Tamara Niesen

Creating an environment where we have trust, pysocholigical safety, and fun is key, but it's trust that allows team members to have autonomy and agency. Celebrating wins toegther, celebrating mistakes (fail forward!), and removing roadblocks are foundational to building healthy teams. Something I try to encourage is that each team member is the owner of their business line, audience, program, etc. As a business owner, they know what they are accountable to, and what is required to meet their goals. Retaining top talent means giving team members sapce to strategize, navitgae, execute, and pull their leadership in when required. But it's also really important that our talent is challenged, constantly growing year over year, and that as leaders, we have a solid understanding of their career asipirations, and we constantly surface opportunities for growth. It's really important that my teams know I have confidence in them, and I have their back.

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 ;)

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”.

Network and seek advice. Getting to know people in the field, genuinely asking about their roles, responsibilites, what keeps them up at night, recommendations on where you might learn more is the best starting point. In addition to that, get in on these Sharebird AMAs, Demand Gen podcasts, take courses where applicable- this could be in digital marketing/performance, SEO, PMM, sales....all of these crafts are inputs/influence demad gen. A personal goal of mine throughout my career has been to be a Tshaped marketer - to have a solid expertise in a few areas, and be knowledgeable enough in others (so I understand how it all works together as a system), this is an always on exercise and should never be "complete".

The answer here is nuanced. I have a background in product marketing, so I am biased, but if this role is the first marketer overall, I would actually prioritize a product marketing hire or skill set and focus on the foundations: * Positioning, value props, messaging, personas, pitch decks, roadmap, leave behinds * Sales and product feeback loops- customer insights, win loss analysis * Customer stories- social proof of product market fit * Competitive intelligence If this hire is the first demand gen hire, with the assumption the high level areas above are covered, I would prioritize the following skills (some of the below is repetitive from the skill set question also asked in this AMA): * Understanding of sales teams, inbound vs. outbound, and willingness to get scrappy and executing in the field (ie. joining sales calls, pitches, etc), and taking these learnings to then zoom out and develop a demand gen strategy, campaign calendar, and the know-how to patch leaky buckets in the funnel. * Project management and relationship management: working cross functionally is essential to devlopping strategic demand gen programs and campaigns. Demand gen is the central hub if you will- the central team that brings together channel owners (note, in smaller orgs, they might also be the channel owners), product teams, sales teams, content, field, etc. The ability to pull plans and tactics together to create time bound, TOFU, MOFU, BOFU or full funnel campaigns requires the demand gen team to be organized, while holding other teams accountable (to deadlines, targets, and more). * Audience and industry knowledge: having a deep curiousity to understanding target audiences, the buying group, various personas, coupled with a solid understanding of industries and verticals allows demand gen marketers and teams to develop tailored strategies for the various audiences. To support this, the DG marketers also need to understand how their competitors market against their product, and understand why deals are won, or more importantly, lost. * Data and financial acumen: DG teams are tied to targets, and need to forecast, and propose/invest budget accordingly. Understanding how this, coupled with deep understanding of each stage of the funnel, plays a role in CAC (customer acquisition cost), CPL (cost per lead), etc. will allow teams to optmize for efficiency and impact.

As an engineer, I suspect you have deep product and user knowlege, and this could be a huge asset in marketing! I would start with getting to know the demand gen team at your organization, or, start to network, subscribe to AMA's like this one, listen to demand gen podcasts to better understand: * role responsibilities- what are they responsible for, how are they measured, what does a day in the life look like * when targets are not being met, what are the levers demand gen has at their disposal * learn about inbound vs. outbound, marketing vs. sales funnels, stages of the funnel, conversion rates * understand how campaigns come together, the teams and tactics involved * how does product play a role in marketing- from positioning, to automating stages of the funnel, to self serve acquistion * martech- what is the marketing tech stack, how does this play a role in lead scoring, upsell or cross sell This is just a starting point, perhaps a way to dip your toes is to ask your marketing team about contributing to a campaign, follow along from ideate to launch, and offer to take on tasks where you can, ie. speaking on a webinar. Good luck!

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.

See response re: becoming more influential for more details. In addition to those hard skills and tactics, I would say the soft skill side of this is crucial: I establish trust by being authentic, real, vulnerable, delivering on my word, being transparent and taking stakeholders along for the process or journey, sharing my work/team’s work early for feedback, knowing the impact of my team’s work and above all, ensuring our customers are at the forefront of every decision.

Escalate. Do not hesitate to escalate. I know this can be uncomfortable, and you don’t want to throw any team members under the bus. Something I learned from one of my leaders is “clean escalation”. You identify the problem, document the problem statement and possible paths forward with all the respective tradeoffs. It’s crucial that this is data driven, supported by proof points and is 100% objective. If it’s objective, it’s less awkward, and the most important step before you escalate: write the document, share it with your conflicting team member(s) first and allow them to provide feedback first. And when you do send or share the document for escalation, ensure all the conflicting parties are included in the same email, slack message, meeting etc. when it’s presented to the decision makers. No backchanneling. If I am the leader who is being escalated to, I would ask the impacted parties to complete this process so I can make an informed, objective decision that covers all angles and tradeoffs.

The [long] answer to this is part art, part science. Whether you are in a product led growth role, or creating demand for a sales led go to market organization, knowing your customer (KYC), developing compelling narratives and messaging, and leading with data are essential. But HOW you lead with these is equally important. It’s easier to do the KYC and data piece, the HOW is an art that takes time and credibility. General rule of thumb is to build trust through genuine curiosity and understanding your first teams, multifectas, or stakeholder’s world. To share an example, let’s say you are responsible for campaigns and you work with sales: * You should develop a solid understanding of the sales team’s territory, segment of customers, buying groups/decision makers, verticals, where they win, lose and how demand gen can help. * You can listen to sales recorded calls, talk to prospects, share insights and demonstrate that you are invested in their business and goals. * When proposing new ideas, like a campaign, seek feedback from them, give the team an opportunity to influence and have a stake in your work. * When you launch a new campaign, enable the sales with the assets/tools, create excitement and where possible, bring in advocates to voice their support. * During the campaign, provide progress updates and encourage feedback. * Once the campaign is complete, host a retro and be transparent in wins, fails, key learnings, and next steps. KYC is key to influencing internal and external stakeholders- whether it's a proposal for budget, headcount, programming, experiments, etc. In this context. knowing your customer can include: * Target audience, ideal customer profile, buyer group personas, pain points, industry/vertical, customer buying journey, respective total addressable markets (TAM) and total Sellable Addressable Market (SAM), user pain points, user profiles, product personas. * Compelling value props: product and platform positioning and what messaging should be in the context of the market you are targeting (ie. is it a buying group, or a user?). * Where does your target audience consume content or conduct research? * Existing funnel and understanding of where there are opportunities to increase volume, conversion rates, velocity, efficiency. * Having a solid understanding of why you win, why you lose, what is resonating with prospects in the sales cycle. When you present your ideas, or you are problem solving with your stakeholders, or perhaps you are new to an organization and are establishing trust with sales and or product teams, lead with data: * What trends are you seeing in the market, with prospects, customers, product. * What is the opportunity size. * What investments are required. * How will you measure success, what are you benchmarking targets or goals against. * How will you track performance. * What channels will perform based on your target audience and where they are at in the customer journey, what historical data can you share to validate. * If running an experiment, what are the control variables. * What insights can you share to validate your idea or proposal.