The New Model for Modern CMOs with Kyle Coleman

Kyle Coleman: Any marketing that does not generate revenue. Is arts and crafts. 

John Common: Welcome to Growth Driver brought to you by Intelligent Demand, where the best minds in B2B are redefining growth. Hey everyone, John Common here. You know, B2B revenue growth and B2B marketing in particular is going through more disruption, more upheaval, more innovation.

And if I'm being honest, more self doubt than I've seen in a very, very long time. You know, and I think, I think our field is growing up in many ways, you know, and this maturation that we're undergoing has huge implications, obviously, for all the kind of things that we talk about on Growth Driver all the time, technology, strategy, tactics, channels, revenue process, executive leadership roles have to evolve.

Right? It can't always be tactics and technology that evolves. The role of the CMO is what we're going to focus on today. You know, and I think the timing of this is really perfect because when you step back and look across all of B2B, I really think we're in the midst of a generational shift. of new marketing leaders who are stepping up and beginning to take command of marketing at their companies, you know, and I bet many of the folks in the audience today who are listening, um, fit that description.

So today what we're going to do, what we're going to focus on is This idea of what does the new model CMO really look like? How do they think about the role of marketing? How does a new model CMO approach growth? How do they plan? How do they budget? What skills and experiences should they have? What are some old things that that a new model CMO needs to be courageous enough to walk away from?

That's the kind of stuff we're going to get in today, into today. And, um, I've got someone who fits the bill extremely well. Um, uh, and his name is Kyle Coleman. He has over a decade of experience of sales and marketing leadership, both, which, by the way, we're going to talk about driving and guiding growth at Looker.

At Clary and now@copy.ai, Kyle brings a really awesome blend of sales and marketing strategy and tactics, and he also is just such a fresh, clear thinker, the way he thinks about stuff. Um, he's also just a really smart and a nice guy. I have pumped you up so much, Kyle. Welcome to Growth Driver. I forgot to come on.

It's exceedingly low body fat percentage, chiseled cheeks. No, I'm kidding. You are, you are a handsome guy though. Welcome to growth driver, buddy. It's a 

Kyle Coleman: pleasure being here. That was a great intro. I'm really looking forward to diving in. 

John Common: Oh, yeah, right at the top. Um, I know this, but I think our audience, um, would benefit from hearing like the high level path that you took in your career to become a CMO.

Cause I think there's a lot of, um, a lot of instructive, uh, information in that path. So how did you become a CMO? 

Kyle Coleman: Yeah. Uh, well, first I'm going to completely rip off the Steve jobs line of, it's very easy to connect the dots looking backwards. If you had asked me a dozen years ago, If I was going to be a CMO today, I would have said, what does CMO stand for?

Like I did, I had no idea what, what the path was. So I got started in B2B SaaS as an SDR sales development rep at a small company you mentioned John called Looker. Looker was a business intelligence company based in the Bay Area. I was the sixth employee. I didn't know anything. About SAS technology, cloud technology, business intelligence.

What I was in my mid twenties. And I was like, what's the worst that can happen? I'll join a six person company. Why not the no time like the present. And so jumped in and ended up doing as you do at a small startup. You know, my title was. Sales development rep, but I did all sorts of things. Sales marketing.

I did website copy. I did event coordination. I did some very lightweight product marketing, of course, did a lot of sales work, um, qualifying leads and running sales cycles and all the rest and gravitated toward this role of sales development leadership. Which is a function that sits right between sales and marketing.

So marketing is responsible, generally speaking for generating demand. SDR qualifies that demand, hands it off to sales to go and close deals. And I was running that, that middle, uh, portion of the top funnel and the usefulness of this looking back is I became fluent. In both languages, sales and marketing.

I understand the metrics. I understand the strategies. I understand, understand the tactics. I understand the politics. I understand everything that matters to leaders and individual contributors. On the marketing side and on the sales side. And so I'm like, again, looking backwards, very grateful for the eight or so years I spent in direct sales development leadership, because it was a great training ground to really understand the full go to market system, to have appreciation for every cog in the machine, and to figure out the best way to make that machine work really, really seamlessly.

And that's what I hope I'm bringing to my, my current role now is, is that, that background. So six years at Looker, Five years at Clary and now just started at CopyAI, uh, seven months ago. 

John Common: That's awesome. That's great. You know, um, I think we just bumped into one of the, one of the, uh, pillars. I don't know, maybe at the end of this, you and I will have created a new framework called the Framework for a New Model CMO.

We'll see if we do it or not, but, but I think we just bumped into one of them, Kyle. And that is, you know, in your experience, You know, uh, it is, it is deep and wide, right? And I think that the modern CMO more than it has ever needed to be is a aligning, orchestrating, integrative force and function. And it should have always been that, but now we are realizing as our field has matured, that it's not a nice to have Alignment and orchestration and integration.

It's a must have and within the go to market executive team Who needs to know how to do that? Well, the answer is everybody but the cmo I think i'd love your take on this Yeah needs to be Maybe the quarterback of that. And so if, if you do, but do you agree with that? 

Kyle Coleman: Let me say, uh, I don't, I want you to finish the statement, John, but I'll, I'll restate what you said.

I'm agreeing with you. And I'll say marketing needs to be a leadership function inside of the company. At many companies, marketing teams are not focused on the right metrics and do not deserve the right. To have a seat at the big boys table, big girls table and be a leadership function. And so what happens, they're focused on generating leads or whatever.

Those leads are just way too disconnected from real revenue. They lose the trust of the other executives in the room because it feels like not everybody's rowing in the same direction and then marketing becomes a service. organization responding and reacting to whatever is asked of them. Oh, product says we need to launch this thing next month, scramble and let's do it.

Sales team says we need this collateral for this deal. Let's go create it. And the marketing team is always behind, always scrambling and not owning a strategic leadership oriented plan inside the company. That is a major problem. And it's a vicious cycle. It's a vicious cycle and it's up to the marketing leader to break that cycle by first caring about the right metrics, B, creating the strategy that achieves those metrics, and like I said, earning the right to be a leader inside the company and be a leadership function inside the company.

John Common: Yeah. I preach. I love it. I love it. And I agree entirely. So, okay. So what you just said, then you back up and you go, how do you build a CMO? How, what are the, what's the bill of materials, the raw ingredients of a CMO that is capable of doing that, right? So what we, you and I just said is modern CMO and the role of marketing is this aligning, integrating, not dictating.

I know you don't mean that marketing runs everything, but it is the glue, the aligning, the connecting force. So then you go, well, where, where do you. If I wanna be that kind of a CMO, what do I need to know and do and, and be ex ex uh, uh, have experience with Yeah. Exposed to. And that's what's so interesting about your background.

That's why I invited you on Growth Driver is because you, what you just said, I, I have seen, and I am fluent not only in brand, not only in product, I haven't spent the last 15 years only doing. One of the critical elements of marketing, but, and I, but I don't think it's a generalist. It's not a generalist.

It's that you are fluent in the, the team sport that is B2B growth. And so to be exposed to strategy and tactics, to be exposed to sales and SDR and marketing. And I know you even worked on the agency side earlier in your career. And we're going to talk about that later to understand the three 60 Ness of.

Of of modern growth I think is an incredible strength to being a successful cmo 

Kyle Coleman: I totally agree And it's not to say that I am an expert in all of these categories anybody that says they are you need to side eye And kind of question their their credibility. Um, but it's to say that I know what good looks like And that is a very important distinction because if if I know what good looks like And I know how to hire great people that can achieve that Then I can have the right team in place, the right lieutenants, the right delegation structure, the right system that achieves the strategies that I ultimately am responsible for at the executive level.

So that like getting that exposure, and I love that you use that word is one part of it. The second part of it is having the wherewithal and having the curiosity to really dive into it to say, why is this the right way to do a product launch? Why is this the right way to to run a discovery call. Why is this the right way to run a negotiation and implementation customer success?

Like you have to actually go and learn and listen to the gone calls and do the ride alongs and interview the internal stakeholders and read the stuff that exists on the Internet. Like the beauty of the Internet is you can learn anything if you take the time to do it. Most people do not. 

John Common: Yeah, scrolling linked in.

And reading hot takes all day is not what you, what Kyle just said. It's, it's doing the work. And, and I want one more thing. And I know you've done this, but, um, man, I've been doing, I've been doing marketing and, and, and more widely B2B growth my whole career. And if someone were to come to me and say, Hey, John, I'm a marketer.

I want to be incredibly successful at marketing. What's one thing you could, you would recommend that I do to be successful in my marketing career? I swear I would say, go sell something for a while. Um, I, and I, I know that's not an original thought and to a lot of marketers, that's terrifying to them, either terrifying or they think it's not their thing, but I'm telling you guys, you know, especially if you're in B2B, no matter if, you know, the rise of product led growth, trust me.

Sales will always be around in some form or function. And if you want to be a good marketer, you need to feel viscerally in the seat of what it feels like to have to lead a call with a prospect or, or negotiate against a competitor or win a deal or bring a deal that went dormant and is ghosting you back into the fold.

These are the things that real salespeople have to figure out. 

Kyle Coleman: Yeah. 

John Common: And, and, and the best marketers I know have lived that at least a little bit. 

Kyle Coleman: So two, two stories here, John, for you. One, I, and I totally agree with you. One is how I sharpened my ax to be able to do this. And one is how I lost sight of the importance of this.

So early in my career, as, as we mentioned, I was an SDR. I probably should have said the first company I was at, 0 in revenue when I started, or like 100 K friends and family, we got it up to 110 million in six years and they sold for two and a half billion. So like, yeah, but a little bit of credibility, hopefully, um, 

John Common: absolute failure, 

Kyle Coleman: um, so the, the early days at the company, I, as I mentioned in the sales development representative, uh, position in the managing leading the team, ultimately the team grew to about 70 people we on the front lines.

When you are owning the first brand impression and the first messaging impression that companies get. You can't afford to miss, you can't afford to just take the marketing language that's on the website, copy paste and be like, all right, my work here is done. There is no room for preciousness about your messaging.

You have to be direct, you have to be clear, you have to compel people both to open an email and to respond to the email. Or you don't get paid, like full stop. And so there's a lot of pressure to get that messaging right. And so I learned very early. How and why to take quote unquote marketing language and translate it into language that will actually resonate with people who are less familiar with your product, your solution, your space, whatever it may be.

That was a very, very important translation exercise and it continues to be to this day. Fast forward 12 years. I am now the CMO at Copy. ai and I'm putting together these, uh, pitch decks for these new product packages that I roll out. I'm like, sales team, check these out. They're the best. They're amazing.

And, um, we went, field tested them a little bit. Sales guy comes back to me and says, these two slides are terrible. Like they do not work. You can see people zone out. They're just not landing. We need to kill them. And me, the ivory tower, precious marketer said, no, they're the best. Like they help tell the story.

They stitch everything together from A to C. Like you need to have this. And he was like, okay, you go present the deck on the next sales call. So I go and present the deck on the next sales call and see exactly what he was telling me. Like I can see people zone out, lose interest, lose the thread. The story was not helping.

I was like, shit, I just did the exact thing. I know I'm not supposed to do. So killed the two slides from the pitch deck. Sales team is happy. I'm happy. Record breaking quarter last quarter like awesome fantastic. And so it's very easy to lose sight of that It's very easy to go into your marketing lab and come up with the words and phrases and stories and narratives and everything that look Good on paper, but don't actually work in practice and if you get Too married and if you're too precious to the things that look good on paper in your ivory tower and you lose sight of what's Going on on the street You are going to lose the faith of the sales team and that is the start of the vicious cycle Where you lose the faith of the company?

So don't allow yourself to do that. Go and be there in not, maybe if you're not selling beyond the meetings, present the deck, talk to the reps, like do what you can to make sure that you have a really good understanding of how the messaging is actually landing in real life, not in your marketing fantasy world.

And it should change the way it should change your perspective quite a bit. 

John Common: All right. So I, you're a CMO. What does a modern CMO, um, believe in? and practice about the role of marketing. Let's just start right there. What is marketing for in terms of the modern CMO? 

Kyle Coleman: Any marketing that does not generate revenue is arts and crafts.

John Common: Who said that? That's a great, I've heard that quote. 

Kyle Coleman: That's Christopher Lockhead, author of Play Bigger, Category Design Godfather. Any revenue that does not generate or any marketing that does not generate revenue is arts and crafts. Full stop, full stop. If you're doing things because you're trying to add to your portfolio and it's not generating revenue, what are you doing?

What are you doing? It's not to say you need direct 100 percent attribution for every single thing you do, but you need to own the story and the narrative to say, we are doing this because it is in service of this revenue outcome. And that revenue outcome could be in a one month timeframe. It could be in a one year timeframe.

It can be in a two year timeframe, but you have to own the framing and you have to have the accountability to say, this is why we're doing this. And this is why it's working or not. And change gears 

John Common: there. I think there are two potential mistakes that come from that point of view if you're not careful.

And the one we've been seeing now for, I think, years is you hear that thing that you just said. And I agree with. And the people in the room equate it to, ah, what Kyle just said is that the role of marketing is to myopically focus on mid and bottom of funnel, only active demand. And so all of marketing sole role is mid and bottom of funnel demand gen pipeline for this quarter and maybe next quarter.

And anything that isn't that is not active. is arts and crafts. And I, I totally disagree with that. And I see that you do too. So talk to me about that because I think we have over rotated in marketing on active demand. 

Kyle Coleman: Because, uh, you're totally right because of the obsession that everybody has with direct super high fidelity attribution, which is a complete pipe dream.

It's a complete pipe dream. There are way too many buyers in a buying group. The buying group is not even remotely close to linear. If you expect to get a hundred percent attribution on things, and that's what your CFO expects, you need to reset the expectation. It's just not going to happen. And so because everybody's been super obsessed.

With, Oh, the W shaped and the first touch and the last touch and what multi touch and all this stuff. Like you've lost sight of the real, the real, the full role of marketing, as you said, John, which is to both create demand and then to capture that demand as well, to borrow language from Christopher, uh, Chris Walker, the, um, the role of the new CMO.

And I don't think this is a wholesale change from in the past, but I do think it's something we lost sight of, uh, you know, in the last 20 years or so with the rise of marketing technology. The role of the CMO is to architect. A narrative that pulls the market toward a different future. And that's what matters most.

And that requires a lot of thinking. Your product features are not what you should be marketing. The problem you solve is what you should be marketing. And the means of solving that problem should become self evident. But the really important thing is that by solving this problem, you're unlocking a different future for your customers and you need to convince people that that future is where they want to live.

And if you're not doing that, you're not doing your job as a marketer. If you are doing that, you're going to create the right kind of demand from people who believe in your vision of the future, who are interested in pursuing your product as a means of achieving that future. And you have built in differentiation against anybody else in a very crowded space because every space is crowded because you're the only one talking about this level talking at this level.

You get to abstract away from the feature function battle that so often is an obsession of marketing teams. You get to rise above that by having a different type of strategic narrative. That changes the way people think that compels them to take action in a different way. That is the role of marketing and that will do everything that we just talked about.

It'll create demand. It'll help you capture that demand and importantly, it'll help you convert that demand into revenue. And that's the role of the modern marketer. 

John Common: Yeah, I agree. Um, before we leave this topic of the role of marketing, I want to, I want to run something past you is I don't think that CMOs from 5, 10, 20 years ago thought that they were doing arts and crafts just for the fun of it.

I think they knew that what they were doing was supposed to drive measurable growth at some point, right? They're not dumb. They weren't dumb. They're not dumb. Um, so what were they doing? So what was the mistake that got made? And I think the mistake that got made is they lost the plot. And I think, I think there's some couple of really good examples of that.

Um, I think brand, it might be at the top of that list, which is like, have you ever been in a meeting that's supposed to be about business growth with someone who is talking and focused on brand, which they are, in my opinion, a hundred percent correct to be thinking about brand. But they are letting the people in the room with them think that all they're doing is brand arts and crafts.

Right. And so I think, talk to me about that. Cause I bet you've seen examples of that. 

Kyle Coleman: Yeah. 

John Common: And how do we avoid, uh, seeming, uh, confusing tactics with the point, which is growth, 

Kyle Coleman: right? Well the problem is that a lot of people equate brands to colors and graphics and then that's not really what a brand strategy should be.

Brand strategy should be in service of, you know, Bringing your company's point of view to life as we just talked about. And some of that is like, it needs to look good. It needs to look professional and all that. But I think that marketing people or especially, uh, many brand focused people are unable to equate.

Why the look and feel is important to advance the point of view of the company. And if you're not able to connect those dots, then you're going to sound like you're myopically focused on colors and you know, gradients and shadows. And that's not, that's not going to be a convincing argument for anybody who cares, especially now when we're out of the Zerp era and there's a critical eye on every dollar you spend, you have to be able to say, we are doing this, we are investing in this brand campaign, let's say, So that we can make our category better known so that we can make our point of view better known so that when we get into these first calls with customers, we have some credibility already.

And that's the, that's the doc connection you need to do. I'll use a different example. If we can abstract from brand for a moment, like, Companies and the old model CMO is let's pay someone else to do this. Let's pay someone else to create our category, to evangelize our category, to prove that we have credibility for the stakeholders we care about.

We're going to spend millions of dollars a year on analyst firms to go make our case on our behalf. Is that totally necessary these days? I don't know the answer to this. I genuinely don't know the answer to this, John. Like I, I'm, I have a crisis of consciousness about it. Like I get a, I look at a bill from Gartner for 250, 000 or a quote, For a quarter million dollars.

I'm like, I'm a series eight company. Really? 

John Common: Let me jump in on this also. Um, I, I agree with the question at a minimum, if not, if not the likely trajectory of the answer that you're, I think pointing at, but I agree with the question and I would even go further, which is, you know, how many times have you, cause we have clients across, you know, lots of different industries.

And so, so many of our clients get sucked into the game of, oh, I want to be up into the right on the quadrant. And I'm like, why are you seeding comparison? Your, your, your comparison, your category design, your positioning. To someone else to, to a firm who literally makes money by, by, by suckering you into a trap 

Kyle Coleman: to compare you to, to another.

And that's the goal of modern marketing is not to invite a comparison. As we talked about before, it's to force a choice for a different future. I'd like if I'm just shamelessly stealing a lot of this from the book, play bigger, the category design. So I highly recommend this for everybody. And it's a totally different way of thinking about.

the role of marketing, but forcing a choice, not a comparison. Now, of course, there is virtue. If you're selling to a CIO at a, you know, older school company, they probably need to see some sort of validation from, you know, the gardeners, the foresters of the world. So I'm sure there is still value there. I just don't know if it has to be de facto.

This is where I'm going to spend my money. I just raised my series B funding round. Now I can quote unquote afford to go and do this. I don't know. And that was the instinct. That was the reflex that CMOs had, at least in my experience, John, in this tech industry for the last 15 years. It's like, okay, finally we can afford this.

Let's go do it. It's like, and 

John Common: I think where that comes from, I think where that comes from Kyle is, is, um, an unspoken, so in some ways unspoken, but not even perceived, not even an unseen adoption about, Oh, I work in B2B. This is the way growth works. There is an, And we call that just the old playbook. It's the old playbook and it has many, many components and chapters to this old playbook.

And it, for there are maybe most still of the people in marketing, sales, product, customer success in our industry have been, have been fed the old playbook. For over a decade or two, the old playbook is this is the way it is like, holy writ. And what you just pointed out about, you know, the role of analyst relations is, is, is one of the chapters in that book.

And it's not that you burn the whole book and throw all of it out now, but I think what you and I are, maybe you're putting your finger on is there has never been a more important time for CMOs to step back and say, Before I go ask for X dollars for a Gartner or a Forrester or a brand investment or a media play or a website or anything, think, think, think.

And I love, and I think maybe, maybe the test is if I can't explain and connect the dots in a intellectually honest and relatively compelling way to my CEO and CFO, then. Then have I earned the right to go spend this money? 

Kyle Coleman: That's exactly right. And there's going to be a different answer for every company.

And another useful framework here, John, again, shamelessly stolen is, are you advertising to digital natives? Are you advertising and marketing to analog natives? I was talking to my sister, she's 22 years old and she recently bought a car or she's 24 and she bought a car. She didn't look at consumer reports.

Like you and I did when we bought our first car. She didn't look at any of that stuff. She did like the TikTok influencer. They told me this car was good. I'm going to go buy it. Totally different. So that B2C DNA, those buyers. that are now digital natives that were born and raised on the internet are used to consuming and getting information in a fundamentally different way.

And so who are the decision makers inside the companies that you're marketing to? Are they the analog natives that want the Forrester and Gartner credibility? Or are they the digital natives that are going to look elsewhere for that kind of credibility and that kind of authority? I don't, it's different out of every company and it's probably different across your buying group.

And it requires you to ask these kinds of questions, to spend the time, to get meaningful answers, and then design a strategy that's actually going to move the needle from a revenue standpoint. 

John Common: How do you think about goals, expectations, and then the relationship to budgets as a CMO? 

Kyle Coleman: The, the goal. Setting is critical.

The metrics you're accountable for are critical. As we talked about before, for like rep being fully responsible for revenue is maybe a bridge too far. Cause there's a lot that's out of the marketer's control. And there's a reason that a chief sales officer, chief revenue officer exists. However, pipeline creation, and I'm talking qualified pipeline creation is one.

Metric that matters the second metric that matters very much related is the velocity of that pipeline Most marketing teams make the mistake of goaling themselves way too far up the funnel Some marketers are still going themselves on the leads that they generate if you're still doing that you are 10 years in the past and you Need to evolve dramatically and immediately some look at marketing qualified leads, which is slightly better But only very slightly better some will look at the meetings that we book You Okay.

We're getting a little bit further down the funnel, but still a little disconnected from a meaningful outcome. We need to care about the meetings that we book that happen, that turn into qualified pipeline for our sales team. But your job is not done there. Mighty marketing team. And this is a mistake that a lot of marketers make.

Okay. Pipeline qualified. Our work here is done top of funnel. Let's go create more demand. Well, hang on. There's still 30, 60, 90 years worth of selling, marketing that needs to be done. You set up that initial call. Great job. They came to it. They requested a demo. They did all the things. Your channels worked.

Good for you. But that's one person. The average buying group at a 500 person company is 11 people. 11 people. So what are you going to do marketer to increase the velocity of that pipeline? You need to be the one that's helping get multi threaded. You need to be the one helping architect the story, the point of view for that account that you're selling into so that your seller has what they need to go and execute.

You need to be the one accountable for the conversion of that pipeline through the funnel. And there's probably some stage, you know, you get it down to a negotiation stage or you get it down to a POC stage or something like that, whatever. That you can say, okay, my work here is done. I need to go refocus.

But if you are just handing things off at the tip top of the funnel and saying nothing else to see here, you are doing your company a disservice. You're doing your function a disservice. 

John Common: When you're doing goal setting for the year, for the half year, for the quarter, for marketing, and then connecting it to budgets, uh, how do you truly deal with the, the.

Requirement in most companies to say, tell me about marketing sourced qualified pipeline versus sales versus when, when you and I both know that that question is partially right and partially very harmful. 

Kyle Coleman: Yeah. It's the, the, it's not irrelevant, but you have to change the conversation and the conversation needs to be, you need to know your metrics well enough to know what are your highest velocity pipeline channels.

The pipeline that is going to be the highest velocity nine times out of 10 for most companies are the folks that come and request a demo. Like it's not rocket science, and yet most marketing teams will blend their pipeline so that it can actually see that level of fidelity for that cohort. And so what you need to what I would highly recommend and what I do personally is I am accountable for how many demo request opportunities are we creating?

That is the main thing that I care about. And then from there, how am I going to support the other cohorts of pipeline that gets created? So yes, we care about the events we do and the waterfall and the funnel that gets created from event leads. And yes, we care about the ads that we do, although we don't serve any ads right now, um, cause it's not super performant, but anyway, if we do serve ads, what does the funnel look like?

And you need to have those channels well understood for your campaigns or whatever you end up calling it. But the most important thing is you need to know what the highest value pipeline is. It's based on the velocity and the close rates that it has. And you need to architect the, the supporting network that you create from a marketing standpoint to increase the velocity and the conversion rates of all the other cohorts of pipeline that you create.

John Common: We're talking about marketing source versus marketing influence, whether, right. I mean, that's what that is. And how do you, I'm really trying to put my finger on this, uh, in this conversation is now you connected to budget. How do you. handle the moment that inevitably arises when someone says, okay, let's see marketing sourced.

If I believe your attribution marketing sourced is this much, your budget is this. Why don't we delete the part of your budget that isn't directly attributable to marketing source? In other words, I want to delete your marketing influence budget. How do you handle that? Because, because that's, that's, that's where the rubber hits the road, especially lately, I think, in a lot of companies who are, um, realizing that their entire go to market strategy efficiency isn't where it needs to be.

Kyle Coleman: Yeah, it's not the, it's not an easy thing to answer. And if, again, if you set the expectation or allow the expectation that every single dollar you spend is going to be directly attributable to some tangible outcome, that's, it's going to be a really hard bridge for you to cross there. What I would say though, John is, and what I've done in the past is I have, okay, we have our high value cohort of.

of demand that we create. Like that's unassailable, pretty easy to track, last touch attribution. They came to our website, they clicked request a demo. Like it's very, it's very linear to get to that top of funnel point. But the other cohorts I create are now that we have the demand, whether it was outbound sourced, whether it was inbounds or like whatever source it came from, are they going to get middle of funnel marketing treatment or not?

And we track this and say, these hundred accounts this quarter, got a bespoke landing page and got this ABM treatment and got this and this custom content and all the rest. These hundred did not. What were the conversion rates of those two of those two cohorts? And without exception and without fail, the ones that get extra marketing attention are the ones that That, that do better.

And so then you get to make the case to go further up the funnel to say, we need to do this kind of broad based marketing strategy so that there's more general awareness about what we do so that our, our category design is better understood so that our point of view is better understood so that we can create more of this demand.

And look, we've proven that when we're able in a one to one sort of way, tell this story, it moves the needle. So of course, when we tell it in a one to many sort of way, it's going to move the needle And that's, you just have to prove it. 

John Common: Yeah, that's the way to do it. I think I think I agree with you and and that takes a little bit of It takes a fair amount of communicating and and educating sometimes at the c suite level and the vp level and it also takes a little bit of rigor And patience to go set up an experiment an a b cohort And then let it run for because it is in b2b buying cycles.

They're not six days. They're six months or plus And so that that I agree with that and I'm, and I'm saying, um, even do the doing of that isn't easy at a lot of companies. It's not easy at all. 

Kyle Coleman: And, and a lot of companies totally whiff on this, John, where they're like, yeah, we do ABM. Look, we put their logo on this page and all the other content is the same.

Is that good? And no, that's not an account based marketing. That's like completely transparent tactic that doesn't actually move the needle. And so now with the rise of AI, it is so much easier to create bespoke landing pages for every single high value account that you have. There's no excuse anymore.

You have to do this, create bespoke landing pages. That takes your point of view, takes account real account research, connects the dots. Create that custom blog post, create the custom video from your executive, put it on that landing page. Like that's real account based marketing. Make sure that you're advertising it, sending it to the right people.

Engage your executives for one to one outreach. That is real account based marketing and it's hard and no, it doesn't always quote unquote scale to infinity. So what? Like you're not trying to generate infinity revenue dollars. You're trying to generate some tangible amount of revenue dollars. So do the things.

That don't scale from time to time to learn what works and then find ways to make it more efficient. Streamline the process. If you are completely obsessed with just scaling everything, all you're going to do is just spend ad dollars. You're just going to pour more money into Google and it's going to come out with a really terrible efficiency metric on the other end because you're taking the lazy way out.

You have to put in the hard work. You have to have a, like a cabal of people that believe in this strategy that are aligned on the strategy that help you create that high velocity pipeline and then help convert it as well. 

John Common: How many times have you heard. Or thought or said the B2B creative and content sucks.

Raise your hand. We've all thought it. We've all said it. We've all seen it. How do you change it? Is the question look at the end of the day, all the tech, all the content, all the strategy, all the media planning, all the meetings don't matter. They're there in support of real. Human moments. The other word for that is courageous, creative.

If you're ready to get courageous with your creative and move the needle with your creative strategy, your messaging, your content, your calls to action, and do it in highly relevant, personalized ways, go to intelligent demand. com book, a meeting with a growth expert. Let's break it down. Let's talk about audience insights, audience definition.

How does a new model CMO think about. The fast but effective way to really understand your ICP at the account level, at the buying team level, at the persona level, at the customer journey level. Just literally, how do you, how do you do that? 

Kyle Coleman: Yeah. You, it's funny, John, when I started at Clary, um, this was 2019, we were, the company was seven or so years old, um, you know, doing pretty well, but not like totally taking off quite yet.

And I was looking at the, The customers that we were focused on from an outbound and the ABM strategy. I was looking at the list in Salesforce and I was looking at our logo wall. I was like, these two things are not, these two things are not the same. Like we have outbound programs where we're chasing John Deere and Boeing, but the customers that we have are B2B tech, 200 to 2000 person companies, like.

This is not rocket science guys. So just like completely, just that simple little insight. It's not rocket science here. You like the I and ICP is ideal, ideal. It's not, we're not trying to maximize the amount of companies that we can reach out to. We're trying to get the same. center of the bullseye.

That's what we're trying to do. That's what your ideal customer profile is. So define it. Look at the customers that you have or be very realistic with yourself. If you're a startup, if you're a new company, you're not going to go sell to JP Morgan. Like relax, you got to earn the right friend. And so start a little bit more.

you know, a little bit more modest and make sure that you're reaching out to companies that you can prove that you have a repeatable sales cycle into. So center of the bullseye, be very restrictive. We just did this at copy AI. We can sell to anybody. Anybody has a marketing or sales use case, customer success, finance operations, use case for AI.

We could sell to anybody. Our ICP is 1800 accounts, 1800, very manageable, very manageable. So we limited the universe from literally hundreds of thousands. Of accounts down to 1800 because we said these are the companies that fit this exact really strict criteria for where we want to go win in 2024. And that's a critical thing.

And it requires you to be really honest with yourself. And then if you have the history, look at the golden path of how a prospect becomes a customer, what are of course the, uh, um, characteristics of the account, but then also what are the characteristics of the titles, the ICT ideal customer titles that you engage to create the initial opportunity.

And if you created that opportunity with an operation stakeholder, but they had to go get the CFO, when did that happen in the deal? And what marketing things can you create to help go and engage that CFO at the right time? And so understand the golden path of who is involved and when and create your marketing strategies around it.

And that one, two punch of ICP and ICT is very, very powerful. And it helps you codify the strategy that you create for content, for events, for advertisements, for your whole POV. So you have to, you have to do the work. You have to lean in and really understand And, 

John Common: and, and how does a marketer get those insights?

Probably by Looking at their own CRM data, their own deal flow data, but also, uh, this crazy idea of actually talking to SDR and salespeople and CS people, right? What a concept, 

Kyle Coleman: what a concept, like shadow, a couple of deals. Again, you don't have to be the one selling it, but take the 45 minutes out of your week to go to the meeting.

Like what you really can't afford to do that. Come on. So you like, there's, there's no excuse. Um, there's just laziness. And I think a lot of people are looking for shortcuts and are not willing to put in the work. And want to just kind of pontificate and hope instead of just getting the real facts on the ground and then architecting their strategies in pursuit of those facts.

Now, it's not to say that what's happening today has to be the way that things happen in the future, but you need to prove that your systems are successful so that you can evolve them. Accordingly, if you try and come in and wholesale change on day one, you're gonna spook your company, you're gonna spook the market.

It, it may not work, so it needs to be ambitious, but maybe somewhat gradual from time to time. So be smart about it. Don't completely pull the rug out from under your, your target audience. Um, but you have to understand. And you can't understand them by, you know, uh, light Googling or asking chat GPT for an answer about your persona profile.

You have to actually dig in and understand how they think and how they buy. 

John Common: How many times have I heard clients in the middle of a workshop turned to the other and go, you know, We've never done this. We ought to do this more often. I'm like, Oh my God, you're welcome. You know? Uh, anyway. Um, all right. So let's, let's, let's go to the next sort of component, major component, major decision that a CMO either.

Makes or helps their company make and that is okay. We've got our clarity around our goals and I've Connected those goals to budget and timing realities We have done homework about our buyers and how they buy how we define our ICP or ICT we have done whether it's category design or whatever whatever flavor of positioning and messaging and storyline that we've done that matches that buying reality.

Now we have to make the next major go to market decision, I think, which is what go to market motion is the right motion for us now with these particular growth goals with this ICP? Are we doing a, are we pursuing an ICP TAM or a total relevant market, whatever phrase you want, that's got 200, 000 companies spread across the world and a million industries.

Are we doing a more narrow version? Are, are we selling something that is a, uh, you know, a 10, 000 lifetime value or ACV? Are we selling something that's a 1 million? How do you think through the right go to market motion to achieve a growth goal? 

Kyle Coleman: Yeah, it's a really good question, John, and there's no single answer.

Um, No, 

John Common: no. 

Kyle Coleman: What I will say is I think it is a mistake that many companies are making and are seduced into making because the concept is so seductive of PLG and product led growth. Because I think when people say, Oh yeah, we have a cost, a product that sells itself. They are really losing sight of how products get bought and probably most important how they stick.

And that's a fundamental problem that especially a lot of, um, technology startups have is they're so proud of their product that they just think it's a no brainer that everybody should use it. And how many like hyper successful PLG companies are there really? Five? Like seriously, it's Notion, Canva? Miro Slack.

Yeah. And even Slack was like, it needed the top sound sale to really achieve scale. And it's really, really hard. It's really hard. And so I think if you are expecting your product to do all the selling for you, you're fundamentally discounting the role of marketing. You're fundamentally discounting the rule of sales.

And it's a very, very tough hill to climb. And so it's not to say that you shouldn't have, you know, ease of use and an awesome product experience. Of course, that's awesome. Super helpful. But be really honest with yourself about who is going to buy this, who is going to champion this, who's going to renew.

This and how can we make sure that the customer acquisition cost ratio to lifetime value actually makes sense. And I think what a lot of PLG companies are seeing, this is true of Netflix. This is true of Disney plus is that they're, they churn more customers than they can replace every month. It's hard, it's really hard.

And so you have to be really, um, analytical about what the right model revenue retention model is. for your business. It's not all about acquisition. It has to be about retention and lifetime value. And if you can take that broader view in that longer term view, you'll have a much more comprehensive answer on the right go to market strategy for you.

John Common: This, this, this, this thing, this pillar, this step, this decision that you and I are talking about, which is okay, I've earned the right. I know what we're doing now. What. I think about like go to market motions as like, um, they're like, uh, recipes. They're integrated recipes for achieving a growth goal. Right?

And I think a lot of companies, um, don't spend enough time having very rigorous discussions about the fact that it's a choice. And because they don't do that, they end up with really either the old playbook As their default go to market motion. Or they end up thinking that their job is to do every go to market.

We're, oh, and I've actually been in go to market workshops where people proudly, and it kills me, Kyle, people proudly, they say, well, which go to market motion? And they say, well, we're doing, uh, demand gen, we're doing account based, we're doing, uh, PLG, we're doing partner led and near bound, we are also doing customer led growth, and we're doing community led growth, and we're doing inbound, and we're doing outbound, and we're doing peanut butter and jelly led growth, and I'm like, and they're like, and they think that the, the job is to do as many as you can.

Box checking. Which is terrifying. Yeah. So, there's a couple of things that here, that I think, And we're talking about it. I would say, you know, really think clearly about your target audience and what you're really trying to achieve. In terms of the, the, the number of segments, the, the geographic spread of those segments, your position in your market relative to your competitors.

What is your ICP and 

Kyle Coleman: how defensible is your product? How, how, what is your moat? Like truly, truly how different really is your product capability? I'll tell you, like the, a lot of the moat comes from your POV. If your POV is truly differentiated, if you're the future, you're creating is really differentiated.

You can have a totally different conversation with a totally different stakeholder inside the company. Even if you have feature parody. With another company. And so you need to think about the differentiation, both from a product capability standpoint, but as well as a POV and the sharpness of your category design, 

John Common: where I am, where my thinking has been evolving on this topic of how do you choose the right go to market motion is to, I'd love your thoughts on this.

Is that, um, to give ourselves permission to have, to think of it as what are my r Right. Or die primary go to market motions versus my supporting or supporting go to market motions or even like test and learn. Right. It's like a laboratory. 

Kyle Coleman: Yeah. 

John Common: And so primary is the way I put it is if you're choosing one to many demand gen or a one to few account based approach.

Or. Right. Right. or one of those or both of those with a, and maybe, maybe a true side order of partner led growth. If those are your primary motions, and by the way, in most B2B companies that I know, that's what they are. And that's what they should be. Yeah. Some version of those three, probably more often than not are your primary.

What primary means is in my mind is y'all are betting Your mortgage on this. You have got to be good at these. You, and, and what that, what being good sometimes means is you're going to say no to all of that other shit so that you can be doubly good at your primary ride or die go to market motions. And it, and you should go stare in the mirror as a go to market team and say, are we good enough at ABX?

Because it's our ride or die go to market motion. And so when someone says, Hey, we ought to do community led growth. You say, Maybe, but we're going to put that in the secondary or the test and learn go to market motion. We got to get back to ABX or we got to get back to doing really effective personalized demand gen.

That's my preaching. What do you think about that preaching? 

Kyle Coleman: A hundred percent. I'll say it's a yes. And it, you need to have. The, that exact same thought process and conversation for the type of revenue that you're creating. Is this new business revenue? Is this upsell revenue? Is this expansion, retention revenue where, what are we trying to do here?

Because. A different motion may be more appropriate. And I'll give you an example for Copy AI. We are very much account based, demand generation, executive, top down land. That's what we want to do. We want to have an executive conversation. We want to become infrastructure for these companies so that we're very difficult to replace.

Then, once we land, we need the product experience to be good enough that there's organic use. We're usage based. We want there to be as many users as possible. We want On our platform. So we don't charge per seat all the time. We want there to be inventiveness with the use cases that you deploy with our generative AI capabilities.

So we want this to happen organically. We want people to be able to use it. If we relied on that though, as our new logo motion, it's hard to get enough of a groundswell. It's hard to train people for a new technology to get enough value to go and command six figures. From these companies. And so it's, I think you have to be really smart about the type of revenue that you're focused on.

And I think that's where you can have a little bit more diversification in the way you think about what the primary approach is. And it could be very different for new logo versus upsell and expansion, or even retention as a, as a critical component here, um, that many marketers just are not thinking about.

John Common: That's a great call out. Yes. It's the full bow tie, the full revenue process. It's not just acquisition. And. And as you move from acquisition to value delivery to renewal to expansion, your go to market motion very, very likely could be different or at a minimum could be tailored differently for those differences.

I think that's awesome. I wanna, I wanna, and we leaned into this, but I wanna tee it right up for you. Brand awareness and preference. Number one. Number two, demand creation or demand generation. Number two. Number three, demand capture. So now it's active demand. And then lastly, sales, demand conversion. So if I say those four things, which is how we think about it more and more at i D.

Yep. Um, how do you, CMO, think about where you place your bets and your dollars and your talent and As a marketing function across brand awareness and preference across the creation of demand, the capture of demand, and the enabling and support of sales. 

Kyle Coleman: It's never static, John. Like if you try and make an annual plan across and I totally co sign those four categories if you try and make an annual plan You know February 1st, you're like this is what we're gonna do and it's the same exact ratio and in December like probably you're being lazy And so as an example, you know, I copy AI we were series a we're building we're growing We need to show that we can run repeatable sales cycles.

And so I am investing more in May squeezing every ounce of juice as we can out of the opportunities that we do create. That's what matters most to me right now. And so we are over rotating toward capture and convert. And we're doing like, as I said, we're not serving any ads for awareness or anything like that.

We're, we have a content led awareness. Strategy. Um, but you know, that will change when we need, when we have, you know, 20 salespeople instead of four and we need to be creating and capturing more and the expectations from our revenue growth standpoint are different. So like it totally changes depending on what your monthly or quarterly targets are and you have to be flexible enough to be able to invest the right amount in each of those four categories for whatever the business needs are and frankly, whatever the revenue goals are.

John Common: For our audience. I think, I think what Kyle, you just said is. Spot on. And it also is, remember when he said we're at series a, so a lot of the folks who are, who are listening to this are, are, um, not at series a, right? So that, you know, they, they've achieved at least some amount of scale, some amount of product market fit, and now they're in the growth and scale phase.

But all I can say, John, 

Kyle Coleman: for those, and you're right, you're right. There's absolutely difference in distinction, but even still, I see a lot of marketing teams that have the same exact tactics, mixing Q1 as they do in Q4, even though Q4 is 50 percent of their revenue. And you're like, how are you doing the exact same thing when you have a hockey stick Q4 and the whole goal is converting as much of the pipeline that you've created over the course of the year?

Like, what are you doing? And they say, Oh, well, we're creating demand for next year. You're like, I think there's a little bit more sophistication and some knobs to turn. Perhaps. Yeah. Right. 

John Common: Yeah. Well, yeah. I'm, I'm Q4. And that's how I got fired. Yeah. Yeah. 

Kyle Coleman: Not to be harsh, but I've seen it. We've all seen that.

It's easy to do what you are already doing. And it's hard to change. And some people will say, Oh, I have a 50 person marketing team. It's like turning a tanker in the ocean. Well, that's your job. It's your job. So figure out how to do it. Communicate what matters. What you said earlier, John, is like, you have to say no to stuff.

I maintain a list of the priorities that we're focused on. It's like five things and a list of the things we're not doing. And it's like 50 things. And in my one on ones with the CEO, it's like, Hey, Paul, just as a reminder. Hey, great idea. You had last week. Guess what? List it's up. Why? Because these five things matter most for what we need to do right now.

So we'll get there. Maybe for the time being, we got to focus on this because, and here's why. Okay. Here's our strategy that we agreed on the executive team co signed sales team understands like we got to keep going down this road. So maintaining your list of priorities of yes, this is in and yes, this is out is, is I think a really good way of doing that and allows you to be flexible month over month or quarter over quarter and pull things in, push things out, whatever you need to do to actually support the business.

And that's what leadership is. 

John Common: That's a perfect segue to another critical job of the modern CMO. And it's around. Alignment around, when I say alignment, I mean cross functional alignment and orchestration, and what you just said is a good example of that, so let's go there. How do, how do you, as a, as a, as a modern CMO, establish and maintain the right working relationships and expectations and role clarity with CEO, CFO, CEO.

CRO. Let's, let's just start with those three. 

Kyle Coleman: Yeah. I'd include product in there as well. Yeah. 

John Common: Chief product officer. Um, yeah. Head of product. 

Kyle Coleman: This is going to sound really glib and I don't mean it to be, but it really is like a very important point here is write shit down, like get your strategies out of your head and get it into long form memos.

Like slide decks are nice and cute and you can pretty them up and put nice animations in there, but nothing beats. The long form memo. I mean, there's a reason Amazon has a six page memo thing. It works and it works to clarify your thinking, to share your thinking and to have real conversations with stakeholders.

Uh, CEO, CFO, CRO product in, in a way that's going to help shift your strategy. If you are not taking the time to get stuff down onto paper and have real conversations about what you're doing and why, and how it's in service of the short and long term plans of the company, you're again, like you're being lazy.

And that's, it's really hard to do this. It's hard to sit down for two hours with no distractions and get your thoughts on paper. It's hard to take. That memo to an executive meeting and get beat up around it and hold your ground and compromise and find the path forward and align the product launch plan and like do all the things.

It's hard work, but if you can commit to doing that, getting your thinking out there, you're going to get way higher fidelity thoughts from the other stakeholders. They will understand and appreciate the amount of effort you're putting in and they will be Encouraged to do the same exact thing. And so I know it I know it sounds simple But I mean how many companies that you work with how many people you work with John are actually committed to getting like that Long form thinking down on paper so that it can become a real strategy.

It's made. It's like 1 percent 

John Common: your advice is hey CMOs If it's not already naturally happening, be the one to write the memo. Is that what you're saying? 

Kyle Coleman: That's exactly right. 

John Common: And, and, and I think let's unpack that because I think alignment, we're talking about cross functional executive alignment around go to market and growth.

It, what could be more important other than, you know, taking care of your customers and your employees. It's, it's like the, right? So it's worth it. And my point of saying that is it is worth the effort that Kyle, you are preaching, man. And, and so. I think it's good. What do you think about this idea of setting up an annual calendar that says, Okay, annually, the cross functional go to market executive team that I'm a part of annually.

This is our cadence for how we do things. This is our communication commitment written down. And then also, these are the checkpoints. Uh, we will get together and actually not just talk once a year as part of the annual planning process, but go to market is a verb, not a noun. How do we do it? On the operating cadence, the operating model.

And then the last thing that we help our clients move into is when you've so you've created a That's an honest, regularly occurring space that is cross functional where the right people are in the room talking about the right things. The last piece is you need to feed that room with credible information and data.

And not just opinion, right? That's where rev ops and reporting and analytics needs to circle back, um, into your executive team. That's how we think about that. But beat that up with me. Talk to me. I absolutely 

Kyle Coleman: love it. And I love the cadence and there's a sales and finance cadence and interlock. That's really important.

There's a marketing and product interlock. That's really important. That typically are on the same sort of cadence and, and more tightly interwoven, um, sales and finance are more like quarterly driven, revenue driven. Marketing and product are more launch driven, maybe on a six month time horizon, but so there's ways to think about the interlock there, but I totally agree with all of that.

You build this muscle and what ends up happening, John, is you earn the right to be a leader inside the company for things you, uh, that are outside of your quote unquote scope. And I'll give you an example. Like because I've committed to writing down the marketing strategy, getting people's thoughts, pushing back, adjusting where necessary, et cetera.

I have earned the right to weigh in on topics that are not owned quote unquote by marketing. As an example, while I was looking at the data, as you mentioned, um, and saw this huge glut of pipeline that's coming down the pike in the second half of the year. I was like, okay, this is a, this is a problem.

It's a good problem, but it is a problem. What do we need to do to address this problem? One, I need to make sure the rest of the company is aware of this. Hey y'all, did you know that we have eight times as much pipeline set to close in Q4 than we had in Q1, like. There's probably going to need some resourcing there and so create, write the memo, show the data, show the from to show the growth of recorder recorder, make recommendations.

We need solutions team to handle this. We may need additional AEs. What are the product things that will make an implementation smoother? Nothing in this memo has anything to do with marketing. 

John Common: That's right. 

Kyle Coleman: But I get to facilitate the conversation with cross functional stakeholders because I am a leader at the company.

You're thinking like 

John Common: a, you're thinking like a growth executive. Yes. Not, not a. Chief marketing tactic, project manager. 

Kyle Coleman: That's right. And if I need to compromise my budget, Hey, I was about to have a hundred thousand dollars in Q4 to spend on whatever marketing people spend money on colors and shadows.

Maybe I should go fund a role, like a role. Maybe I should go fund something else that can help with the long term future of the company. And so you can make much smarter trade offs and that's how you earn credibility. You're not always going back to the CFO, hat in hand, begging for more money. You're showing that you are a true business owner.

You are a true cross functional leader and it starts with It's just building the muscle of getting your thoughts down, communicating clearly. And so start with your marketing strategy, as I mentioned, interlocked with product and that you'll be surprised at how much this approach will be able to inform the executive C level strategy or even departmental strategies that you end up having.

So build this muscle for yourself and for your team. And I promise you, you're going to have much better outcomes 

John Common: to our audience bookmark this point in the podcast and share it with others. Your revenue leaders, revenue executives at your company. If you were to ask me the single biggest gap that could improve end to end growth performance at almost every B2B company, it is, it is the lack of what Kyle and I just talked about for the last six minutes, which is a, what we think of it as a cross-functional go to market operating model that is always on.

It is cross-functional. It is always on. It has executive, uh, not sponsorship, but ex active executive, regular engagement. Yes. The lack of that. Is at the root of so much weak or mediocre or inefficient go to market performance in most B2B companies, the lack of that. But when you put it in place, uh, what it takes is some rigor.

It takes some sustained executive focus and courage to go, go to that space and talk and work out problems. But when you do it. You get outsized gains and impacts, and you don't have to spend any more money on tech, any more money on people, any more money on media. I'm telling you, it's, it might be boring, but this is the unlock.

This is the B2B unlock. 

Kyle Coleman: Thinking, John, like we talked about this before, thinking is the thing that you, that can't be replaced by AI, by anybody else. And so, uh, another sort of corollary here for how to think about your role at the company, CMO. Is and this was this was a big mindset shift for me is if you ask 100 marketers who their primary team is, 99 of them will say it's my VP of product marketing.

It's my head of content. It's my head of life cycle. It's my campaign managers. It's all these people on the marketing team. Like wrong. You're wrong. Your primary team. Is the executives that you work with, it's your CEO, CFO, CRO, head of product, like that has to be your mindset. You should be spending as much time with them and their teams as you are with the marketing team, because that is your role.

If you are truly a leadership function inside of your company, you have to show up in the places that allow you to be this. It's a mindset shift. And it was a major unlock for me in my career. 

John Common: How should a new model CMO think about properly leveraging A holistic RDR function, and then my, um, secondary question is, I know you're going to talk about AI, you work at CopyAI, I know that CopyAI's use cases extend far beyond the SDR use case.

But talk to me about both. Let's start with, how should you think about a proper SDR function? 

Kyle Coleman: The way to think about it is CAC to LTV. What is your customer acquisition cost and how does that compare to your lifetime value? Most companies, John, over the last 15 years, let's call it, said, oh, Salesforce invented this, this SDR function, so we should do it too.

It's like, well, Salesforce's LTV is like 2 million and yours is 20K. Can you really afford a 150K fully burdened employee to drive a 20K LTV? Your cocktail TV is upside down. It's completely wrong. So just because another well known company is doing a thing does not mean that you need to do that thing.

You need to think about what is actually right for your, your financial model. And so cocktail TV is the first thing you need to really, really understand. Then you can say, what are the right investments in CAC to drive. The right LTV and some for some companies, it will still be this SDR function. Okay, awesome.

It makes sense for us to be proactively outbounding. I can afford to pay somebody 150k fully burdened because they're going to be this productive and achieve this many revenue outcomes. Now, what, how can I make their time most performant? This segues into the AI part. The problem that a lot of SDRs RDRs had is that they're 80 percent of their day Was spent on menial, mundane, time consuming tasks that are research oriented.

AI is so good at this research orientation. AI should be building the account plans. AI should be doing a lot of the contact research. AI should be delivering that information on a silver platter to the humans so the humans can be thoughtful, strategic, creative, and can execute together. And that research that you do For an SDR from an account and context standpoint should inform your account based strategy as we talked about before.

So there should be interplay much more interplay between what the SDR is doing and what your marketing team is doing than there ever has before, despite everybody's best efforts and despite everything you hear about it, there has still been a major wall between what an SDR does and what a demand gen or campaign manager does.

And that is inexcusable now inexcusable. So have like, if it makes sense for your company, Have an SDR model. If you have an SDR model, you have to find ways to make them much more efficient than they have been historically. Otherwise your financial model is going to fall apart. So that's a super high level.

Like we could talk about this for another hour, but that's my take. 

John Common: You know, We, we're, we're, um, this episode is part of a season two of growth driver, and I'm already seeing you're, you're gonna, if you'll have us, we're going to have you back. I think we need to just do a deep dive in SDR, um, cause you have such a unique perspective on it from, cause you did it if I, cause I know, I know your background.

You were part of SDR 1. 

Kyle Coleman: 0, 

John Common: you know, back in 2000, whatever. Yeah. And, and, and so, and now you're a copy AI helping to innovate that use case and function as well as many others. 

Kyle Coleman: Well, what happens like John, we, we got into this point where a lot of companies, the biggest problem they're trying to solve right now is their go to market bloat.

They have this bloated application environment. They have all these manual processes. They have all these hyper specialists that we could afford to hire when money was cheap. Right now we can't afford to hire them anymore. And it doesn't always make sense to have a person who is solely focused on Doing research and doing outreach.

Now they need to do more and they can either do more outreach, which is not always, you know, infinitely scalable, or you can have them responsible for additional things. So I view the SDR role as still critically important for some companies, most companies, probably, but the scope has to be broadened. It can't only be an outreach meeting setting role anymore.

That doesn't make sense. It has to have a broader horizon. So either they're also contributing to account based marketing type programs, or they're running down market deals and generating revenue, or some, there's some expansion. There's some evolution of the role that you have to introduce. So that the math works, so that there's actually, like we said, Cactail TV that checks out.

I'm gonna stop there, because I'm gonna open up way too many avenues for us, but we could, like I said, we could talk about this for an hour. 

John Common: Alright, so, we're, we're, we're gonna start landing the plane here, and one of the things I like to do, think of this as lightning round, I want you to, Um, give advice to CMOs in three different use cases or situations, okay?

And don't overthink it. It's just, it's just like, what, hey Kyle, what, what's the first thing that comes to mind is truly lightning round. What did, what's one piece of advice you would give a CMO who is already a CMO? They're in seat as a CMO. They're staring at H2 of 2024 and looking at 2025. And they want to become a more effective, more modern CMO.

What's one, maybe one or two things you're like, this is what I would tell that person if they were my good friend. 

Kyle Coleman: Look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself if you truly are a leadership function, if marketing is a leadership function inside your organization, if not, and again, in most companies, it isn't at most companies, marketing is a service function.

You have to take the right steps to earn the right, to be a leader, focus on pipeline, focus on conversion, focus on revenue. Focus on your point of view, make sure that you are understanding how you're pulling the market toward a different future, and you will have fundamentally different outcomes in the back half of this year and then moving into the future.

John Common: Excellent. Okay. Next one is. Advice, a tip, uh, for someone who wants to become a CMO. So they're currently a director or a VP of some flavor of marketing, maybe even a head of SDR. How, what, what's one piece of advice? 

Kyle Coleman: Most people that are in this VP of marketing role, John grew up through product marketing or content marketing or demand gen or something like that.

So the advice is actually stolen from you, which is go sell, get in the trenches, be responsible. For a deal or ride along and shadow a deal, really, truly understand it because it will change your perspective and it will make you a much better leader when you ultimately do achieve that CMO role. 

John Common: Okay. The third use case advice is I'm someone, uh, who is a marketing executive and I'm looking for my next gig,

which is, let's be honest, there's a fair number of those out there right now. Yeah. Um, what, what, what advice would you have for them? How to land. A great next gig as a marketing executive or CMO. 

Kyle Coleman: It's the way I think about it is position yourself or be positioned. Do you want to own the way that the marketing companies that you're talking to think about you?

Or do you want them to define it for you? You have to have a point of view. You have to come in and in your interviews, you have to show people that you're not a service oriented CMO, but you're going to be a change agent inside the company. And if the company doesn't want that, then you're not the right fit.

And move along. So I like be opinionated, be yourself, position yourself as a strategic leader inside that company and then go do it. Like really go do it. And if you can do that, you're going to show up very differently. Don't come into an interview with all these frameworks and like all this stuff. You need to come in and show them that you can think differently and achieve meaningfully different outcomes.

Then the other 99 percent of the candidates they're going to talk to, if you can do that, if you really believe in a lot of the stuff that you and I, John have been talking about today, you will get way more opportunities and you will, of course, drive better results. 

John Common: That's excellent. All right. So this episode is about the modern CMO.

We're also going to be doing. a similar kinds of series around what the modern CRO looks like for obvious reasons. And so for that reason, since I've had you under the bright white hot light of the CMO role for a second, what's one piece of advice you would offer your peers who are CROs trying to become more modern, better, more effective versions of CROs?

Kyle Coleman: Most CROs are graduated VPs of sales. And they don't care. Not that they don't care. They don't focus as much on the customer. Go and focus on the freaking customer. Like really lean in. Do you really understand how retention and renewals are done? Really? Do you understand? Do you really understand product usage and the use cases that the product is driving and what yellow flags and red flags are?

Really? Do you? Most do not. Go do that because revenue. Is not just sales. It's post sales, it's expansion, it's retention. And I mean, we all see the stats. It's way easier to expand an existing customer than land a new one. It's way cheaper. And yet, because most CROs are graduated VPs of sales, their DNA is new.

I want new logos. I want new business. That's how I want to drive growth. And of course you need to do that. Man, if you can lean into and understand your customer business, you're going to be in just exceptional shape. 

John Common: That's a mic drop. That's awesome. Um, okay. Last one is, um, advice to the CEO.

Kyle Coleman: Expect more from your marketing leader. 

John Common: Oh, that's so good. That is so good. Sorry, I'd try to be quiet, but that can't be quiet. That is fantastic. 

Kyle Coleman: Most CEOs direct their marketing leader. And suffocate them. You have to expect more from them. You have to challenge them to be a leader, a true leader inside your cross functional leader inside your company.

And if you're not doing that, you're not squeezing all the, all the, all the juice out of their brain. You got to do that. Got to do that. Because most, most marketing leaders, like it's not their fault that they feel beaten down, that they feel like a service organization, that they feel accountable to shitty metrics.

It's because a lot of it is like this is how they grew up. You got to help you as a CEO have to help unshackle them. You have to help drive what they're focusing on. You have to make sure that their priority list is five instead of 50. You have to expect more leverage out of your CMO. 

John Common: Okay. Last question.

Um, I'm going to make it a little bit more personal. Uh, what, uh, as a leader of people, of teams, of culture, what's, what's something that you've learned, uh, uh, Along the way about leading people about about about creating an environment where good things happen. What's, what's, what's something you would share?

Kyle Coleman: I used to think and still do to a certain extent, still battle it. That being liked is the most important thing. I like to be like, we all like to be like, we're humans, we're tribal. 

John Common: I know 

Kyle Coleman: that's not how you get the most value out of high performing people. High performing people like the feedback. They expect the feedback.

They want the truth. And if that comes at the expense of them not liking you for an hour, get over it. Get over it. And so that it's hard, it's hard to look somebody that you respect and that you like in the whites of the eyes and tell them they did a shitty job on something and need to step up. You got to do it though.

You have to, because that's how you unlock people. That's how you, it's like, it's a motivator for, for the right people, for the right people. It's a motivator. And, um, it took me a long time to learn that lesson. I'm still learning it. It's, it's not, it's unnatural for me anyway. It's not unnatural for Steve jobs.

It's unnatural for me. 

John Common: I suffer from the same desire to be liked that you do, and it's, that's really, that resonates with me too. Um, that's really great. Kyle, I knew this conversation would be great. It's, it kind of exceeded my expectations even, and um, It's really good to get to know you, uh, here on growth driver.

Thank you for giving us your time. It's been a pleasure, my friend. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm excited about some follow on, uh, work that we can do together. Uh, we're obviously, uh, users of copy AI. We're big fans. Uh, I'm, I'm a big fan of you. ID is a big fan of your product and let's, uh, let's do some part two stuff as well.

Kyle Coleman: Love it. Thank you so much, my friend. 

John Common: Thanks, buddy. All right. It was great to talk to Kyle. I knew it would be. Uh, he really is such a great example of a new model CMO, which is why we wanted him here on Growth Driver. Hey, thank you for spending time with us today. Uh, if you like what we're doing, I'd like you to do me a favor.

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