This episode features an interview with Kady Srinivasan, CMO at Lightspeed Commerce, a commerce platform that helps merchants innovate to simplify, scale and provide exceptional customer experiences.

In this episode, Kady discusses the importance of understanding your segments so you can talk about the value proposition for each segment appropriately. She also dives into the process of determining where to play and how to win at Lightspeed Commerce.

Key Takeaways:

• You need to understand your segments in order to ensure that you are talking appropriately about the value proposition for each segment.
• Go through the exercise of determining where to play in the market and how you can win there. Gain clarity regarding the choices that you are making and where you should say no.
• Position yourselves as a partner, instead of the provider of a product or service, when you are building your brand.

Quote:

“The short-term focus on the short-term ROI is a big problem. And then the second thing is like the unattributable spend and how to make the right business case for it. I'll say as a tee up to our budget masterclass, when we do it, there are three segments of metrics that I've realized, uh, CFOs care about: there's volume, which is usually your MQL, SQL, closed one, you know, whatever that is, right? Then there is the velocity bucket, which is time to close, or time to first transaction, time to XYZ, whatever that is, time to first touch. And then the third one is efficiency. So it could be ROAS, it could be sales and marketing as a spend, as a percentage of spend. If you can convincingly present these three buckets or the right kind of information in these three buckets, you get a lot of mileage out of your conversations.”

Episode Timestamps:

*(02:49) The Trust Tree: Leading the shift towards prioritizing higher value ICPs

*(23:45) The Playbook: Managing brand building as CMO at different companies

*(36:08) The Dust Up: The translation problem

*(38:50) Quit Hits: Kady’s Quick Hits

Sponsor:

Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links:

• Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
• Connect with Kady on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Lightspeed Commerce

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Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Smita Wadhawan, CMO at SimplePractice, a leading practice management software company for health and wellness professionals.

In this episode, Smita discusses the importance of keeping your customers at the center and incorporating their voice. She also dives into educating the customer about the value of your product and then showing up for them through that product.

Key Takeaways:

• Customer feedback should be taken very seriously and it is worth creating a formal process to give customers a chance to share their thoughts.
• It’s important to arm yourself with data and examples when trying to sell your ideas internally, or you won’t be able to push them through.
• The website can serve as your sales function and you should experiment with how the website can “work harder for you”.

Quote:

“So I would literally think of the marketing strategy as the full funnel from building the right product to getting the product in the hands of our customers, to making sure they use the product and get the most value out of it. And then last but not the least using our communications and our creative to tell the stories which put our customers front and center. We don't use models. We don't use actors. All our creative is telling authentic stories and they are all our customers. That is something that's really key to our brand, always honing in on our customer and having them do the storytelling for us.”

Episode Timestamps:

*(4:43) The Trust Tree: Fulfilling your obligation to your customers, who rely on your product

*(15:42) The Playbook: Customer referrals as the largest source of acquisition

*(34:45) The Dust Up: Advocating for staff to support conversion rates on the website

*(38:03) Quick Hits: Smita’s Quick Hits

Sponsor:

Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links:

• Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
• Connect with Smita on LinkedIn
• Learn more about SimplePractice
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

This episode features an interview with Kristin Russel, CMO at symplr, a company that offers healthcare operations solutions, anchored in governance, risk management, and compliance.

In this episode, Kristin talks about not only creating a category, but also creating roles for the people who work in that category, in an effort to organize their customers. She also discusses going to market with the human in mind and authentic marketing.

Key Takeaways:

• Creating a category involves driving brand recognition, but it also requires educating your customers and thinking about creating jobs within the category you are building.
• If you have a smaller budget, “brandquisition”, focusing on brand acquisition efforts with a very recognizable brand, can be a useful strategy.
• Prioritize featuring real people on your website. Focus on creating content and going to market authentically with real people in mind.

Quote:

“When you think about creating a category, we're also thinking about how do we create people who work in that category? How do I create a healthcare operations director or the manager of healthcare operations for workforce? And so, crazily enough, thinking about not just our content, but also working with our training team, working with the ways that we're reaching out and organizing our own customers.”

Episode Timestamps:

*(5:56) The Trust Tree: Going to market with the human in mind
*(20:58) The Playbook: “Brandquisition” and SEO

*(38:13) The Dust-up: Using the “Lencioni approach” to work through disagreements

Sponsor:

Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links:

• Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
• Connect with Kristin on LinkedIn
• Learn more about symplr
• Learn more about Caspian Studios