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: 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

How SaaS Marketing Orgs Are Changing In Both Seismic And Subtle Ways: 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

î‚Š

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

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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:

Winning the Bigger CMO Mandate: Insights From Hundreds of B2B SaaS Marketing Leaders
byErica Seidel

When you look at the CMO role across hundreds of B2B tech companies, what themes emerge these days? In this episode of The Get podcast, host Erica Seidel talks with Matt Selheimer, VP and Research Director for B2B Marketing Executives at Forrester. 

You’ll hear about the top themes that have emerged in The Get this season. And you’ll get a sneak peek at new Forrester research dedicated to CMOs. 

Learn about:

  • How to classify marketing leadership roles: is the CEO looking for a supporter, a promoter, a partner, or a driver? 
  • How changes in tech and buying behavior can be a catalyst for marketing leaders to claim a broader role and bigger budget 
  • Advice to CEOs who have failed at hiring CMOs
  • How CMOs who create a continuous learning organization are the ones who will be the most successful
  • Why marketing leaders need to get beyond “polishing the pebbles on in-market intent signals” and instead invest to be the preferred vendor earlier on, to avoid being used as negotiating leverage against the preferred vendor
  • How increasingly, “your understanding of your buyers, your customers, and the markets you’re operating in is your competitive differentiator”
  • Why so few CMOs are at the point of firing whole teams in favor of AI 
  • How to avoid ‘re-org fatigue’ while still responding to changing buyer behaviors 

Memorable Quote:

“What I tell our clients, and CMOs in transition, is: make sure there’s a really good fit here for the purpose of marketing. That what you see as the purpose of marketing and what your CEO and the board see as the purpose of marketing is aligned. If you need to do education, that’s the time to do the education… and expand the aperture of how they think about marketing. If you don’t get the CEO resonating with that, then that may not be the place that you want to go join, as an example. But if you are already in a function, already in a company as a CMO, what we’re telling all of our clients is, now’s a great time to recalibrate the purpose of marketing.”

00:00 Introduction to The Get Podcast

00:17 Guest Introduction: Matt Selheimer from Forrester

01:32 High-Level Themes in SaaS Marketing

01:46 AI’s Role in B2B Buying

02:16 Disciplined Experimentation in Marketing

03:03 Resurgence of Brand and PR Roles

03:32 Matt Selheimer’s Background and Fun Fact

06:33 In-Depth Discussion on AI and Generational Shifts

10:05 The Importance of Testing and Experimentation

13:25 The Role of Brand in Modern Marketing

17:22 Advice for CEOs on Hiring CMOs

27:29 Marketing Organizational Design

36:09 Favorite Interview Question

37:25 Conclusion and Closing Remarks

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 how SaaS marketing organizations are changing — in both seismic and subtle ways. 

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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