AMA: Databricks Senior Director, Demand Generation, Kelley Sandoval on Demand Generation Career Path

Although I’ll provide a framework here, you must consider your top non-negotiables when considering moving to a new company. Where you work, the culture, company size, and solutions likely differ from those around you. When I review a company, I look at the following areas and questions: 1. The Technology / Solution 1. In today’s volatile market, I look for a technology or solution that solves real-world customer problems and is future-proof against a market downturn (e.g., people will still buy this solution in a recession). 2. The company’s TAM today and future potential. Does this solution have the ability to grow, and at what rate does the market expect it to grow? 2. Leadership Team - What does their track record for success look like? For example, if they are pre-IPO, has this leadership team ever led a company to a successful IPO? Do they have a clear future vision for the company? 3. The Direct Team Culture: The direct team you work for can heavily impact your day-to-day. I am looking for a team that is: 1. Collaborative and inclusive, they enjoy working as a team. 2. Willingness to change and take on new ideas. 3. Strong leadership can help us prioritize where we focus our efforts. 4. The Opportunity: The value I believe I’ll get from taking on this role: 1. Will I learn more or something I’ve never done? 2. Is there room for me to make an impact? 3. Will the work be challenging and something different or the same every day?

Demand Generation Managers work between many teams to bring to life a GTM strategy to meet key business objectives. Therefore, the skills I measure my team on include the following: * Collaborative Project Management: The ability to execute a high-caliber program that resonates with your audience is critical. This means you need to motivate cross-functional teams to work with you by communicating clearly and often. * Strategic Mindset: You have to be someone who can see the forest beyond the trees. Beyond your programs, you must understand how your program relates to larger OKRs, where it sits in the customer lifecycle, and how to drive your prospect or customer to the next step in their journey. * Truth-Seeking: Demand Generation requires balancing the budget, resources, and time allotted. Since you can never have everything, you need to understand how to prioritize across all your asks to drive efficiency and meet your business's KPIs. You need to be able to use data to drive your decisions and help others understand why you are prioritizing some aspects of your plan over others. * Ability to Influence Stakeholders: Demand Generation does not work in a silo. You have to bring along all your stakeholders to see the value of working with you, to feel ownership of your joint projects, and to feel accountable for the results. Furthermore, as you become more senior, you need to be able to bring along senior leadership to agree to your plans. * Team Leadership: Leading cross-functional teams and motivating them to follow you. Be a leader within your own team, helping train, coach, and grow our overall team’s abilities. * Growth Mindset: The ability to have an agile learner mindset. Someone is constantly trying to grow and improve with what and how they do things. 

As a people manager, you must wholeheartedly invest in your team and your employees’ career objectives, even if it’s not Demand Generation. Here are a few things I do to cultivate my team’s growth: 1. Create strong career ladders. This drives a few things: 1. Clear articulation of my expectations for their existing role and promotional requirements. 2. Transparency in your career discussions on their strengths and areas of opportunity, which can be used throughout the year and during the review cycles. 3. Hiring skills are clearly outlined, so your recruiting team can attract the right candidate at the correct job level. 2. Leave the space for them to grow. There are a few ways to do this: 1. Carve out dedicated time on people’s calendars where they can hold space for learning opportunities. 2. Support outside L&D with company funding for educational courses. 3. Host team L&D sessions on relevant topics related to your career ladders. 4. After discussing their areas of interest, stretch projects allow them to learn a new skill hands-on. 3. Give them autonomy to do their best work, this includes but is not limited to: 1. Allowing them to own their work. Do not micromanage a top performer. 2. Designate team leaders to represent your team on calls and projects, and remove those who are necessary. Allow their voice to represent your entire team. 3. Be clear about when you want to be more involved and why.

Different organizations have various criteria and promotion processes. Depending on your company culture, different leaders will review promotions and sign off on these changes. What I’ll say is these are the typical questions managers and leaders consider before someone is put up for promotion: 1. What are the current business needs? For example, if someone is promoted, what work would they do differently to fill a business gap? People managers usually only open up when the business has a need for an additional people manager. 2. What are the technical competencies someone needs to have at the next level? 3. What brief of work can you point to showcase that this person is already operating at the next level? 4. What peers and leaders can speak to the level of work this person owns? If you are looking for someone to help advocate for you in your promotional journey, it’s essential to have a transparent conversation around the expectations of the next level, and if you are meeting those, provide them clear examples and metrics about how you’ve exceeded in these specific areas. 

Whenever there is an open position on the Demand Generation team, we go through an exercise to understand the overall technical skill set we want this person to have, and we review the team’s current strengths and weaknesses. We often look for someone who can lift the team up. That being said, when I interview, I find strong candidates have the following qualities: * Initiative—They are always trying to push themselves and run programs that do better each time. They have a mindset of constantly pushing the envelope. * Curiosity—They are willing to chase an idea and learn new things, and although they have a POV, they are willing to hold it lightly, e.g., changing their decisions to reflect new inputs. * Energized by Data—Someone willing to dig into the data to understand the “why” behind the results and, therefore, can pull new levers and run experiments to optimize future performance. * An Empathic Business Partner—We partner with many cross-functional business partners in Demand Generation. This is why it’s not just about what you do or achieve but also how you do it. You want to work with people who have a collaborative mindset.

AI will complement Demand Generation. AI is only as bright as you train it to be, so smart marketers need to choose the right dimensions and factors for AI to leverage. Tools will only get you so far, but ultimately, without humans to spot-check efforts, you will see AI learn and optimize for the wrong things and then provide a poor customer experience. I’m excited about AI’s future in Demand Generation. I believe that if you create strong foundational elements like taxonomy, reporting infrastructure, CDPs, content management systems etc., and then you feed all your data into a single place, you can use AI models to serve the right offer to the right person in the right place across their buyer’s journey. But you must have the right people with the technology prowess and the creativity to alter offers to improve your results and truly create an omnichannel journey.