety, contact Erica at erica@theconnectivegood.com. You can also follow Erica on LinkedIn or sign up for her newsletter at TheConnectiveGood.com.
The Get is produced by the team at Simpler Media Productions.
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
What does it look liketo be good at networking?
(00:02):
To be able to grow your network,nurture it, give to it, and get from it?
And what does it mean towork with a recruiter?
Many CMOs have admitted to me thatthey are really bad at networking, and
many have asked me how they can bestwork with recruiters as a candidate?
Today, we look at programmatic waysto work with your network, whether
that means recruiters, formercolleagues, current colleagues,
(00:24):
personal boards of advisors, etc.
If you can get good at this, yourdecision-making will be stronger
with input from others, and you canget connected to more opportunities,
making friends along the way.
Hello, and welcome to The Get.
I'm your host, Erica Seidel.
This season, we focus on the raceto reduce risk when it comes to a
match between a company and a CMO.
(00:46):
How can you find out what you need tofind out before saying yes so that you
make a match that sticks and flourishes?
Today, you'll hear some tips from meabout working with executive recruiters.
Then you will meet my guest, Tracy Eiler.
She will share the playbookthat has helped her tap her
network and collaborate well withrecruiters over several CMO jobs.
(01:06):
Let's first talk about how to work withexecutive recruiters as a candidate.
Some words to the wise.
First, executive search peoplelike myself work on behalf of the
companies, not the candidates.
We don't have the model of workingwith candidates to curate their
set of opportunities per se.
We are instead helping companies thatare looking for very particular things.
(01:28):
I like to say elevenout of ten requirements.
That means that the chance I couldplace a particular marketing leader
is lower than I wish it would be, evenif the person has great experience.
I often tell people thatI'm not a substitute for a
career coach or a therapist.
But of course, I do a lot ofcoaching for the candidates I have
in play for particular searches,guiding them through that process.
(01:50):
When I think about the marketing leadersthat I have the closest relationships
with, there's some things in common.
They have the background that Itend to place, marketing leaders
at scale-up companies in B2B SaaS.
They have contributed tostrong, scaled journeys.
They've gotten back to mewhen I've reached out to them.
They've said things like, I wantto look at this or maybe this is
not the fit for me, but let's chat.
(02:12):
Let me introduce you tosomebody who is a good fit.
They might be somebody that I'vemet in person at some event or,
obviously, through an interview.
Maybe they've been a candidatealready for me in the past.
They've shared their views on themarket and not just asked me for mine.
So, let's say you have aconversation with a recruiter
without a particular role in mind.
(02:32):
Kind of a get-to-know-you conversation.
Some tips for you.
First, do your research.
Check out the recruiter's content.
Get to know their focus area.
Second, have your scale-upnumbers at the ready.
Know what your businessimpact is and say it.
If you have helped a companygo from fifty million to a
hundred million, spit that out.
If you've built a marketing teamfrom ten people to twenty-five
(02:53):
and then back down to fifteen, butwith increased output, share that.
Third, be clear on whatyou're looking for job wise.
Sometimes people spend too much time withme talking about what they did fifteen,
twenty years ago, when really what youwant is to create the triggers for,
call me for this kind of opportunity.
For instance, oh, I'm looking for aSeries B cybersecurity company, you
(03:16):
know, based on the East Coast, wherethe marketing leader should have a
real strong depth in product marketing.
That's helpful for me to hear.
Now, let's say the executive searchperson has a role that could be a good
fit for you, and they have shared thename of the company, so you have a
real opportunity to work with them.
Take the call if you have even a smallamount of curiosity about the role.
(03:37):
I've placed many people who wentfrom twenty percent interested,
to fifty percent interested, to110 percent interested over the
course of just a few conversations.
And check out the company, comewith a quick point of view.
Especially now, the bestcandidates are doing that.
Then, once you're meeting others fromthe company, share your reactions
honestly with the recruiter.
(03:58):
Candidates can really shape thedirection of a search and the
perspective of the recruiter and theCEO more than they sometimes think.
There's so much more to talk about,so let's bring on another perspective.
Let me introduce you tomy guest, Tracy Eiler.
Tracy has been named one of the fifteenmost influential women in B2B marketing.
She's now the CMO of OpenSesame, theSeries D company in the e-learning space.
(04:21):
Previously, she served as CMO at Alation,InsideView, and MarkLogic, to name a few.
She's an advisor with Women inRevenue, which is a great organization.
I've tried to recruit her many timesbefore, and you will likely find
her just as impressive as I do.
She's going to discuss with us herplaybook for pressure testing a role,
and she'll share her programmaticapproach to working with people in
(04:42):
her network, both recruiters andcolleagues, to help get to the right fit.
And she'll discuss tips for CEOs todemonstrate their support of marketing.
Tracy, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
I'm really thrilled to be here,especially after listening to last season.
Oh, wonderful.
Thank you for being a listener.
I appreciate that.
Let's launch right in.
So you landed as CMO at OpenSesamein the last year, I think, right?
(05:07):
And you
- Yes.
Right.
So you mentioned you had checked outabout thirty different opportunities.
I did, I did.
So that is, that is a lot.
And I know you're picky about what yousay yes to having talked to you before.
So, um, can you talk about how thissearch for you was different from
the past, and maybe share a couple ofthings that you learned or that you
did that others could learn from asthey seek to kind of mitigate risk
(05:29):
with, with their hiring and recruiting?
Yes, absolutely.
I think every one of your listeners knowswhat a weird climate that we are in.
Companies want successful marketers tojoin them, but yet they might have had a
bad experience in the past or been burnedor overhired teams and then downsized.
(05:50):
There's just volatility everywhere.
And every marketer I know has comein and out of businesses, sometimes
in less than eighteen months,sometimes in less than a year.
You know, there's that joke, notjoke about marketing people having
eighteen-month tenures, but youknow, it's, it's happened to me.
So I, this time around, wasincredibly deliberate about what
(06:14):
I was looking at and looking for.
And at this stage of my career, I reallywanted to be in a slightly more mature
company, something that was C or D interms of a series, that really was looking
to scale and appreciated efficiency, thathad really good business fundamentals.
I've been through that growth-at-all-costswhirlwind that many of us have been in
(06:36):
and we're in a different climate, right?
So I started looking for my newopportunity, and really what I did
first was proactively reach out torecruiters that I know and trust and
just say, "Hey, I'm looking around.
These are the sorts of things I'mlooking for if anything comes up."
Right?
Start there, but then I was alsolooking at kind of segments of
the market that I think are reallyinteresting, or people that I know
(06:59):
that are at interesting companiesthat I would then go and learn about.
And then you just start shortlistingand start interviewing, right?
And I, I think one of my skills that Ihave developed really well, Erica, is the
fast assessment phase when you first hearfrom someone like you and you see a job
spec, and you look at a company, I canpretty much rule out a business maybe in
(07:22):
five or ten minutes I can rule them out.
And you know, you might think,Oh my God, how can you make
such a fast snap decision?
But there's just a bunch ofdifferent things I look at,
and I'd be happy to share that.
Yeah, yeah.
I do want to get to that.
I also want to say I love whatyou said about a short list.
So it sounds like you had a list ofcompanies that kind of fit your criteria.
And I'm wondering, it's funny causeso many CMOs don't actually do that.
(07:45):
I'll, I'll share that as feedback withthem when they come to me, I'll say like,
Oh, create your kind of networking mapof different companies and, you know,
different swim lanes for your search.
And so I love to hear that you did that.
Can you talk about, like,is that, is that rare?
To do, do you think?
I do think so.
Although, I have spoken to reallygood, trusted advisors, friends of
(08:09):
mine, and trusted advisors, likeSydney Sloan's a good example.
you know Sydney.
She has done a very deliberatesearch in her past also.
You know, in fact, during this time,we were both looking at different roles
and comparing notes and even tradingopportunities, almost like baseball cards.
Like there were a couple of timesshe'd call me and say, Hey, I
just talked to this company.
Here's their story.
(08:29):
They're in Atlanta, blah-di-blah.
I think you could be areally good fit there.
It's not for me.
And I've done, you know, the samewith other people too, which I
don't know if that's, I thinkthat's probably unusual also, right?
Yes!
It seems so obvious, and alot of people don't do it.
And I, I love that.
Like, just call up other people who mightbe getting the calls that you want to
get, and say, hey, if it's not the righttime for you, not the right opportunity,
(08:51):
not the right location, send them my way.
Right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So talk to me a little bit about your, youknow, let's call it your pressure testing
playbook, just cause I love alliteration.
So when you explore a new role, and howdoes it help you kind of avoid risk?
Can you talk about that?
Yeah, absolutely.
It's funny because until youand I were preparing for this
(09:13):
conversation, I hadn't really thoughtabout what my methodology was.
I just know that I have one.
My husband's a Chief Revenue Officer, andhe's looking for his next opportunity.
And I've been helping him withthat super fast assessment.
He'll be like, hey, can you go dothe thing with this opportunity?
And I'll go do the thing.
And the thing is, essentially,I look at their website.
I do a quick scan onwho do they seem to be?
(09:35):
How are they presenting themselves?
I will then quickly pivot overto the team that's there that,
that you can identify, right?
Certainly the leadership that'sidentifiable, board members, if they're
on the site, they're not always.
And then I'll go right over toLinkedIn and I'll start looking
at employees that are there.
You know, how big are they?
I look at that insights thing thatyou can find on a company profile.
Get an idea of are theygrowing really fast?
(09:57):
Are they leveling out?
Have they downsized?
You see all of those shapes now.
And I'll look at the people that are therein kind of the next click down level,
the VPs, the directors of functionalareas, just to kind of get a feeling
for like, where are these people?
I'll give you an example of one thatI told my husband to run away from.
He was looking at an organizationwhere once I did my double click
(10:18):
down, I discovered that the leadershipteam and like the one level down,
between all of them had likeseventy years of Cisco experience.
Not that Cisco's a bad company.
Cisco's an awesome company.
But the homogeneity in that leadershipteam, having all been at the same business
for so long together, and now in thisnew business together, just said to
(10:38):
him, you're going to be the odd man out.
You're not a Cisco person.
I don't think that's a good idea, right?
And as it turned out, as hestarted talking to them, there was
a lot of practices that they hadthat weren't really appropriate
for their size and stage.
They were a much smallerstartup, and they'd all come
from this big, big company.
That's an example of the kindof sleuthing around that I do.
(11:00):
I'll also read what people in the companyare writing about, whether it be Glassdoor
or LinkedIn posts on their engagementin their own businesses or other places
where I'll go seek out information.
And you know, none of thosesources are perfect, right?
I've heard plenty of people discreditGlassdoor employee reviews saying,
(11:20):
oh, it's just the disgruntled people.
But you know, youdirectionally get a sense.
That's kind of my point.
And my advice to other people is sample alot of different sources of information.
You're going to get a sense forthe health of that business and
the attitude and the culture.
Yeah, yeah.
That's great.
I love how your husband callsit, "do the thing," you know?
(11:40):
[Laughter] Do you write it up as you go?
Or is it just kind of like,you know, a few notes here
and there and it's informing
- Um it depends how many I'm looking at, right?
Like, you know, there was a timewhere I was probably getting,
oh my gosh, two or three inboundinquiries a week from recruiters.
This is going back to 2020, 2021.
And, you know, I would have to do thething, do the superfast scan very quickly
(12:05):
because I also have this tenant whereeven if I'm happy in my current role,
if I know and trust that recruiter,I will often take a quick look at the
spec and then give advice back like,hey, do you know these five people?
I think they'd be good tonetwork with, or whatever.
I just did it yesterday.
I do that whether I'm lookingor not, and I find that to be
a very good behavior to have.
I agree.
And thank you.
Cause you've done that for memany times and I appreciate that.
(12:28):
And I think that's a good tip forpeople that even if you're not, um,
even if you think you're going to be ano for an opportunity, take the call.
You make a connection.
You help somebody out.
Recruiters have good memories usuallyand can, you know, remember that.
And you never know sometimesa no becomes a yes.
You never know.
It's very true.
Cool.
So, I'm curious about, you know, aspart of your de-risking, part of it,
(12:52):
I'm sure, is looking at the CEO andtrying to figure out their commitment
and their support for marketing.
What would be youradvice on the other side?
So to CEOs, what is your advice toCEOs on how they can best demonstrate
that to attract a candidate like you?
You know, there's many things that I haveexperienced with CEOs ranging from, I
(13:15):
worked for a CEO once who really wantedsales and marketing to be oppositional.
He wanted us to fight.
And I think it's because he feltthere was some Darwinian survival of
the fittest thing that was going tohappen and we'd get a better result,
which we all know that never happens.
So I pressure test for attitudesabout common pitfalls that I see
(13:38):
marketers running into again andagain, fighting with sales or sales and
marketing misalignment is one of them.
So I will ask questions of a CEOabout their posture around sales and
marketing, and they can demonstrateback to me by saying something
simple as, I want you to be joinedat the hip with our head of sales.
(13:58):
When they say that, I know they don'twant me to fight with that person, right?
That's a good example.
Another example would be, I wantto see that they can articulate who
they think the business should bein the market, or what posture the
company should have in the market,and they're able to give me examples
of brands that they know and love.
I'll often ask, like, tell meabout a brand that you just love.
(14:20):
And it doesn't have to be in tech.
It could be a consumer brand.
I learn a lot that way.
My current CEO, Don Spear, is a veryunique CEO for me in my lifetime, where
he is not a engineering technical founderwho started the company at a really,
really early stage in their career andthen kind of grew up with the business.
(14:42):
I've worked with a bunchof those kinds of people.
Don was a submarine Lieutenant in theNavy and then went to Harvard Business
School and he and his roommate wrotethe first business plan for PetSmart.
He was too risk-averse at thetime to go found the company.
He was newly married and had ayoung child and so on, but ended up
joining PetSmart when they were aboutseven stores, and grew them to 250
(15:07):
stores and then ended up selling it.
And then he went on to found andrun Banfield Pet Hospital, which
I don't know if you've seen them,but in the northeast, it's like a
chain of veterinary pop-in places.
So Don is, he has a retailer's mindand very much talks in those terms.
He understands all the,the four P's of marketing.
(15:28):
And he himself will say, like,you have to make an emotional
connection with the buyer.
That is the way that you build trust.
That is the way that youget them coming back.
But he's not a marketingexpert at all, right?
He doesn't pretend to be, but throughthose, some of those experiences, I really
came to evaluate him as somebody thatwould appreciate the complexity that the
(15:48):
marketing role has in a business and thekinds of challenges that we would have.
That's really been remarkableand a big difference for me
working for somebody like that.
Hmm.
That's great.
He sounds terrific.
How about on the other side?
Have you seen any kind of red flagsor sniffed out somebody who's not
going to be a great marketing partner?
Is there a particular example of that?
(16:09):
[Laughs] Oh yeah.
And it's not always the CEO.
You know, it might be a head of salesor it might be someone in finance.
It's unfortunate and I've heardpeople on your podcast talk about
this and many of my friends thatare CMOs - marketing is just very
misunderstood, not thoroughly understood.
And I think it's because all of us in ourhuman lives and our regular lives, we are
(16:30):
the audience of so much marketing, right?
We are making buying decisions all thetime, and therefore we have opinions
about what good marketing is and isn't.
So no matter who you are in a company,you're going to have an opinion about what
marketing should and shouldn't be doing.
And that's unique, right?
I don't have an opinion about whatengineering should and shouldn't be doing.
I don't know how to build products.
I don't know how to code, right?
So I can't come across with anycredibility in that conversation.
(16:52):
But yet, our heads of productcan because they are recipients
of marketing all the time.
So I find as marketers, we endourselves up in businesses where we
have to do loads and loads of internalmarketing and communicating and not
only about what we're going to do,but what we're not and why we made a
decision to do thing A versus thing B.
(17:13):
In fact, right now we're working ona website redesign and we're using a
very much iterative kind of testingapproach to decide where we land on
fundamental things like our homepage.
And, you know, I'm using thatmantra that we are continuously
testing because of this constantopinion that we keep getting back.
So that for me is a scenario that Ithink we all should expect that there's
(17:38):
going to be lots of opinions aboutwhat we should and shouldn't be doing.
And we need to be the ones thatare going to provide clarity on
how we're making decisions and why.
Yeah, yeah, I'm feeling it's like thisChief Marketing Education Officer is
- It's true.
- you know, it's, it's such a thing.
It's such a thing.
So, Erika, there's onestory I wanted to tell you.
I got my very first CMO jobat a company called MarkLogic.
(17:59):
I had done my due diligence.
I'd known the CEO.
I'd worked for him in other companies.
He had chewed up and spit outfour marketing VPs in three years.
And I knew that, but I knew itwas because he kept hiring in
the product marketing image.
And he's a product marketer, and I'ma much more demand and brand marketer.
So the need, I felt Iwould be successful there.
(18:19):
I'd met the CRO, but the mistakeI made was I didn't meet the CRO's
lieutenants who were kind of VPs ofsales in a couple different divisions.
So this business was only15 million when I joined.
The day that I met the four VPs ofthese divisions, I go bouncing in,
in my, you know, lighthearted self.
Hey, I'm so excited to meet all of you!
And I put my hand out and the alpha ofthe group who had run the federal team,
(18:42):
literally looked up at me, shook hishand like waving away a fly, and turned
around and kept talking to everybody else.
Wouldn't shake my hand,wouldn't talk to me.
I'm standing there going, oh mygod, like, is this really happening?
And you know, when you're outsideyourself, looking at yourself,
kind of like, what's gonna happen?
And this voice came out of me, whichwas my mom's voice, and I just said,
(19:03):
seriously, this is how it's going to be?
Like, y'all are not evengoing to talk to me?
Like, I know that you've had manypredecessors before and I'm sorry
about that, but unless you talkto me, you're going to be meeting
number five in about six months.
So how about we do a redo?
And that's what we did.
And, you know, it kind of shamedthem into it, but it was crazy.
(19:24):
The punchline to this story is the onewho swatted me away is now my husband.
Um
- No!
Yes, yes, yes.
[Erica chuckling] Yes.
So...
[Tracy laughs]
Wow!
How we got from A to B is a lot of trustand a lot of friendship and a lot of
lead generation for the sales team andthen, you know, the rest is history.
(19:46):
Did you ask why he wasjust swatting you away?
Oh, he denies it.
He's like, that's not how it happened.
And I'm like, yes, it was.
There were witnesses.
I mean, basically, the point of view ofthose sales leaders, and I totally see
it, was, oh god, here comes another one.
Yet another marketing personcoming in here with their
playbook and their attitude.
They think they know everything.
(20:07):
You all have probably heard thatterm in the military, the "FNG?"
The F-ing New G uy, basically.
So you know, you've got this whole,this whole troop and you get the
new person in and they basically,you know, they get shot fast because
they don't know what they're doing.
And that was what came to their mind.
They're just like, oh mygod, here comes another one.
And just a lot of eye rolling.
(20:27):
Wow.
Well, they didn't know who they had there.
So that's, that's great.
I like that you didn't put, you didn't letyourself be put in a one down position.
You kind of like interacted as
-I don't know how else I could have handled it, honestly.
I think back on that, I'mlike, I could have run crying
from the room and quit, right?
Like, it would have been easy.
That was, these guys arejust jerks, but I get it.
Like, I understand whythey behaved that way.
(20:48):
It's terribly rude, butyou know, I kind of get it.
Wow.
That's great.
Thank you for sharing that story!
So, talk also aboutworking with recruiters.
What does it mean in yourmind to work with a recruiter?
You've talked a little bit about takinga call even if it's not quite the right
fit for you, which I think is great.
Can you talk about other dimensions ofhow you have collaborated with recruiters?
(21:11):
I have been very fortunate, andgotten to know some extremely
talented recruiters in my career.
Some that have placed me in opportunities,some that I've worked with and looking
at opportunities that didn't work out.
And the really good ones are advisors.
I almost end up feeling likethey're my agent, my talent
agent, and are representing me.
(21:33):
Now, there's no doubt that, you know,a recruiter is going to make money
when they place you somewhere, right?
But they're only going to be successful ifthat placement ends up to be a good one.
So, you know, I think we have to trustthat the recruiting process is going
to weed out the candidates that aren'tthe right fit and put forward the
candidates that are, and then help us,as candidates, put our best foot forward.
(21:57):
And tell us the truth, right?
There's nothing I appreciate more thanwhen a recruiter says to me, "Hey Tracy,
they're concerned that you did not growup in product marketing because they
think that's a really important skill."
And my response to thatwill be, they're right.
I did not grow up in product marketing.
Let me tell you the ways that Isupplement that lack of core talent in my
(22:19):
skillset, let's just call it like that.
And if that's not good enough,then we should walk away, right?
If they're really hung up on aparticular thing, then let's just say no.
And I'm going to moveon to the next thing.
And I think good recruiters can reallyhelp weed some of that out because,
you know, there's multidimensionalityto every marketer and you can't,
you're not going to get a hundredpercent score in every dimension.
So I really think good recruitersneed to help CEOs prioritize and
(22:43):
define what they think they needfor the next two, three, five years.
Right, right.
And it's such a calibration.
You go back and forth.
And I think candidates don't realizethat they can, with their feedback
and with their shaping, they canhelp to, they can help the recruiter
and the CEO to shape the search andthe outcome a little more than they
might give themselves credit for.
(23:03):
Yes.
And I really use recruiters assounding boards in situations where,
uh, when I was looking for my currentrole, I got to the altar five times.
Meaning, I was one ofthe top two candidates.
Several of those times I walked awayat the end because I just in the end
decided, you know what, I don't thinkthis is going to be the best place for me,
(23:25):
even though I went this far and it's sohard to walk away when you get that far.
But I'm glad I did.
A couple of the times they didn't pick me.
They picked the other person.
And in all of those scenarios, therecruiter was very much a sounding
board for me about my decision processand what was concerning me, what
was making me hesitant, and helpedme explore it in a way that allowed
(23:47):
me to be confident about my choice.
Yeah, yeah, that's great.
And it sounds like you've investedin those relationships beforehand and
while, while you're doing the search,you know, as well to have that kind of
- That's exactly why when I do get an inbound inquiry, I respond.
Because I feel like I'm just going tokeep giving and giving and giving advice.
(24:08):
Sometimes I'll read a spec, for example.
I read one the other daythat I just responded to that
I was mentioning earlier.
And there's a piece of the spec whereI'm like, that doesn't make any sense.
And I told the recruiter that.
I said, this thing, this piece here justseems incongruous with everything else.
You might want to takea fresh look at that.
It struck me as odd.
And he was very grateful.
He's like, thank you for telling me that.
I thought it was odd too, but thecompany insisted to put it in there.
(24:29):
And that kind of stuffhappens all the time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They say, you know, give to get.
Just be a giver and give advice backon good candidates and other things.
Right, right.
There's a great book, Give and Get.
I don't know, have you read thebook by - oh god, uh, Adam Grant?
Is that his name?
Oh, I love Adam Grant.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Giving and Getting?
Give and Get?
(24:49):
Give to Get?
You know, something like that.
Yeah, he talks about there are givers,there are takers, and there are matchers.
And so it's, it's fascinating.
It's one of his first things.
Um, I would like to say also, Ilove your example of, "Oh, Tracy,
we're not sure about your depthof product marketing experience."
One of the best questions I getfrom candidates is, "Erica, what
(25:11):
are the concerns that you or thecompany have about my candidacy?"
Because that's a way that you can,as the candidate, they can hear
how they've been perceived andcorrect any miscommunications.
Because sometimes a recruiter didn't hearor, or, you know, just didn't fully grasp
the extent of somebody's background.
(25:32):
So, when you play it back, like, oh,okay, the client wants XYZ and you have
ABC, that can be helpful to just kindof have that, that calibration moment.
There's good examples thatfit into what you're saying.
For example, if you just look atsomeone's LinkedIn profile or resume,
you may not know that they haveworked on multiple acquisitions.
You may not know that they have extensiveexperience in EMEA, but not in Asia.
(25:57):
You might not know that they werean SDR at the beginning of their
career, a sales development rep.
I was.
But that comes out in the conversationand then you realize, oh my gosh, I
probably should have put that in writing,but a good recruiter is going to tease
out those things and help, you know,really amplify what's unique about you.
Right, right.
Yeah, that's a lot of what we do.
Because you talk to so many peopleand it's like, oh, okay, well,
(26:19):
you have this combination ofthese two things and that's rare.
So I, I love that.
That's the fun part.
Let's talk about networking broadly.
So part of working with recruiters iskind of a networky thing, but, you know,
networking can be kind of a dirty wordor a necessary evil for some people.
Yeah, yeah.
And, and many people will say to me,god, I wish I had a bigger network,
or I wish I knew how to network,or I wish I enjoyed networking,
(26:43):
you know, types of events more.
So it seems like you havea different approach to it.
And I'm wondering, maybeyou're just more extroverted.
I don't know, or more programmaticabout it, but can you, can you talk
about how you approach networking?
Because if you think about there'sdifferent, it seems like for
you, you have, you know, you'reconnected to several recruiters.
You have your Women inRevenue organization.
(27:06):
You're also an advocate, it seemslike, for women in marketing.
had people who've worked for you, peopleyou've worked for, you've had investors.
And so it's like, it seems likethere's this whole ecosystem.
Can you talk about your approachto, to networking and how that, that
is programmatic, if you think is?
Sure.
I do think it's programmatic, althoughit's not as organized as you make
it sound, you know, in my world.
(27:27):
But I remember very early in my careergoing to "networking events" and
I'd have my little stack of businesscards in my little business card case.
And I dreaded it.
I didn't know what to say to anybody.
I felt awkward.
I felt like I didn't belong in the room.
What I came to realize overtime is everyone else feels
the same way that's there.
(27:47):
It's just like going to a dinnerparty where you don't know anybody
or like everyone's really hopingthey're going to have a good time
and, but they're nervous about it.
So I just decided, I think the way todo this is, and I learned this from
a book that I read by Peggy Noonan,who was Ronald Reagan's speechwriter.
And Peggy Noonan wrote his veryfamous, amazing speech after
(28:09):
the Challenger explosion and allthose astronauts were killed.
She really became known for makinghim what was known as a great
communicator at the time, whetheryou believed in his politics or not,
he was a phenomenal communicator.
And Peggy Noonan hadterrible stage fright.
And she talked about in her book howshe overcame her stage fright because
she was asked to speak all over theplace based on what she'd been doing.
(28:31):
How she overcame it wasbasically realizing that her
nerves were because she cared.
And if she framed it that way, thenshe kind of got herself to settle down.
So I totally have stolen that.
It helped so much.
And the other one was she didn't gostay in a green room before she spoke.
She went out and moved around theaudience and just talked to people.
Like, why'd you come?
What are you hoping to hear?
Because they're nervous too.
(28:52):
They're nervous thatyou're gonna be terrible.
They're nervous that they'regonna waste their time.
So, by the time you get back onstage, you're like, oh my god,
I have friends in the audience.
I know now what they want to learn.
So that's kind of the wayI think about networking.
If I go to any kind of event,there's like, just people
that I want to get to know.
And there's usually one or twopeople that I already know.
And then you can kind of juststart finding out about people
(29:12):
and asking good questions, right?
Everyone loves to talk about themselves.
So that's the way that I think about it.
And I also think about, what's,what is this person looking for?
For example, if I talk to somebodyat an investment firm - Costanoa
Ventures is a good example.
They were an investor in my last companyand I got to know the partners there and
their marketing community really well.
And you know, what is it that they want?
(29:33):
They want talent, right?
And they want to know what thebest practices are in the market.
And so sometimes I'll just proactivelyshare something with, you know, um,
Martina Lochenko is a good buddy of mineand be like, hey, I just read this book.
I think you'd be interested in it.
So it's like in the back of my head,there's just always this little, who can I
give a gift to that might be of interest?
And then if I think about approachingsomebody that I don't know, I'll
(29:55):
just start kind of watching them.
Some people call it stalking, butI just am interested in knowing,
like, what are they publishing?
What are they doing?
Where have they been in their career?
So that there can be like ahuman point of connection.
And I find it just kind of easierto do the further along I go.
Yeah, yeah.
Do, do you have a model forstaying in touch with all the
people that you're meeting?
Yeah, kind of.
(30:15):
By the way, this isn't, I'mnot talking about hundreds
and hundreds of people, right?
I'm talking about, there's probably,I don't know, several dozen that
I'm in touch with regularly, andthen there's like another little
kind of ecosystem outside of that.
You know, I don't think you can let morethan a year go by without connecting
with somebody that's in your network,and preferably sooner than that.
But I'll just tell you a quick story.
There was a product marketingmanager on my team a couple
(30:36):
companies ago who was just terrific.
He was wonderful.
And worked for me for two years,went on to another company.
And when he did that, Iwas a reference for him.
Like he was looking for something bigger.
I'm like, I'll help you.
So I was a reference for him there.
And then I didn't hear fromhim for like three years.
And then he called me up andsaid, "Hey, I'm looking at a new
opportunity, will you be a reference?"
And I'm like, I can't.
(30:57):
I don't know anything about you anymore.
You haven't kept in touch with me.
You haven't told me what's going on.
I can't comment on where you'vebeen in the last three years.
Like, you know, you should have toldme because I can't really help you now.
Oh, wow.
And that was brutal, right?
But it's how I felt.
I was like, in the old days,I might've said, oh, sure.
You know, I'll help you out.
(31:18):
But I just felt disingenuous.
It's like, I don't know anythingabout this person anymore.
So I feel like there's,there's that piece of it too.
Where you think about your own network andwho's giving back to you, and who doesn't.
You don't want to always bechasing everybody all the time.
So I think cultivate some meaningfulrelationships where you really
develop your almost board of advisors.
I have a collection of peoplewhere, you know, when I'm looking
(31:39):
at a job offer, I call them up andsay, this is what they offered me.
What do you think?
What else should I ask for?
You know, what shouldI be concerned about?
And get that second point ofview or third point of view.
Super helpful.
That's great.
Can you talk, you don't haveto give me names, but like,
who's on this board of advisors?
You know, more personal, moreprofessional, other CMOs?
Yeah, it's really formercoworkers and bosses.
(32:01):
Many of them are women.
And that's because I have verymuch cultivated my female network
because there just aren't asmany of us in leadership roles.
That's one of the reasons why Igot involved in Women in Revenue
with other people that you know.
That community is turning into areally wonderful one for, not only
networking, but also sharing advice.
In fact, a little known fact that I wouldlove your listeners to know about is in
(32:24):
the Women in Revenue community, there'sa Slack community and there's actually an
advice, comp, and benefits channel withinSlack that allows for anonymous posting.
So you see in there frequentlywomen will say, hey, I've just
been offered this role as a VP ofMarketing and a blah, blah, blah.
Give some details.
Does this offer seem appropriate?
And I really like that a lot becausethere's so much, um, mystery around
(32:48):
salary negotiations and what peopleget paid, and what they should ask for.
And then there's lots of thingsin negotiation that you kind of
learn along the way, like doubletrigger or negotiating a severance
package before you even get there.
That you just learn the hard way.
And I feel like when you have agood network of advisors, they
warn you about those things.
(33:10):
Yeah, yeah.
Great.
I have two final questions for you.
One, you talked about, you used theword "disingenuous" and part of having a
strong network is being authentic, right?
And showing up as yourself and tryingto help other people, et cetera.
I'm wondering, in many of theconversations I've been having,
there's this aspect of likecareer trauma that is coming up.
Yes!
(33:30):
Yes.
Where, you know, people are, again,they've had these short tenures.
You know, CEOs are disappointedin marketing leaders.
Marketing leaders can bedisappointed in CEOs, et cetera.
I guess, how real should amarketing leader be when they
show up to their network?
When is something like kind of toomuch information to share that you're
(33:51):
having this, you know, traumaticsituation, and when should people
trust the authenticity of it?
Because I often feel like
- Oh, you're - I such a great question.
Right?
I often feel like, as a recruiter,you talked about recruiters being
agents, but I often feel like peoplemisconstrue, like they mistake a
recruiter for a career coach or
- For a therapist!
Or for a therapist, right, exactly.
(34:12):
Yet I do want to know whothe authentic person is.
I don't know.
I don't have a particular incisivequestion, but do you, do you have
- No, I know exactly what you're talking about.
I know exactly what you're talking about.
You and I were on a CMO club meetinglike two or three weeks ago, and
you were talking about, uh, careeradvice and networking and recruiting.
And the topic came up in the groupabout this phrase, "career trauma."
(34:35):
There was like almost300 people on that call.
And boy, that, the chat inthat meeting just exploded.
I know you saw it, too.
And you know, there is no doubt thatalmost every executive I know, whether
they're in marketing or not, has beenthrough some sort of career trauma of
one sort or another in their career.
But especially in the last several years.
(34:57):
You look at the hyper growth stage, COVIDlockdown and all of the challenges that
brought, all of the impossibility of evenrecruiting when unemployment was so low.
And then the economy squeezes andeverything gets downsized, right?
So everything gets bloatedand then it all crushes down.
So lots and lots of people wholost their jobs and there's nothing
(35:17):
scarier than losing your job, right?
You've got a mortgage to pay.
I remember that happened to me early inmy career and I had a, I was a single
mom to a young toddler and it waslike, oh my god, what am I going to do?
Like I, I need to make money.
You know, you find yourselfmaking decisions that you wouldn't
normally make or settling forthings you wouldn't normally do.
I think that we all have to knowourselves and work on our confidence.
(35:43):
And believe me, I've had severalphases in my career where I made a
mistake in deciding to join a businessand then leaving that business and
just feeling like, wow, how could Ihave blown that decision so badly?
And then if it happensagain, you're like, why?
What happened?
There's a woman on my team that wejust hired who'd been laid off three
different times in three different years.
(36:04):
And she was just like, look, I thought Imade good decisions, but those businesses
were not what I thought they were.
And that was okay withme to hear her say that.
What you're talking about is howmuch vulnerability do we show?
And there is no doubt that weneed to project confidence, right?
That is a huge part of what we bring toa business is projecting confidence as
(36:26):
an executive, that we know what we'redoing and that we are feeling good about
the decisions that are going forward.
So some of it is a little performative.
I'm a huge fan of Amy Cuddy.
I don't know if you knowAmy Cuddy, the Power Posing?
And I tell you, it's true.
If you get yourself kind ofup for the thing - for me, it
means there's things I wear.
There's kind of rituals that I doahead of time to just get myself in
(36:50):
the zone to be able to talk about myaccomplishments, and also talk about
why I might have left a business and,you know, what I'm, why I'm available
currently and that kind of stuff.
And you just, you need a good, smoothtalk track and you need, you don't
need to say a heck of a lot, right?
I think sometimes people tend toover explain circumstances in a way
that makes the person they're talkingto really wonder what happened.
(37:13):
Like, wow, you know, this isa lot of drama going on here.
Is this somebody that is goingto bring that to a business?
So I think trying to think about whathappened in your past dispassionately
and in a business-like fashion.
And just knowing that there arecycles in businesses and as a
marketing leader, it is very rare tobe somewhere five, seven, ten years.
(37:36):
It's super rare.
I was a VP of Marketing, corporatemarketing, at BusinessObjects.
I was there for eleven years.
That was unusual.
And it's okay to begoing to the next thing.
Or to decide, hey, I'm think I'minterested in a company that's
slightly bigger, or I'm interested ina company that's more international,
or whatever the case may be.
And you deliberately make thatchoice and transition out and in.
(37:58):
Yeah, yeah, that's a great perspective.
Thank you.
I know we are running short on time.
So one final question for you.
I like to ask most of thepeople I interview this.
When you interview a marketer foryour team, a marketing leader to
work for you, is there a particularquestion you like to ask them?
I love to ask, what didn't I askyou that you want me to know?
(38:18):
It's one of my favorites.
It usually catches people off guard.
So I find by doing that, I get alittle insight into the real them.
They become less performative.
I can't stand performative behavior.
It drives me nuts.
Like I, I just kind of have a nosefor when people are posturing or,
you know, using flowery languageor something that they might've
(38:40):
pulled out of AI as a good answer.
And I almost always hear somethingthat is more on the personal
side than the professional side.
I'll learn that somebody, uh,just took up running marathons.
I learned once that a person that Ihired had lost a hundred pounds, and
how meaningful that that was for themand how it had changed their life.
I've learned about people that,uh, had some real gritty thing,
(39:05):
gritty lessons that they've learned.
Someone told me, you know, I,I'm here to remove the stigma
of being a teenage mother.
You know, I had my son when I wasseventeen, and now he's graduating
high school and I'm really proudof being able to do all that.
Some people have told me that theywere first generation college graduates
and what that meant in their family.
And I love that content, right?
(39:26):
It just tells you, gives youthis kind of insight into them.
I'll often tell people that, myfirst job was a sales development
rep when I was in high school.
And I did that job for four yearsbefore it was ever even called that.
How much that taught me.
I'll tell them that I'm the oldest ofseven children in a multiracial family.
And that is like at the foundation ofwho I am and how I show up as a leader.
(39:48):
So that's my favorite one.
Yeah, that's great!
Thank you.
And I love how it dovetails with thewhole trauma and vulnerability thing.
You know, like I think maybevulnerability is not necessarily
sharing all the dirty laundry.
It's kind of, it can be something,you know, personal and authentic
and non-professional related.
Yeah, and my advice isjust work on your story.
(40:09):
And I've done this withsome of my advisors.
It's like, how do I explain this story ofwhere, why I went to that company, what I
did when I was there, and how I'm leaving?
And you know, that, that can bevery helpful, just to kind of
talk that through your sort ofelevator pitch about a scenario.
Yes.
Yes.
I love that.
I think that's great feedback for people.
Just keep telling it.
(40:30):
And as you practice, you get better.
And as you practice, people give youfeedback on, Oh, this part was boring.
This part was interesting.
Or this resonated and, or stop here.
And yeah, that's, that's great.
Fabulous.
Well, Tracy, thank you so much forsharing all this awesome wisdom on
working with recruiters, working withyour network, working with your kind of
insides, and all of this with The Get.
Appreciate it.
(40:51):
I really appreciate the offer to come andtalk to you and talk to your listeners.
I'd love to be helpful to anyoneand would love to connect.
Thank you.
That was Tracy Eiler, CMO at OpenSesame.
Now, think about what three things you cando to leverage your network in new ways.
Next time on The Get, you'll hearfrom me and from another guest.
Don't miss it.
(41:11):
Thanks for listening to The Get.
I'm your host, Erica Seidel.
The Get is here to drive smartdecisions around recruiting and
leadership in B2B SaaS marketing.
We explore the trends, tribulations,and triumphs of today's top
marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.
If you liked thisepisode, please share it.
For more about The Get,visit TheGetPodcast.com.
(41:32):
To learn more about my executive searchpractice, which focuses on recruiting the
make-money marketing leaders rather thanthe make-it-pretty ones, follow me on
LinkedIn or visit TheConnectiveGood.Com.
The Get is produced by Evo Terraof Simpler Media Productions.
What does it look liketo be good at networking?
(00:02):
To be able to grow your network,nurture it, give to it, and get from it?
And what does it mean towork with a recruiter?
Many CMOs have admitted to me thatthey are really bad at networking, and
many have asked me how they can bestwork with recruiters as a candidate?
Today, we look at programmatic waysto work with your network, whether
that means recruiters, formercolleagues, current colleagues,
(00:24):
personal boards of advisors, etc.
If you can get good at this, yourdecision-making will be stronger
with input from others, and you canget connected to more opportunities,
making friends along the way.
Hello, and welcome to The Get.
I'm your host, Erica Seidel.
This season, we focus on the raceto reduce risk when it comes to a
match between a company and a CMO.
(00:46):
How can you find out what you need tofind out before saying yes so that you
make a match that sticks and flourishes?
Today, you'll hear some tips from meabout working with executive recruiters.
Then you will meet my guest, Tracy Eiler.
She will share the playbookthat has helped her tap her
network and collaborate well withrecruiters over several CMO jobs.
(01:06):
Let's first talk about how to work withexecutive recruiters as a candidate.
Some words to the wise.
First, executive search peoplelike myself work on behalf of the
companies, not the candidates.
We don't have the model of workingwith candidates to curate their
set of opportunities per se.
We are instead helping companies thatare looking for very particular things.
(01:28):
I like to say elevenout of ten requirements.
That means that the chance I couldplace a particular marketing leader
is lower than I wish it would be, evenif the person has great experience.
I often tell people thatI'm not a substitute for a
career coach or a therapist.
But of course, I do a lot ofcoaching for the candidates I have
in play for particular searches,guiding them through that process.
(01:50):
When I think about the marketing leadersthat I have the closest relationships
with, there's some things in common.
They have the background that Itend to place, marketing leaders
at scale-up companies in B2B SaaS.
They have contributed tostrong, scaled journeys.
They've gotten back to mewhen I've reached out to them.
They've said things like, I wantto look at this or maybe this is
not the fit for me, but let's chat.
(02:12):
Let me introduce you tosomebody who is a good fit.
They might be somebody that I'vemet in person at some event or,
obviously, through an interview.
Maybe they've been a candidatealready for me in the past.
They've shared their views on themarket and not just asked me for mine.
So, let's say you have aconversation with a recruiter
without a particular role in mind.
(02:32):
Kind of a get-to-know-you conversation.
Some tips for you.
First, do your research.
Check out the recruiter's content.
Get to know their focus area.
Second, have your scale-upnumbers at the ready.
Know what your businessimpact is and say it.
If you have helped a companygo from fifty million to a
hundred million, spit that out.
If you've built a marketing teamfrom ten people to twenty-five
(02:53):
and then back down to fifteen, butwith increased output, share that.
Third, be clear on whatyou're looking for job wise.
Sometimes people spend too much time withme talking about what they did fifteen,
twenty years ago, when really what youwant is to create the triggers for,
call me for this kind of opportunity.
For instance, oh, I'm looking for aSeries B cybersecurity company, you
(03:16):
know, based on the East Coast, wherethe marketing leader should have a
real strong depth in product marketing.
That's helpful for me to hear.
Now, let's say the executive searchperson has a role that could be a good
fit for you, and they have shared thename of the company, so you have a
real opportunity to work with them.
Take the call if you have even a smallamount of curiosity about the role.
(03:37):
I've placed many people who wentfrom twenty percent interested,
to fifty percent interested, to110 percent interested over the
course of just a few conversations.
And check out the company, comewith a quick point of view.
Especially now, the bestcandidates are doing that.
Then, once you're meeting others fromthe company, share your reactions
honestly with the recruiter.
(03:58):
Candidates can really shape thedirection of a search and the
perspective of the recruiter and theCEO more than they sometimes think.
There's so much more to talk about,so let's bring on another perspective.
Let me introduce you tomy guest, Tracy Eiler.
Tracy has been named one of the fifteenmost influential women in B2B marketing.
She's now the CMO of OpenSesame, theSeries D company in the e-learning space.
(04:21):
Previously, she served as CMO at Alation,InsideView, and MarkLogic, to name a few.
She's an advisor with Women inRevenue, which is a great organization.
I've tried to recruit her many timesbefore, and you will likely find
her just as impressive as I do.
She's going to discuss with us herplaybook for pressure testing a role,
and she'll share her programmaticapproach to working with people in
(04:42):
her network, both recruiters andcolleagues, to help get to the right fit.
And she'll discuss tips for CEOs todemonstrate their support of marketing.
Tracy, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
I'm really thrilled to be here,especially after listening to last season.
Oh, wonderful.
Thank you for being a listener.
I appreciate that.
Let's launch right in.
So you landed as CMO at OpenSesamein the last year, I think, right?
(05:07):
And you
- Yes.
Right.
So you mentioned you had checked outabout thirty different opportunities.
I did, I did.
So that is, that is a lot.
And I know you're picky about what yousay yes to having talked to you before.
So, um, can you talk about how thissearch for you was different from
the past, and maybe share a couple ofthings that you learned or that you
did that others could learn from asthey seek to kind of mitigate risk
(05:29):
with, with their hiring and recruiting?
Yes, absolutely.
I think every one of your listeners knowswhat a weird climate that we are in.
Companies want successful marketers tojoin them, but yet they might have had a
bad experience in the past or been burnedor overhired teams and then downsized.
(05:50):
There's just volatility everywhere.
And every marketer I know has comein and out of businesses, sometimes
in less than eighteen months,sometimes in less than a year.
You know, there's that joke, notjoke about marketing people having
eighteen-month tenures, but youknow, it's, it's happened to me.
So I, this time around, wasincredibly deliberate about what
(06:14):
I was looking at and looking for.
And at this stage of my career, I reallywanted to be in a slightly more mature
company, something that was C or D interms of a series, that really was looking
to scale and appreciated efficiency, thathad really good business fundamentals.
I've been through that growth-at-all-costswhirlwind that many of us have been in
(06:36):
and we're in a different climate, right?
So I started looking for my newopportunity, and really what I did
first was proactively reach out torecruiters that I know and trust and
just say, "Hey, I'm looking around.
These are the sorts of things I'mlooking for if anything comes up."
Right?
Start there, but then I was alsolooking at kind of segments of
the market that I think are reallyinteresting, or people that I know
(06:59):
that are at interesting companiesthat I would then go and learn about.
And then you just start shortlistingand start interviewing, right?
And I, I think one of my skills that Ihave developed really well, Erica, is the
fast assessment phase when you first hearfrom someone like you and you see a job
spec, and you look at a company, I canpretty much rule out a business maybe in
(07:22):
five or ten minutes I can rule them out.
And you know, you might think,Oh my God, how can you make
such a fast snap decision?
But there's just a bunch ofdifferent things I look at,
and I'd be happy to share that.
Yeah, yeah.
I do want to get to that.
I also want to say I love whatyou said about a short list.
So it sounds like you had a list ofcompanies that kind of fit your criteria.
And I'm wondering, it's funny causeso many CMOs don't actually do that.
(07:45):
I'll, I'll share that as feedback withthem when they come to me, I'll say like,
Oh, create your kind of networking mapof different companies and, you know,
different swim lanes for your search.
And so I love to hear that you did that.
Can you talk about, like,is that, is that rare?
To do, do you think?
I do think so.
Although, I have spoken to reallygood, trusted advisors, friends of
(08:09):
mine, and trusted advisors, likeSydney Sloan's a good example.
you know Sydney.
She has done a very deliberatesearch in her past also.
You know, in fact, during this time,we were both looking at different roles
and comparing notes and even tradingopportunities, almost like baseball cards.
Like there were a couple of timesshe'd call me and say, Hey, I
just talked to this company.
Here's their story.
(08:29):
They're in Atlanta, blah-di-blah.
I think you could be areally good fit there.
It's not for me.
And I've done, you know, the samewith other people too, which I
don't know if that's, I thinkthat's probably unusual also, right?
Yes!
It seems so obvious, and alot of people don't do it.
And I, I love that.
Like, just call up other people who mightbe getting the calls that you want to
get, and say, hey, if it's not the righttime for you, not the right opportunity,
(08:51):
not the right location, send them my way.
Right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So talk to me a little bit about your, youknow, let's call it your pressure testing
playbook, just cause I love alliteration.
So when you explore a new role, and howdoes it help you kind of avoid risk?
Can you talk about that?
Yeah, absolutely.
It's funny because until youand I were preparing for this
(09:13):
conversation, I hadn't really thoughtabout what my methodology was.
I just know that I have one.
My husband's a Chief Revenue Officer, andhe's looking for his next opportunity.
And I've been helping him withthat super fast assessment.
He'll be like, hey, can you go dothe thing with this opportunity?
And I'll go do the thing.
And the thing is, essentially,I look at their website.
I do a quick scan onwho do they seem to be?
(09:35):
How are they presenting themselves?
I will then quickly pivot overto the team that's there that,
that you can identify, right?
Certainly the leadership that'sidentifiable, board members, if they're
on the site, they're not always.
And then I'll go right over toLinkedIn and I'll start looking
at employees that are there.
You know, how big are they?
I look at that insights thing thatyou can find on a company profile.
Get an idea of are theygrowing really fast?
(09:57):
Are they leveling out?
Have they downsized?
You see all of those shapes now.
And I'll look at the people that are therein kind of the next click down level,
the VPs, the directors of functionalareas, just to kind of get a feeling
for like, where are these people?
I'll give you an example of one thatI told my husband to run away from.
He was looking at an organizationwhere once I did my double click
(10:18):
down, I discovered that the leadershipteam and like the one level down,
between all of them had likeseventy years of Cisco experience.
Not that Cisco's a bad company.
Cisco's an awesome company.
But the homogeneity in that leadershipteam, having all been at the same business
for so long together, and now in thisnew business together, just said to
(10:38):
him, you're going to be the odd man out.
You're not a Cisco person.
I don't think that's a good idea, right?
And as it turned out, as hestarted talking to them, there was
a lot of practices that they hadthat weren't really appropriate
for their size and stage.
They were a much smallerstartup, and they'd all come
from this big, big company.
That's an example of the kindof sleuthing around that I do.
(11:00):
I'll also read what people in the companyare writing about, whether it be Glassdoor
or LinkedIn posts on their engagementin their own businesses or other places
where I'll go seek out information.
And you know, none of thosesources are perfect, right?
I've heard plenty of people discreditGlassdoor employee reviews saying,
(11:20):
oh, it's just the disgruntled people.
But you know, youdirectionally get a sense.
That's kind of my point.
And my advice to other people is sample alot of different sources of information.
You're going to get a sense forthe health of that business and
the attitude and the culture.
Yeah, yeah.
That's great.
I love how your husband callsit, "do the thing," you know?
(11:40):
[Laughter] Do you write it up as you go?
Or is it just kind of like,you know, a few notes here
and there and it's informing
- Um it depends how many I'm looking at, right?
Like, you know, there was a timewhere I was probably getting,
oh my gosh, two or three inboundinquiries a week from recruiters.
This is going back to 2020, 2021.
And, you know, I would have to do thething, do the superfast scan very quickly
(12:05):
because I also have this tenant whereeven if I'm happy in my current role,
if I know and trust that recruiter,I will often take a quick look at the
spec and then give advice back like,hey, do you know these five people?
I think they'd be good tonetwork with, or whatever.
I just did it yesterday.
I do that whether I'm lookingor not, and I find that to be
a very good behavior to have.
I agree.
And thank you.
Cause you've done that for memany times and I appreciate that.
(12:28):
And I think that's a good tip forpeople that even if you're not, um,
even if you think you're going to be ano for an opportunity, take the call.
You make a connection.
You help somebody out.
Recruiters have good memories usuallyand can, you know, remember that.
And you never know sometimesa no becomes a yes.
You never know.
It's very true.
Cool.
So, I'm curious about, you know, aspart of your de-risking, part of it,
(12:52):
I'm sure, is looking at the CEO andtrying to figure out their commitment
and their support for marketing.
What would be youradvice on the other side?
So to CEOs, what is your advice toCEOs on how they can best demonstrate
that to attract a candidate like you?
You know, there's many things that I haveexperienced with CEOs ranging from, I
(13:15):
worked for a CEO once who really wantedsales and marketing to be oppositional.
He wanted us to fight.
And I think it's because he feltthere was some Darwinian survival of
the fittest thing that was going tohappen and we'd get a better result,
which we all know that never happens.
So I pressure test for attitudesabout common pitfalls that I see
(13:38):
marketers running into again andagain, fighting with sales or sales and
marketing misalignment is one of them.
So I will ask questions of a CEOabout their posture around sales and
marketing, and they can demonstrateback to me by saying something
simple as, I want you to be joinedat the hip with our head of sales.
(13:58):
When they say that, I know they don'twant me to fight with that person, right?
That's a good example.
Another example would be, I wantto see that they can articulate who
they think the business should bein the market, or what posture the
company should have in the market,and they're able to give me examples
of brands that they know and love.
I'll often ask, like, tell meabout a brand that you just love.
(14:20):
And it doesn't have to be in tech.
It could be a consumer brand.
I learn a lot that way.
My current CEO, Don Spear, is a veryunique CEO for me in my lifetime, where
he is not a engineering technical founderwho started the company at a really,
really early stage in their career andthen kind of grew up with the business.
(14:42):
I've worked with a bunchof those kinds of people.
Don was a submarine Lieutenant in theNavy and then went to Harvard Business
School and he and his roommate wrotethe first business plan for PetSmart.
He was too risk-averse at thetime to go found the company.
He was newly married and had ayoung child and so on, but ended up
joining PetSmart when they were aboutseven stores, and grew them to 250
(15:07):
stores and then ended up selling it.
And then he went on to found andrun Banfield Pet Hospital, which
I don't know if you've seen them,but in the northeast, it's like a
chain of veterinary pop-in places.
So Don is, he has a retailer's mindand very much talks in those terms.
He understands all the,the four P's of marketing.
(15:28):
And he himself will say, like,you have to make an emotional
connection with the buyer.
That is the way that you build trust.
That is the way that youget them coming back.
But he's not a marketingexpert at all, right?
He doesn't pretend to be, but throughthose, some of those experiences, I really
came to evaluate him as somebody thatwould appreciate the complexity that the
(15:48):
marketing role has in a business and thekinds of challenges that we would have.
That's really been remarkableand a big difference for me
working for somebody like that.
Hmm.
That's great.
He sounds terrific.
How about on the other side?
Have you seen any kind of red flagsor sniffed out somebody who's not
going to be a great marketing partner?
Is there a particular example of that?
(16:09):
[Laughs] Oh yeah.
And it's not always the CEO.
You know, it might be a head of salesor it might be someone in finance.
It's unfortunate and I've heardpeople on your podcast talk about
this and many of my friends thatare CMOs - marketing is just very
misunderstood, not thoroughly understood.
And I think it's because all of us in ourhuman lives and our regular lives, we are
(16:30):
the audience of so much marketing, right?
We are making buying decisions all thetime, and therefore we have opinions
about what good marketing is and isn't.
So no matter who you are in a company,you're going to have an opinion about what
marketing should and shouldn't be doing.
And that's unique, right?
I don't have an opinion about whatengineering should and shouldn't be doing.
I don't know how to build products.
I don't know how to code, right?
So I can't come across with anycredibility in that conversation.
(16:52):
But yet, our heads of productcan because they are recipients
of marketing all the time.
So I find as marketers, we endourselves up in businesses where we
have to do loads and loads of internalmarketing and communicating and not
only about what we're going to do,but what we're not and why we made a
decision to do thing A versus thing B.
(17:13):
In fact, right now we're working ona website redesign and we're using a
very much iterative kind of testingapproach to decide where we land on
fundamental things like our homepage.
And, you know, I'm using thatmantra that we are continuously
testing because of this constantopinion that we keep getting back.
So that for me is a scenario that Ithink we all should expect that there's
(17:38):
going to be lots of opinions aboutwhat we should and shouldn't be doing.
And we need to be the ones thatare going to provide clarity on
how we're making decisions and why.
Yeah, yeah, I'm feeling it's like thisChief Marketing Education Officer is
- It's true.
- you know, it's, it's such a thing.
It's such a thing.
So, Erika, there's onestory I wanted to tell you.
I got my very first CMO jobat a company called MarkLogic.
(17:59):
I had done my due diligence.
I'd known the CEO.
I'd worked for him in other companies.
He had chewed up and spit outfour marketing VPs in three years.
And I knew that, but I knew itwas because he kept hiring in
the product marketing image.
And he's a product marketer, and I'ma much more demand and brand marketer.
So the need, I felt Iwould be successful there.
(18:19):
I'd met the CRO, but the mistakeI made was I didn't meet the CRO's
lieutenants who were kind of VPs ofsales in a couple different divisions.
So this business was only15 million when I joined.
The day that I met the four VPs ofthese divisions, I go bouncing in,
in my, you know, lighthearted self.
Hey, I'm so excited to meet all of you!
And I put my hand out and the alpha ofthe group who had run the federal team,
(18:42):
literally looked up at me, shook hishand like waving away a fly, and turned
around and kept talking to everybody else.
Wouldn't shake my hand,wouldn't talk to me.
I'm standing there going, oh mygod, like, is this really happening?
And you know, when you're outsideyourself, looking at yourself,
kind of like, what's gonna happen?
And this voice came out of me, whichwas my mom's voice, and I just said,
(19:03):
seriously, this is how it's going to be?
Like, y'all are not evengoing to talk to me?
Like, I know that you've had manypredecessors before and I'm sorry
about that, but unless you talkto me, you're going to be meeting
number five in about six months.
So how about we do a redo?
And that's what we did.
And, you know, it kind of shamedthem into it, but it was crazy.
(19:24):
The punchline to this story is the onewho swatted me away is now my husband.
Um
- No!
Yes, yes, yes.
[Erica chuckling] Yes.
So...
[Tracy laughs]
Wow!
How we got from A to B is a lot of trustand a lot of friendship and a lot of
lead generation for the sales team andthen, you know, the rest is history.
(19:46):
Did you ask why he wasjust swatting you away?
Oh, he denies it.
He's like, that's not how it happened.
And I'm like, yes, it was.
There were witnesses.
I mean, basically, the point of view ofthose sales leaders, and I totally see
it, was, oh god, here comes another one.
Yet another marketing personcoming in here with their
playbook and their attitude.
They think they know everything.
(20:07):
You all have probably heard thatterm in the military, the "FNG?"
The F-ing New G uy, basically.
So you know, you've got this whole,this whole troop and you get the
new person in and they basically,you know, they get shot fast because
they don't know what they're doing.
And that was what came to their mind.
They're just like, oh mygod, here comes another one.
And just a lot of eye rolling.
(20:27):
Wow.
Well, they didn't know who they had there.
So that's, that's great.
I like that you didn't put, you didn't letyourself be put in a one down position.
You kind of like interacted as
-I don't know how else I could have handled it, honestly.
I think back on that, I'mlike, I could have run crying
from the room and quit, right?
Like, it would have been easy.
That was, these guys arejust jerks, but I get it.
Like, I understand whythey behaved that way.
(20:48):
It's terribly rude, butyou know, I kind of get it.
Wow.
That's great.
Thank you for sharing that story!
So, talk also aboutworking with recruiters.
What does it mean in yourmind to work with a recruiter?
You've talked a little bit about takinga call even if it's not quite the right
fit for you, which I think is great.
Can you talk about other dimensions ofhow you have collaborated with recruiters?
(21:11):
I have been very fortunate, andgotten to know some extremely
talented recruiters in my career.
Some that have placed me in opportunities,some that I've worked with and looking
at opportunities that didn't work out.
And the really good ones are advisors.
I almost end up feeling likethey're my agent, my talent
agent, and are representing me.
(21:33):
Now, there's no doubt that, you know,a recruiter is going to make money
when they place you somewhere, right?
But they're only going to be successful ifthat placement ends up to be a good one.
So, you know, I think we have to trustthat the recruiting process is going
to weed out the candidates that aren'tthe right fit and put forward the
candidates that are, and then help us,as candidates, put our best foot forward.
(21:57):
And tell us the truth, right?
There's nothing I appreciate more thanwhen a recruiter says to me, "Hey Tracy,
they're concerned that you did not growup in product marketing because they
think that's a really important skill."
And my response to thatwill be, they're right.
I did not grow up in product marketing.
Let me tell you the ways that Isupplement that lack of core talent in my
(22:19):
skillset, let's just call it like that.
And if that's not good enough,then we should walk away, right?
If they're really hung up on aparticular thing, then let's just say no.
And I'm going to moveon to the next thing.
And I think good recruiters can reallyhelp weed some of that out because,
you know, there's multidimensionalityto every marketer and you can't,
you're not going to get a hundredpercent score in every dimension.
So I really think good recruitersneed to help CEOs prioritize and
(22:43):
define what they think they needfor the next two, three, five years.
Right, right.
And it's such a calibration.
You go back and forth.
And I think candidates don't realizethat they can, with their feedback
and with their shaping, they canhelp to, they can help the recruiter
and the CEO to shape the search andthe outcome a little more than they
might give themselves credit for.
(23:03):
Yes.
And I really use recruiters assounding boards in situations where,
uh, when I was looking for my currentrole, I got to the altar five times.
Meaning, I was one ofthe top two candidates.
Several of those times I walked awayat the end because I just in the end
decided, you know what, I don't thinkthis is going to be the best place for me,
(23:25):
even though I went this far and it's sohard to walk away when you get that far.
But I'm glad I did.
A couple of the times they didn't pick me.
They picked the other person.
And in all of those scenarios, therecruiter was very much a sounding
board for me about my decision processand what was concerning me, what
was making me hesitant, and helpedme explore it in a way that allowed
(23:47):
me to be confident about my choice.
Yeah, yeah, that's great.
And it sounds like you've investedin those relationships beforehand and
while, while you're doing the search,you know, as well to have that kind of
- That's exactly why when I do get an inbound inquiry, I respond.
Because I feel like I'm just going tokeep giving and giving and giving advice.
(24:08):
Sometimes I'll read a spec, for example.
I read one the other daythat I just responded to that
I was mentioning earlier.
And there's a piece of the spec whereI'm like, that doesn't make any sense.
And I told the recruiter that.
I said, this thing, this piece here justseems incongruous with everything else.
You might want to takea fresh look at that.
It struck me as odd.
And he was very grateful.
He's like, thank you for telling me that.
I thought it was odd too, but thecompany insisted to put it in there.
(24:29):
And that kind of stuffhappens all the time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They say, you know, give to get.
Just be a giver and give advice backon good candidates and other things.
Right, right.
There's a great book, Give and Get.
I don't know, have you read thebook by - oh god, uh, Adam Grant?
Is that his name?
Oh, I love Adam Grant.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Giving and Getting?
Give and Get?
(24:49):
Give to Get?
You know, something like that.
Yeah, he talks about there are givers,there are takers, and there are matchers.
And so it's, it's fascinating.
It's one of his first things.
Um, I would like to say also, Ilove your example of, "Oh, Tracy,
we're not sure about your depthof product marketing experience."
One of the best questions I getfrom candidates is, "Erica, what
(25:11):
are the concerns that you or thecompany have about my candidacy?"
Because that's a way that you can,as the candidate, they can hear
how they've been perceived andcorrect any miscommunications.
Because sometimes a recruiter didn't hearor, or, you know, just didn't fully grasp
the extent of somebody's background.
(25:32):
So, when you play it back, like, oh,okay, the client wants XYZ and you have
ABC, that can be helpful to just kindof have that, that calibration moment.
There's good examples thatfit into what you're saying.
For example, if you just look atsomeone's LinkedIn profile or resume,
you may not know that they haveworked on multiple acquisitions.
You may not know that they have extensiveexperience in EMEA, but not in Asia.
(25:57):
You might not know that they werean SDR at the beginning of their
career, a sales development rep.
I was.
But that comes out in the conversationand then you realize, oh my gosh, I
probably should have put that in writing,but a good recruiter is going to tease
out those things and help, you know,really amplify what's unique about you.
Right, right.
Yeah, that's a lot of what we do.
Because you talk to so many peopleand it's like, oh, okay, well,
(26:19):
you have this combination ofthese two things and that's rare.
So I, I love that.
That's the fun part.
Let's talk about networking broadly.
So part of working with recruiters iskind of a networky thing, but, you know,
networking can be kind of a dirty wordor a necessary evil for some people.
Yeah, yeah.
And, and many people will say to me,god, I wish I had a bigger network,
or I wish I knew how to network,or I wish I enjoyed networking,
(26:43):
you know, types of events more.
So it seems like you havea different approach to it.
And I'm wondering, maybeyou're just more extroverted.
I don't know, or more programmaticabout it, but can you, can you talk
about how you approach networking?
Because if you think about there'sdifferent, it seems like for
you, you have, you know, you'reconnected to several recruiters.
You have your Women inRevenue organization.
(27:06):
You're also an advocate, it seemslike, for women in marketing.
had people who've worked for you, peopleyou've worked for, you've had investors.
And so it's like, it seems likethere's this whole ecosystem.
Can you talk about your approachto, to networking and how that, that
is programmatic, if you think is?
Sure.
I do think it's programmatic, althoughit's not as organized as you make
it sound, you know, in my world.
(27:27):
But I remember very early in my careergoing to "networking events" and
I'd have my little stack of businesscards in my little business card case.
And I dreaded it.
I didn't know what to say to anybody.
I felt awkward.
I felt like I didn't belong in the room.
What I came to realize overtime is everyone else feels
the same way that's there.
(27:47):
It's just like going to a dinnerparty where you don't know anybody
or like everyone's really hopingthey're going to have a good time
and, but they're nervous about it.
So I just decided, I think the way todo this is, and I learned this from
a book that I read by Peggy Noonan,who was Ronald Reagan's speechwriter.
And Peggy Noonan wrote his veryfamous, amazing speech after
(28:09):
the Challenger explosion and allthose astronauts were killed.
She really became known for makinghim what was known as a great
communicator at the time, whetheryou believed in his politics or not,
he was a phenomenal communicator.
And Peggy Noonan hadterrible stage fright.
And she talked about in her book howshe overcame her stage fright because
she was asked to speak all over theplace based on what she'd been doing.
(28:31):
How she overcame it wasbasically realizing that her
nerves were because she cared.
And if she framed it that way, thenshe kind of got herself to settle down.
So I totally have stolen that.
It helped so much.
And the other one was she didn't gostay in a green room before she spoke.
She went out and moved around theaudience and just talked to people.
Like, why'd you come?
What are you hoping to hear?
Because they're nervous too.
(28:52):
They're nervous thatyou're gonna be terrible.
They're nervous that they'regonna waste their time.
So, by the time you get back onstage, you're like, oh my god,
I have friends in the audience.
I know now what they want to learn.
So that's kind of the wayI think about networking.
If I go to any kind of event,there's like, just people
that I want to get to know.
And there's usually one or twopeople that I already know.
And then you can kind of juststart finding out about people
(29:12):
and asking good questions, right?
Everyone loves to talk about themselves.
So that's the way that I think about it.
And I also think about, what's,what is this person looking for?
For example, if I talk to somebodyat an investment firm - Costanoa
Ventures is a good example.
They were an investor in my last companyand I got to know the partners there and
their marketing community really well.
And you know, what is it that they want?
(29:33):
They want talent, right?
And they want to know what thebest practices are in the market.
And so sometimes I'll just proactivelyshare something with, you know, um,
Martina Lochenko is a good buddy of mineand be like, hey, I just read this book.
I think you'd be interested in it.
So it's like in the back of my head,there's just always this little, who can I
give a gift to that might be of interest?
And then if I think about approachingsomebody that I don't know, I'll
(29:55):
just start kind of watching them.
Some people call it stalking, butI just am interested in knowing,
like, what are they publishing?
What are they doing?
Where have they been in their career?
So that there can be like ahuman point of connection.
And I find it just kind of easierto do the further along I go.
Yeah, yeah.
Do, do you have a model forstaying in touch with all the
people that you're meeting?
Yeah, kind of.
(30:15):
By the way, this isn't, I'mnot talking about hundreds
and hundreds of people, right?
I'm talking about, there's probably,I don't know, several dozen that
I'm in touch with regularly, andthen there's like another little
kind of ecosystem outside of that.
You know, I don't think you can let morethan a year go by without connecting
with somebody that's in your network,and preferably sooner than that.
But I'll just tell you a quick story.
There was a product marketingmanager on my team a couple
(30:36):
companies ago who was just terrific.
He was wonderful.
And worked for me for two years,went on to another company.
And when he did that, Iwas a reference for him.
Like he was looking for something bigger.
I'm like, I'll help you.
So I was a reference for him there.
And then I didn't hear fromhim for like three years.
And then he called me up andsaid, "Hey, I'm looking at a new
opportunity, will you be a reference?"
And I'm like, I can't.
(30:57):
I don't know anything about you anymore.
You haven't kept in touch with me.
You haven't told me what's going on.
I can't comment on where you'vebeen in the last three years.
Like, you know, you should have toldme because I can't really help you now.
Oh, wow.
And that was brutal, right?
But it's how I felt.
I was like, in the old days,I might've said, oh, sure.
You know, I'll help you out.
(31:18):
But I just felt disingenuous.
It's like, I don't know anythingabout this person anymore.
So I feel like there's,there's that piece of it too.
Where you think about your own network andwho's giving back to you, and who doesn't.
You don't want to always bechasing everybody all the time.
So I think cultivate some meaningfulrelationships where you really
develop your almost board of advisors.
I have a collection of peoplewhere, you know, when I'm looking
(31:39):
at a job offer, I call them up andsay, this is what they offered me.
What do you think?
What else should I ask for?
You know, what shouldI be concerned about?
And get that second point ofview or third point of view.
Super helpful.
That's great.
Can you talk, you don't haveto give me names, but like,
who's on this board of advisors?
You know, more personal, moreprofessional, other CMOs?
Yeah, it's really formercoworkers and bosses.
(32:01):
Many of them are women.
And that's because I have verymuch cultivated my female network
because there just aren't asmany of us in leadership roles.
That's one of the reasons why Igot involved in Women in Revenue
with other people that you know.
That community is turning into areally wonderful one for, not only
networking, but also sharing advice.
In fact, a little known fact that I wouldlove your listeners to know about is in
(32:24):
the Women in Revenue community, there'sa Slack community and there's actually an
advice, comp, and benefits channel withinSlack that allows for anonymous posting.
So you see in there frequentlywomen will say, hey, I've just
been offered this role as a VP ofMarketing and a blah, blah, blah.
Give some details.
Does this offer seem appropriate?
And I really like that a lot becausethere's so much, um, mystery around
(32:48):
salary negotiations and what peopleget paid, and what they should ask for.
And then there's lots of thingsin negotiation that you kind of
learn along the way, like doubletrigger or negotiating a severance
package before you even get there.
That you just learn the hard way.
And I feel like when you have agood network of advisors, they
warn you about those things.
(33:10):
Yeah, yeah.
Great.
I have two final questions for you.
One, you talked about, you used theword "disingenuous" and part of having a
strong network is being authentic, right?
And showing up as yourself and tryingto help other people, et cetera.
I'm wondering, in many of theconversations I've been having,
there's this aspect of likecareer trauma that is coming up.
Yes!
(33:30):
Yes.
Where, you know, people are, again,they've had these short tenures.
You know, CEOs are disappointedin marketing leaders.
Marketing leaders can bedisappointed in CEOs, et cetera.
I guess, how real should amarketing leader be when they
show up to their network?
When is something like kind of toomuch information to share that you're
(33:51):
having this, you know, traumaticsituation, and when should people
trust the authenticity of it?
Because I often feel like
- Oh, you're - I such a great question.
Right?
I often feel like, as a recruiter,you talked about recruiters being
agents, but I often feel like peoplemisconstrue, like they mistake a
recruiter for a career coach or
- For a therapist!
Or for a therapist, right, exactly.
(34:12):
Yet I do want to know whothe authentic person is.
I don't know.
I don't have a particular incisivequestion, but do you, do you have
- No, I know exactly what you're talking about.
I know exactly what you're talking about.
You and I were on a CMO club meetinglike two or three weeks ago, and
you were talking about, uh, careeradvice and networking and recruiting.
And the topic came up in the groupabout this phrase, "career trauma."
(34:35):
There was like almost300 people on that call.
And boy, that, the chat inthat meeting just exploded.
I know you saw it, too.
And you know, there is no doubt thatalmost every executive I know, whether
they're in marketing or not, has beenthrough some sort of career trauma of
one sort or another in their career.
But especially in the last several years.
(34:57):
You look at the hyper growth stage, COVIDlockdown and all of the challenges that
brought, all of the impossibility of evenrecruiting when unemployment was so low.
And then the economy squeezes andeverything gets downsized, right?
So everything gets bloatedand then it all crushes down.
So lots and lots of people wholost their jobs and there's nothing
(35:17):
scarier than losing your job, right?
You've got a mortgage to pay.
I remember that happened to me early inmy career and I had a, I was a single
mom to a young toddler and it waslike, oh my god, what am I going to do?
Like I, I need to make money.
You know, you find yourselfmaking decisions that you wouldn't
normally make or settling forthings you wouldn't normally do.
I think that we all have to knowourselves and work on our confidence.
(35:43):
And believe me, I've had severalphases in my career where I made a
mistake in deciding to join a businessand then leaving that business and
just feeling like, wow, how could Ihave blown that decision so badly?
And then if it happensagain, you're like, why?
What happened?
There's a woman on my team that wejust hired who'd been laid off three
different times in three different years.
(36:04):
And she was just like, look, I thought Imade good decisions, but those businesses
were not what I thought they were.
And that was okay withme to hear her say that.
What you're talking about is howmuch vulnerability do we show?
And there is no doubt that weneed to project confidence, right?
That is a huge part of what we bring toa business is projecting confidence as
(36:26):
an executive, that we know what we'redoing and that we are feeling good about
the decisions that are going forward.
So some of it is a little performative.
I'm a huge fan of Amy Cuddy.
I don't know if you knowAmy Cuddy, the Power Posing?
And I tell you, it's true.
If you get yourself kind ofup for the thing - for me, it
means there's things I wear.
There's kind of rituals that I doahead of time to just get myself in
(36:50):
the zone to be able to talk about myaccomplishments, and also talk about
why I might have left a business and,you know, what I'm, why I'm available
currently and that kind of stuff.
And you just, you need a good, smoothtalk track and you need, you don't
need to say a heck of a lot, right?
I think sometimes people tend toover explain circumstances in a way
that makes the person they're talkingto really wonder what happened.
(37:13):
Like, wow, you know, this isa lot of drama going on here.
Is this somebody that is goingto bring that to a business?
So I think trying to think about whathappened in your past dispassionately
and in a business-like fashion.
And just knowing that there arecycles in businesses and as a
marketing leader, it is very rare tobe somewhere five, seven, ten years.
(37:36):
It's super rare.
I was a VP of Marketing, corporatemarketing, at BusinessObjects.
I was there for eleven years.
That was unusual.
And it's okay to begoing to the next thing.
Or to decide, hey, I'm think I'minterested in a company that's
slightly bigger, or I'm interested ina company that's more international,
or whatever the case may be.
And you deliberately make thatchoice and transition out and in.
(37:58):
Yeah, yeah, that's a great perspective.
Thank you.
I know we are running short on time.
So one final question for you.
I like to ask most of thepeople I interview this.
When you interview a marketer foryour team, a marketing leader to
work for you, is there a particularquestion you like to ask them?
I love to ask, what didn't I askyou that you want me to know?
(38:18):
It's one of my favorites.
It usually catches people off guard.
So I find by doing that, I get alittle insight into the real them.
They become less performative.
I can't stand performative behavior.
It drives me nuts.
Like I, I just kind of have a nosefor when people are posturing or,
you know, using flowery languageor something that they might've
(38:40):
pulled out of AI as a good answer.
And I almost always hear somethingthat is more on the personal
side than the professional side.
I'll learn that somebody, uh,just took up running marathons.
I learned once that a person that Ihired had lost a hundred pounds, and
how meaningful that that was for themand how it had changed their life.
I've learned about people that,uh, had some real gritty thing,
(39:05):
gritty lessons that they've learned.
Someone told me, you know, I,I'm here to remove the stigma
of being a teenage mother.
You know, I had my son when I wasseventeen, and now he's graduating
high school and I'm really proudof being able to do all that.
Some people have told me that theywere first generation college graduates
and what that meant in their family.
And I love that content, right?
(39:26):
It just tells you, gives youthis kind of insight into them.
I'll often tell people that, myfirst job was a sales development
rep when I was in high school.
And I did that job for four yearsbefore it was ever even called that.
How much that taught me.
I'll tell them that I'm the oldest ofseven children in a multiracial family.
And that is like at the foundation ofwho I am and how I show up as a leader.
(39:48):
So that's my favorite one.
Yeah, that's great!
Thank you.
And I love how it dovetails with thewhole trauma and vulnerability thing.
You know, like I think maybevulnerability is not necessarily
sharing all the dirty laundry.
It's kind of, it can be something,you know, personal and authentic
and non-professional related.
Yeah, and my advice isjust work on your story.
(40:09):
And I've done this withsome of my advisors.
It's like, how do I explain this story ofwhere, why I went to that company, what I
did when I was there, and how I'm leaving?
And you know, that, that can bevery helpful, just to kind of
talk that through your sort ofelevator pitch about a scenario.
Yes.
Yes.
I love that.
I think that's great feedback for people.
Just keep telling it.
(40:30):
And as you practice, you get better.
And as you practice, people give youfeedback on, Oh, this part was boring.
This part was interesting.
Or this resonated and, or stop here.
And yeah, that's, that's great.
Fabulous.
Well, Tracy, thank you so much forsharing all this awesome wisdom on
working with recruiters, working withyour network, working with your kind of
insides, and all of this with The Get.
Appreciate it.
(40:51):
I really appreciate the offer to come andtalk to you and talk to your listeners.
I'd love to be helpful to anyoneand would love to connect.
Thank you.
That was Tracy Eiler, CMO at OpenSesame.
Now, think about what three things you cando to leverage your network in new ways.
Next time on The Get, you'll hearfrom me and from another guest.
Don't miss it.
(41:11):
Thanks for listening to The Get.
I'm your host, Erica Seidel.
The Get is here to drive smartdecisions around recruiting and
leadership in B2B SaaS marketing.
We explore the trends, tribulations,and triumphs of today's top
marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.
If you liked thisepisode, please share it.
For more about The Get,visit TheGetPodcast.com.
(41:32):
To learn more about my executive searchpractice, which focuses on recruiting the
make-money marketing leaders rather thanthe make-it-pretty ones, follow me on
LinkedIn or visit TheConnectiveGood.Com.
The Get is produced by Evo Terraof Simpler Media Productions.
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