This episode of The Get podcast is one of my favorites. I interviewed CMO scale savant Sydney Sloan. Sydney discussed her time as CMO at Salesloft, where she contributed to a huge scale-up.
Sydney had so much insight to share. It was hard to pick out just a few highlights. I asked her how a CMO can balance “getting oars in the water quickly” while managing expectations that “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” You’ll hear about:
- The difference between a true market leader and a marketing leader
- Looking at the marketing budget as “buying outcomes.”
- Balancing achievable goals and aspirational goals during a scale-up. The purpose of an aspirational goal is to remove barriers from what you’re doing now and think differently about how you might achieve results. “Transformational growth is different from incremental growth.”
- Designing org charts for marketing 18 months out, since the marketing org chart for the 100MM business is different from the org chart for the 250MM business.
- Surfacing red flags when hiring and talking to the candidates about them; you can then have a development plan for them in place on day 1.
Favorite quote: “Everyone says marketing and sales should be aligned, but no CMO wants to report to sales.”
This is Episode 8 of The Get podcast, now in Season 4. This season, we explore the theme ‘Solving for the Scale Journey.’
The Get is produced by Evo Terra and Simpler Media Productions. Listen and subscribe here.