Recruiting the 'make money' marketing leaders, not the 'make it pretty' ones

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The Connective Good is a boutique retained executive search practice with a hyper-focus: recruiting CMOs and VPs of Marketing in B2B SaaS.

Chief Marketing Officer | VP Marketing | VP Revenue Marketing / Demand Generation / Growth | VP Digital | VP Product Marketing | VP Customer Marketing | VP Marketing Operations | VP Brand / Corporate Marketing

The CMO Hiring Market

CMO Recruiting In B2B SaaS Right Now: The Race To Reduce Risk — Read

Scale-ups

Your CMO candidate with the perfect scale-up experience could be a liability — More 

Podcast: The Get

The Race to Reduce Risk in CMO Recruiting is the theme on The Get this season — Check it out

Representative Projects

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Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer

for a B2B SaaS company in the public safety category

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VP of Marketing and Sales

for a leading car-sharing company

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Global VP of Marketing Data & Technology

for a large SaaS tech company

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VP of Marketing Analytics

Evangelizing and explaining analytics to consumer marketers

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VP of Marketing

for a cybersecurity company funded by Bain Capital

CMO

Martech/data management SaaS company backed by Vista

VP Marketing

Fintech SaaS company backed by Resurgens

SVP Global Demand Generation

Disaster recovery SaaS company backed by Vista

Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer

SaaS Public safety company backed by TCV

VP Digital Strategy

App dev SaaS company backed by KKR

Global VP, Marketing Data & Technology

Public company in travel management software

Chief Marketing & Experience Officer

Tech solutions brokerage backed by Columbia

SVP Marketing

Risk management SaaS company backed by Gryphon

CMO

Healthcare IT company backed by Bessemer

SVP Brand Experience

Low-code app dev company backed by Vista

SVP Marketing

Martech company backed by Clearhaven

SVP Marketing

Vertical-specific SaaS company backed by Serent

Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer

Cybersecurity company backed by Frontier

Contact

Why Clients Choose The Connective Good

Specialization

100% focused on marketing

Dedication

Focus on 3 searches at a time, max

Speed

Slate of 3-5 candidates within 2 weeks; 80% of clients hire from that initial slate

Diversity

Commitment to diverse slates of candidates

Agility

Pivots are easy when you don’t have a lot of cooks in the kitchen

Staying Power

The tenure of placed executives tends to be significantly longer than industry average

The Connective Good Process

A repeatable process that has led to delighted clients and sky-high retention rates.

Discovery

Your culture and needs are unique. First up: immersion in your culture, through detailed intake interviews with key stakeholders, and often spending time in your office. This helps in representing your particular culture to candidates and bringing you people who are additive to it.

Positioning

Most job specs are boring. They focus just on what the company needs. You’ll get a compelling job spec and other ways to pierce the attention barrier with candidates, like videos. Also, you’ll listen to and shape the elevator pitch that candidates will hear.

Scouting

The best candidates are not necessarily out there looking actively. They have to be wooed. You’ll get a diverse set of top candidates, even if it takes hundreds of conversations.

Evaluating

Marketing leaders can make a great first impression, but you don’t want the person who just interviews well. You want the person who will be the best at the job. Every candidate goes through 2 rounds of evaluation before you meet them, to rule out the ‘false positives.’ You’ll go beyond interviews and evaluate the actual work that candidates do.

Selling

A sky-high acceptance rate on job offers, as the process is so careful and robust. 

“Loved the speed, hustle, and communication! Erica quarterbacked a range of inputs into a clear and compelling story/spec quickly, then got profiles in front of the group to calibrate quickly. She did a great job communicating to ensure the right stakeholders had the right information at the right time, and/or that she had the proper guidance to move forward and make progress. There was no ‘well I was waiting to hear back from you’.”

“Selfishly, I’d prefer to keep Erica’s talents a secret, but I appreciate her and value our partnership too much to withhold a ringing endorsement. Erica brings energy, focus, creativity, expertise, levity, professionalism and drive to her engagements. You experience this from the onboarding process to candidate pipelining, vetting, closing, and the post-mortem. She loves the challenge of finding outstanding talent and it shows. If you can find a way into her client roster, you won’t be disappointed.”

blueconic
Allocadia
Analytic Partners
CapitolCanary
Castellan
Concur
N Contracts

What Clients Say

She loves the challenge of finding outstanding talent and it shows. If you can find a way into her client roster, you won't be disappointed.

You provided proper scoping, good market intel, active and creative 'product marketing' when thinking through our needs and what's in the market, and good hustle.

You're a force multiplier – you pulled us together well, and there was no wasting of my time.

Selfishly, I'd prefer to keep Erica's talents a secret, but I appreciate her and value our partnership too much to withhold a ringing endorsement.

It was a no-brainer for us to choose Erica because of her depth of experience hiring for this kind of role in our type of company. The search was a great experience, beginning to end.

She nailed just about every conversation she had on our behalf — whether or not the prospect turned out to be a perfect fit or not.

Some search people disappear. You drove the process and invited us into it. It elevates you above others.

In the end, we had two outstanding candidates that left us in the enviable position of being able to be picky about the final decision.

Erica brings energy, focus, creativity, expertise, levity, professionalism and drive to her engagements.

Other search processes are three to six months; this one took two months.

You were accessible, responsive, flexible, and had a sense of urgency.

Most recruiters are biased and just want to close the deal. You're the only search person I fully trusted to do good reference calls. And you provided balanced, insightful briefs on candidates.

Loved the speed, hustle, and communication! There was no 'well I was waiting to hear back from you'.

This was the best recruiting process I have been a part of. A nice mix of scrappiness, organization, professionalism, and creativity.

Erica Seidel is a masterful recruiter of relevant marketing talent with a strong network and a process to ensure a great fit with your organizational needs and culture.

You were intentional with keeping the process moving (nudging where necessary). You gave white glove service to candidates, and you gave us good counsel to close the candidate.

Erica's network and understanding of the niche marketing talent pool is second to none.

Contact

The Connective Good Blog

What CEOs Fear Most When Hiring CMOs

What CEOs Fear Most When Hiring CMOs

What do CEOs fear most when hiring CMOs? In this episode of The Get podcast, we discuss why the CMO role is particularly tough to fill, and common concerns that bedevil CEOs and investors when they hire CMOs. My guest is Peter Mahoney, Chief Commercial Officer at GoTo...

read more
What Veteran CMOs Know That First-Timers Don’t

What Veteran CMOs Know That First-Timers Don’t

These days, when CEOs and investors hire marketing leaders, they can have very specific wish lists. Such as: Experience scaling from point A to point B Facility with a mix of sales-led and product-led growth motions Background that spikes in demand generation...

read more
All Posts
The Get: Finding And Keeping The Best Marketing Leaders in B2B SaaS

Check out The Get podcast at thegetpodcast.com

Recent themes have included:

  • The CMO and Board Relationship in B2B SaaS: From Fraught to Functional to Fabulous
  • Solving for the Scale Journey in B2B SaaS
  • Diversity in Marketing Leadership & Hiring

Listen to the latest episode here:

Building Your Flywheel of Credibility: A Playbook for New CMOs in PE-Backed Companies
byErica Seidel

On today’s episode, Erica talks with Gary Survis, an Operating Partner with Insight Partners. Erica and Gary discuss how the strongest CMOs limit risk when transitioning into new marketing leadership roles:

  • They stand out by demonstrating credibility, collaboration, and curiosity. They’re aware that what you don’t say in an interview is just as important as what you do say.
  • When interviewing, they communicate their experience with this structure: strategy + example + numbers. 
  • Once in the new CMO role, they realize that no matter what their background is, they have to deliver on their demand gen goals or risk losing their job.
  • They have a perspective on AI and know how they will organize their teams and define roles differently for AI-supported marketing. 
  • They create a “flywheel of credibility.”
  • They take the time they need to form an assessment – “it’ll be the only time in your tenure when you are afforded the luxury of time.”
  • They follow the “Diagnose, Don’t Delude” approach – identifying and surfacing problems rather than sweeping problems under the rug.
  • They swiftly make the org changes they need to make: “If you are not successful because the people below you are not strong, you have no one to blame but yourself for not making the changes you know you need to make.”

00:00 Welcome to The Get: Season Overview

00:47 Introducing Gary Survis: Insights from an Operating Partner

01:37 De-risking the CMO Hiring Process

02:10 Common Pitfalls in Recruiting Marketing Leaders

05:01 Balancing Strategy and Execution in Marketing

11:00 Key Traits of Successful Marketing Leaders

13:19 The Importance of Curiosity in Leadership

17:15 AI in Marketing: What to Look for in a CMO

19:36 Early Steps for a New CMO

21:41 The Role of AI in Organizational Structure

22:34 Setting and Achieving Goals

24:25 Challenges in Coaching CMOs

26:53 Reflections on Past Marketing Roles

28:56 Marketing Under the CRO: A Controversial Trend

31:13 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

The Get is here to drive smart decisions around recruiting and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing. We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today’s top marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.

This season’s theme is The Race to Reduce Risk in CMO Recruiting. 

The Get’s host is Erica Seidel, who runs The Connective Good, an executive search practice with a hyper-focus on recruiting CMOs and VPs of Marketing, especially in B2B SaaS. 

If you are looking to hire a CMO or VP of Marketing of the ‘make money’ variety – rather than the ‘make it pretty’ variety, contact Erica at erica@theconnectivegood.com. You can also follow Erica on LinkedIn or sign up for her newsletter at TheConnectiveGood.com. 

The Get is produced by the team at Simpler Media Productions.

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

OP3 – https://op3.dev/privacy

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About Erica Seidel, Founder

Erica Seidel is known for recruiting the ‘make money’ type of marketing leaders – not the ‘make it pretty’ ones. She founded The Connective Good, a boutique retained executive search practice, in 2011. The Connective Good is hyper-focused on placing CMOs and VPs of Marketing in high-growth B2B SaaS companies.

Previously, Erica ran Forrester Research’s global advisory businesses for CMOs and digital marketing leaders of Fortune 500 companies.

Erica has an MBA in Marketing from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in International Relations from Brown University. Her favorite job ever, aside from executive search, was being the Brown bear mascot in college.

“Erica Seidel is a masterful recruiter of relevant marketing talent with a strong network and a process to ensure a great fit with your organizational needs and culture.”

“Erica’s network and understanding of the niche marketing talent pool is second to none.”

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