The Get: Finding And Keeping The Best Marketing Leaders in B2B SaaS

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:

In this episode of The Get, host Erica Seidel explores how AI-native marketing orgs are shaping up with guest Kady Srinivasan. Kady is CMO of You.com, the enterprise AI productivity platform that powers agentic workflows that deliver measurable business results. She previously held top marketing leadership roles at Lightspeed Commerce, Klaviyo, and Dropbox. She has been part of three IPOs. From her vantage point, running marketing in an AI-native environment, Kady shares her experiences, observations, and hypotheses for how the marketing org is changing – and will change – to enable using AI at warp speed.

You'll hear abou...

In this episode of The Get, host Erica Seidel talks with Monica Ho, CMO of SOCi, the leading AI-powered marketing platform for multi-location businesses. Monica reflects on her CMO journey as revenue has grown from ~$10MM to ~$100MM. She gets real about how she has built her adaptation muscles and her boardroom voice, and she shares how AI and efficiency have reshaped her org chart and choices.

Monica and Erica discuss:

How do you not only keep up with seismic changes as a SaaS marketing leader but also proactively confront them?

In this episode of The Get, host Erica Seidel of The Connective Good talks with Wanda Cadigan, SVP of Marketing for Cloudinary.  

Wanda shares how she delivers on the 'supply chain of revenue' in an environment where AI has joined the buying committee. From growing organic traffic when buyers arrive far more informed, to orchestrating smartly across PLG and enterprise motions, to building trust not just with humans but with AI-driven gatekeepers, Wanda offers valuable in...

How are PE-backed environments unique for SaaS CMOs? And what's the difference between the CMOs who flourish in PE-backed companies and those who flounder? This episode is required listening for any current or prospective CMO in a PE-backed company.

This week on The Get, Erica Seidel dives into the nuances of marketing leadership in PE-backed B2B SaaS orgs with guest Julie Zadow, Growth Marketing Leader at The Riverside Company. They explore Julie's role in private equity as a marketing operating partner, insights into aligning marketing strategies with investment firm goals, and the impact of AI on...

In this episode of The Get, host Erica Seidel explores the changing landscape of SaaS marketing organizations with guest Jay Roxe, CMO at Inriver. You'll learn about:

In this episode of The Get, host Erica Seidel and guest Ashley Deibert, CMO of Marigold, candidly discuss the realities of leading marketing in today's SaaS landscape.

Ashley shares how she's navigated seismic shifts in marketing org structures, budget realities, and the CMO role itself, all while keeping alignment at the center of her approach. You'll learn from her perspective on:

This episode kicks off the 7th season of The Get podcast. Host Erica Seidel introduces this season's theme, which is about how SaaS marketing orgs are changing, in both seismic and subtle ways.

We share a deep dive with guest Claudia Lee. Claudia is a CMO with a unique background in both partner marketing and product marketing. She spoke at a rare moment of reflection while transitioning from a CMO role at CertifID to a new CMO role at Celigo.

You'll hear perspectives and practical advice about:

In this episode of The Get, we highlight key insights from this season of The Get, which is all about the race to reduce risk in CMO recruiting. Host Erica Seidel and her guests delve into the intricacies of how CEOs and CMOs at B2B SaaS companies can make more-informed decisions before saying yes to each other.

Whether you’re hiring a CMO or looking to step into a new CMO role, you will learn a lot from these takeaways, which range from the practical to the provocative.

We discuss the challenges, fears, and ri...

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:

In this episode of The Get, host Erica Seidel discusses the intricacies and challenges of hiring CMOs in B2B SaaS companies. She highlights why the CMO role is particularly tough to fill, the high stakes involved, and the common concerns among CEOs and investors. 

Erica is joined by Peter Mahoney, Chief Commercial Officer at GoTo and author of The Next CMO. Peter has been a GM, CMO, CEO, and now at GoTo has recently transitioned from CMO to Chief Commercial Officer. He offers practical advice on organizational structure, fostering CEO-CMO trust, and managing expectations.

Y...

In this episode of The Get, host Erica Seidel explores the theme of managing risk in CMO recruitment, specifically cautioning against over-relying on a candidate's experience with a particular scale journey. Erica discusses the potential misconceptions and pitfalls when hiring marketing leaders based on their previous successes in scaling companies. 

While such experience can be beneficial, she warns that it doesn't necessarily guarantee the same outcome in different contexts. Listeners are encouraged to delve deeper into how these candidates contributed to their past successes. The episode underscores the importance of aligning expectations and understanding the nuances of e...

A good leader evolves over time. A CMO’s perspective will shift as they go from first-time CMO to repeat CMO, or to CRO or CEO. As they build experience, they are able to sidestep common pitfalls and react more efficiently to new challenges. At the same time, their perception of risk in a role evolves as they get more exposure. There's an 'arc of caution' that CMOs often go through, from being open-minded early on in their careers, to being able to recognize risky situations once they have more marketing leadership experience, to being more risk-averse and attuned to...

In this episode of The Get, host Erica Seidel explores the crucial role of decision-making in CMO recruiting. Erica shares common traps in decision-making, such as over-trusting someone else's due diligence, over-estimating an appetite for transformation, falling in love with someone's former company without looking at their specific contribution to it, and falling prey to confirmation bias, to name a few. She shares tips for making strong, informed hiring and career decisions. 

The episode includes a deep dive with guest Melissa Sargeant, a seasoned CMO, on her experiences and strategies for doing due diligence and reducing risk w...

The best CEO/CMO matches are ones where, BEFORE day 1, both sides collaboratively, intentionally, and explicitly surface the challenges they will face together and how they will overcome them together. That's not as easy as it sounds, though! 

In this episode of The Get, host Erica Seidel dives into the complexities of hiring CMOs in B2B SaaS companies. Drawing from her 13 years of experience in recruiting marketing leaders, Erica discusses the high risks and challenges faced by CEOs and investors during this process. 

She is joined by James Lamberti, Head of Go-to-Market for Georgian, wh...

In this episode of The Get, host Erica Seidel delves into what it takes to excel at networking and effectively work with recruiters, exploring programmatic ways to engage with professional networks. Erica discusses the best questions candidates ask recruiters and the importance of developing a personal Board of Advisors. She also explains the role of executive search professionals, differentiating them from career coaches and therapists.

Special guest Tracy Eiler, CMO of OpenSesame, discusses her recent experience evaluating marketing leadership opportunities, how today's recruiting climate is unique, the fast-paced pressure-testing playbook she uses to assess roles, and red...

Welcome back to The Get! It's Season 6 and the theme this season is 'The Race to Reduce Risk in CMO Recruiting.' We look at risk from the perspective of hiring and the perspective of getting hired.

In this first episode, host Erica Seidel shares:

Erica Seidel, the host of The Get, provides an overview of the key themes from this season. Erica runs The Connective Good, the executive search practice that specializes in placing CMOs and VPs of Marketing for B2B SaaS companies. She is known for recruiting the ‘make money’ type of marketing leaders, not the ‘make it pretty’ ones. 

This episode serves as an executive summary of the learnings from our fifth season, which has focused on the CMO and Board relationship. 

We cover:

Sandra Lopez is a marketing dynamo who has been in marketing leadership and general management roles in many of the world's biggest and most influential tech companies, like Adobe, Intel, and Microsoft. She recently served as co-chair for the World Economic Forum for Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality. She also serves on the Board of Directors for Junior Achievement USA and PureRED, she's an advisor for Cabra Sports, and she is the co-chair for Sports Integrity Global Alliance.

We discuss:

A good CMO/Board relationship entails both giving and getting. Elana Anderson talks about putting Board members at the center of marketing initiatives by making bold asks of the Board to add value to customers and prospects. She also talks about the anatomy of a successful CMO/Board interview.

Elana Anderson has been the CMO for Veracode, Vidyo, and Salesforce Commerce Cloud. She reflects on her experiences interacting with Boards at public versus private companies. 

Learn about:

Hear two SaaS marketing leaders from PE-backed companies discuss their hard-won learnings on working with Boards. 

You'll learn about:

Allison Dancy is a veteran CMO who most recently was C...

Listen to the honest dialogue between a CMO and her Board member, who have managed to forge a fruitful partnership together. Jen Pockell Dimas is Chief Marketing and Experience Officer for Telarus, the global technology solutions brokerage. Evan DeCorte from Columbia Capital is a Telarus Board member. 

You'll hear about:

Chris Fountain is an Operating Partner with Frontier Growth, the PE firm that invests in B2B SaaS companies in scale-up mode. He has been a GTM leader, a CEO, and a Board member. In his role, he collaborates with multiple CEOs and CMOs both inside and outside of the Boardroom. 

You'll hear about:

Kelly Ford Buckley has a career many CMOs dream of: She is a marketing leader who became an investment partner, developing a platform to accelerate and scale growth across Edison Partners' portfolio of companies. She then broadened her role into general partner and COO for the firm. Since she's been in the marketing leadership seat and she's been on several Boards, she is uniquely qualified to talk about the bridge between CMOs and their Boards. 

You'll hear about:

 Hello, and welcome back to The Get. 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. I'm your host, Erica Seidel. 

This is our fifth season! And in this season, we dive into the relationship between CMOs and Boards. How can that relationship go from fraught to functional and maybe even fantastic?

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Produced by Simpler Media

This season on The Get podcast, we have stayed close to the theme 'Solving for the Scale Journey.' We have talked with marketing leaders who have scaled… and, in one case someone on the investor side who hires marketing leaders for scale-ups. We've looked at different dimensions around scaling: Hiring. Budgeting. Aligning with the Board. Getting the balance of brand and demand right. Balancing aspirational goals with achievable goals. 

Obviously, every scale journey is different. Just because someone did a scale-up in one place doesn't mean they will be successful somewhere else. But there are some the...

Sydney Sloan is a scale savant! I talked with Sydney as she wrapped up her CMO role at Salesloft, contributing to a huge scale-up. She has since joined Zoom as Head of Product & Industry Marketing.

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 achievable goals versus aspirational goals and when to use each. You'll also learn about how to build organizational...

Khalid El Khatib is the Head of Marketing and Communications for Stack Overflow, which reaches 100MM people per month -- more traffic than the New York Times website! Khalid shares how his career path prepared him for this role, and how he has structured his organization to serve not just Stack Overflow's developer community, but also its paid SaaS products.

You'll hear about:

Cynthia Gumbert is the CMO of SmartBear, the ~750-person PE-backed SaaS company that is on a growth tear, serving more and more software developers every day.

Cynthia reflects on her transition from VP of Marketing to CMO. We discuss the difference between a marketing-centric mindset and a 'business first, marketing second' mindset. It's this 'business first' mindset that is key for a CMO in scaling mode. That mindset entails putting yourself into the CEO's shoes and thinking about how to help the whole company grow, not just how to grow marketing's results. In other words, change your...

It’s every CMO’s complaint: “Everyone thinks they’re a marketer.” With so many people outside of marketing weighing in, this can make the CMO job challenging. Our guest today shows how you can harness the emotional investment that others in the company have. 

Our guest is Justin Steinman, CMO of Definitive Healthcare, the healthcare commercial intelligence company. Justin joined the company to help fuel a scale-up to the $500MM mark and went through an IPO already. He shares:

It's not in our nature to move slowly as marketers. We like to act, move, go, and grow, especially when there’s a scale mandate. But there’s wisdom and value in assessing first, like just pro athletes surveying the field of play to let the game come to them. We discuss the formula for successful scaling:

We also discuss:

Kristin Hambelton, CMO scaleup queen now running marketing for MineralTree, takes us on a deep dive of budgeting for marketing during a scale journey. You’ll learn:

From a hiring standpoint, we discuss:

The CMO’s most important job when scaling? To create focus, protect focus, and seize control of the strategic planning process - not just for marketing but for the company as a whole. Here’s how to do that.

Join Erica and her guest Jay Gaines, who runs marketing at insurance tech scale-up AgentSync,  as they discuss:

What’s it like behind the scenes when CEOs hire CMOs in PE-backed companies? Hear from a ‘talent whisperer’ from a PE firm.

If you’re a CMO looking to work in a private-equity-backed business, or a hiring leader in a PE-backed company, you will come across the PE talent partner. Learn about the role of the PE talent partner in recruiting CMOs. 

You’ll hear about the soft skills framework Bryan uses to vet CMO candidates. In particular, listen for his definition of agility: not just being adaptable, but being PROACTIVELY adaptable. 

We unpack th...

Hiring great marketing leaders is not easy. Especially these days! The Get is designed to inspire smart decisions around recruiting and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing. 

I'm Erica Seidel, host of The Get. I run an executive search practice focused entirely on placing what I call the ‘make money’ marketing leaders -- not the ‘make it pretty’ ones. 

I spend most of my time talking with today’s most talented marketing leaders, and with The Get, I bottle up some of those conversations for you. 

This is the 4th season of The Get. The them...

This episode wraps up our ‘diversity-in-B2B SaaS marketing’ themed third season of The Get, with not one but two special guests on either end of the age/experience spectrum, discussing their take on age-related diversity in the business world in general and in B2B tech in particular. Our goal with this episode is to raise awareness of age biases and address them in our B2B marketing world. This episode is controversial but compelling. Don’t miss it!

Dwight Griesman is the CEO for Eye4Growth, as well as the former CMO of Forrester and of oth...

Jeff Winter is the Chief Marketing Officer of Rocket Software, a B2B tech company that helps companies innovate using the data and tech they already have. Rocket serves customers across the Fortune 50 and has a global presence. Jeff has had a prolific career including senior marketing roles at SAP and IBM before joining Rocket.

Episode synopsis

In this episode, Jeff and Erica talk about company values, how they can be lived by the marketing team and how there is still room to bring in function-specific values without colliding with corporate values.  Jeff also shares t...

Pantheon is building the world’s best web ops (website operations) platform to empower marketing and development teams to take control of their websites. Christy Marble, the Chief Marketing Officer of Pantheon, is a global SaaS growth marketing expert with over 20 years of experience leading all facets of marketing. Prior to Pantheon, she served as CMO of SAP Concur, and CMO of Visier.

Episode synopsis

Christy and Erica discuss building a marketing leadership team that does not compromise on diversity. They also discuss whether prior SaaS experience is necessary in a marketing leadership role at a...

Openpath offers cutting-edge workplace safety and security solutions though touchless access control. It is a hardware and SaaS company with about 80 people. Kieran leads marketing for Openpath and has previously led marketing at Belkin and Radioshack. He has been recognized by Forbes as one of “The World’s Most Influential CMOs 2020”.

Episode synopsis

In this episode, Kieran and Erica delve into the big trends in B2B that will impact B2B SaaS marketers and the work they do, in 2021 and beyond. Kieran shares valuable real-life experiences from his career, stressing that an agile mindset is the...

Concur is a global SaaS leader in travel and expense management. David Hsu is the Global VP of Marketing Data and Technology and has worked in senior marketing roles at IBM and CA in the past.

At Concur, he leads a global 30-member team with the mandate to support marketing with analytics, automation, martech, and project management solutions and services. His team balances both transactional, problem-solving work and more strategic innovation projects.

Episode synopsis

In this episode, David and Erica talk about different kinds of diversity that are critical in a global team...