I personally started my career as an entry level contractor at Salesforce, where I worked for 17 years and had 12 different roles. By the time I left, I was a Senior Vice President overseeing a large department that consisted of multiple functions and business units. My high level advice for anyone is to stay curious and slightly uncomfortable – because that will keep you learning and engaged. For recent graduates looking to start a career in Demand Generation, the key is to embrace continuous learning and adaptability. Demand Generation is a multifaceted field that touches many areas of marketing—paid media, content, email, field marketing, and analytics—offering exposure to a wide range of skills. This variety makes it an excellent starting point for those eager to develop a well-rounded marketing foundation. Early in your career, be open to taking on tasks beyond your immediate job description. In an entry-level role, saying yes to new challenges—whether it’s campaign execution, data analysis, or content development—can accelerate your growth. The more you immerse yourself in different aspects of Demand Generation, the more career pathways you create for the future. Since Demand Generation is both strategic and executional, building both soft and hard skills is crucial. Develop analytical skills to understand campaign performance, but also refine communication and collaboration skills to work cross-functionally. Being proactive, resourceful, and willing to experiment will set you apart. Finally, seek mentorship and stay curious. Follow industry trends, ask questions, and leverage every opportunity to learn from experienced marketers. Over time, this broad experience will help you identify your strengths and areas of interest, positioning you for long-term success in marketing. By staying open-minded, taking initiative, and continuously learning, you’ll set yourself up for a thriving career in Demand Generation and beyond.

Employee retention is almost always top of mind for me. I think as a people leader, it is very important to communicate the company goals and tie it back to that individual no matter what role or level. Everyone's contributions matter and being able to translate that back to what they are doing gives the individual 1) a sense of belonging and purpose and 2) motivation that their impact connects to a bigger picture. There are factors that drive people to look for new roles, maybe it's the pay, or career advancement, or they just want to solve new problems. I have had some incredible people leave my team due to various reasons. I was sad to see them go but supportive nonetheless and happy for them.

I have lengthen explanation in the other questions digging into each channel and the importance of it. For the sake of time, here are the channels that are critical to demand gen: 1. Organic/web 2. Paid digital 3. Email 4. Events 5. Webinar 6. Direct Mail 7. Field events 8. CxO & Top Accounts

Start with understanding what the business cares about most. All Demand Gen teams are expected to help drive pipeline and bookings, but you should try to get as much context on both as possible. For example, is the business trying to move upmarket? If so, over what timeline? To what extent do your current-state investments support that objective? Are you hiring new reps? If so, in what segments/markets? The closer you can align your Demand Generation strategy to business objectives, the easier it will be to establish appropriate metrics for the team. For example, in the hypothetical above (i.e., business moving upmarket over X quarters), you will need to establish goals tied to growth within the Enterprise or Mid-Market segments instead of setting holistic lead, pipeline, and marketing-originating bookings goals.

To be successful as a Demand Generation Manager, both soft and hard skills are essential. More hard skills early in your career, and a clear shift to soft skills later. Here's my hot take: Hard Skills Data Analysis: Proficiency in interpreting data and analytics to make informed decisions. Ability to use tools like Google Analytics, Tableau, or Excel to track and analyze campaign performance. Getting comfortable with fast, sloppy startup math (vs the ideal but rarified state of statistical significance and variables with little swing). Marketing Automation: Expertise in using marketing automation platforms such as HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot, or Eloqua. Understanding how to set up and manage automated workflows, email campaigns, lead scoring and lead delivery systems will all pay off for you over time. CRM Management: Familiarity with CRM systems like Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics. Getting hands on with your reporting, and the data-bridge between sales and marketing, is critidal. You gotta be able to get in and generate your own reports. Knowledge of and experience with integrating your CRM and your MAP is a real bonus. Content Creation and Management: Skills in developing compelling content that attracts and engages potential leads. Experience with content management systems (CMS) like WordPress isa plus. But the most important elements are 1) research capabilities and 2) writing skills. If you can identify customer pain and write in plain, easy to read english EVERY job will be easier for you. SEO and SEM: Understanding of search engine optimization techniques and search engine marketing strategies. As you grow in your career, you will benefit from the ability to conduct keyword research, optimize content, and manage paid search campaigns. You'll need to learn platform specific idiosyncrasies, and be able to keep up with the ceaseless flow of UI updates, algorithm changes, pricing models and creative formats. Project Management: Competence in managing projects, timelines, and budgets effectively. Massively helpful skill that can quickly transform you into the most valuable person in your department and your leader's go-to person. Get familiar with project management tools like Asana, Trello, or Monday.com. Read a book, attend a class or better yet...get certified (your company may even pay for it). Outbound and ABM (Account-Based Marketing): Knowledge of Outbound and ABM strategies will become more important as your organization inevitably moves "up market". The ability to work with Sales to develop a target account list, assemble Outreach sequences, execute personalized marketing campaigns and develop custom reporting for your efforts (it's always a shitshow at first) are tremendously valued by Marketing leaders at late stage growth startups. Soft Skills Analytical Thinking: Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to make data-driven decisions. At every level of the Marketing organization, the capacity to interpret complex data sets and derive actionable insights is going to be critical. So is the ability to translate the data into "insights" that can shape your organizations go-to-market strategy. Creativity: Innovative thinking to develop unique and compelling marketing campaigns. The ability to generate new ideas and approaches to attract and engage potential leads will never go away. Finding alternative solutions to business problems is what startups are all about. Build your creative problem solving skill set and watch your career blossom. Communication: Excellent verbal and written communication skills to convey ideas clearly and persuasively. This one is under-rated. The ability to communicate effectively with team members, stakeholders, and customers is mission critical and will have a multiplying effect on your career. Every role you will ever have on a startup marketing team will be better if you invest in your communication skills. Not good at it? Now is the time to lean in and get good. Collaboration: Strong teamwork skills and the ability to work cross-functionally with sales, product, and other marketing teams. The willingness to share knowledge and collaborate on projects is going to matter more and more as you become more and more senior. In fact, your promotion to Director is dependent on it. If you can't partner with other marketing teams, with the SDR/BDRs or with Sales you are going nowhere my friend. Build a reputation as an amazing collaborator - it will serve you well for the rest of your career. Adaptability: Flexibility to adapt to changing market conditions, technologies, and business priorities. Startup Marketers must be open-minded and willing to learn new skills and adopt new strategies. It's literally part of the job description. If you tell your manager "this is not what you hired me for" you are the problem and you have likely stunted your career. Get flexible, stay flexible or get out of the startup ecosystem. Leadership: Ability to inspire and lead a team towards achieving common goals. Skills in mentoring and developing team members is crucial for leaders. So is the much maligned cousin to leadership, "management." Both are required to run a successful marketing team. Talk to the leaders you admire, ask them their secrets, read interviews and form your own point of view on what great leadership looks like...then go and be that person. Time Management: Effective time management and organizational skills to juggle multiple tasks and meet deadlines. Your going to run into the need to prioritize tasks based on their impact and urgency, at every level of the organization. Any success I have, from running a tactical meeting to delivering a major company strategy is constrained and multiplied by my ability to manage time well. Whew. That was a lot! But it's I think it's all true. By developing a blend of these hard and soft skills, Demand Generation Managers can navigate the complexities of modern marketing, drive effective campaigns, and lead their teams to success. Continuous learning and adaptation are key to staying ahead in this dynamic field. And remember, invest in your hard skills first...but don't neglect the soft skills. They are going to get you across that line from IC to Manager and eventually CMO.

I said it earlier, but it bears repeating: I don’t necessarily believe in ABM as originally defined. I think ABM is just really good targeting combined with specific, intentional marketing efforts. The industry has a habit of renaming things we’ve always done in slightly evolved ways, and ABM is no different. ABM, in theory, was about treating a single account as a market of one, crafting hyper-personalized campaigns tailored to its specific needs. But in practice, ABM is rarely done at that level. Instead, it has evolved into tiered targeting; sometimes it's 1:1, sometimes 1:few, and often it's just really well-segmented 1:many. To me, ABM is not a standalone strategy; it's a system. It’s just great marketing with strong targeting, tight sales alignment, and a clear understanding of customer needs. It’s about shifting from a lead-based model to an account-centric view where success is measured by engagement, pipeline velocity, and expansion within key accounts rather than just MQL counts. At its core, ABM is an execution model, a system, and not a separate discipline. It’s how you prioritize, structure, and scale outreach to the accounts that matter most. Whether that’s through outbound plays, inbound nurturing, or a hybrid of both. It’s not about running a playbook called “ABM”; it’s about running the right campaigns, with the right message, to the right audience, at the right time. If you’re doing intent-driven, multi-channel, sales-aligned marketing that leads to revenue growth, you’re doing ABM, at least as I define it, even if you’re not calling it that.

* Own: * Lead volume and quality (MQLs, SQLs). * Campaign performance (CTR, conversion rates). * Pipeline contribution and ROI of demand gen efforts. * Don’t Own: * Pure revenue metrics (owned by sales). * Customer retention and expansion (owned by customer success). Focus on the metrics you directly influence and partner closely with sales to ensure alignment.

Demand generation often serves as a bridge between sales and product, but the way I collaborate with each team can vary significantly. Here’s my high-level approach: * Understand business goals and metrics: Focus on understanding the goals and metrics each team owns. Sales typically tracks revenue-related KPIs like pipeline and bookings, while the product team focuses on adoption metrics - such as activation and retention - and usage, including breadth and depth. In self-serve model, product might also prioritize the growth of paying customers and self-serve revenue. To align demand generation efforts, work to establish shared goals or, at minimum, clarify how marketing supports these objectives. * Use BI reporting for alignment: I eliminate silos with joint dashboards built in Tableau and Looker, tailored to each team’s needs - real-time pipeline for sales, usage trends for product. Understanding how data is captured ensures reporting aligns with their priorities, keeping everyone on the same page. * Create consistent rituals: We review these dashboards in weekly or bi-weekly cadence with respective teams, spotting business trends and adjusting demand gen/ sales/ product strategies. Note: You can also create separate reporting for operational purposes, tailored for the marketing team to use alongside joint dashboards Example of marketing/ sales alignment: * Marketing contributes % into the overall pipeline. * Marketing/ sales meet weekly using Tableau, pulling data from Salesforce and other sources and analyze top-funnel (eg. leads, MQLs, SQLs) and down-funnel metrics (eg. meetings, Stage 1 opps), tracking conversion rates between stages. This reveals issues - like slow MQL-to-SQL progression - prompting discussions and joint solutions. Example of marketing and product alignment: * Marketing plays a crucial role in driving customer acquisition and activation. * Collaborate with the product team to use Tableau or another tool to track and visualize performance metrics end-to-end, from acquisition through to retention and paid conversion.

I would prioritize paid search and co-marketing. Here's why: 1. While paid search can get very expensive, you can learn a lot from this channel that can then help you optimize other channels. I love paid because it's very easy to measure performance. I can see what prospects are clicking on, how many are converting to leads, and then what the overall CAC is (spend divided by customer sign ups). In addition to this, I can learn a lot about how to optimize my funnel. Ad copy can be optimized, landing page design can be optimized, even form fields can be optimized. Best thing is all of this CRO improvement will raise the performance of the other channels I've invested in. 2. The reason why I like co-marketing is because it's the opposite of paid advertising: it's cheap! Co-marketing is a fantastic way to generate net new leads cost effectively. Co-host a webinar with a company that serves your target customer. Then in exchange for you promoting it to your mailing list, ask them to promote it to theirs. After the event, agree to share the registration and attendee lists. You will have a lot of net new leads to nurture and work.

Effective OKRs for demand gen are measurable objectives that drive impact or growth in key areas such as acquisition, pipeline, awareness, and engagement. Before creating OKRs, it's crucial to have a firm grasp of not only your team's specific goals but also the broader company objectives. This ensures that your marketing efforts and the OKRs you develop will ladder up to these higher-level objectives. This approach elevates your OKRs from good to great and enables you to tailor them more effectively, making them more specific and relevant. For instance, if launching a new product is a top company-wide priority, then your OKRs should be refined accordingly. Here are a couple of examples: * Decent OKR: Source X% of site traffic * Better OKR: Source X% of traffic to the new product site page * Decent OKR: Source $X in sourced opportunities * Better OKR: Source $X in sourced opportunities, with Y% being new product opportunities