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 g ...Read More

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 ca ...Read More

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 ...Read More

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 hi ...Read More

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 le ...Read More

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 pro ...Read More

This is a difficult question to answer, I would love more context in order to respond thoughtfully, but I will share this- a work enironment that is build around psychological safety, one that encourages healthy debate and conflict is (IMO), the envinroment that breeds the most creative and successful teams. It's good to disagree and work together to come to an agreement, or comprimise, but your leader may have context you don't have, and they may not even be able to share that context. In some ...Read More

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 ...Read More

Operating in a silo from sales and not treating them as my first team. B2B demand gen marketing- developing pipeline for sales is our job. If we are not in lockstep with sales, and don't show up as one team, we end up with an unhealthy tension that pits teams against eachother.    I have only made this mistake once, where I hit my MQL/Sales accepted targets and when we didn't hit our deal target for the quarter, I did not take accountability for the full funnel, and left sales to take responsibi ...Read More