Navigating Complexity to Drive Growth as a Tech CMO with Corey Livingston

Corey Livingston: Meeting your sales plan is an outcome of strategy and execution. And so if you did meet it, you need to go back and say, why, what did we do? Well, if you didn't meet it. You need to be asking those same questions. Welcome to

John Common: Growth Driver brought to you by Intelligent Demand, where the best minds in B2B are redefining growth. Hey everybody, John Common here. Look, enterprise marketing challenges are not the same as the kind of challenges You run into at a small company and we know that, right? So I want to set the table.

Imagine you're the CMO or the head of marketing at a large enterprise company. Imagine it's in the it technology telecom space. You've got lots of pressure to drive growth efficiently. You've got lots of product complexity and marketing and sales complexity. You obviously have plenty of competition who talk and sound and maybe even are like your products in some ways.

You've got the usual alignment challenges. You've got limited budget. Are you with me? Are you there? You're in the seat. That's the pressure cooker. So how should you think and operate as a CMO to make sure that your company hits its goals, right? What new skills do you need to bring to this head of marketing role?

What old school fundamentals are still true? How do you prioritize your resources in your time as the head of marketing of a large complex company? That's what we're going to talk about today. That's what we're going to dig into. And I'm going to be doing it with someone who has been leading and managing and learning and growing in this area of growth, marketing and complex enterprise companies for years and years and years and years.

Corey Livingston has been the senior vice president of marketing and sales operations at OneNeck IT for the past eight years. They're in the IT cloud services space. And then prior to that, Corey led integrated marketing. Demand center of excellence and marketing operations at level three for 12 years.

Now, if you don't know, level three, there were a global telecommunications provider that got acquired by Lumen technologies. Um, she's a proven marketing leader who knows how to balance strategy, And tactical execution as well as the people and change management side of things. And then lastly, since I'm bragging about you, Corey, uh, she is one of the deepest thinking expert practitioners.

Of b2b growth that I know for real corey. Welcome to growth driver. 

Corey Livingston: Thank you, and i'm blushing Thank you for that wonderful introduction john 

John Common: Well, the good news is I didn't I didn't lie one bit in that introduction you and I go way back. I know you And um, i've worked with you across your entire career It feels like across different scenarios different projects and challenges and that's why i'm so glad to finally get you on growth driver Thank you so much.

Yeah I just want to start with the first kind of question that we can talk about is step back and how do you think the CMO head of marketing role has been evolving in the last five plus years? 

Corey Livingston: I believe, um, a lot of leaders perceptions about marketing are starting to shift. Not fast enough, but one of the big changes that I've been observing personally in my career is seeing the CMO become more of a key player in business strategy, which I think bewilders some people on the C suite team who maybe have worked at smaller companies or have a lot of preconceptions about, What who marketing is, what it does, what impact and I think this is because marketing has always been viewed as the creative part of business, making things look pretty, putting on really engaging events versus doing a lot of hard data analysis and driving strategic business decisions.

But, you know, with the rise of digital marketing, predictive analytics, customer data platforms, and just a very complicated nonlinear system. Uh, buyers journey where the buying committees are getting so much larger. You have to influence more and more people. I think all of those things have made growth.

Uh, company growth, business growth, more challenging and has really helped to transform the role of the CMO into one that requires not only creative expertise, that's still critically important, but one, um, where a deep understanding of data, analytics, business strategy, go to market is more and more important.

John Common: Yeah, I think that, you know, when I step back and think about how that role. and marketing leadership has changed. I, I, I agree. I think a big piece of it is that going from marketing alone to business growth is, and I think on some level, what we've been doing as a field, especially in marketing, B2B marketing has been, we've spent the last decade gaining tactical and technical chops, but along the way, I don't think that we learned until recently how to connect the dots of tactics and technology cross functionally.

Corey Livingston: Yeah. And I would say it, you know, some executives and other peers on the senior leadership team, or even in other departments still hold these very outdated perceptions of marketing, uh, which is kind of fun because It's fun to see the surprise, right, when a CMO demonstrates strong analytic and critical thinking, um, capabilities and really breaks the stereotype.

I know in my current role, that's been one of the best parts of my journey and my job right now is, um, really earning that seat at the table and, um, earning the respect of my peers and Yeah. Them inviting me into their, their sandboxes, so to speak, and, um, it's just been really humbling and really fulfilling, right?

To, to play that role because everyone talks about it. You know, you gotta have a, you know, marketing wants to see that the table. What does that really look like? And I think CMOs and other senior marketing leaders. Um, need to start to learn how to talk the language of business really when you're getting the financial downloads from the CFO, you know, listen closely, understand what those metrics mean, understand all the KPIs that are important to the different leaders.

And it's just like what you do in marketing, right? You really need to know your audience to be effective. You need to cultivate your value propositions, not only externally, but you need to think about that internally as well to all your peers. What is my value proposition to them in order to be effective?

And in order to start to be that key player that we all want to be, 

John Common: how do you, how do you set the table with, with the top level of a large company around the role of marketing? How do you, how do you not just get invited, but how do you make sure that the, your peers and sales or product or finance, or even potentially CEO and board, how do you make sure that they don't use an outdated point of view about the role of marketing and your role in leading it?

Corey Livingston: Oh, this takes, it takes a lot of skill, right? And it goes back to understanding what each of those leaders cares about. And a lot of times when it comes to, especially with technology companies who are very product and engineering led, right? They still think the product will sell itself. Um, I think it just comes back to really understanding their perspectives and knowing what questions to ask, right?

In a way that's not threatening or, um. You know, being very modest about how you approach them about it, but, you know, start asking them questions that no one's ever asked them before. Like, why do we exist? Who do we serve? And, you know, what markets do we serve? And why would they buy from us? And how do you think we win?

You know, those are things that you think should be really easy to answer extemporaneously, but they're not. And it really causes them to kind of step back and then, you know, kind of get them thinking. No one's really asked me those questions before. And, you know, I think that's the first part of the journey, um, and then showing them frameworks, right?

Once you ask those questions, how well do they answer them? And it's a great catalyst for bringing other leaders into the conversation and really talking about it as a team. So, for me, it's being really a facilitator. Someone who is is actually being the glue that brings the other senior leaders together and again, I think it just comes with starting to ask the right questions in a very nonthreatening way and then if there isn't a good answer, really helping guide the CEOs and others on the leadership team.

On a journey of curiosity to really answer those, uh, questions. So, so you can go out and, and, and help transform the way that the company is going to market. 

John Common: I love what you're talking about is the role of the CMO is to be the facilitator, to bring that together with curiosity. I love how you said that too.

And, and to, and to do the hard work of building the trust and the understanding, uh, that coalesces and aligns these different. practice areas that often, you know, they don't wake up in the morning speaking the same language, using the same terminology, thinking they're not gold the same way. There's so much work to be done in this space.

And I think that we'd love to hear your take on this, but I think the big unlock that is starting to become obvious in B2B growth is the The playbook for bringing all of those disparate tactics and people together to execute team based growth. The playbook is go to market. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's a modern point of view about what does modern go to market strategy and execution look like.

Um, what do you think about that? 

Corey Livingston: One of the things that I'm seeing is that, you know, very few CEOs, um, have any kind of marketing background or go to market background. And it's unfortunate because they're the ones that really need to lead. They're the ones that need to be connecting all of those leaders together, right, to, to really step back and say, how are we going to win?

That's one of the provocative questions I, I always ask, which is, how are we going to win? What are we doing and how we're going to win? And, you know, unfortunately, I see a lot of CEOs who defer to the product leaders, defer to the sales leaders, defer to the CFO and the marketing person is the last person they come to, but has a lot of insights, right?

Based on, you know, On our craft, what we do, all the analytics we do, all the insights, the voice of customer initiatives. I mean, that's really our role is to understand deeply what's going on with the market where the rest of the leadership team is kind of looking more industry trends kind of overall.

But we're the ones that are sitting there trying to understand what are the needs of the market? How are we going to position ourselves? Who is the competition? And, um, I think that that's, that's where those are things that in order to for companies that are going to continue to grow and a lot of companies stall out in their growth is they really need to make sure that they're not just talking to those leaders specifically, but bringing the marketing person in.

I mean, we're not the end all be all, but we're another lever, right? That kind of greases the engine and not defer to other. Okay. Leaders on the team who only have a sliver of understanding of how to grow. 

John Common: Yeah, yeah. And that's the aha that has to happen to unlock more efficient, more scalable growth. I really do believe that, you know, because we've got it, we've got decades of, of Knowing that you have to have a great product, like that's not new information for the, like, of course you need a great product needs to be competitive, needs to be different, needs to add value for your customer.

We have decades of going down the hallway and talking to sales and saying, and saying, if we don't sell it, there ain't no business here. So, I mean, we are, we have very strong product led growth or product centric go to market muscles. We have extremely developed, um, relying on sales, which is. Often more short term focused.

Yep. And I think what we're beginning to realize and, and, and we've, to be fair, we've relied on marketing as well, but we've relied on marketing as a tactical service center support. That's right. And then the, if you go down the, the go to market chain, I think you could, you get to CS. And I think CS is also a, has been an under appreciated, underleveraged, more importantly, growth driver that I think it's marketing, marketing, strategic, connective tissue, team gathering role, and also the role of post sale CS and driving growth.

I think those are a couple of the key unlocks. And again, so how do you do it? How do you unlock it? As you, as the head of marketing at a large, complex company, how do you help? Your company, your team of executive peers crack open in an honest, candid way, clarity around what are our real growth goals and 25 percent year over year growth is not enough.

We have to make it more granular. Let's just start there. How do you get real about goals and constraints? 

Corey Livingston: First, I think leaders get corporate strategy, go to market and the sales plan very mixed up. 

John Common: That's right. 

Corey Livingston: And so what typically happens is the corporate strategy somehow turns into the sales plan and then the sales leaders or the product leaders then end up placing an order with with marketing.

Right. Right. That, that, that is not. A formula that will lead to growth. It just won't. So one of the things that I have cultivated over my career, and it's taken a while, and it's so funny how it just seems so complex to me, you know, even five years ago, like, how do I connect all the dots? Because there's so many players that you have to get in line aligned, excuse me, in order to get to, you know, A plan that leads to growth and growth is an outcome of a good go to market process, right?

So one of the things that I, you know, that I've been able to do and is I have, I have a flow now, like starting with corporate strategy to go to market to, uh, or corporate strategy to kind of ICP to go to market. I mean, all the way down the line that involves every leader, like every leader, Owns a part of this process.

And what has happened historically is that everybody This sounds cliche, but they have been operating in their silos, right? So they have their own KPIs for their own silo. Another leader has their own KPIs. They're kind of loosely connected, but not really connected, right? Not synthesized. So being able to show and again, I, It's a framework and it is a process.

Go to market is a process and it's an iterative process. It's not a set it and forget it because you're going to get some things wrong. But I have created kind of a, I can show that process and show the connective tissue right across all the leaders. And then we can start asking questions. Well, what is the corporate strategy?

Um, How does, what are the priorities from that? And just take it all the way down, right? Into who are ideal, you know, what are our growth products? Uh, what are, what are our growth segments, right? What are the ICPs, you know, what is the ICP within those segments? What is our strategy to go to market? Are we going to do broad based demand generation, or do we need to do partner led, or does it need to be ABX?

And those are the kinds of conversations that people aren't answering, that they aren't asking. They aren't talking about, they aren't asking. And so everybody is following the same playbook and that trickles down to everything that trickles down to your campaigns that trickles down to your sales enablement that trickles trickles down into your pipeline growth plans, right?

That trickles down to deal closure, customer success, customer success, planning, cross sell upsell, right? It's a whole thing end to end. And I think when you can do that, right? And take your leadership team through that process and ask the right questions at each stage. You immediately figure out what are your gaps and then how do you go about closing those gaps so you can deliver predictable growth?

John Common: Yes. Yes. That's it. That's it. And the reason that so many B2B companies don't do that is they don't have anybody who has seen or done that before. Quite often. And so if you have never seen what better looks like then you just keep doing what you have done in the past. I mean that the way you just walked through that Is a, is one really great way to describe the, the, the essence of moving from kind of the old playbook to the new playbook, in my opinion, you know, and using a go to a cross functionally aligned, go to market mindset and process to do that.

So maybe let's, let's, let's go into that. How, what are some of the, walk us through the, the high level, the things that you've learned, how would, let's say you enter a new company. That has been doing siloed stuff because they haven't seen better. What, how would you walk through that process you just described?

What would you do first, second, third? 

Corey Livingston: Well, I think the first thing is really trying to understand the company vision, right? And the company strategy. Uh, and I talked earlier about. You know, too often it turns into what are the sales targets for the quarter, right? That's where we immediately drop down.

And it's really thinking about, well, where are you trying to grow longterm? I mean, I work at a place where we have a very broad and deep portfolio, right? But we don't have the budget or the resources to grow everything in that portfolio. 

John Common: You mean product, portfolio, 

Corey Livingston: product, portfolio, exactly. And services.

Right professional services, managed services, those types of thing. And so, you know, if you have limited resources and limited budget, um, you really have to prioritize. Right? So, it's understanding the company company vision and mission. Breaking that down into what are your growth priorities, right? If you have a limited amount of resources, you have to prioritize.

And that's the first conversation that you have to have. And a lot of leaders don't have that, right? They don't have those tough conversations early on. And it's very helpful because then you can tie it. If you're analytical, right, the creative will come, but that's the analytical and strategic part of being able to show them.

Well, with this amount of budget and this amount of resources, and this is what your pipeline looks like, right? Here's what your conversion rate looks like. You're going to have to focus. And that's always an eye opening experience. So starting from the corporate strategy, taking that down into what are your key priorities and then, you know, where's that growth going to come from?

That's another question, and it stops people. Is it going to become, is it going to come from. New logos, is it going to be, is it going to come from existing accounts? Is it going to come from a mixture of both? Which then that really leads into, okay, now where you, once you know where the growth is going to come from, then you can start thinking about, um, okay, Okay.

Okay. Uh, well, prior to that, you're also working in what are our segments, right? Who's our ideal customer profile? But once you also, I mean, that's kind of part of that process as well. But understanding where the growth is going to come from, then you can start building the plans, right? And being very focused about that and then starting, you know, and there's alignment all the way.

But once you understand where the growth is going to come from, then you can start putting your campaigns together. Then you can start focusing on your sales enablement. When you have a broad portfolio like I'm working with, there's no way you're you're. You're first of all, you can't afford to market all those things, and you wouldn't want to do it because it'd be fragmented anyways.

Right? So you really need to think about all how you connect the dots in your own portfolio. You know, what are your wedge strategies? How are you going to break into certain accounts? Um, and then how do you build? You know, this is kind of what Amazon did, right? They started with online books, and then they started to, um.

Move into other categories, so to speak. So really helping your team understand how you attack a market like that. You can't go in with everything in the kitchen sink. That's going to just create too much effort. On the part of your, your buyers to try to understand, you know, what your value is, what do you do?

It's confusing your sales people. They can only really kind of know some two or three things really well. So I think just taking them through that process, the prioritization, getting everybody to agree on where the investments, where they're going to come from, and then really trickling, trickling that down into everything else you do.

John Common: Right. Yes. Yes. And to folks who were listening or watching. Go back two or three minutes and send this. Episode to your CEO and your CFO. And because this is, this is the real deal, like what Corey just talked about. This is the real deal. And when companies don't do this at least once a year, and by the way, I, I, I recommend companies go through this process truly.

And honestly, as part of their annual planning process. And then about every six months they need to true it up because things change so fast. But if you're working at a company, that's not at least once a year, I'd recommend twice a year, getting in the room with all of your go to market executives, your growth executives, cross functionally, and asking these fundamental questions.

How are we going to hit our total growth goal, break it out into acquisition renewals and expansion, break it out by division. Break it out by, uh, geographic region, and even if, depending on the, your product complexity, break it out by product or product bundle, solution bundle, and, and, and get very real about that, and have the head of sales, the head of product, the head of marketing, the head of CS, arrive together at usually some, you know, incredibly important, but, um, awkward moments where you go, Oh yeah, the way that we're going to hit that growth goal that the board and the CEO told me to hit said the head of sales is it's going to be new logo.

90 percent and don't worry about the other. I'm just saying that could be an example. Another example is, uh, We're just going to focus on product or another like, you know Oh, I think it ought to be all about some special tactical thing You'd be shocked when you bring your cross functional leaders into a space and say what do you honestly think?

How do we hit that growth goal? What is priority one priority two priority three? They are never on the same page until you get them on the same page. Nope And again, I, this seems so obvious, but if you're not, if you're not creating a mechanism, a forum, a space for your growth executives to work it out and then exit that meeting and saying, yep, the thing that I thought was my number one pet priority is number three.

And we have, we discussed it, we decided, and now we are committed to a cross functional path to hitting our growth goals. If you're not doing it, that's the big opportunity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Corey Livingston: And, and, and the priorities and the expectations really. Um, I hate to use the term air cover, but it is air cover, right?

Especially when, if you get a dip in sales, right, there's oftentimes a panic in the sales organization, um, and they want to come into marketing and treat it like a vending machine, like I'm going to put in a quarter and then I get, want to get my, thing that's important to me out of it. But if you've set those priorities and those goals, you have a tool now, you have an instrument to be able to navigate those conversations and say, when, when people across the company, it's not just sales, right?

It's all across the company. I would say marketing is, um, uh, uh, Oh, what is it? The, the expression is. Undervalued overappreciated right overappreciated meaning because there's a lot of requests coming in undervalued because there's never enough resources or money to meet those requests, but having that those priorities really help change the conversation and again, even with people that are in the marketing organization that are often, you know, dealing one on one individual contributors and and feel exposed sometimes or feel like they have to say yes.

But if you're, you know, You know what I'm doing with my teams. I'm like, these are your priorities. When you're talking to people who are asking you to do things, um, that don't align with these priorities, you can take that back to me or others in the organization and say, how does it align? Right? And it just changes the conversation.

That doesn't mean you're not going to do favors, right? Or you're, you're not going to like, Hey, this will take me five minutes. It's not. Not everything has to be, you know, this deep strategy conversation, but there's many instances where someone saying, come in and run this campaign. And I'm saying, well, that's going to cost money.

You know, what is the business case? What is the return? Who's the audience? Well, everyone's. You know, well, this is appealing to everyone. You know, this really helps the, the marketing team, um, navigate those conversations and instead of saying no, right, which nobody likes hearing, no, it's saying, let's, let's, let's step back and think about what are we trying to accomplish?

Here's the number that we're trying to reach. How does this contribute to that number? And it really creates an equal playing field. 

John Common: Yeah. Yeah. That aligned mutually. arrived at growth path, the path that we are going to traverse together to hit our growth goal, otherwise known as the go to market strategy.

Corey Livingston: Otherwise, it's just chasing revenue. Yeah. And just silo tactics, chasing revenue. It's not the ICP. You end up getting a lot of accounts into your pipeline that are never going to close, right? Because you're, you're, you're panicking. You're being reactive. You're not being strategic. Right. And also marketing is not sales.

If you have a. Dip in sales and you didn't meet your target for the quarter. That's not something that marketing can go in and help you solve. That's been one of the biggest areas of education that, you know, that I've had to, um, really navigate within the organization. Is that especially in B2B complex sales and looking at sales cycles?

I mean, this is why marketing, um, we have to be looking at building pipeline, not just for this quarter, but two and three quarters out, right? There's only so many people in your target market. They're in an active buying window, right? And you're going to exhaust that pretty quickly. That's one of the things I've learned doing ABX and working in ABX and customer data platforms.

You know, a lot of the advice that they will give you is focus on people, spend all of your marketing dollars on people who are at a lower end of the funnel, right? Who are in a decision stage or in a purchase stage. Unfortunately, The number of accounts that are in that stage is really small. And if you're not focusing on building your brand, right, focusing on people who are earlier in that journey, then you're not building that demand two quarters out.

And you are going to hit a patch where sales. Growth stalls. And so, um, you really need to be focused, not just on the, you know, the lower stage funnel, so to speak, but making sure that you're focusing higher up in the funnel and really doing, you know, you really need to attack all stages, right? So you don't run out of demand 

John Common: and greater 

Corey Livingston: your sales.

John Common: Am I, am I right in thinking that the way that. a CMO can get the trust and ultimately the approval and funding to not only chase bottom of funnel active demand. One of the best ways to do that is to help their CEO, CFO, head of sales, head of product, really understand not just who our ICP is at the account level and the persona level.

where do we win, but helping them understand the truth of what you said, which is what is the real buying cycle, the length of the buying cycle. Number one, number two, how many people in our category for our ICP do you think are actually in an active demand mode at any given time, whatever our TAM or our total relevant market is.

What percentage of those accounts are actually in active demand? That's the second. And that is an eye opening thing for people who haven't really, really thought through that. Hey, uh, real talk. Growth goals are tough. You know it. I know it. And they haven't gotten any easier to hit. In these days of efficient growth, intelligent demand knows it too.

That's why they have a team of experts across strategy, creative media, tech, data analytics. And they all have a proven track record of driving growth at companies just like yours. So reach out to them, go visit intelligent demand. com, hop on a call, talk some shop. 

Corey Livingston: You know, it's interesting. I, Have really, I think cultivating a relationship with your CFO is incredibly important.

Um, one of the things that, uh, among many, uh, that CFOs do well, right. Is they're looking more at the high level market data, right? They're looking at the CAGRs and those are huge numbers, right? Most companies are like, we need to be in that market. Look at these numbers, look at the CAGRs, right? But then you have to reverse engineer that down into Um, data that is a lot more tangible, right?

Because that's everyone who could buy from you that, but that's not everybody who will buy from you. And one of the things that, um, I've done in the last couple of years with my current CFO is, okay, he's got the big financial picture. He's got like, here are the sales targets, but building more of a, a demand forecast model to say, well, how are you going to hit that number?

Uh, Right. What are the things that need to happen? And that's a whole different level of analytics and a different type of forecasting than most financial leaders are used to, right? They don't and being able to connect that forecast by understanding who's, you know, who's in the market, who's in active demand.

You know, we have unprecedented, unprecedented visibility now with all the platforms to be able to look into our target market to see, at least to be able to proxy where people are at within your target market that meet your ICP in their buyers journey. And really take that data back to the CFO and start and also start to look at, you know, everyone says the traditional demand waterfall is passe.

I think that there are still, you know, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think there's, it's a good starting point for really looking and saying, okay, look, this is our current close rate. Right. If we start to back that up across the funnel and look at our conversion rates right now as just a proxy compared to what the sales targets are and what the CAGR and really connecting those dots, that's again where CMOs can be really valuable to the senior leadership team, because now they're saying, Oh, It's going to be a lot more difficult.

And then you can also show them the sales cycles, right? You've got, we've got different ICPs. Sometimes we've got a broad ICP, but then for each product category or line of business that we're trying to grow, there is a different ACVs. There's different sales cycles, right? So you have to, that's a puzzle that you can help.

put together for your CFOs and start really talking to them about this is the budget I have. I'm not asking you for more money. I'm showing you what we're contributing to the sales pipeline right now. I'm showing you, you know, all of the conversion rates. I'm saying, if you don't want to increase the budget or the resources, then here's where we can focus, right?

Because you have to have a little, a minimum amount of investment to even. To rise above the noise, particularly in it, it consulting IT and services. IT services. There's so many competitors, so many ankle biters, right? Yeah. And then you just say, here's the reality. If you really wanna grow, then I'm gonna have to put all of my chips in this product category.

If you wanna know, wanna, if you want to grow this one, then we really need to talk about what those resources need to look like to achieve that objective. What do you want to do? 

John Common: So let's imagine that work. Is largely done. Now let's get to positioning, messaging and brand, which is now we're, we're kind of getting out of the nerdy or kind of spreadsheet value prop, internal stuff, and we're starting to move toward creative expression, emotional expression, externalizing.

Our story for the market. Um, what, what are, what are some ways that you've learned as a head of marketing to, to quickly, but effectively create good positioning, differentiated positioning, and then take it to market with a brand that has some courage. Talk to us about that. 

Corey Livingston: I'll just start with brand, right?

Cause everything is going to start with brand and your brand positioning. Um, and you need to stay connected to that. And a brand promise is delivered over. As you know, um, several touch points, which are really hard to keep together in a business to business company that is selling a complex product. But I think the positioning, it just, it starts with, you know, you know, if you're building a product, and what I find more often than not is a lot of products are built because someone else is building them, right, in the market, and we need to be at parity.

So there hasn't been a lot of work on who is the target audience. How is this different? What outcomes is this delivering? Right? Uh, and, and, and you hear a lot of buzzwords about outcomes right now, but it's a real thing. And a lot of. Companies are not focusing enough on that. They're just focusing on. We need to be a parody, right?

We need to get this out. We need to have a competing offer. Um, so for me, a lot of times the product when I'm working on positioning, the products already built. And they're coming to marketing saying, okay, we need a sales sheet, right? We need a web page. Um, we need a training deck for sales and we're coming back and going.

Whoa. Um, well, who is the audience for this? Did you have an audience in mind when you built this? How many people did you talk to before you built it? Did you talk to just three or four customers, which I often find is the case? Did, or did you, customers are great, right? It's great to talk to customers, but what about the broader market, particularly, you know, what is your revenue target or what is your sales target?

So it's really having those conversations with the product team. And then you got to figure out quickly, like, how do I start to position? How do I connect this to the brand? How, how do we need to position it and how does, how do we convert that into compelling messaging that resonates with customers, you know, for me, a lot of that is, um, talking first, the easiest and quick way is talking with your existing customers, but there's also market research that can be done.

Pretty quickly, you know, on the fly, um, doing online bulletin boards for me, I have to kind of reach out directly to the market. Really understand, you know, what are the alternatives in the market? Who is really occupying space in the buyer's mind? The buyers that we're going after and then, uh, taking that information, you know, figuring out, okay, we're going to position.

Here's how they're positioning based on outcomes. Here's how we're going to have to position. And then here's translating that into a messaging that really resonates. And the other thing that I find is that so many folks, um, in the company and product want to. Just overwhelm prospects with so much information.

Right? 

John Common: Yeah. 

Corey Livingston: And it's, and it's, it's a battle to work with your internal teams to say, look, this is where we come in because we're, we're really, you know, That's what we know, right? We have this empathy with buyers and saying, you're going to have to distill this down into something because people are going to come by.

They're going to come by our website. You're lucky if you have 5 seconds to connect with them so that they immediately understand what, what is this? How does it have value? Um, and that is, that is not an easy thing to do, but you know, it just, it starts with that internal research, looking at your competitors.

It's, it's, it's the blocking and tackling of what marketing does. It's hard to do it quickly. And it's especially hard when you aren't engaged at the very beginning of the product development process. Yes. And asking those questions. And, um, And we're an off too often than that. We're not involved. So we're being given something and then having to make lemonade out of.

I'm not saying that all products are lemons, but it really limits your capability to really create differentiation and distinction. 

John Common: You're right. There are no silver bullets. There's no easy, automatic. guaranteed success way to take an existing product and make it immediately a smash hit in a market category.

But one thing that helps me and our teams get there faster, I think, is to close your eyes, And don't get sucked in to the product, but instead to say, Who is the target audience for this, potentially? And to fall in love with the problem. Exactly. Is to really heat seek in on, and not the, not the generic problem.

the problem of an ICP, maybe your ICP, or what you think is the ICP for this product, and really go get extremely curious about the pain, the pain that that audience is feeling, because they have not solved that problem effectively, the missed opportunity lurking behind that. And I think that's a fast way that we've learned.

as a, as a partner, um, to our clients is to, is to, is to home in on pain and opportunity, missed opportunity, because I think that's how you can more quickly get to that pithy five second value prop positioning, and then tell a story to your ICP that makes them say, wait a minute, Maybe you do know me. 

Corey Livingston: One of the breakthroughs that we've had in the last couple years, and I was lucky enough to, or blessed enough to facilitate this process, is there's still a lot of commoditization in IT.

There's a lot of competition, so there's a lot of noise. And what's happening, and this kind of goes back to, you know, Why you need marketing, good marketing, not just any marketing, right? Because what I'm seeing in my industry is a lot of our competitors will copy each other's stuff. It's almost like accepted where's a leader will come to you in the company will come to you and say, hey, I like how competitors so and so is saying this.

Let's say it that way too. And of course, it's a marketer. You're like, what that? No, that's not a good thing. But, um, so when you are in that situation where you weren't involved at the very beginning, there's not a clear. Target audience, right? You're building it because you want to create parody. Um, or you did you talk to a couple customers, right?

That's how a lot of products are built as well. You have some really flagship customers and they kind of drive your product road map and you don't really do the diligence on. Okay, after I sell it to, to the customers who know us, who know our brand, who's going to want this next? Is this a, is there a broader market need for this?

Um, so one of the things that we really started to work on was offer design and knowing that there's so much noise. If you can create offers that are really easy to understand, right, and be really easy to do business with, that's one of the ways that you can stand out. Even if you have a product that's at parity, right, is someone being able to say, wow, they made this really easy for me to understand.

Everything is kind of connected together. Um, I didn't have to spend a lot of effort, right? Because when in our market, what's happening is that there's so much information, people are showing up and throwing up with their marketing, right? And then expecting the customer to the buyer, to wade through it, to figure out the value.

That's what I'm seeing. Like, why are you putting the work on them? That's our job. Like we should make this super easy. So even if you're at parody, if you can just come in and Put an offer together and design it in a way where they clearly understand. You understand what my problem is. You understand my up met need.

You clearly articulated what it is that you're going to do to solve this. And then you're going to make it really easy for me to actually buy this from you. That in itself is a huge differentiator. That's one of the things that I've learned. So I've spent more time now, even before messaging is just working on offer design.

And how do you take all the products that you have and, and configure them in a way that makes it really easy for people to understand what it is that you offer and make it makes it really easy for them to buy from you. 

John Common: See, that is fantastic. That is really good. And because, and that's using an outside in mentality.

That's using a buyer centric mentality versus a product or sales centric mentality, because at the root of this offer design insight that you're recommending and doing is, I love how you put it. I forgot how you said it, but it was something around for this target audience, with this pain or opportunity or need, they're going to need.

Products and services to achieve that. That's right. So instead of just dropping them off in the middle of Home Depot, wandering the aisles of products and services, and they have to figure out how How many nails, how many pieces of, you know, plywood they need, do I need glue? Do you know, give them the kit for solving their particular need.

And it says, we're going to make it easy for you to achieve that goal. Um, instead of making you wander around a warehouse or a category and figure it out. That is really great. 

Corey Livingston: We have customers like that, right? And this goes back to understanding your audience and segmenting your audience. And in, in, in my current situation, we have very unsophisticated buyers and very sophisticated buyers.

So the Home Depot analogy is perfect. And in fact, it's the one that we use when we shared it with the company to talk about how we were evolving our offer strategy, a very, We have, you know, very large enterprises who are very sophisticated, right? They're able to afford specialists on their team that have all of that knowledge or about all the pieces in part, right?

They have the plumber, they have the HVAC specialist, right? Um, they have all those people. And so they want to go into the Home Depot and want to pick out all the little things that they need to build what they want. And you need to understand that 

John Common: Yeah. 

Corey Livingston: That's a mature buyer. And, and, and you need an, you need to be able to provide that for them.

But then you have another type of buyer that says, I don't have time to do that. I don't have all these specialists on my team. You know, and you think about Home Depot, when you walk into the aisles often on the end caps of those aisles, they have things put together in a way like, Hey, do you need to install a toilet?

Sorry, um, but here's all the things that you need to do that. 

John Common: Yeah, we've 

Corey Livingston: packaged them all together for you. Right? And. You know, if you want to pull things out because maybe you have some existing parts at home, you can do that, but we packaged it all together for you. We've made it easier for you. So for that buyer, that's really compelling.

This goes back to knowing who you're marketing to and then building your offers around that. Right. And it's such, it's so, it's actually really simple to do, but what a lot of technology companies want to do is just throw everything out there and then leave the work to the buyer to figure out. 

John Common: We've got the planning done.

We've got the story. We know who and where we win and how we win and the story we tell. Now we got to go actually march to battle and, and, and, and drive growth as a team sport. How do I know how to balance brand versus demand? How do I choose a one to many? Demand gen motion or a more targeted ABM, ABX motion.

What about partner led growth? What about product led growth? How does a CMO help her company choose the right go to market motion? So 

Corey Livingston: I think this it's important to consider how you, you, you, you just, uh, you just rattled off the approaches, right? Demand generation, ABX, partner led. I'm sure there, there are more.

Um, But you have to consider your business objectives, you have to consider your priorities, all of the things that you just described, right? That you, that you lined up, that we've been talking about for the last 30, 45 minutes. But I think that determining which approach really, um, when we think about objectives, there's, again, it's knowing what questions to ask.

So, like, what are your short term and your long term revenue goals? Different go to market motions may be Better suited for hitting specific revenue targets. So for example, a demand generation approach might be more effective for broad market outreach while ABX led motion might be better for landing high value accounts.

Questions like how do you, how are you positioning your product and service in the market? If you have a premium offer positioning, you might want to focus on more high touch personalized approaches like one to few, um, one to many, but still a step up from few, uh, ABX or partner led strategies. Questions like, who is your target market?

Is the market broad or is the market niche? A broad market might require more scalable demand generation tactics while a niche market could benefit more from ABX or partner led approaches, right? You may want a partner who already has a brand. In a niche market, and it's going to cost you a lot of money to build your own brand.

That's when a partner led strategy is perfectly appropriate. Or, um, we had a situation where one of our partners was, um, going end of life on a specific product. We got early knowledge on that. We were able to build, um, a replacement product really quickly. And attack that niche segment, but that was very partner led.

It was very surgical in terms of how we attack that market. And then, um, what is the length of sale cycle? I mean, that's another consideration when you're thinking about what are what is the right gtm motion? Longer sales cycles might benefit more from an account based approach, which again, provides a more tailored and personalized, uh, a more tailored and personalized strategy while shorter sales cycles might align better with some of those broader demand generation tactics.

So that those are kind of the questions that I ask and that I'm asking my peers when we start to collaborate and collaborate is an operative word here on. On what is the right motion, right? For this product, for this market, for this segment. 

John Common: Yeah, I like all of that. I, hearing you walk through that, those are, I think, exactly the kinds of questions that not only the CMO should be asking and help, helping to answer, but that should be in that go to market space, that cross functional.

Corey Livingston: This goes back to the conversation with the CFO that I was talking about. Right? Like, how are you going to grow? Um, and you know, where are you going to place your bets? Um, and what's that going to cost you? And, and, you know, Again, there's just not many companies that are good at go to market, and I don't know why.

I feel like that that should be a requirement if you're going to move into a CEO role or that every senior leadership team needs to understand what that is, because that's where you suss out what you just talked about, right? What's the minimum amount of investment that you need to make? And. You know, when you have when you're not thinking about your go to market motions in the context of your buyers, the markets, the A.

1. V. Right of your product. Um, that's when you get the peanut butter marketing spread, right? Where you're just trying to spread it, spread it across everything. And that's when marketing sucks. They're not delivering anything. And I'm like, because that's because you're wanting to spread the dollars that you have over everything equally.

And you can't do that if you want to grow. And that's where you got to have the data analytics and the savvy and the relationships, right? To talk to your leaders who really do respond. To excel in numbers and say, look, this is the challenge, right? That is in front of us. And if we want to grow, we have to get really clear about what those motions are going to look like.

If you have a product with, you know, a 20, uh, you know, 100, you know, MRR, a broad demand generation strategy is probably not going to be the best approach. You're going to have to do something differently, and we're going to have to align on what that looks like. And then we need to organize around that.

If you have like a, you know, 500 MRR product, you know, yeah, that's probably suited for broad demand, demand generation. And you probably want to structure your team around that. If you have all of the above, then we need to structure around that, right? So, yeah. Yeah, um, it's gotten easier to have those conversations because I've spent a lot of time really trying to understand and get in the heads of the people who lead the organizations like product, like sales, like finance, like the CEO, like the head of customer success, um, and really talking to them in ways that help them not only Represent the holistic strategy of the company and how we all need to work together to achieve that outcome, but also how they're trying to reach their goals and the context of that holistic strategy and how those motions, what are the strengths of those motions?

What are the weaknesses, what they can expect if they go that way? We often don't have conversations again, because we skip go to market. We go from company strategy to sales planning and sales goes with what they 

John Common: How can a CMO. help her cross functional growth executives maintain interlock and maintain alignment?

What are some one or two tricks for keeping the band together, not just once a year at the SKO or the revenue kickoff, but on a daily, weekly, quarterly basis? What are one or two things you've learned to maintain cross functional alignment and interlock? 

Corey Livingston: So, uh, you know, communication is key. 

John Common: Uh, 

Corey Livingston: So, that helps getting into, you know, when you're having, you know, most, most companies, most leadership teams have regular company, you know, regular senior leadership meetings, right, where they have communication and you have to be very vigilant about asking for time on that agenda, right, as the CMO.

A lot of times you may get crowded out by the immediate. And so, You have to make sure that you have some time on that agenda to be able to talk about what's happening outside of just studying sales force cap forecast, because that's often what happens. The, the measure of success is, did we meet our sales plan?

Right? Did we not meet our sales plan? What's going on? And not really looking at, Okay. Everything that leads the meeting your sales plan is an outcome of strategy and execution. And so if you did meet it, you need to go back and say, why, what did we do? Well, if you didn't meet it. You need to be asking those same questions.

So that seems like really generic advice, but that's one of the things I do is let's get on the agenda and let's talk about how we're performing against this GTM plan. A lot of times it said it and forget it. You have a strategic plan. That's big. You put it out once a year and then you go and you look at the sales plan.

The other thing I think is being very trend for me has been very transparent. Transcribed About reporting and showing, um, not just outcomes, but leading indicators, you know, I think marketing has, and we've been talking about this unprecedented access to data that they've never had before. We have access to AI, we have access to customer data platforms, and you need strong or strong revenue operations function on your team to really help connect the dots beyond just what's happening in the pipeline, which that.

Data is often unreliable, but really showing them the journey. Like, here's how, here's our target market, right? Here's, here's our TAM or our total relevant market, so to speak. Here's what's happening. Here's what we're doing. Here's the impact that's having. Here's where we're not seeing results. And here's some data.

Ideas, right, or recommendations about how we might change course. So I think it's the combination between communication and transparency and teaching your leadership team to pay attention to metrics that they previously haven't paid attention to and then connecting those two outcomes and showing them that.

And I think that creates a lot of like, whoa. I'm seeing it now, right before they haven't seen this goes back to why if there's an extra dollar to invest, you know, CEOs and CFOs have to choose where they're going to invest it. They tend to choose, let's hire a salesperson. Cause I know exactly what their quota is.

I can see exactly what they're doing, right? It's predictable to me. Um, and marketing has always been the black box, so to speak, but now we have so much access to data and you can't just throw a bunch of data, you know, uh, unstructured data at your, at your leadership team. Part of your value is being able to synthesize that data, summarize it and, and put it together in a way that tells a story about growth.

Yeah. Thank you. About whether you're getting to the growth you want or you're not getting to the growth that you want. And I think that that can be very transformative. Um, in a company. So those are the things that I do that have been very effective. They seem simple. Um, and it takes a lot of trust. I mean, you obviously, you have to have credibility in order for them to even and, you know, and I'll even say this, like, I don't know if you've experienced this with other clients, but there's been such skepticism about marketing data as well.

John Common: Is 

Corey Livingston: this, Okay. Data true. Can I believe it? Um, is it accurate? You know? So again, having the kind of resources on your team. people that don't just speak marketing, but also understand that the sales data, they understand, you know, the billing data, the revenue data, and are able to, um, build that credibility and build that trust that when you get data from marketing, it's data you can trust.

John Common: You can get all the strategy, right? You can get all the tactical planning, right? You the capabilities, right? And at the end of the day, Even in B2B, there's people involved. It's about people and culture and leadership. And Corey, I, I know, I've known you for a long, long time. You are so genuine. I know you as a values driven leader.

You are curious and courageous, uh, but you're also humble and you're willing to get real with people. How, first of all, how did you become the kind of leader that you are that makes people around you trust you? How do you, how do you, how do you become a Corey Livingston who was so, you are so strategic, you are so focused on execution, but you really also are a leader, um, in an authentic way that is very values driven.

How did you, how did you become this? So, 

Corey Livingston: um, How did I become this? Well, this, you know, first of all, I have a strong faith. Um, I know a lot of people don't talk about that in business anymore, but that's something that's very grounding for me. Uh, but in addition to that. I've really worked on as a leader. Um, I've been in a lot of complex organizations with a lot of competing priorities, very toxic organizations and, um, and I've been able to, to thrive in those organizations.

If funny enough, you know, most of my, my competition, particularly in larger organizations or toxicity has, has come from people within the marketing organization itself. Eating its own, which is unfortunate. Um, outside of that, I think that I've really worked to cultivate a very steady and calm temperament and, you know, that's really important in building trust.

I, I, I lead with confidence, not arrogance, and I'm very open to feedback and learning. I'm not. At least I hope I'm not pretentious at all. What you see is what you get how I am in my personal life is how I am in my professional life and I will readily admit that I do not have all the answers and I. I rely on the contributions of others.

I mean, I go to my senior leadership team and I say, I need your input. I need your perspective on this. Right? I don't come in like I know it all because they have expertise and I'm curious about it. Right? I want to know what you do. I want to learn what your challenges are. And I think that builds trust because you're not coming in with an agenda.

You're coming in as someone who's truly curious and wanting to understand and empathize. If someone is having. You know, if someone has a negative perception of me or what I'm doing, like, I want to know what that is. What am I doing right to do that? And again, it just goes back with really wanting to understand others and where they're coming from.

And there's a certain amount of vulnerability that comes with that. I'm comfortable being vulnerable, but that's where the confidence comes in. Vulnerability does not mean weakness. It means being able to acknowledge what you know, what you don't know, and the space in between where you don't know what you don't know.

Um, but I found that that helps that genuineness really helps build trust quickly, because again, what you see is what you get. And people will comment on that. Um, You know, they're like, I, you know, how do you stay so calm in that situation? And I said, it's just, I've practiced, right. And particularly with business leaders, you know, I think they don't trust people who come across too emotional, um, or too passionate because it feels like you have an agenda.

So I always try not to be attached to attach to the outcome. Or a recommendation that I love, right? I try to say, here are three ways that we can go about this. I have a favorite, but I train myself. Don't be attached because then I can be, um, then I can be just very, uh, what I want to say, uh, disconnected from that, so to speak.

I was thinking of 

John Common: the word dispassionate. 

Corey Livingston: Yeah, I guess not disconnected, dispassionate about it. And again, I think people trust that because then they sense that you're really. More interested in doing the right thing from the company, not the thing that you love. 

John Common: Yeah. Yeah I'm here to help us win not to be right.

Corey Livingston: Exactly. 

John Common: Yeah. Oh easier said than done though And I got to tell you and again, I'm not trying to shine you up You don't need me to shine you up, but I've known you for a very long time. We I have seen you in tough situations I've seen you navigate that and I I really have admired that about you. You really, that is a, that is a strength.

Everything you just talked about, um, I could, I could, I'll be your character witness. That is actually true with you. And, um, so I appreciate you giving us a peek into how you, how you get there, how you maintain that. 

Corey Livingston: And let me add one more thing. You know, that's the biggest. You know, development and coaching for members of my team is they often want to go in and fight for their ideas.

Right? And they, everything's kind of fight or they think, you know, you know, why didn't you go in there and do that? You know, why weren't you going there is passionate and you have to train them and coach them. It doesn't mean taking away your passion. It just means putting boundaries around your passion because this isn't your company.

Right. It's not my company. I mean, we work for somebody who's trying to achieve an objective. We will make recommendations and there's strategies around how you present recommendations. So you may get the one that you want, but you have to calm yourself, be steady, listen. Um, that's the other thing that I've learned is to listen more than I speak.

And there's, there's power in silence. It doesn't mean that. And you have to be strategic about when you speak, but there is a skill about listening and being curious and just not trying to talk because you need to get your thoughts out there. 

John Common: Yeah. Well, that's a good place to, to maybe wrap this one up. I, I, I predict that you're going to be a multiple time guest on Growth Driver if you'll let us make this happen, but this has been such a fantastic conversation, Corey.

Thank you. John. 

Corey Livingston: I love talking to you and love what, you know, you and your company is doing. And, um, I just appreciate the opportunity to have a voice and to share what, what I know with others. And hopefully they get something out of it. 

John Common: Well, I mean, the whole, the whole reason, you know this, but the whole reason we were doing growth driver is because it.

You and the truth is you and I've been having conversations exactly like this for like a long long time We just didn't record them. And so it's so fun to have other practitioners to geek out about and and yeah This time we did it in front of a camera and recorded the audio because I just think that other people In my role and your role It can be kind of lonely trying to drive growth in B2B, frankly.

It really can. And, and, uh, not to get all mushy about it, but you're not alone. You're not alone. Um, Cori, thank you so much. And, uh, and I will talk to you soon. You know, I will. 

Corey Livingston: Thank you, John. 

John Common: Bye. Bye. It was so great to talk with Cori laying out the fundamentals of. A winning go to market strategy through the lens of an enterprise Company cmo.

She's exactly the right guest to talk about that. Um, I knew it was going to be a good show Hope you enjoyed it and and thank you for spending your time with us here today on growth driver Uh, whatever platform you're on be sure to follow us like comment And if you do like what you hear share it with your teams.

Um, we're we're really creating these episodes Because we think they can really help You Um, with, with your mission, no doubt, and certainly our mission, um, which is to help companies really unlock growth in a smarter, more fun, easier, uh, more creative way. Um, so, uh, the other thing I would say is if, uh, there's a topic or a guest that you're interested in, um, feel free to reach out to me or anybody on the Growth Driver team, um, with a suggestion.

We'd love to hear your thoughts about questions you want answered or topics or guests, uh, new books that you want us to pull in and author. All that kind of stuff. Just let us know. And you should know that Growth Driver is brought to you by the talented and kind people at Intelligent Demand. If you work at a B2B company that needs to grow, but grow smarter, grow more efficiently, that's literally what Intelligent Demand stands for.

Smarter growth. So go to IntelligentDemand. com, request a free consultation with one of their B2B growth experts. And they'll help you, um, figure out how to connect your budget and your time and your resources to efficient growth. Okay, that's a wrap. Thanks again for joining us on Growth Driver and I'll see you soon.