Demand Generation Stakeholders

I am focused on B2B marketing to create, drive and capture demand with the end goal of creating a pipeline for sales teams (well, ultimately to acquire customers!). From my perspective, the pillars that feed into the strategy for driving pipeline include: * Knowing our target audience * Creating compelling narratives, value propositions, and messaging * Developing best in class point of view content to educate the market while establishing our brand as trusted thought leader in the space * Integrated campaigns and multi-channel strategy: getting our message to the right audience at the right time, in the right place (buying journey is complex and requires multiple messages, solutions, tailored to multiple personas at different stages, at any given time, via multiple channels- from digital, to in person events, to social and more) Aligning stakeholders in these processes is typically done by following an established framework I mentioned in a previous question. In summary- a single project or campaign champion would create a proposal for the project/campaign in the form of a brief that is circulated amongst stakeholders. Alignment and approvals take place with the right decision makers, from there, workstream owners or channel owners are identified and brought into a project/campaign kick off. Shared goals, metrics, targets are established, timelines and workback schedules created, and regular check ins/status updates to ensure we are on track, or to remove roadblocks. Once the project/campaign is complete, a retro is conducted with all stakeholders- this can help ensure best practices are identified, key learnings are addressed, or failed initiatives are deprecated ;)

What are the pillars of your demand-generation strategy? The foundation of a demand generation strategy starts with tracking, measurement and reporting. You need to have a deep understanding of your ICP (ideal customer profile). Before you can select the channels to target your ICP, you first have to empathize with where they are coming from. Where does your target audience hang out? How do they prefer to consume information? What are their pain points? Once you have an understanding of your ICP, map out the buyer's journey. What touchpoints will you have with your target audience? Key channels and approaches? I prefer to tailor the channels based on the goals. That being said, I consider email and SEO as must-haves. From a performance marketing perspective, this is going to be dependent on where your audience hangs out. For example, how you target a developer versus a realtor would be different approaches. How do you align the different stakeholders in these processes? Clear communication, getting ahead of stakeholders’ questions and an ongoing cadence of reporting will all aid in managing stakeholders. Here are a few additional responses on the topic: * What is the best cadence for gathering stakeholder feedback in preparation for a launch? * How do you align internal Stakeholders? * Tips for managing stakeholder input: are there any templates or best practices for when to gather input and how to incorporate (i.e. whose feedback to incorporate vs. ignore, etc.), especially as it relates to a timeline?

I believe the key to this question is to be very intentional with your time allocation. It’s a balance of managing defined priorities while also being flexible as needed. Be sure to communicate clear expectations for projects and ad-hoc requests. When is the deliverable needed? What is the priority of the deliverable compared to other deliverables? I’ve also found success with planning for the next day. For example, evaluate the status of your projects at the end of your day. Think through how you are going to approach them the next day. Find the project management process that works best for you. Be realistic with yourself about what is doable. The more experience you have with this the more accurate your estimates will be for managing ad-hoc requests with your projects.

This is a bit tricky, especially if the feedback provider is an exec. One of the tactics that has helped me in the past is to outline what is in scope versus what is not. Be clear on this and have your approvers align to it. When suggestions that are out of scope and could impact your timelines, reference that initial proposal/project brief, “great suggestion, we would love to incorporate that in the next phase, edition, general availability, etc. but it is not in scope for this phase of the project”.

Thinking of this through a project lens, I have seen DACI or RAPID frameworks help by assigning clearer roles and decision-making responsibilities. The project owner then knows who they need to involve to gather input from, who they need to keep informed, who can contribute to the decision, and who can block it. I've seen this approach work well with a product launch, for example, which is a huge cross-functional effort. It allows demand gen teams, product marketers, content teams, PR and others to be clearer about their role, provide input, and share the dependencies and deadlines that need to be adhered to in order to execute their part of the project. My second tip is to avoid decisions by committee -- it's paralysing! I would try to limit the number of people who approve/sign off on a project. Finally, to manage stakeholder input, be conscious of people's time - it's a finite resource. Large group meetings going through status updates are generally not valuable to anyone. Gather the updates in advance and use the time together to review blockers and agree on the next steps.

From the beginning of a project, set clearly defined objectives and goals. I believe the key to managing stakeholder input is to lay the foundation from the beginning. It’s much harder to manage stakeholders and their feedback if the structure is not set from day 1. If each interaction anchors to this then your stakeholders won’t experience surprises. Clear communication is going to be necessary as well. My preference is to get ahead of the questions. Define how you are going to communicate progress and measure performance. You’ll find it is much easier to manage timelines if your stakeholders have an expected cadence for communication. This also helps manage the opinions that are received from multiple channels at multiple times (which makes project management difficult). Lastly, documentation is important. Will everyone read it? No, but it serves as a point of reference for stakeholder management. As input is gathered and documented, you should also define if it is in scope or part of a future phase. Acknowledge the input and show it as captured and not forgotten, but also reinforce what will be incorporated now versus what will be part of the backlog for prioritization.

No matter where I am in my career, I always consider my work in the context of how I’m making the company more successful in achieving its goals. In other words, rather than focusing on my personal priorities, I spend my time thinking about how the problems I am solving show up across the organization, and how I can partner with key stakeholders to solve them. As a marketer, our challenge is often understanding how our work supports sales. I learned early on in my career that partnering closely with SDRs and AEs will make my team more effective and the company better. So I make sure to build strong relationships with the sales teams (at every level, from our Head of Sales down to individual reps) so that we build trust and connection right away. I also ensure that my team co-creates the marketing roadmap with sales so that we feel like equal partners.  By putting the work in up-front to build trust and relationships, when it’s time to influence the sales team (who I definitely don’t have authority over) they are more willing to listen and act because they know I’m coming from a place of shared goals, respect, and empathy for their needs.

Last year I led a mission that was outside of my discipline. The greatest challenge of leading without authority in my career: * I was successful because we had alignment at the exec level that ‘it’ was [one of] the most important things we needed to accomplish.  * When we asked leaders and individual contributors from across the organization to join and contribute to the mission, we ensured the goals, expectations, timelines, deliverables were clear. * If the individuals had conflicting priorities, we got buy-in and worked with their leaders to delegate those conflicting priorities so they could focus only on the mission for a defined time period. * When we were successful in the mission, we celebrated, reflected by getting feedback from everyone involved- we encouraged every member to have a voice throughout. The key here to leading outside of reporting lines was certainly leading with confidence, but more importantly, with empathy (and there were times where I messed this up). I had buy-in and a sense of authority from the powers above, but you cannot be successful with authority alone…you need more. You need to establish trust with those you are working with- people don’t do their best work because they are told to, they do it when they are aligned to a common goal, are excited about the work, and motivated by the people around them to deliver. So on that note, make sure you are having fun, too.

My current role has a focus on growth marketing and is all about influencing others without authority because of the cross-functional nature of the role. Depending on the org structure, you’ll need to work with product marketing, customer success, sales, engineering, design and many other departments. I do not have authority across all of these departments. Yet the cross-functional nature is imperative to reach our united business objectives. I recommend you lead by example. This makes it much easier when you need buy-in on other projects. Be respectful and proactively communicate. This ultimately comes down to building relationships. A big part of demand generation is about collaboration. Perhaps if you reframe this and see it as building trust throughout many micro-moments, the getting buy-in part comes much more naturally.

Strategies usually get defined bi-annually or annually and most of us don't have complete influence and control on what gets defined. So allow me to stray a bit and take this opportunity to share some 'tactics' that have worked for me.  1. Do you use common vocabulary? You will be surprised how many salespeople in your organization don't understand the difference between an 'acquired contact' and a 'marketing qualified lead'. Many times, this could be attributed to a combination of a lack of commonly agreed definition and lazy communication from Demand gen 2. Are you measuring the same thing? Acknowledge that solving their problem is your problem. Your success and reputation depend on whether your programs are planned to help them achieve their goals. In the PLG world, it could be a commonly agreed definition of what is a PQL. In the ABM world, it could be the definition of 'Engaged accounts'.  3. You know their 'stated position' but do you have a pulse on their 'interest'? A stated position from sales is usually concrete and explicit. For example, it could be 'I want more leads'. But look for the underlying interests, which are usually unexpressed. For example, it could be 'I need better quality leads - leads that display engagement on the website or inside the product or both'. When you appeal to the 'real interests' of your sales teams and succeed at meeting them, you will build trust and emerge as stronger partners. 4. You need to be okay with not being able to resolve 'all' issues. There will always be a few 'open' questions and opinions about the other team that might never get resolved. For example, as a Demand gen marketer, you'd want a multi-touch attribution model to be instituted but sales might never refer to it. In fact, they could vouch for the clarity provided by a last or a first-touch attribution model. Another one - Sales might have feedback on why marketing needs to do more of a certain kind of content (because the competition does) and deep down, you know that it is a nice-to-have, not a must-have. 6. Divide and conquer. collaborate with your counterpart in Product marketing who can help ease off the pressure on you by helping sales win and keeping up the momentum. They make sure Sales are engaged and are enabled with a winning message, collaterals, and direction. 7. Cultivate a champion in the sales team. Do you have someone from Sales who helps validate your Campaign theme and messaging, and vet prospect emails so they don't read marketing(y)? This is the person who will stand up and speak on your behalf when things get tough for you (which they do occasionally). 8. Identify opportunities to build alignment. Invite champions from your sales team to build the buyer journey and the persona map along with you. Collaborate with them when you conceptualize the PQL logic for your PLG motion or define the segmentation strategy for your next campaign. 8. Build an Always-on feedback loop - given the nature of the roles, it is possible that the Sales-Demand generation relationship could get transactional very fast. Avoid this at any cost. As Demand gen marketers, the onus is on us to elevate the discussion (and our relationship) and ask higher-order questions from a place of curiosity (I know this is super difficult and I'm also learning). One way to do this is to find the right opportunity to pose strategic questions such as 'what is good for the business' and 'do we need to revisit our Ideal Customer Profile' as against 'You are not touching these leads fast enough'. Strive, as much as possible, to attain the right balance in every conversation.

1. Communication! Shared Slack channels, meet regularly and ask your sales team for input so they feel engaged and involved in decisions. Be transparent about how the marketing budget is spent and what is working and what isn't. 2. Shared KPIs. The biggest mistake is disconnected goals. Having a marketing goal of driving leads and a sales goal of driving revenue rarely works out, in my experience. At a minimum, Demand Gen/Marketing needs a sales-qualified pipeline target to fill the top of the funnel. At best, it's a shared revenue target.  3. Having marketing champions on the sales team can make a big difference. A sales leader who advocates for and voices their appreciation for marketing sets the tone for the rest of the sales organisation. Invest time in building those relationships.  4. Listen back to sales calls and hear the types of objections and discussions they are having. It can often give you ideas for new pieces of content that will resonate well and that your sales team will appreciate.  5. Avoid jumping in to fulfil every request of the sales teams. In all likelihood, you will become much more tactical than strategic and ultimately deprioritise things from your plan that may have had a greater impact. It's always better to provide a rational explanation as to why you believe their suggestion isn't the right thing to do. For example, with event suggestions, I usually find that the target ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) isn't quite right. 6. Have fun! Lunch chats, socialising together, connecting over the coffee machine, finding shared interests. All help build up a more personal relationship that ultimately builds a deeper connection and better working relationship.

My advice can apply even outside of Sales - try to frame your interactions around the question - how can I help? Even more so lately, people feel overwhelmed with a constant shortage of time. Time is money for Sales and when possible, you want to establish this relationship from a lens of empathy and partnership. Here are three of my top strategies to drive alignment with Sales: * Share insights. What better way to drive alignment and nurture a relationship than with ongoing information sharing? What knowledge, data or reporting do you have that Sales could use to better serve customers? What nuggets of information could you share that could open up a new door for them? * Ongoing communication. You won’t be able to forge a relationship with Sales via one-off conversations. Try to establish ongoing communication in some medium (e.g., 1:1s) and make the discussion useful for both sides. Could you help them with better tracking and reporting? Could you assist with message amplification via a tactic such as ABM? * Anchor on your shared goals. Ultimately you share a common ground of wanting your efforts to ladder up to revenue. This is only possible with customers who experience value. How can you approach this goal from your two different perspectives? You’ll be able to reach your goals faster as a team even if you sit in different departments.

We care a lot about clarity, both for our customers and our internal teams. So it’s important for us to build clarity into every step of the planning process: *  First, we align on goals: We don’t start any project until the team is aligned on the project’s goals and how they ultimately ladder up to our company’s key objectives and mission. On an individual and team level, goals help everyone understand why their work matters and what they should be working towards. *  Next, we answer the big questions: We create a clear project brief and set up a kick-off meeting including key stakeholders, always pointing back to the project’s objective and how it’s moving the business forward. *  Then, we figure out who’s on first: Once we’ve agreed on the brief and the goals, then we assign tasks and owners (in Asana of course!). The project owner’s job is to hold everyone on the team accountable for their deadlines and deliverables. With distributed/remote/hybrid teams, every decision and action item has to be written down and agreed to ahead of time. Finally, we communicate with urgency and purpose: The project owner’s role is to constantly check in with key stakeholders on progress, report out regular updates to the team (usually monthly at the beginning of a project, and weekly or even daily as the deadline approaches), and help reshuffle timelines and scope if workloads and priorities change.

Context: I work in a relatively matrixed organization and see a lot of stakeholders across the organization come together to deliver on a shared goal, mission, or solve a problem. See below for my lengthy, tactical response.  In short- the key to successfully navigating the pivot from collaboration and ideation to execution and accountability is to establish and align on clear goals and priorities, identify a SINGLE champion, break the project down into manageable tasks for workstream leads, and provide support and direction to team members in a structured cadence of status updates, roadblock sharing and mitigation, and where required, escalations to pre-identified decision makers: If you don’t already have a framework in place, I highly recommend investing time in developing a common framework on how multiple groups come together to work on a project, develop and launch a product, campaign, etc; a process with various tasks, identified owners at a discipline level, checkpoints, and approvers. Now, let’s be real, even if you have this, we all know that process doesn’t always perfectly apply! Regardless of where you are at in your collaboration effort, I recommend getting the idea into a brief or proposal template, even if it’s a v1 draft/outline: * Problem to be solved * Why it's worth solving * What will it accomplish * What does success look like * Resources required Once the group is aligned on the idea proposal, approvals are in place (if required), you move to execution (again, I cannot stress this enough- if a brief or proposal is not created, create one. You cannot execute if you aren’t on the same page on what you are trying to accomplish). Intentionally shift the discussion from ideation to execution, hold a conversation and title it “Execution Phase, Build Sync”, something that makes it clear what you are aligning on (this can be done async or in a meeting). Reiterate problem statement and success criteria that the group has aligned on, and then pivot to key priorities, deliverables, and respective work back schedules. From here, apply the RACI or RASCI model (or a similar model): * Assign a project sponsor or accountable owner. * Assign a single champion for the overall project and breakdown the project into smaller projects, or workstreams. This creates one champion for the overall project, and multiple workstream owners responsible for smaller aspects of the project- making it more manageable to work in parallel and move faster. * The project champion: this individual is responsible for keeping the team on track and hosting the project rituals; this person represents the workstream owner’s progress, escalates roadblocks and communicates overall progress to the relevant stakeholders. * Note: I recognize this could be awkward….i.e. if a group of peers is coming together to decide this, you should be comfortable in nominating and aligning on the most suitable champion. If you cannot do this (and there could be many factors at play), you may need to bring in more senior decision makers to help make this decision and that’s okay. In group work, transparent escalation can be a powerful tool (more on that in a later response). * Once you have done this a few times, process, templates, tools, can help reduce the awkwardness. * Workstream leads: assign workstream owners with their deliverables and workback schedules (i.e. if for a campaign, you might have a content workstream owner, a channel workstream owner, creative design owner). * Regular status updates, approval points are key to ensuring timelines are met - if the timeline is tight, consider short daily standups with mid week deep dives, and if it’s overly complex, each workstream might have their own set of rituals too (ideally avoid this- too many silos can create duplication of work, miscommunication). Clear goals, priorities, a single threaded champion, dedicated workstreams with workstream leaders, regular syncs and checkpoints are essential to ensuring everyone is working towards the same objectives, and can help to keep the team focused and motivated as the deadline approaches.

I believe the key to this is to set clear expectations from the beginning. Communicate the project framework in your kickoff or initial call. If this foundation is laid from the beginning, it won’t be interpreted as a pivot. It will be interpreted as carrying through what you initially outlined. There needs to be a clear owner of the project, collaborators and identified individuals who need to be informed (or a similar framework). Proactively keep the team informed. Celebrate successes along the way. Provide performance readouts on an ongoing cadence. Lastly, I view this question from the perspective of clearly communicating and continuously getting ahead of questions. I believe laying the infrastructure or foundation in this way gets ahead of many concerns that could surface.

1. Build relationships and build trust- get to know the people you want to influence- we are all human and want to do great work with people we know, like and trust- invest in this. 2. Listen- you may not agree with your stakeholders, but understand their perspectives, what drives them- incentives, how they are compensated, goals, career aspirations, super powers. 3. Communicate- clearly, often and transparently. Oh, and don’t use fancy language, $1000 words or tech jargon (sorry if any of my responses do this, I might not even notice when I do sometimes, but always ask to be called out on it). 4. Back everything with data and/or proof points. Math doesn’t lie (quoting my data science partner). 5. Persistence Pays- sometimes you have to be able to sell internally- winning hearts and minds takes time and effort.

To influence people across different functions and teams you need to focus on our common denominator of being human with our individual perspectives. Here are my five tips to accomplish this: 1. Lead by example. Embody the type of person that people respect even if they do not agree with you. Show up in the way that you would like others to show up for you. 2. Empathy. Put yourself in their shoes and approach interactions from this lens. It’s important to be respectful even if you have to agree to disagree. 3. Clear communication. It’s important not to only communicate, but to ensure it is transparent, clear and ongoing. Clear communication should be the norm. 4. Data-informed. Ensure your information is backed up by data. While perspectives are important, influence is better driven when it’s not just an opinion. 5. Adaptable. When trying to influence stakeholders, it’s critical to be adaptable and flexible. This will help you build rapport.

This is a tricky one! First, you should assume that both stakeholders have good intent and that they’re willing to work together to resolve the issue. It’s critical to go in with a positive mindset! Then, try to create a shared fact base so that you’re all working from the same data. Once you have a shared understanding of the facts, then you can begin to build shared goals. Ask lots of questions to find shared goals between the stakeholders, and help them work towards a compromise that meets both of their goals (or at least as many of their goals as possible!)

This is tough to navigate but absolutely doable. I recommend that you actively listen to both sides. Try to meet them where they are at. To do so, you’ll need to empathetically listen to their perspectives. Identify a common ground for the executive stakeholders backed by data. It’s harder to argue against facts. Let the data help navigate the discussion and bring you to a compromise. I also recommend that you assume good intentions. Keep stakeholders focused on the bigger picture and its associated business goals. This will only be possible with clear communication and healthy debate.

Understand how each of you are wired. Personality tests are helpful here, especially as it relates to how someone makes decisions, and how they like to receive or give feedback. And then, I prefer to rip off the bandaid, meet face to face (screens are okay too) and share objective feedback. If you need to work together to be successful, it’s worth the time and effort to understand the situation, behavior and impact each of you has had on each other. Both parties need to accept the feedback, even if it’s brutally hard to hear/accept. Once you have shared the feedback, take the time to digest, have a follow up conversation and align on a path forward, what needs to happen in order to build trust and commit. If you aren’t committed or genuine, this won’t work. High degree of care and candor is essential.

It’s challenging to improve a historically tense relationship. It takes time and mutual respect. The key is to create an environment that is a safe space. Model and foster an environment of communication, transparency and empathy. Know that you will need patience as you work to create a more collaborative relationship. It’s important to meet people where they are at. Why has there been a tense relationship? What’s within your control that you can do to help improve the situation? How do you help support others to improve the relationship? Think deeply about the answers to these types of questions.

I love this question. When you’re a small company, the stakeholders are a pretty small group: You’ll work with a small number of sales reps who generally serve similar customer groups and operate using the same sales strategy. As a result, the type of demand gen work you have to do is generally pretty consistent and straightforward (not that it’s easy!). As companies grow, customer bases expand and evolve, making Demand Generation work increasingly complex. For example, companies will begin serving additional geographies, each of which require their own programs. On top of that, sales reps will sell into new customer segments, which adds another layer of segmentation to consider. When a company shifts from private to public, we start to have conversations with even more stakeholders, including investors, analysts or perhaps your company’s board of directors. To tackle the complexity that comes with a growing business and also evade the temptation of doing everything, prioritize the programs that are the most scalable and will help make the company most successful as a whole. Communication is also essential: The big thing I teach my team is to never say no to sales (it feels draining and demoralizing to always say no, since we all know sales is always clamoring for more support). Instead, say yes AND agree on which program you will deprioritize as a result of adding the newly requested one. In other words, make program prioritization a shared responsibility. As a marketer, our job is to work with sales and understand which programs we can jointly drive to make an impact together.

There are more of them! Identified stakeholders, approvers, owners need to be clear, and having a consistent framework to work allows for better documentation, tracking, alignment which in turn would ideally ensure projects are aligned to greater company goals and priorities. Identifying who should be involved right at the ideation stage makes this a lot easier. I.e. if it’s a product launch, product teams should be identified and brought in early to the project. Sometimes you learn this by making mistakes- iterating on your launch, campaign or go to market framework in process comes with time (and more data points).

The key stakeholders from other departments change due to the needs of the business changing. The swimlanes for demand generation typically become more defined. There are more processes and procedures in place based on what you manage. You’ll probably find that you go from wearing many hats with less clarity on your stakeholders to a more narrow focus with clearly defined stakeholders. Fast forward from a startup environment to an SMB or enterprise and the only constant is change. You may go from working directly with the CEO as a stakeholder to working with procurement and finance teams. You may find that a performance readout happens in a weekly standup to a QBR with various teams from around the world participating. With growth comes complexity, new markets and challenges with data. All of this may need to be navigated with new team structures. And with all of these shifts come new stakeholders or people who you’ll need to collaborate with and inform.