Welcome to Stacking Growth, called to action. A show for the Trailblazers, change makers, and paradigm shifters. Each week, a different marketing hero who is called to make a change in their field will join us to walk through each step of their journey. They'll cover the highs, the lows, and what's coming next.
Together, we'll help you find the changes needed for your own business to win. I'm Steph Krenula here with Evan Hughes, and today we are so excited to welcome Steve Voigth, VP of Revenue Marketing at Kariba. Fun fact, we're running out of the Coribit Islands. It's the first island mass to see the sun, and Treasures use our software, the founder envisioned that it would be the first thing a Treasury team checks in the morning, and that's the story of the company.
Steve reflects Refined Labs commitment to consistently redefining demand generation through his career evolution, and he's here to share steps to take and avoid in your own journey. Steve, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm also happy to be here, Stephanie and Evan. Thanks for having me.
Definitely happy to add the avoid steps. I thought I'd like to take more of those in my career than you would. Thanks to do. It's good.
We love hearing about the successes, but Evan says it a lot of failures teach us just as much, if not more, so knowing what not to do is a great, great guide to follow. Absolutely. It's like dating, right? You got to date the wrong people to know.
Exactly. I'm all right. Let's go back, maybe not that far, but in your marketing journey, not necessarily your dating history, talk about your path into marketing and some experiences you've had before moving into demand generals. This was a fun one to think about, and I'm going all the way back.
Fun only enough, I did major in marketing in undergrad, but only because I had no idea what I wanted to do. I wasn't passionate about marketing from a young age. I just didn't know what I wanted to do. Like a lot of college students, right at school, I did the classic $10 an hour internship at a small agency while I waited tables.
I will say waiting tables. I'm going to do a quick plug for that. I actually do think it is an important thing for really anybody in business, but in particular marketing, there's so much multitasking and people management you learn and waiting tables. So a quick plug for anybody who has a young cousin or somebody looking to get their start.
I would recommend waiting tables. That was a formative part of my career. But thankfully, after a little bit of doing that, I got my first job randomly at a B2B company, but it was in a services space. I will say I was like trained for that.
I did take a B2B marketing class in college. I took a services marketing class, but I just randomly found my way to this B2B company. It was the network sales division of Turner Broadcasting. That worked there for a while.
It led me to actually work for one of our clients, a cable company in Atlanta called Cox. That was, I remember it was 2010. It was the first time I heard the words lead and demand generation. I want to focus on the word lead was very strategically in there because at back in 2010, that's what it was.
It was not even really about demand gen. It was about how many leads could we get? So that's, someone said, do you know anything about this? I was like, absolutely.
Quickly googling, what is this? Because it was still pretty new in 2010. But thankfully, I said yes to sort of like, oh, I'd love to learn more about this because it really then catapulted my career from there. I think some of the early stuff that got me tuned in to demand gen and off of what I was hired to do, which was very just general corporate marketing.
That was helpful in learning how to create a good project plan, how to get a good corporate marketing pedigree. But having the opportunity kind of raising my hand to learn more about lead and demand generation, I got to actually, the foundation from we started with actually implementing our company CRM. We did Oracle CRM, which was why I don't think they sell that anymore. And then that turned into implementing Eliqua on top of it.
So the first time I touched on a market automation tool was in 2012, which you like this cutting edge, maybe? I don't know, but having myself up. I was part of the team was responsible for it, but we stood up our first BDR team. So then that was another thing that we wanted to have cold outbound callers.
So getting to see these things stood up for what we really wasn't even the B2B's asking about. It was a services company, but we were B2B and seeing all these things stood up just gave me a really nice foundation for, oh, I'm really into this type of marketing. It's a machine of sorts. In fact, I remember the first reporting dashboard.
It was a PowerPoint slide that had all of the vanity metrics you could imagine, right? It had like the number of emails that we sent and the number of people that opened them and then the number of leads that we created and we had like click the array. It was awful. It was built as a machine and it was the beginning where we were making a lot of leaps and bounds to then connect some of the leads even to try to say this is the deals that it influenced, but it was so hard to do back then.
We've come a long way, but that's sort of how I made my shift from what I always thought I'd be was a very generalized marketer into this new world of lead and demand generation. I have to echo the waiting tables as being such a valuable skill set for anybody. And it's so ironic that we've talked before, Steve, but just that is so many personalities you deal with and it just sets you up for how to handle situations in public that maybe you don't want to. It's like that in project in high school or college that you absolutely hated everybody on your group, but you decided to get through it.
So hats off to you on that journey. I definitely understand that. But you know, it's an interesting trajectory, right? Because I think all of us unconventionally got into marketing somehow or whether we wanted to or not or how to passionate about it.
But so early on, to your point about like the measurement component or our success being lead volumes, not really understanding what we were getting excited about, right? Like the actual clicks to open. And I think the technology has evolved so much and that's kind of what created this demand gen world that we live in now, right? As B2B SaaS marketers.
And I think because we do have the technology and because attribution is such a big part of the discussion around like who gets credit for what. But what was that moment like kind of in your marketing career or where you made that pivot? Are you ready to kind of take that journey and say, you know what, like I've learned a little bit about leads. This is interesting in the SaaS world.
I want to kind of go all in on this demand gen motion. Like what was that kind of unlock or that click that sent you to that point of the compass in that direction? Yeah, I know. I think it was a very distinct moment because one of the things I became the lead and demand gen manager at this company services company, but really my focus was content marketing.
So like I got quickly put into there was this BDR team running, they need content to send to the leads, the people they're talking to. So then I worked with an agency to create the ebooks, the infographics, all the content that we wanted, and then actually would end up going to work for them. And I had a sort of a hybrid role, which was really what turned the knob for me because I was not only their sole marketer, I was the responsible, I was the director of demand for this agency, but then I also ended up doing my own consulting as part of the, having been a customer of this agency when I was at this Cox, it was very good or easy for me to consult with them about their content marketing strategy. And I remember two things happened.
I kept going into meetings and I felt like I could talk to clients about what they needed to do from a content perspective, but then I'd get pressed on questions like, oh, like well, why do you recommend a graphic ebook versus a white paper? And I was like, oh, because you get lots of clicks. I could never find that connected tissue of like there's engagement with this, but then I remember vividly we went into a meeting with Microsoft and we did not win the business. Because I think I gave an answer like that, where I couldn't connect it to opportunities and sort of end what the results, the meaningful business results that is.
And at the same time, this was the first time I was living in a Salesforce instance, and I actually just found that to be a huge improvement from Oracle Scurum, where I could actually end up with a mandate from me from the agency, how to say, you know, you're helping us run all these campaigns, host these events, what's the ROI on these things. And so it was the first time I sort of opened up the Salesforce reporting modules and campaigns and said, okay, I can make sure all of these leads are tracked this way. And it's going to be really easy for me to, I think at the end of the time, I was manually putting in the opportunities, I would just call every Salesperson and be like, did you get this from that? And you know, it's very manual, but it really connected and clicked for me where it was like, no, this is what I've been looking for all this time is that I've been doing what I think is really cool marketing, but I've never been able to connect to business results.
And seeing that happen for the first time, I knew that this was sort of the joining of what two things I was passionate about, which is I think I'm pretty creative. I'm a good thinker, but I also have a passion for analytics and numbers. And I was like, oh, this is, this is the place that I can do that. And so that was where I built sort of my first dimension engine.
And I guess I did it well enough. Because at a certain point, I realized I was primarily consulting with SaaS companies and I just doing cool stuff. It seemed like the cutting edge and really doing the most advanced things with the dimension. And so that's why I said, great, like I need to leave this agency and actually go client side and like prove that I can do it with like proper resources, a proper dimension team.
And that's when I made my shift kind of getting that taste of reporting of what it could look like and then doing an unscaroids of the SaaS company in Chicago. That's so interesting. And I kind of the timing of it too, right? Demand Gen being talked about, like you probably have one of the first demand gen titles.
If you think about it, as you like evolved this content marketer, but now they're, you know, everywhere because it's such an important component. And also I think we've just rebranded aspects of marketing to be demand generation. So I think the integral part of that is you're talking about like the storytelling creativity aspect of it, but the measurement piece and bringing those together. That was really kind of what clicked for you on the journey of like, this is the right way to do marketing.
This is how I should think about marketing going forward. And I think that a lot of that, like some people have a hard time bridging the gap between the two, you know, because it's a little bit of the unknown or making assumptions. What was the challenge or something? And this is kind of off script a little bit.
But as you think about kind of that first role in as a demand gen, you were kind of looking at the metrics. Like what if one of those challenges you ran into, was it the storytelling aspect of it or the lack of tools that actually connected the data together? I think the lab, I mean, I like to think I'm creative, but everything can always be better creatively. And it's like the heart of a good demand gen.
So I'm not going to say my credit was perfect, but I feel like, especially in now, like flash four, this is like 2015, I think I had figured out a good motion to do things that a lot of marketers can connect with that. That's on a little more easily like events, right? It was really easy to say, Hey, I paid for this event. I was there on the ground.
I watched my eighties talk to these people and so I can chase them down and hunt down the opportunities and put them into a Salesforce campaign. And it's really straightforward to report on. I think what I was struggling with then that really inspired me to like do more, seek out others and talk to other dimension professionals was more on the digital side, right? Because it was get hand raisers on the side, people coming inbound and then I kind of didn't know how to track them or I certainly didn't know how to ramp up the volume, right?
Because this is even a little bit like pre early LinkedIn days, like there wasn't a great way to target them. I'd always been leery of Google display was probably the cutting edge advertising partner at the time. And I was inherently like, I'm not putting any money there just because of the targeting. I don't know how I'm able to drill down to exactly the ICP that I want.
So I struggled a lot with like the connection points and that phase of my career with anything beyond events. And I think it's been amazing to see what's happened in the space in the last 10 years to advance there. Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense. So fast forward to kind of like 2015, get into the role, you kind of consult with clients.
And then, you know, we all had a chance to work together or find labs. And I think that that was a great time where demand gen 2020, the pandemic kind of set in and people really like, it was a rampant budget increase for a lot of these companies to like find ways to drive more business in a unique setting that was kind of digital first. But and then, you know, you moved on to Kariba and talk about that journey a little bit like the milestones you took there and where you felt like that moment of I am ready to go back in house and I have the tools or at least I think I'm ready to and making that decision. No, it's yeah, that's a it was a lot of things that happen along the way, but I will definitely say working at refine labs that was a huge like inflection point in my journey because I got an amazing opportunity to do with all of us crave as a management professionals, which was to have like easy access to a lot of really smart people that also did the same thing I did.
And so, I think the experience of refine labs, it was twofold. It's having access to the amazing talent, the folks that worked there and had their own in-house experiences and perspectives, and then we codified a lot of that and said we came together. There wasn't one way to run the refine labs playbook, but it was there was an approach and then obviously a lot of guidance along the way that was so invaluable to me and just being able to like share what I learned, get feedback on that, things that I could be doing better and differently. And I just learned a ton from the team and it's the benefit of any marketer going to work in an agency.
So similar to the waiting tables, I will actually also make the same bold claim that I think every marketer at some point should work in consulting or agency. So just a guarantee, you'll be a better client if you ever worked in an agency. So a quick plug for that. The other thing that Refinites did for me personally was that I got to consult with a bunch of companies at once.
So it was somewhere in my first role where it was like, you're no longer just consulting with or doing one Salesforce instance or one approach, one ICP, you're getting to see it operate once it came up. I was like 16 different ways and that was just incredibly valuable. I learned a lot about what works and I think we also learned about a lot of companies we're struggling with, what not to do and that was incredibly valuable to me, especially as then I said, all right, I think I'm ready to go back in-house and have one Salesforce instance and just one memory to keep in terms of how we approach things, what we call a qualified opportunity, et cetera. But it's been, I mean, while I miss everyone at Refinites, it's been an incredible year at Pre-Budd.
I think all of my past demand and experience has really played a different role in it because certain things are coming back in circle. I remember there was a company I worked at that had a weird nuance where they created opportunities like in advance of knowing that we're going to even sell the company something. It was sort of a high ABM touch. So it was really tough for me to be able to track inbound influence, right?
Because even if they requested a demo, the Salesforce would say, great, you're weak to see if you did it, but I've already got that opportunity created so it wouldn't ever get credit for it. So then I would not bought visible, you know, and then created a very complex influence model and multi-titribution model, which was cool. But I learned early on that that was too complicated to explain. If I couldn't explain it to the CEO, if I couldn't explain it to the board, that it really wasn't understood or accepted, right, this influence number.
So I think we did a great job at Refinites coming back to that, that of how to, for marketers and demand-in folks to take a true claim of what they source and how to programatize that. But then I find myself, I think a lot of the ecosystem is coming back to this conversation of like, even the best demand-gen engines are somehow flawed and inherently in the way that they report. And what's that next evolution that is, maybe it's not the visible multi-touch of, oh, if I look at it in a U-shape, it's worth this much money and I look at it in a W-shape, it's worth this much money. Because I think I don't think we ever need to go back to that per se, but I do think there's a need right now, and that's a lot of what I'm focused on right now at Cribov.
What is the full scope of how marketing is touching our landscape and then how does that ladder up to the performance for the company as a whole? Yeah. So you've touched on a lot of different tools that you've used through the evolution of your career. And it's really fascinating because it sounds so lonely, your journey, where it started, you know, working off a PowerPoint presentation to put this all together, doing everything very, very manually, to coming to a place like Refine Labs where you're using so many different tools and software and vocabulary to describe the same things going back to being in-house.
So from that journey of maybe being too alone, too surrounded, what are some tools that you've taken away that have been really helpful? Oh, yeah. I think, I mean, Refine Labs was a great reinforcement for something I think I kind of accidentally understood for myself. One of those asked companies that were already had the how did you hear about us field.
I remember that was invaluable for me as I was running my very first LinkedIn campaigns because this is that company that had to say the problem of, well, like the A.E. is going to sell one deal, they're going to sell that same law firm and they're going to create the opportunity. So again, I'd get a demo request and then they'd be like, yeah, we were going to sell them this thing. Like, no, no opportunity credit for you.
So it really was my LinkedIn campaigns never really show. And I was also running them with a click attribution. So if someone didn't convert off of the LinkedIn, I didn't give myself that credit for the LinkedIn ads and the contribution it was making. And just as an example, and I think it took me like spending some money and then getting frustrated with the results and then really just taking a step back to be like, it's just really the only way that I should measure the effectiveness of this channel.
Because I could see the impressions, I could see the clicks and the firms that were clicking on my ads, but I sort of dawned on me that's like, oh, I don't think I should measure it this way. What if I just kind of report back an uptick in demo requests and the meetings that are set from that? And then like lo and behold, that was very under well understood and acknowledged by my CMO where I wasn't about producing a very specific ROI of LinkedIn on its own. This was before I ever like learned the phrase, you know, demand creation, you know, like what it was really aimed at.
But thankfully I sort of accidentally stepped into like that understanding with my CMO, that's how we decided to report it. And then that was a big attraction to sort of the refined labs ethos and what drew me over there to like, I want to go work with other marketers that see it the same way I do and then learn how I can take it to the next level. So how did you hear about us like understanding that I can broaden the scope of how I track pipeline, especially for inbound has been a huge unlock for me in my career. And then also helped me, you know, best partner with like my CMO here at Kariba where we're very focused on demo requests and then pipeline is the top pipeline source for us.
And so it's about what are all the things that we could do to maximize that. And it's also brought my aperture that there's a lot of different ways to create demand. And I actually got the, I could say reward this year of taking on our BDR team. And thank God I'm not the manager for the BDRs because I would be terrible at that.
I inherited a wonderful leader who's been doing it for a long time. And now I just worked with this gentleman to kind of manage our teams. But I think another tool, I'm not plugging six cents because I think there's a lot of pros and cons to this tool, but the philosophy that it brings of, hey, there's a probably a better way than for BDR to just spray and pray their message to the masses. And I absolutely agree with that.
And it's a big challenge we face right now, Kariba, we're really trying to figure out what does the every sales territory's best fit accounts and whether or not I get a sixth sense tool to tell me who's the right fit and who's engaging on the website. I very much subscribe and I'm working with my BDR teams to figure out how can we carve up every territory so that the BDR and the AE know which are the best accounts to call into because even though we've been largely successful with that team in the last year, I just feel like to scale our pipeline numbers, that team has to be calling into the exact right people, but the exact right medium, we've got really good data with the team now, we've kind of evolved our meeting object, we know we're in a little set of meeting, is it done via phone, is it being done via email and we've seen some really interesting trends, right? And so I think the most important thing is a lot of the meetings are now getting set via email, which is good, that's automated and scalable, but the ones that convert the best to pipeline are actually the ones that are set via phone. So it's giving us some good numbers on how we need to go about setting these meetings and then also the messaging is the other big thing that we're looking at with that team is like, what are we saying to each of these folks to try to get them, especially when it's a cold outbound, but I guess the last thing, it's not only a tool, but a philosophy that I will share is that a big unlock for us on the Cribal marketing team has been moving the BDRs under marketing.
That happened a year ago, I can't take credit for that move. And for what's worth, they were under a different leader last year, but we saw a lot of success and just not only scorecarding our BDRs on cold outbound. That's something they still do, they're absolutely prioritized. I want to find tools and methods for that to be able to be maximized, but because now they're under marketing and they can sort of have the time and space to not just be hit over the head with a dial count and, you know, meeting quota, purely for the cold outbound outreach, they can now have that space to follow up with warmer leads, things like folks who attended a webinar multiple times or an event.
And I mean, the event space in particular has been very helpful for us because we have a large seller base and they don't always have time. So they'll talk to somebody in an event, but inevitably those things get slipped into the crack. So having the BDRs have the permission to give attention to those leads has been really helpful in growing our pipeline. You're up here.
Was there any tools? So you speak a lot about like tangible tools that you use and what are any resources as well, like that you found to be valuable just that had improved your career. Because if you think about the confidence that you've had to build, obviously to jump one role to the next is inherently to present that to the team that during the interview, right? There's obviously some skill sets you learn and roll, but any resources for listeners that you've had, this was a really good tool that I identified or used, or was it just all through kind of just the working?
I think that's what I said most of it has been through learning through my peers and my network. I mean, there are fantastic tools. I actually volunteer. The vault is a great place where you can go and get frameworks.
I think for me it was like Topo maybe back in the day where I'd be serious decisions where I'd get the complicated frameworks in trying to figure out like, all right, I'm not doing that, but I like the some tenets of this and now, so I think like finding like professional resources with document and playbooks is always going to be helpful. And I think what you have to couple with that is then expert advice from those that you've worked with before or that you trust. And I think a lot of that where we find that at scale now, especially with all of us, the best talent being spread across the world is through Slack groups, right? So I'm a member of three right now that I have that one of them is a little more broad.
It's kind of from senior marketing leaders where that one's interesting. I can pick insights from there, but the ones that are the most helpful to me are these intimate communities where it's full of just a man due to folks or even better. Like I have one that's just from kind of like 30 people that I've worked with or from other people's networks. And it's a really helpful place where we can go and be real and say, Hey, man, it's not working.
Like, what do I do here? And I think learning from others and what to avoid or what to try has been or even just validating that have this idea is this, this worth doing? Is anybody else tried this before? Those have been really big unlocks for me and at least just like learning to fail fast or get reinforcement that I should keep going with something I want to try.
Yeah. The ability to be able to ask questions. And I think that in itself is a skill set, like not having fear of being judged or somebody criticizing that you should have known that or don't know that. Like, well, I like to be an open to curiosity and surrounding yourself by a network.
It's a powerful lesson that I think I probably should have taken advantage of more early in my career, but something that I definitely value. Oh, I completely. Right. So smart, which we don't need to ever ask anybody.
And I feel like an older, I'm like, Oh, my God. That's the question. The other interesting source and then no, no, not everyone has a P firm, but I will say for every SaaS company that has like a P firm or a network portfolio group, those have also been good sources for me. And I've maybe it's tried to say, but I truly have found boards to be helpful.
I mean, they are investing in your company and they want to help you do better and succeed so that they get their return. And so like, again, losing some of that ego where I had a conversation just recently with ours where they're like, Hey, we've got some ideas for you on the paid media sign. Maybe a little bit on SEO. And I'm just like, well, your initial reaction is like, Oh, no, I'm.
Well, it's we're talking about and then, but very quickly, I'm like, no, like, especially as I got older and I have a more humble, right? No, I would love to learn what you have because I mean, one, it's twofold. It's like one, I might learn something new and find a way to ratchet up my inbound pipeline. And two, I'll come off as impressive because I've already thought through some of the things they have and I have justification for why.
But also they can connect me with other folks that work at companies of my size and I can learn from them. So it's I think not being shy, taking advantage of some of the whether it's your board or your best company, like with those services are offered, don't have too much pride to take them up on those offers. They're there to help. Very, very valuable.
Right. Learn from questions or manage expectations. Those are sometimes the best opportunities there to set that so you don't get asked a question again, at least in the first 60 days or so. Yeah, just for the while.
Yeah. So we kind of gone through like your journey, your career growth, you have some of the inflection points. Has there been a point or what was the lowest point of this kind of journey to where you're at now that you kept the kept you pushing forward or what was like the driver behind that force that kind of kept you? I will not reveal you with all of my failures because there's a lot of them truly so many failures.
I will just focus on two. But I think I think are probably good advice. I hope they're good advice. I definitely did not interview well enough.
Like, meaning I didn't press that company that leader enough. I was moving to Chicago looking for my first job. I looked for any demand generation manager jobs and was like, cool, I got one, like talked to the guy 45 minutes and said, Oh, great. Seem nice.
Like I can do demand gen anywhere. And that was all I did to scrutinize. And I found within the first week, I knew I made a huge mistake. And I think it was a little bit like I kind of saw the true colors of the leader, but then also the biggest part was I didn't do any research on like this company and what they did.
And it was in a really commoditized space. Like, I think they were truly hiring a demand gen manager because it was like the vibe in and like they just thought it would be a smart hire and just, you know, just know right away. And the best thing I did is that my initial mentality was you could do anything. No one, don't be a quitter.
I was raised that way. Like, but I was like, no, I don't win a medal for being miserable for a year and like sitting in this mistake. Like, so basically I like only once in my career, I know this, but I made a quick change really quickly and left that company and I will always be grateful that I did it professionally. I did it.
I did it. Critically. But I knew I had to leave. And then again, it is always informed every future interview I have that like, yes, even if you are without a job right now, and I know a lot of us, a lot of folks are looking right now, but that company still needs to serve you and it has to be a two-way fit.
So make sure that you're interviewing folks really deeply. And if you understand the goals, but they want a demand generation manager or director or VP to do because that's one of the other great ways to sniff out. Are you going to be happy and successful in this role is if they're like, oh, yeah, I did you get a bunch of leads or, oh, hey, we don't know what you want you to do. We just think it's a great one.
These are starting to add to your red flag list of things to avoid. So definitely that was probably the lowest for me where I had like maximum amount of Sunday scary. He's just like, did not want to go into work. And I'm glad I listened to my intuition.
I made a change. I think the other thing is it varies points in my career. I mean, I think somewhat a career out of saying yes to things. And I will talk about that.
And I think that's generally good advice when you're thinking about growing your skillset, looking for new challenges, like not being afraid. But I think that there's I've had a lot of different experiences where I basically said yes to too much, like literally just a project work, too many things. And I was excited to do them. I like to say yes, I like to make sure that my coworkers think highly of me, but it burnt me out.
And I was running on fumes, not showing up well for family and friends. And thankfully I had a lot of accountability partners present company included, right, where it's like, here's the boundaries that I hold. I think sometimes you just need that accountability partner to sometimes when you ask they give you that perspective, but also it's even better to find ones that will just tell you, hey, my observation is that you're kind of burnout right now and that you need to do something different and kind of share that perspective with you. Because I like to be good at work.
I want to do good at work, but not if it's going to come at the cost of my sanity or my personal and most important relationships. So I think that's one probably most marketers face because inherently we like to be busy. We like it and we get asked to do a lot of things. So holding yourself accountable to where your boundaries are.
And sometimes just saying, yeah, I can work all night, but I'm not going to stop right here and all that work will be here for me the next day. I'm not perfect at it still, but thanks to some good accountability buddies along the way. I found better at it. No, I think that's great.
And especially, you know, we kicked off this conversation, noting that we would talk about some things to avoid. And I think those are really good personal development, just for any career, not just a man-gen, but for any career, those are really important things to be able to find and avoid burning out and avoid finding a company that's such a misfit for you wherever you are. Absolutely. Let's take ourselves out of that hole a little bit and talk about some of the, the positives.
What are some things that you've learned about yourself as a marketer, but also as a creative and as a human from this journey that you've been on? Yeah, I think this is where I think we're going to talk about those as my mouth and say, like saying yes to things and new experience and having some self-confidence. I mean, this doesn't mean jump off cliffs, it's not for things that you know you will fail at. Like, I like to think I said yes to a lot of opportunities that came my way along the years because I had a certain level of confidence.
I'm like, I think I've got some good ideas in that space. And I'm even though I have nothing on my resume or past experience that says, like, great, you're ready for this. It's just saying yes to certain things that I think in large parts serve me well. And I think some recent examples would be even just in my current role of career, right, where we want to spend up a partner marketing engine and I have no experience in partner marketing.
But I saw it as a big leverage that the company wanted to do and I had some ideas about how I thought, what if we applied a little bit of a demand-gen approach to a very specific portion of marketing that I don't understand, like hire the right team underneath me that has the experience of partner marketing and can make sure I don't drive that off the rails and then I can, again, apply some of my strengths to it around reporting. How do we track the referrals that our partners are giving us, but then tie that back to campaign influence from a partner marketing perspective. Like, that just spoke to me. So I when asked, like, hey, is this something you feel like you could take on?
Absolutely. I have a hair of a plan and we're going to do it in a prayer, you know, but we're going to do it. And I think, well, it certainly adds stress to my life because it sits in unknown for me. It's definitely also keeps me energized, keeps me refreshed because I think also a lot of demand in folks when you get stuck a little bit, even when it's working great and you're seeing incremental pipeline growth, if you're just doing more of the same, it's really easy to burn out, especially if you've been in SaaS for a while because the playbooks kind of stay the same.
So I find saying yes is an important thing. It definitely helps keeps me energized and falling into any of those reps. And I think also finding ways to balance out yourself, like I made this point earlier, but I'll reinforce it, a balance of creativity. I think the truly the days of like marketers being one dimensional, I mean, I, there are some amazing creatives that like maybe they don't need to have a report and that's fine.
Like our creative director, I create as one of those folks where I don't need a report. So there's always a space to have kind of more of one than the other. But I think in general, it's important for us all to figure out if how to find the right balance of being a creative marketer, having that creative thinking mentality, but also the ability to report and speak intelligently about what your programs, what your creative campaign has delivered. So I think that's sort of the other thing that I'm constantly in search of.
And then also coach my team on how to like, hey, just because you sit on the campaign steam or because you are graphic designer, it doesn't mean I don't want you to think about what you're being asked to in a given day and what's going to matter the most when it comes back to the larger marketing goals. Yeah. I want to call up to something that you wrote on this outline when we asked for an episode goal because I think that sums up, you know, Evan's going to get into the future a little bit, but this really sums up a beautiful like button on what you've been talking about through the episode. There's no one set playbook for successful marketing.
The best marketing strategies are constantly evolving and improving and your best compass for how you improve results, lies in your data. I know with some smart shit. Yeah. Yeah.
I believe all of that. Like I said, and again, I think I saw this in my career. Finally, I was in every in-house role I've been at where you start getting asked some questions or you start being unsure of what you're doing and there's this moment of panic, this gut feeling we're like, I don't know what to do. And these are moments I really wish I was still able to find that's where I could type it.
Like, hey guys, what do I do? But I think in absence of, you know, an immediate slag to a trusted colleague, like always know that the answer to your problems lies in your data. And that like it might not always be easy to find, but it is there. And so if you're looking, and honestly, that's what everyone's going to do anyway.
So whether you know it as the place to start, or if you're like, hey, actually, I think I just did two at the problem, you need that data to prove what the problem is. And then also reinforce what your fix is going to be. I mean, we have a kind of a fun challenge that I can relate to this right now where it's, we have one region where we've been struggling to hire an outbound BDR, which is an important motion. And I'm like, struggling to find the right person or pipeline suffering.
And I looked at our data and I was like, because everyone pointed back to pipeline, we've created from a BDR in the past. And I was like, yeah, but I'm looking at our bookings data right now. And we've never closed any of that business. And so it's just a simple example, but it's really opened our minds.
And I'm like, we just need someone we don't need to cold out that because in Japan, this isn't like an important motion or a successful motion. And our data reinforces that point. So right now we're exploring other ways we could do it. But probably a good example of our data can be your friend and also help point in the right direction to the right answer.
I love that. Thank you. When you don't have the data, then you know that you need to find it. So that opens a can of worms for another project.
So it just kind of has nothing like a salesperson. Right. Exactly. Well, as we think about, I love asking this question kind of at the end, but more specific to what's next.
So when you think about marketing, what shifts do you expect are coming next? And how do you think listeners or people should prepare for it? Yeah. Well, I'm waiting for the listeners.
But I will go out, I'll profit two things. And then I'll tell you how I'm thinking about them. The first one is probably I'll top of mind for a lot of us right now. And that's like, what's my buddy?
And yes, we just bought a few AI tools. We got a few AI-enabled things. And I'm very down with the idea of like, AI is not going to replace people. It's going to replace people who don't know how to use AI.
You can debate that. But I found most of these tools to be very friendly where I'm focused right now is more in in our how did you hear about this form. So I'm hearing I'm seeing more and more. It's definitely not more than I get from direct organic search.
But I'm getting a lot of chat GBT, a lot of Gemini, of like, this is how they discovered Karibov. And so I think a lot of us are trying to kind of crack open this nut right now of like, is it the same algorithm as SEO? Is there something else I have to do? Like, what are all these points?
I don't mean if the listeners know, please, in the comment, like, tell me what it is. But this is something that a lot of us are looking at right now of like, how do we best sort of gain the system to make sure that we're showing up right now or showing up the best in these AI-powered search? What we're choosing to double down right now, which I think is good advice, is just keep creating excellent buyer-focused web-friendly content. Like, in absence of a clear playbook of like, oh, all I gotta do is get these backlinks and do this jazz, you know, like, part of this loving we can let go of some of this really like headache stuff related to SEO.
But I think if we can just have good content, it's getting traffic on the site, that's going to, that's how I'm coaching the team right now in terms of what they prioritize and how we ensure we show up. And also just checking a lot of it, right? We're doing a lot of searches on all of these engines to figure out like, oh, interesting, we do populate if someone types in who's the best liquidity performance vendor, which is a category we created, then we're sick, great because it's looking at our content to shape that. But then we're not in certain other areas.
So then it helps focus where we want to improve some of the algorithm that we call it, but like some of the how we show up in these platforms. Gosh, we're talking to this internally too. So I'm glad to know that we're not the only ones scratching our head. And I think you nailed the point though, at least I can offer like our perspective, it's about clarity and message to market and simplification.
So that was part of the big rebrand narrative shift that we pushed here as we relaunched. And I think you're on to something by like coaching that like simplicity of message that can easily be understood by these AI tools in order to regurgitate it back. And I think that if it's, if you're unable to kind of decipher or understand what's being communicated and obviously that's like marking one on one, communicate much clearly, but there's a lot of websites where it's just packed with jargon and that's hard to do. So I'm sure you and I will take this offline too because I'm curious about this journey.
And Beth and I have been talking about it as well when it comes to vlog. So we're not doing this creating what is treasury management. That's not qualified. And I don't need to show up for that.
I'll be like, I'm going to keep this over that. Okay. Another thing, let's definitely connect that I'm eager to hear how we're all solving for this. I think that's the thing for us that I'm hearing a lot of buzz about.
And I'm also interested in this is that I feel good about our current attribution model. Like it makes sense to me. We look at conversion touch. The thing that happened right before the opportunity was created.
We obviously do look at the first touch in the last touch. But even with what I think is a pretty fair attribution model, we're basically great. The demo request was the thing that happened right before. Does it matter that the A.E.
created that contact record two years ago? Like that feels right. It's still creating a lot of unproductive behaviors in the business where we're having to sort of re-explain the conversion touch model to our partner sales team and be like, well, this is why it's not going in this partner source and why it's going in this market source. And I can we all agree, like there's all these things that are happening offline.
Our partners consulting with the prospects definitely have a role to play here. I'm serving LinkedIn ads that don't get any credit necessarily. So all of these offline things are something digital, but just can't be recorded. Things are happening.
I think we as SaaS and B.D. marketers know that it's happening. But we're just still stuck in this sort of one way to look at attribution model. And there's been all this discussion which I'm here for about like, we need to look at just general signals, sort of what are the tools that can help us understand all the touch points.
And then do we tie it back to the company performance? There's a big part of me that likes that idea because I can look at sort of like this company pipeline growing, cool, if it is, and we're doing these things and I can see the right signals happening, I'm successful. But what I don't have confidence is the board still needs to be able to understand what are they going to double down on, what are they going to invest on. And in order to do that and invest it in the right programs, there has to be some sort of tie that to say, well, great, we're really successful in driving pipeline and closing one field out of the website.
We should give that team more money. But it's, and other things don't represent it because they're just harder to report on. So it's, I'm very eager to see, or I don't think it's going to be one piece of software or one person that solves this. I think it's going to be an evolution over time where either like the perspective of boards or of go-to-market leaders will change or we'll just keep living in kind of an imperfect world.
And we're going to have to also say, great, we're going to report this way, but I'm also going to educate my CEO and my board on this is another way to look at it so that we're not inadvertently killing programs and teams that are revenue producing. It's just not captured in our current attribution model. So I don't, that wasn't as concrete as I wanted to be. Like this is how we got to do it.
But basically I'm here for the conversation. I guess is what I'll offer up to listeners. And I think it's one we need to keep happening and that we will solve as a community, not necessarily. We should not wait for our software vendors to do it because I think it's a lot trying right now and I don't know if that's the way.
I think it's just kind of like that. I love that. Yeah. Yeah, it's erasing.
Yeah, exactly. It's going to be or not loud, right? Yeah, that's I just stop myself from getting because I love that it's being talked about a lot, especially in LinkedIn right now. But I'm like, but wait, but like, so what do I do?
What do I do? That's the answer we're missing, but we'll get there. I'm confident. Oh, Steve, this has been wonderful.
It's been so great to get to chat with you. Thank you for sharing your journey with us, taking the time and giving us such good insights on the evolution of your career. We hope that everyone listening will keep learning from your network, searching for the next evolution and say no, but also say yes. If you like hearing these journeys, make sure to subscribe and share this episode out to your network.
And if you want to nominate a marketing hero to come on and chat with us, feel free to get in touch. Thank you for sharing and we'll see you on the time. Thank you.