The Modern CMO: A Cornerstone of Services and Success
Jenny Victor, CMO at Epicor shares what the new vision for a CMO is and how she’s approaching this evolution.
[MUSIC]
Welcome to Pipeline Visionaries.
I'm Ian Faizan, CEO of Caspian Studios.
Today, we are joined by a special guest, Jenny.
How are you?
>> I'm good. Thank you very much.
How are you doing?
>> I am doing excellent, excited to chat about Upcore,
excited to chat about your background and marketing.
Today's show is brought to you by our friends at Qualified.
We're always brought to you by Qualified.
You can go to Qualified.com to learn more about the number one conversational
sales
and marketing platform for companies, revenues, teams that you sales force.
Let's get into it. What was your first job in marketing?
>> I feel like I'm pretty lucky.
My first job in marketing was directly out of business school,
and I was hired into IBM in their marketing leadership development program,
which meant I got a little special entrance into marketing.
It was a program designed by the then CMO, Abi Constam,
to really help people understand the different parts of marketing.
I got to start in product marketing at a recent acquisition IBM had made out
here in the Bay Area.
>> That's awesome. Yeah, I've heard of people doing programs like that,
because I spent my 400 years in the AirMe,
and they have a lot of military rotational programs for junior officers,
or NTOs, or whatever.
Anyways, those type of programs are so cool because you get to see so much
stuff,
and especially for you in your first marketing job, I'm sure that was awesome.
>> It was really neat.
They gave you a different level of visibility as a new entry into a company the
size of IBM.
>> Right.
>> You reported directly to a VP of marketing for one of the business units.
So you've got to actually go in to see a little bit more of how the marketing
was impacting the business
at a very early stage in your career, which was super cool.
>> Now you are the CMO of ApiCore.
Tell us about what it means to be CMO.
>> Well, I think for me at ApiCore,
the opportunity for CMO is really to help elevate our marketing
to be a more strategic player for the company.
But I think as a CMO in general, the role is really changing because it used to
be all about really focus on just the demand side.
But now it's really evolved into how are you impacting and driving the business
And how are you driving that connection with the market,
especially as we move into a reoccurring world?
As we move more into cloud and SaaS-type solutions, you need to worry about the
renewal.
And so you need to think more long-term about that customer engagement.
So I think really, chief marketing officers are starting to blend a lot with
the success side of the house,
and not only partner just with sales, but much more with services and success.
>> Yeah, I love how you said that making marketing a more strategic place,
because I think that for a lot of, especially in the Echo Chamber,
that is the Pipeline Visionaries podcast, where we talk about marketing all the
time.
And we don't even question its importance or its strategic function, right?
Like we just know, and we can prove that with data and otherwise.
But for a lot of companies, there isn't that function.
It's either very sales driven or very product driven or things like that.
And so coming in and making marketing strategic is something that's needed.
And it's something that a lot of CMOs come in and need to do.
>> Yeah, it is.
And it's part of the fun for me.
It's part of the challenge.
It's taking the storytelling to kind of a new level,
because you want to not only tell the story to the market,
but also to the rest of the business.
We're not just a cost center.
We're actually impacting the revenue stream.
And if you treat marketing as sort of the tip of the spear as really a part of
the revenue cycle,
then you're going to see that strategic impact.
Much more clear.
>> All right, let's get to our first segment,
the Trust Tree, where you go and feel honest and trusted,
and you can share those deepest, darkest pipeline secrets.
So what does Epicor do?
>> So we are the essential ERP partner to the world's most essential businesses
And so what this really means is that Epicor is a global leader
in delivering industry-specific ERP software.
And our customers, and who we service with this industry-specific software,
are the makers, movers, and sellers.
They're the people that make everything everyone needs.
It's the automotive industry, it's the manufacturing industry,
it's hard-line retailers, it's distribution, and building supply.
>> And so those customers, what does that buying committee look like?
What are those personas look like?
>> For us, we're really helping companies better manage their operations.
So our buyers and those buying committees tend to be those people in charge of
operations.
So they could be, depending on the type of company or size of company,
could really be the COO to VP of operations, or the CIO or technology leaders.
In some cases, those are nested under finance.
So it's usually kind of where that crosses between operations and technology.
And we serve as companies, depending on which industry, from your ACE retailers
ACE is a big customer of ours.
We have a lot of the ACE stores are running Epicor, so we have the individual
retailers.
So ACE is a great customer to large manufacturers and distributors.
So I think it's really kind of fun to see the size and breadth of company that
we work with
and who we work with across these different, really critical industries.
>> Yeah, very cool.
And how do you structure your marketing organization to go off for these
accounts?
>> So we have kind of split the marketing organization where we have a deep
industry
focus because we're such an industry-based company.
And I say that in a way that still even I'm about almost to a year in at Epicor
in this
role.
I've been at companies before that have said that their industry specific.
Typically companies have a generic platform that they've created great use
cases for certain
industries in.
We really have individual ERPs built specific to these industries.
So we have five different platforms.
We're very industry specific.
And I think that is one of our greatest differentiators because we truly know
that.
So our marketing organization has to mimic that and has to carry through that
expertise
to the market.
So my product marketing teams, my demand gen teams are very much industry
focused.
With that said, we have a global program.
So a lot of it, I do have a little bit of a hub and spoke thing for a lot of my
digital
centralized and some of my obviously brand is going to be centralized because
you want
that global unified brand and creative and ARPR, that type of activities, those
things
that we want to have a consistent global presence are centralized.
And what's your marketing strategy?
Well one of the things that we want to continue to make sure that we connect
with the market
on is that we're here to help them solve their problems today as well as their
problems for
tomorrow.
So we want to make sure and we've built our marketing program, communication
strategy,
ongoing education and engagement to really help customers through their entire
lifecycle
from prospect to ongoing and renewing customer.
So we have a brand promise that is made with you for you.
We want to make sure we embody that and how we go to message and communicate
with the
market.
So we really ensure that we help them solve today's problems and then we have a
pretty
involved educational effort and engagement efforts to make sure they continue
to learn
from us and see how they can expand and grow with us.
And we have had customers that have grown their businesses from 100 million to
over a
billion now.
They were all located initially in the US and manufacturers especially that
have then
expanded globally.
And so we want to make sure that we can continue to support as our customers
grow.
It's a really important thing for us.
And then how do you think about demand as it fits within your marketing?
So within any marketing organization, demand's pretty key.
It's usually one of the central things that you want to do.
And thinking about it is there's the demand somebody has to solve that initial
problem.
It takes them to market to find that initial solution and start to engage with
you.
What we want to help them do is identify those other demand opportunities for
other parts
of our portfolio or for other ways their business can leverage the product so
they can get greater
value from their investment.
And from our side, keep investing in EpiCorps.
So that's one of the things that we think about in terms of demand.
It's really across what they need today and tomorrow.
Okay, let's get to our next segment.
The playbook where you open up that playbook and talk about the tactics that
help you win.
What are your three channels or tactics that are your uncuttable budget items?
Well, when you talk about uncuttable budget items, the first thing that came to
isn't
quite an individual tactic, but is content.
I think content is king.
Having grown up in product marketing from that side of the organization, I
truly believe
that content is really at the center of what you're going to do.
It's going to be how you're going to convey your story.
Every tactic you have uses content.
So content to me is something that we need to continually invest in and make it
interesting
and make it compelling and make it eye-catching and consumable is really the
most important
part of that.
So that's my name, number one thing.
And you'll always hear me talk about that with my team and any of the
organizations I've
been in.
Second to that is digital.
I think the world right now.
People consume information from the palm of their hand more than anything else.
They look at their phone, they're checking their emails, they're doing
different web
searches, they're looking on social media.
So they're really, really engaged more at a digital side of things.
And I'm sure you've probably seen Forcia does their annual survey around
marketing investments.
And every year they come out with a stat that has not changed for the last five
years,
that buyers are 70, 80% of their way through their learning journey before they
engage
with a company.
People are finding that information across digital channels.
So digital is a big thing for me.
And then I'll say the third one has been kind of the most fun for me to learn
about
since joining EpiCorps are the acceleration events.
When I spoke earlier about keeping demand kind of through that lifecycle, we
can't think
of demand as ending once marketing gets something into pipeline.
And then it's sales problem.
It's often not ours anymore.
There really is a lot of work that we can do with sales to accelerate through
the sales
side of the funnel.
And we run these acceleration events where we bring prospects together with our
experts,
whether it be at our headquarters or on other sites within different cities
around the country
or the globe, to what we call leadership summits, where they actually get to
learn a little
bit more about us, about our vision, but get more hands on time around use
cases for the
product and how it can help solve their problems.
And these events have been really successful in terms of moving pipe more
quickly, which
right now has been pretty good because people have been hesitant to spend money
because
of what's happening in a microeconomic environment.
So we're accelerating those deals and seeing greater wind rates.
So I like those a lot.
I love that.
I just love the idea of acceleration in general because it's something that we
talked about
with our podcast, with the series of how it is a pipeline acceleration sort of
play, as
well as sourcing pipe and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
But I love the idea of acceleration because I think that you're exactly right
that where
we're at in this market where there's so many different touch points, there's
so much
education happening ahead of time, there's that 95% of people that aren't
buying.
So in order to accelerate, you have to have the accelerator in, which you're
mentioning
is like content or something digitally that they can sort of sink their teeth
into or
an event, and then you need to have the place in which they can sort of be self
-select
into a sales opportunity at some point in time.
So anyways, I like that framing.
Yeah, you know what?
It's been really interesting with it and it plays into something that I've been
seeing
more since the pandemic is the increased value of creating peer-to-peer
experiences,
whether it's peer-to-peer for prospects.
So when we have a variety of prospects in a room together, they talk amongst
themselves
too and find out what they're each looking at or what they find is interesting
or how
it's helping them with their problem or at some of our user events where we
have that
in the peer-to-peer learning there.
I feel like maybe people lost that during the COVID shutdown when we were so
virtual
and you were just capturing things from a webinar or the virtual events.
And that need now for that peer-to-peer engagement is just amplifying the
impact of our activities.
Why do you think that is?
Because I totally agree.
I think that there's a subset of people who are so choose to get back to in
person.
There's another subset that they're like, "Oh my gosh, I don't really want to
get back
to it."
But I think that it feels to me at events that there's a different type of
energy and
excitement and a willingness to learn and to try new products and things like
that that
maybe we were just that it was a little bit stale before or I don't know, or
maybe we
just got complacent, you know, right?
I don't know.
I think I could go a couple of different ways on this.
I felt like when I was paying for events prior to the pandemic, events kind of
got to the
point of being almost a boondoggle.
You had to have them in the place where people wanted to travel and they wanted
to go because
you just wanted people just wanted to get out of the office and just go to the
event.
It wasn't that they were there to really take it in and learn.
And then I think that was that.
Right?
And then when that was taken away from us, you miss that sort of interaction
and that's
where people started to learn a little bit more.
So I think some of it is that I also think we've evolved into kind of a review-
based culture.
There's not much you do today where you don't make a purchase decision where
you don't look
at reviews, whether it's personal, whether it's what restaurant to go to,
whether what
you're doing.
And I think that peer-to-peer engagement kind of follows that, getting others
opinions
on it as you go through that process.
Yeah.
I mean, that's how we think about content.
Like here at Caspian is accelerating other people's ideas and stuff.
And I think that that's events, I think that back in the day, I think they felt
so content-driven
because you couldn't really get that stuff other places.
Whereas now you can use digital content.
So like if I want to hear from Jenny, I could go read her thoughts somewhere or
I could listen
to her on some podcast or I could listen to like their company podcasts or
whatever.
And I can get that sort of the education just in time.
I don't have to wait for a year.
And then you have other people who I think do their learning once a year.
I know everyone is sort of learning all the time.
It's like, all right, I'm just going to wait until we're in bed.
I'm just going to wait until whatever dream force or whatever.
They're like, I'm just going to go, that's going to be my two to three days.
My brain's going to explode there.
And then maybe I'm going to keep up with it throughout the year.
Almost like a recertification of some kind.
Yeah.
I can see that being the case for a lot of people, especially if you think
about it in
terms of that certification.
Maybe they're attached to release cycles for things too.
Those big events that people have still tend to be anchored by what's new in
the product
too.
Yeah.
Yeah, good point.
Yeah, especially if it's a user conference and they're really dug in on that
product.
Yeah.
What type of content do you like creating?
I like thinking about content in a couple of different formats.
So one of the things that I think is always interesting for a CMO is you have C
MOs that
kind of tend towards the science and you have CMOs that tend towards the art.
I tend towards the science, which means I need to create an appreciation and
understanding
of how to manage the art side of things.
And for me, content is a great way for me to do that because the art is what
captures
your attention.
It's what makes it initially consumable.
And it's what makes it something that you want to pick up and you want to
engage in.
So for me, from a content, it's starting at the story level.
And then I think one of the most effective content pieces out there are blog
series,
really, because I think people can follow them.
They can get quick hits of information from a marketer standpoint.
You can bring in different bits and pieces through different links.
I think there's a strong storytelling capability that can lead people on the
right journey
for where they want to go to next.
Content that's most effective starts people, meets them somewhere, and takes
them on a
journey.
And I think blogs are a great way to do that today.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
And I think that there's that control element to being able to craft something
with a narrative
to have a beginning, middle, and end.
We have a bike as we do go and markable where it's all about content marketing.
And so much of it is just thinking about things in terms of stories and using
those Hollywood
screenwriting things, using tools like that to tell your stories, Akira's
journey and
all these other things.
I was going to say Joseph Campbell, there you go.
Yeah, it's so obvious.
And then when we write a blog post or a customer story and we never tell it in
that way,
it's like we just dump a bunch of information out there rather than just taking
the extra
10 minutes and just googling the hero's journey and being like, "Okay, can I
line up any
of this stuff here?"
Like, "Yes, no."
Or whatever.
I don't know.
Well, if you take the opportunity to think about it from the customer's
perspective or
the prospect, the consumer's perspective, our job as marketers is to help show
people
how they can be the hero in their journey, the hero at their desk and in their
business.
They can solve their problems.
And here's how we're going to help them do that.
And so I think it's very appropriate to think about the hero's journey as sort
of a writing
guideline.
Yeah, it is.
I mean, and there's all sorts of like, there's abbreviated versions of that.
There's sort of like all that.
Like it doesn't have to be the like eight different points of the story.
Right.
You can do it a bunch of different ways.
And how does that content sort of like affect those digital channels that you
were talking
about in your second uncuttable?
Yeah.
So, you know, when you think about digital, probably the one thing you land on
the most
is your initially your website is a company, right?
Like that's your digital sort of landmark that you have.
And then you want to think about the content that you have in that.
But when I think about content through all of the different digital
opportunities, it's
how are they driving it?
The frequency and volume of content you have helping drive your organic search
results,
right?
So you want to make sure that you have that content in place to tailor to drive
your organic.
Obviously, you can do whatever you want with your paid.
So that's usually helpful.
But I also think how you make the information interesting and consumable
through infographics,
through video snippets, through social interactions, that's all content to me
too.
And it's usually derivatives of some major content piece that you have or some
major
storyline that you have.
So I think the two really go, they have to go hand in hand or you can call them
yin yang,
whatever you'd like to call them.
Yin and yang.
And especially because you can track all this stuff now, right?
You know how many people have engaged with everything.
How many people downloaded the white paper or how many, you know, this person
has, you
know, clicked on these seven things.
And this account has eight different people engaged with, you know, 56 pieces
of content
over the past year.
And we're, you know, we've been in a stalled opportunity with them and then
they just open
a bunch of stuff like there's just so much more data now at the marketers
fingertips
than ever before.
And like that's how you can, you know, prove marketing's value if you're in the
business
approving it.
Well, I think the trick is figuring out how to use all that data to really make
decisions
going forward, right?
There's a ton of data that we can see now.
What is really showing a motion forward?
I think one of the things that's been most interesting to me in a change has
been the
lead capture and lead flow change from seeing all this data.
Yes, right.
It used to be that you've had the one person that you're working with.
They're your lead.
They put in Salesforce as you think.
And your team is following up with them.
But now this notion of the, was it the swarm where you can see if a whole bunch
of other
people from that business are also on your side or also looking at it.
They need not be the person you're interacting with, but it sure does give you
good visibility
considering you when you start to see the number of touches from that company.
And think about that a little bit differently versus just kind of the one to
one relationship
of lead to BDR to sales rep type thing.
And then final thing about this, just the acceleration events that you
mentioned, any
best practices there or examples of like a way that you've done that really
well?
I think the key there is making sure that you build the right audience for the
content
that you're going to show.
So thinking about all your prospects in the Chicago area probably won't work
for you because
unless you are a one product company, because then they may have too many
different interests
and you may lose people during the day.
So making sure you kind of keep that content and audience tightly aligned.
And I know that that sounds like kind of a Captain obvious statement, but it's
not always
consistent because very often marketers are measured on a volume of activity.
And I think I'd rather have one of those acceleration events with a fewer
number of people that
can be a really targeted conversation that we're going to actually accelerate
those deals
than to have a larger number of people in the room and have half of them diseng
age during
it because then you've probably decelerated those deals.
Anything that you're doing that you would say is your most cuttable budget item
or something
you're not going to be investing in or something that's maybe not working or
fading away or
just taking a pause on?
You know, I don't have a great answer to that right now because we're in the
midst of our
budget process.
Yeah, right.
I'm actually looking at all of that.
Our fiscal year ends September 30th.
And so we're just, you know, just starting to look at and do the analysis for
this past
share with what we want to, what we want to reduce and what we want to go
forward with.
Just not cut anything.
Let's just invest anything that you're excited about investing in.
It's just been.
Yeah, right.
Just been.
We used to joke and what's the worst thing that happens?
You just do it in be legends.
That's perfect.
I spent some silly money that way.
Well, you know, they say that you sent set 10% of your budget aside for
experiments,
right?
Right.
And in experiment, you can get a 10x return.
You can get a one extra turn.
You can lose it all.
But you know, if you're a, that should be, you know what, you just made, that
should
be a question.
I should add that to the, to the, what's your, what's your experimental budget
investment?
What's your 10% investment for next year?
You know what?
For us, it really depends on industry and region.
I can tell you.
Cool.
So, you know, from an international perspective, we have an opportunity to
really accelerate
what we're doing through greater investment in our channel programs there.
Channel is just a great way internationally to give you reach.
When what we're finding with our industry expertise, our focus on delivering
industry
expertise is that when we work with the channel partners in the individual
countries, like
at a country level, not a regional level, we get to deliver that level of
expertise
because they not only know the language and the culture, but they're so well
trained on
our product that they're the experts in that need for that country.
It's really been remarkable.
And so we see that there.
I think in me, America's, we're seeing some great opportunity to experiment
with some of
it is on the content side with how we're thinking about our content, especially
along the lines
of the video work that we're doing.
And so that's something that we're really trying to see how we can be kind of
cooler
and different, especially as we pull together things that we call our virtual
product tours.
So that's something that we're really doing something different in the Americas
That's really fun.
I love the idea of those type of product tours, getting people in there,
especially in other
regions.
That's cool.
Yeah.
Any other things that you're excited about or investing in or anything there?
I think one of the other things that I'm excited about with EpiCorps is EpiCor
ps has gone through
a big transformation of, you know, it's a company that's been around for a
while and
moving to the cloud and now truly moving to deliver that the software is a
service experience
and thinking about how we're going to invest in the customer success.
And for us for marketing, we do a lot of it today, but it is a little bit more
disjointed
than I would like it to be.
And I think there's a way to really partner with our services and our support
teams and
to make sure that we create a more fluid and easygoing educational experience
for our
customers.
And that's something that we're really investing in right now.
How do you view your website?
I see the website is really being a important key element.
I mentioned it earlier.
It is sort of the core of your digital strategy.
I think it is your storefront for a B2B business like we are.
And I think it's an essential piece of your go-to-market.
I think Epicor's website, since I joined, we have been undergoing a lot of
renovations,
I could say.
And shortly you will see a much deeper content-based site.
And that is something that I'm really excited about.
Very, very cool.
We'll be looking out.
Stay tuned.
Stay tuned.
Stay tuned.
With customer success being so important for marketers now.
And marketers, you know, we talked at the top of the show about this idea that
marketers
perhaps having to earn your seat at the table to be strategic.
Well, talking about marketers, marketing on the customer success side is
perhaps even
a bridge farther than a lot of folks are allowed to go at this point.
What is marketing's relationship to customer success in the sort of like post-
sale action?
I think one of the most compelling roles that marketing can play post-sale is
helping facilitate
the welcome, onboarding, and continuing education for customers.
You know, the company, once they purchase the product, they're going to go
through their
formal onboarding process.
Depending on the complexity of your product, that can involve services team.
That can be an online thing.
That can be self-service.
But knowing that you're welcome to the company, that you can be pointed to the
resources,
whether it be online communities, whether it can be upcoming user conferences,
whether
it can be educational webinar series, where the knowledge bases, those types of
things,
make sure that engagement level is there and that the customer feels welcome.
I think is a key thing.
I think making sure that you are able to communicate where to get help and
where to learn so that
they get the ultimate value realization is essential.
So there's the nice and the cool and then there's really making sure that they
're successful.
And I've done this both here and up where we're running them.
I've done it at previous companies, large and small, that when you can actually
build
a cadence of that communication, whether it be a webinar series that starts
with, here's
the new news release information, here's the tips and tricks, here's the
greatest use
cases we've seen, here's the things that we've got 10 most support tickets on,
whatever.
That just provides customers a feeling that they're engaged with and they can
always make
sure their usage of the solution is optimized and that they have the help to
make sure they're
successful in what they're doing.
And when customers have that level of engagement, even if your release gets
pushed, they tend
to not get too fussy with you because they're going to know what's coming.
We've managed expectations and that's really, I think, a role marketing can
play really
better than any other part of the organization.
When we have the systems to track what we're doing, how people are engaging
with us, what
they're taking in, and to we have the team from product marketing and demand-
gen to make
sure that we get the communications and the stories and the information out to
them.
Yeah, totally.
Very, very, very cool.
I totally agree.
I mean, and I think, as you mentioned, who is the keeper of those type of
communications,
right?
Who communicates with the customer?
I heard a great, there's a great story a while ago, many, a hundred episodes or
more
ago, where there was a very famous CEO, tech CEO, who wrote all of the product,
email,
copy himself, and there's a huge bottleneck.
So there's the downside to this.
And then the upside was that it was very refined in the way that they were
being communicated.
And I always thought about that of the CEO finds it so important to write the
product
feedback directly to their customers, of which they must have had thousands.
And I always thought, it's so funny that even in this company, the marketing
person was looking
over his shoulder that for other folks that was not a marketer, it was a
product person
who was overseeing that.
And I'm like, just the idea of mailing that list and having marketing not
involved in
it all, it sounds terrifying.
It does sound terrifying, doesn't it?
Right.
No, I think we want to have kind of, we want to have the organization who's
tasked with
managing that outbound communication, manage those outbound communications and
then do
it across the board.
Otherwise, you get in a situation where you might have cross communications
going out.
Things that are slightly positioned differently might raise confusion.
This is not, raising confusion does not help the customer experience.
So that's what you want to avoid.
Okay, let's get to our next segment.
The dust up where we talk about healthy tension, whether that's with your board
, your competitors,
your sales team or anyone else.
Have you had a memorable dust up in your career, Jenny?
Um, I think we all have.
So there's that.
You know, mine, the thing that came to mind when I saw this is really, um, I'm
out in
the Silicon Valley.
There's been to everyone.
Well, I would assume that everyone's careers take that point where you're like,
I just
want to be in that cool startup.
I'm going to go make it, make my way.
And you get caught up in the startup, this stuff at all.
And I had one of those startups, I had a founder that had just sold his company
for billions
and billions of dollars.
You were in the original Facebook office off of university, Avonie, Palo Alto,
you know,
like this is going to be it.
And so you jump in and you jump in without really knowing what the company was
going to
do.
Like it was such a good startup story that you're like, I want to be part of it
And I went into lead product marketing and I didn't really have a product.
And that's hard to do.
And so it was a lot of hard conversations.
A lot of we can't take this to market.
You want to take it to market.
There's not the right product market fit.
Um, and it just, it just needed to change.
And it was just, it was not going to work.
And I think that was one of my shorter stints in a company.
So I hate to say that the way to solve that problem was really me going to find
a company
with a viable product.
Um, but it was a really good lesson for me to think about not just the hype of
something,
but the, the true, what's, what's going to make that work?
Is that product market fit?
And that's something that I got to look for.
Yeah.
And if you're not there, like that has to be in the marketing, right?
Like that has, it has to be super aspirational.
You need to know, Hey, this is where we're going to be.
This is the future.
This is all that stuff.
Like start with us now, spend money with us now.
We'll grow with you.
We'll grandfather you in all those type of mess has very different from it's
going to
work.
And then they're like, yeah, yeah, but what is it?
What is the, what you think it's going to work with the product teams that, uh,
if you
build it, they will come worked once in a movie.
Yeah.
Exactly.
That is exactly right.
All right.
Let's get to our final segment here.
Quick hits.
These are quick questions and quick answers.
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So go check them out at qualified.com quick hits.
Jenny, are you ready?
Okay.
What hidden talent or skill is not on your resume?
Uh, cooking.
What's your favorite thing to cook?
I am very farm to table.
I am very go find out what's fresh, whatever, and make something cool from it.
Ooh, that's fun.
Do you have a favorite non-marketing hobby that might indirectly make you a
better marketer?
Um, I would say it was, it's a hobby that has waned a little bit.
Um, but I have kids.
I spent a long time volunteering with my boys as they were growing up.
And I think the volunteering was a way that I could actually bring my marketing
skills
to like a different situation and learn a little more about how people took
them in or
how to communicate them and what to do.
And I think it made me a better marketer, especially with how to, uh,
communicate complex
things to folks who don't have any idea what you're talking about to begin with
That's your best advice for a first time CMO is trying to figure out their
marketing strategy.
Take a look at the data.
I mean, honestly, I think the biggest thing you can do is take a breath and
understand
the market, where you're headed, what's worked, and start to identify those
things that haven't
worked.
And of what are you going to keep and what are you going to dismiss?
Fantastic.
And awesome having you on the show.
Uh, we're all going to go check out, uh, Epicord.com because I'm going to have
new, some new website
stuff and, and you can check out the content, uh, any final thoughts here,
anything to plug?
Um, I think one of my final thoughts for all the marketers that are listening
to this,
see if you can find the cool stuff and make it work for you.
I think we all want the big hype and we all want the cool stuff.
We are fortunate enough to sponsor an F one car, Alpha Tori.
Um, that is so fun with drive to survive.
We've done a lot of cool, fun things with it, but we've made it meaningful in
the story
because Alpha Tori uses our product to make sure that car is ready for every
race.
Those 14,000 parts are where they need them to be.
And I think it's being able to find that cool stuff and make it work for you.
I love it.
Fantastic.
Uh, I'm glad you brought it up.
Should have asked it earlier, but it's, but so, so cool.
Um, Jenny, thanks so much.
We'll talk soon.
Great.
Thank you so much.
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