AMA: 8x8 Vice President, Global Demand Generation, Camila Cook on Demand Generation 30 / 60 / 90 Day Plan

When you're the first demand gen hire, your job isn't to "do demand gen." It's to build the engine while proving it works. My framework has three lenses: revenue proximity (what's closest to pipeline?), reversibility (do cheap, undo-able things before expensive, slow ones), and leverage (pick work that compounds, like one ICP definition unlocking five campaigns). In your first 90 days: (1) define ICP and funnel stages with Sales, (2) instrument the funnel so you can see where leads die, (3) fix ...Read More

Quick wins in your first 90 days aren't about checking boxes; they're about proving the function changes how the business operates. The best ones do three things at once: move a revenue metric, build trust with Sales, and reveal a structural insight you can use to make bigger bets in quarter two. Think of them as diagnostic levers, not deliverables. Each win should answer a question about where the real constraint lives. Strategically, I'd aim for wins across three dimensions. Trust wins with Sa ...Read More

Think of a 30/60/90 as a credibility arc, not a to-do list. You're moving from listener to analyst to operator. Days 1-30 are pure listening: meet every stakeholder (Sales, PMM, RevOps, Finance, your team), audit the funnel end-to-end from spend to revenue, and read the last 4 quarters of board decks. Find the gap between the narrative and the numbers. Days 31-60, form a point of view: where's the leakiest part of the funnel, where's spend not pacing to pipeline, and what's the one fix that unlo ...Read More

In the first 90 days, AI's biggest unlock isn't flashy campaign generation; it's compressing the boring, high-volume work that bottlenecks the funnel. Three areas pay back fastest: (1) lead enrichment and scoring, where AI fills in firmographic and intent gaps so Sales stops chasing junk, (2) content velocity, using AI to spin one anchor asset into 20 channel-specific variants (emails, ads, social, landing copy) in hours instead of weeks, and (3) SDR/BDR augmentation, where AI drafts personalize ...Read More

The first 30 days are for diagnosis, not prescription. I focus on a handful of signals that tell me whether the engine is fundamentally healthy or broken: stage-by-stage conversion rates across the funnel (not MQL volume in isolation), pipeline coverage against sales targets by segment, sales cycle velocity, and cost per qualified opportunity paired with CAC payback. I pair the data with structured sales feedback, listening for patterns across multiple reps rather than one-off complaints, and I ...Read More

If I were building a smaller company entering an established market, I'd stop competing on breadth and compete on sharpness. Incumbents win on awareness and budget; you win on speed, specificity, and obsession with a narrow ICP. Pick one wedge, one segment, one painful use case where incumbents are weakest, and become the obvious answer for that slice before expanding. From there, the cheapest high-leverage plays are founder-led content (LinkedIn, podcasts, POV writing), 3-5 pieces of "anchor co ...Read More