B2B Revenue Marketing: Be an uncertainty killer (podcast episode #120)

When this CMO's team proved her wrong about their ebook program, she didn't just accept it – she made them broadcast their victory to everyone. 

Hear that lesson – “let your team take a chance on testing it and prove you wrong” – and many more lesson-filled stories in my in-depth discussion with Susanne Rodriguez, Chief Marketing Officer, Auvik [https://www.auvik.com/].

Stories (with lessons) about what she made in marketing

• Be an uncertainty killer 
• Don't always trust your gut
• Clear is kind
• Lean in and listen on Zoom to connect and build deep relationships remotely
• Bring your best, most efficient self to the office every day to keep it moving
• Prioritize by business impact
• Let your team take a chance on testing it and prove you wrong

Discussed in this episode

Get Productive With AI [https://meclabsai.com/GetProductive] – January 8th at Noon EST. There is no cost.

Not Enough Lobster In The Ocean: Trusting their gut leads to 90,000% revenue growth at Mint Mobile (Podcast Episode #11) [https://marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/revenue-growth-podcast]

Team Building: Loyalty, relationships, pre-selling, and other keys to marketing management success (Podcast Episode #16) [https://marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/team-building]

A/B Testing Prioritization: The surprising ROI impact of test order [https://marketingexperiments.com/a-b-testing/surprising-roi-from-test-order]

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Transcript

Susanne Rodriguez: I love having my opinion challenged. And so when someone proves me wrong, like this example with Tara, I really encourage them to share their victory with the team. So we can create this team culture that feels empowered to take chances. Because, you know, we talked about earlier, I'm really arrax and, you know, this whole concept of providing clarity and being open and honest.

So just because I'm expressing my opinion where I don't I might not like something. I don't want the team to feel like it's shot down and we can go ahead and try it. So, you know, we so we celebrate what we call, proving Suzanne wrong when we have these instances where I like being challenged and testing new things.

And we really celebrate when, I guess I'm proven wrong.

Intro: Welcome to how I made it in marketing. From marketing Sherpa, we scour pitches from hundreds of creative leaders and uncover specific examples, not just trending ideas or buzzword laden schmaltz. Real world examples to help you transform yourself as a marketer. Now here's your host, the senior Director of Content and Marketing at Marketing Sherpa, Daniel Burstein, to tell you about today's guest and.

Daniel Burstein: There's a conversation you need to have, and you've been putting it off for far too long. Maybe with someone who reports to you on your team, someone you report up to, or a client that's just not working out. Or maybe you're on the other side of things right now. Maybe you're in that murky place yourself where you're trying to read between the lines, wondering if you're doing the right things and doing them well as my next guest learned, the discomfort of giving that clarity is far kinder than the chaos of leaving ambiguity.

By embracing clarity and killing uncertainty, she's helped her teams achieve more with less stress. Here to share the stories behind those lessons, along with many more or less than full stories, is Suzanne Rodriguez, the Chief marketing officer of UB. Thanks for joining us, Suzanne.

Susanne Rodriguez: Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Daniel Burstein: Well, let's take a look at your backgrounds. Everyone knows who I'm talking about. Suzanne has been a marketing events manager, Hoover's director of global customer marketing at SolarWinds and VP of marketing Demand Gen at Spark Cognition. For the past four years, she's been at Abac in 2021, the most recent year at accepted funding, having secured a $250 million growth investment from Great Hill Partners, and Rodriguez leads a team of 45 people in the marketing and sales development departments.

So, Suzanne, give us a sense. What is your day like as CMO?

Susanne Rodriguez: Yeah, my day definitely varies depending on the day of week. So if it's earlier in the week, say Monday, I'm likely meeting with various leaders in the business talking about the previous week's results. By the time we get to, middle of the week, say, Wednesday, I'm able to focus on more mid term, even longer term projects, things like upcoming product launches or SEO efforts.

And if it's a Friday, I'm able to chunk out larger blocks of time to focus on more strategic projects. And Fridays tend to be where I have a lot of my one on one. So I get to spend time with, team members, the people doing the actual great work to be done in marketing.

Daniel Burstein: Well, today's a Friday, so I hope you have a strategic conversation. And I know I'm not your team member, but this hopefully be a good one on one. So hopefully this fits into your your Friday set up.

Susanne Rodriguez: So definitely does.

Daniel Burstein: Awesome. Well let's take a look at some of the things that Suzanne has made and working. See what we can learn from them. I've said this before. I've never worked in any other industry, but I don't feel like they get to make things like we do, right? If you're a podiatrist or an actuary, you don't make things.

We make things. And the first lesson you learned was be an uncertainty killer. So how did you learn this lesson?

Susanne Rodriguez: Yeah, the, I came across the term, being an uncertainty killer more recently. But I learned this lesson a while back in my career, actually, interning at a now defunct startup. And, the, founder came over to me at the time and was asking me about a particular project I was working on. And as I gave him an update, he was genuinely surprised.

By all the progress I had made. And his advice to me was to, over communicate. And in fact, he was, you know, he said, communicate to me, you're going to feel like you're over communicating. Once you do that, do it again. Really emphasize this over communication. And at first, I was a little taken back because my, my personality is if I say I'm going to do something, I do it.

So I'm really well known for following through, and doing the good work and doing what I commit to. But it occurred to me that, he had no reason to know that. No reason to trust me. We had not yet built that relationship. And so, you know, it was important for me to be able to reduce his uncertainty about my work so that I knew I needed to proactively provide these status updates while we were developing our relationship.

And, you know, there's science behind this that people universally hate uncertainty. It makes them really uncomfortable. And so the idea here is that you're informed your stakeholders so well that they really will never have to ask for a status update, because that ask means are uncertain and, you're not providing enough information to give them certainty, which we know to.

Daniel Burstein: Know is so true. So I wonder now in your role, talk about leading a team of 45 or anything you set up in both directions, like how you communicate with your team or how your team communicates with you? Because I love what you're saying. I think I've read research too before. Like people would rather have bad news and no news than like, which is so funny to us.

And but you know, there are so many things we can do also now with technology, with dashboards and all those like passive things, because I know for me, I know I felt that way too. It's like, look, I get stopped and I want to keep plugging people like, how much do you tell them? And when does this seem like bragging and when is it too much?

So with your team, like in both drive, you set up something and how you communicate with them to reduce uncertainty and how you want them to communicate back with you?

Susanne Rodriguez: Yeah, I mean, we definitely have consistent ways we communicate. You know, off the bat, you ask me about what my week is like. And I mentioned Mondays are the days for reporting on the previous week. So we have systems in place where we are constantly communicating and giving updates. And we have a pretty robust structure there. I also would say that I have this lesson of reducing uncertainty.

I share, freely and often with folks on my team. So they're very much aware that I, like proactive information. And so I think that sort of drives that culture that makes it a little bit more natural for us.

Daniel Burstein: Well, let's talk about building that team and how you build a team. So yeah, there's lots and don't always trust your gut. And you learn this by hiring I know I've heard that that that saying like attracts like and does that kind of sometimes messes up when we're hiring.

Susanne Rodriguez: Yeah. And you know, this lesson in particular for me is really interesting because I have really good instincts and I really rely on my instincts and my gut served me really well, initially. So the, you know, particular, example I'm speaking to is around not trusting, not always trusting my gut when hiring. And so when I was at, SolarWinds years back and I started as an individual contributor and as I started building a small team, I was hiring people to do a job that I had done before.

So relying on my gut made more sense. I knew what I was looking for. I knew how, you know, this person might fit into team dynamics, but as the team grew and I started hiring, more and more marketers, eventually getting to a team marketing 20 plus products in multiple regions, I realized that I was really just hiring many bees or carbon copies of myself.

And what I found is that, you know, hiring people or that would approach the role the same exact way I would was stifling creativity. And it really limited our approach to trying new things and trying to do things in new ways. And, you know, the lesson there is, around diversity of thought and experience, which is, I found critical to building a really high performing team.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. I mean, I've heard if we all think like no one's thinking, right? And part of building that team is also you need those different skill sets. We need so many skill sets in marketing and sales to balance them out. But I do like I like this don't always trust your gut because I've heard the other lesson so much.

The trust your gut lesson. So I just want to ask, like, can you give us examples like, what are things we know? It doesn't have to be hard. What are things when you decide, I'm going to trust my gut, right. Because, for example, even, I interviewed Aaron North, the chief marketing officer and commercial owner at Mint Mobile, and how I made him marketing.

And one of his lessons was trust your gut. Like he had to learn that story because, like, when he was hired at Taco Bell, when he started working there, he said at Taco Bell, like it was a key leadership, I think, director role for him. And at some point he realized when when he was coming on there, he mentioned like, oh, we should do a lobster taco.

And they told him there is not enough lobster in the sea for Taco Bell to sell a lobster taco. And he realized at that moment, like the scale that he was dealing with, and it kind of froze him at some point because just how big the decisions were that he was making, because of that scale, until his boss brought him in, was kind of trying to figure out what's going on and said, like, look, sometimes you have to trust your gut, right?

And so I just wonder with that balance, I love hearing this. Don't trust your gut because we hear so much in the opposite direction. But what are the times when you're like, okay, I just have to trust my gut and go with this.

Susanne Rodriguez: Sure. And I would, you know, my qualifier would be, don't always trust God. I think trusting your gut comes from having confidence and experience in things you've done before. So trust me, I still rely on my instincts very often, particularly, and, you know, I've been doing marketing in this industry for a number of years and have seen different playbooks and, you know, just have a sense of my instincts will tell me, what will work or not.

And when I say, don't trust your don't always trust your gut around hiring, it's that you've got to be able to bring in some sort of systematic way of, doing things like hiring, you know, just for making it fair and, even evenhanded. So in no way am I saying I don't rely on my gut. I rely on my gut quite often.

I just sometimes have to be more deliberate about bringing in more of a system, as sort of a check.

Daniel Burstein: No, I hear you. And that that is a very good point. But I'm like, what are the times when you feel like you can allow yourself to to trust your gut? Just on the flip side, because like, for example, for me, like one of the times I just get this feeling in my gut when I'm in a meeting and people just make this assumption about the customer that they're just going to love this thing like that to me, I don't know, it's a gut thing to like.

I just a gut thing to go against it, you know? And I've heard like on the downside sometimes like, oh, you're not being a team player. But that side is like, look, you got to advocate for the customer. And so I just wonder, like, are those those things because I do agree with you about the hiring process. I think that is where a lot of us make a mistake.

But there is always this balance in marketing where it's like, okay, the golden gut versus on this other side, there's this group of marketers where it's like, if we don't have reams of data, we're just not going to make any decision until we know. So I wonder, like, as you've grown in your career, I'm sure your scale has grown, your authority has grown, the team size you have has grown you.

We just can't have data for every decision. So where are you? Like, okay, like this is I'm in Austin, Texas. We shoot from the hip sometimes I don't know, that's and this is a time I'm going to do I have any experience of that.

Susanne Rodriguez: Yeah. And you know, it's funny that you mention, talking about a particular campaign that your gut just says is really good or, not good. Is that, in my role, we're marketing to a highly, highly, highly technical user who I understand the user very well, but we, I don't necessarily have everything in common with this highly technical, buyer.

And, we joke on my team about the more I like creative, the less likely it is to perform in a test. So it's about knowing what your gut is going to be instinctually wrong or not. And that's just because I'm not the technical buyer that's going to react to creative, the same sort of way. But look, I can look at, data from a campaign, campaign plans, campaign strategy and just leverage years of experience where it's been there, done that.

I am careful not to shoot things down immediately because, you know, I have found I love to be, proven wrong. And I love trying new things and be able to, you know, take a different approach and test it out. But, yeah, your your gut is not always right.

Daniel Burstein: What we're going to talk about that time. You're proven wrong by tests of DNA. I look forward to that. And I actually I feel like I haven't heard that before of the like, like doing the opposite because because I've said before. So, you know, there's this dawn of realization that early in my career that I'm not a customer.

Remember, I was a copywriter and we, just straight out of college and like in college, I didn't, have any classes before noon if I could help it. Right. And so I was writing for, like, these, these, third, fourth homes and ski out condos and, like, Bachelor Gulch Village and, you know, Colorado and Vail. And I presented some campaign to my boss of, like, sleep in and whatever bubble.

And he's like, sleep in. He's like, these are the titans of industry. They're up at like five to see what the markets are doing in Europe or Asia or whatever and blah, blah. And it just blew my mind. I'm like, why be that successful and have to wake up? But the point of being successful was sleeping in. This was like my, you know, 22 year old self.

And I was starting out of college and then I had that realization. I'm not the customer. I have not heard what you said. I like the like sometimes realizing maybe you're even the opposite of the customer and you have to do what they don't like. Which brings up, I don't know if you're a Seinfeld fan, but that was a great episode.

You know the George Costanza episode. If everything you do is wrong, the opposite must be right. Yeah, I'm going to take that away. But you've got a very difficult audience, and you like a very critical audience. Maybe try the opposite of what you like. Maybe that's what they'd go for. That's really interesting. We have another lesson here. Clear is kind I like this, I think kind of bookending with this just kind of clarity of this communication you have.

So how did you learn this clear as kind lesson and where does it fall in your career in reference to the uncertainty killer? Because I see a lot of parallelism here.

Susanne Rodriguez: The it was this is a lesson. Also, you know, I picked up the phrase from Brené Brown, but I learned it a while back in my, career. Not at the internship, but not that much. Not that long after is, and it was when I had a leader that was, conflict avoidant and I would say, maybe even non-communicative and, this idea from Brené Brown about clear as kind is that too many leaders in particular, avoid tough conversations, you know, including honest, productive feedback.

And so in this particular example, there were there was a problematic performer on, on our team that our leader just wouldn't address directly with the individual and instead, you know, spoke to other team members. And really, what ended up happening is that it created a sort of a passive aggressive team culture that was a bit prone to gossip.

And, you know, that dreaded meeting after the meeting where all the backchannel communicate, action happens that was just became pervasive. And for high performers on the team, myself included, we were really distracted. And, it just wasn't the kind of environment that was productive and healthy. And it you know, the lesson I learned here is not just how important this clear feedback is for the individual, right?

Because so you're not holding them back, holding that person back from improving. But just as important is, its impact on team dynamics. So I've really taken this lesson to heart about honest communication. And, you know, this emphasis on clarity, because I really believe it's what's critical for building that trust and engagement on a team. Again, the, you know, hallmarks of high functioning teams.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. So I wonder, is there any, again, specific tactic or approach you take to make sure that when someone's falling behind, it's it's clear to them and you communicate with them? Because hearing you talk, I mean with the one on ones you talk about having in addition to the kind of two way communication you tend to have, it seems like you have a, a very systematized process, and it's not just kind of randomly happening.

I've heard this time and time again on how I mean at marking, especially people early in their career. They're like the most helpful thing to me was when someone gave me some very difficult feedback about things. I was doing bad and wrong because I learned how to approve, like we all know that. But as human beings, like, we just don't want to do that and then add on top of it.

And this is a topic we were talking about to a lot of times you have these remote teams where this conversation could be harder. So do you have a sense like is there any system or process or tactic you do to make sure this happens on your team?

Susanne Rodriguez: Yeah. So I mean, to your point, it's what we're talking about. Now, I'm sitting here talking about all these lessons I learned from getting feedback from others. And you're right, when you are giving feedback to someone, everyone wants constructive, productive feedback. You know as much as you like to hear, sort of attaboy. Good job. It's not particularly helpful.

And so I would say for me, it's just practice and building the habit. And what I find is that me doing this for others on the team helps, you know, it makes it easy for others to mirror my behavior. And so it we just create this culture that is, you know, open and honest and, you know, at Avic, we have formal trainings on, the right way to give feedback to make it productive so that people get in the habit of doing it.

And it's just built into, the core of our culture. And it's always with positive and content and, you know, given in a productive way. So it just becomes more and more natural.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. I mean, the other thing I've seen is specificity. So I remember early, Mark, I think that's what really frustrates people when they get negative feedback. I remember early in my career I was working on taglines. I just trying to and I just could not get these taglines enough. And, you know, and at one point my boss just got this big dictionary.

This was like in the early days for the internet was that much, you know, this huge dictionaries on his desk and just kind of puts his hand on it is like, yeah, it's in there somewhere now saying, but like maybe a little clearer feedback about why these taglines are off. There's a lot of words in that book. But okay, talking about working with people, that's a key thing we do as marketers in the first half of the podcast, we just talked about some of the things that Suzanne learned from the thing she made.

In just a minute, we're going to talk about some of the lessons from some of the people she collaborated with. But first, I should mention that the how I Made It in Marketing podcast is underwritten by MIT labs. I the parent organization of marketing Sherpa. You can get a three month free scholarship to the AI Guild and get conversion focused training from the lab that helped pioneered the conversion industry.

Get your scholarship at joint Mic labs ai.com. That's a joint mech labs Icom courtesy of Mech Labs AI. All right, let's talk about some lessons from the people you collaborated with. The first person you mentioned was Jackie Murphy, the former CMO at Avic. And you said you learned from Jackie from the way she would lean in and listen on zoom to connect and build deep relationship remotely.

So how do you how did you learn that from Jackie? Like, what did you see?

Susanne Rodriguez: Yeah. So, you know, to begin with, Jackie is incredibly charismatic. Like, she is able to just build. That's the sort of loyalty and trust with a team like no one I've ever seen before. So she can rally teams to pull off seemingly anything. But what I really learned from her is how she built all of those relationships virtually.

So, Jackie is the former CMO at Avic. She hired, onboarded, recruited, recruited me, all without meeting face to face. Or, you know, I didn't meet her face to face or anyone on the team. And in fact, when, Avic is now a fully remote company. But at the time, we were, still had an office, a Canadian based company, and I was only the second one hired in the states.

And at the time, the border was closed. So it was months and months before I even met someone in person. And I really watch what she did, trying to emulate her style of virtual communication. And she really prioritized these 1 to 1 meetings where she got to know, members of the marketing team as individuals and really, you know, fully connect, on zoom, always with the camera on sort of leaning in to learn more about people as individuals.

And I will say it served me really well in my career at Avic because we are now fully remote companies. So, you know, in my tenure Avic, I've also hired Ladd and grown a team, completely remotely.

Daniel Burstein: So wonder is so is building that relationship with your team remotely is important, but is building the remote relationship with your peers in the C-suite any different? So, for example, when I interviewed Jean Hopkins, the chief revenue officer of one screen, I one of her key lessons was to build strong CFO relationships. And, you know, just with others in that C-suite, too.

And she told a story of, I think, I think it was also working remotely during Covid about how I think it was like the chief people off chief, chief people officer or people ops officer had gotten sick. And so she just sent like a digital Grubhub, you know, to him, because they didn't all work in an office, you can't bring in chicken soup for someone.

So she sent it, you know, digital Grubhub gift card. It. And it made a lot of difference that, you know, it helped build that relationship because I worry when we kind of moved to these remote relationships, they become more transactional, right? You just don't you don't naturally go to lunch or talk over the watercooler or, you know, talk about a football game in the morning, whatever it is.

So for you, you I mean, we know we talked about building relationship with your team has building the relationship with the rest of the C-suite been any different coming into our and working remotely?

Susanne Rodriguez: Yeah. So I'm cheating a little because in the C-suite, we do a really good job. We get together once a month in person, traveling to be able to form those, relationships so that, you know, gives us a bit of a head start. But the same principles apply in that, you know, creating a personal relationship. So I, pretty much an open book.

So I'm, you know, an easy share. If not my husband might say an overshare. And so it's easy for me to come into a new relationship and be my, you know, full, authentic self. And I think just making those connections and getting to know people as humans, not just in a working relationship, whether it's C-suite on your team, anyone really, really helps.

And again, cheating a little bit. At Avic, we do a really good job of, getting together in person pretty regularly just helps accelerate that. But there's no reason you can't do that completely virtual as well.

Daniel Burstein: Right. And part of that, whether it's your team or the rest of your peers, is knowing what else is going on in their life. And you mentioned a lesson you learned from Deandra Garibay, director of digital content management at USAA, to bring your best, most efficient selves to the office every day to keep it moving. And part of that was because of she, like most of us, didn't just work.

She also had a life. So how did you learn that lesson from Deandra?

Susanne Rodriguez: Yeah. Deandra. Deandra, I like to say, Deandra, the lesson I learned from her is just how to keep it moving. So I learned this lesson, back when we were in an office, and I watched her. You know, her ability to just accomplish so much in a single day. She's highly efficient, but super collaborative, friendly, approachable. And if you really watched her, she's just fast.

She's fast in everything she does. She walks fast. She talks fast. She just moves fast. And you're right, she shared with me she had no other choice but to fit a lot of great work into our workday efficiently, because she had a kid at home to get home to, and when she got home to them, she wanted to be really present.

And so the way she does that is showing up every day, ready to do great work and bring her best, most efficient self to the office. And I will tell you, it served me well through the years. I now have two young kids at home and it it helps me always bring a lot of energy. And you know, come to come to work every day eager to do great work and, you know, just always keep it moving and keep things moving forward.

Has been a great lesson I learned from her.

Daniel Burstein: When we talk about managing a team, managing remotely, is there anything special you do to make sure some dependencies don't stop one team member from being able to, you know, produce something for a project when it's, you know, being stuck with another team member. Because one thing I I've noticed when you talk about keep it moving is when we went from, you know, we used to be an in person company to a remote company, but I was able to do so much more and I got more, so much more efficient because we didn't have the things that I just mentioned before were so nice.

You don't have someone stopping by your office. You're not in an open office floor, even though I had my own office is still open office and there's a lot of noise and that kind of slows you down. You know, you're you don't have all those things going. And the way I noticed it is, my daughter is doing remote school, and I noticed she'd be done at like 10 a.m. every morning or something like that.

And I'd be like, are you really doing your schoolwork? And she's like, yeah, dad. The funny thing is, like, like, I guess we do a lot of stuff at school in person. That's not really the work, because just doing my work, I'm done in like an hour or two, and I notice not not that I can do that quickly.

I'm like, wow, yeah, I am getting so much more done to working at home. But the biggest challenge is when you're like, working on this project intensely and you've got some dependency and relying on someone else and like, how much do you slack them? Or whether they're getting a meeting because you can't just walk into their office and see what's going on, you know?

Or like when we were trying to get a website, if I could just walk in with the devs and sit in their office for a while and, you know, going back and forth and QA and real quick, it's that that part is harder. So I wonder, you know, we talked about the social part. Is there anything you do to keep projects more fluidly moving now that things remote versus earlier in your career when they were in person?

Susanne Rodriguez: Yeah, and I do think a lot of that is, building the foundation for those relationships. So at Avic, we are a very slack heavy culture. We use slack a lot. And, you know, what I found is building a relationship makes it a lot easier to pop in and interrupt someone's day asking them a question over slack.

And it's really efficient and effective. And, you know, look, I'm in marketing. We have a reputation for liking meetings. And I would say we do have a lot of meetings where we are focused on building that, those relationships and trust. We have regular meetings on updating, on status of the business. We also do things like every Friday we have something that we call, all y'all where everyone shows up and we, it's really a time with the same sort of conversations you'd have just walking by someone's desk, or watercooler conversations.

And, you know, we somewhat formalize it and that we rotate and everyone has, a question of the day. So someone's in charge of bringing a question of the day to that weekly meeting. But it's a great way to show up and build those relationships authentically that you wouldn't otherwise. Get virtually. And then otherwise, I will say I have really, really smart people on the marketing team that are very skilled at using JIRA and project management tools that make sure nothing is missed.

Along the way. That helps a lot.

Daniel Burstein: All right, well, speaking about those projects, let's talk about how to prioritize them. Right. You mentioned you learn from Carolyn McLaughlin, the principal at the two. The four, the two prioritize by business impact. So how did you learn this from Carolyn?

Susanne Rodriguez: Yeah. So, I worked with Carolyn at Plainview. And she led a team that served a lot of internal customers. And I watched her just brilliantly juggle these competing demands for content and creative and copywriting. And she was very deliberate about how she prioritized the request. So she did so based on business impact, not who's asking first or asking the loudest or the most persistent and asking again and again, or quite frankly, even you know, the title of the person asking.

And, watching her do that has really served me well in my career, particularly, you know, now I'm helping to set, priorities for a shared services team. And so I think just making that your process from the get go of decision making, it takes a lot of the noise and distraction out of it. And, you know, folks just know that requests coming in to the queue on your team are, that, you know, determined by business impact, not by, how many times you ask me project.

Daniel Burstein: Well, you mentioned you had a rubric for hiring, and I wonder if you have something similar, similar for prioritization because, for example, when I've written about AB testing prioritization. Right. Maybe testing is something where a prioritization really matters a lot because it's almost like compound interest, like, you know, the order you test and when you get a lift, it can really kind of, lead to bigger results down the line.

You know, there are specific factors we talk about. Yes. Business impact was one that can be vague and you got to define it. But other things like, you know, build time, run time, all of this have to kind of kind of go in to decide how you prioritize. So I wonder for you, Suzanne. Yes, we talk about business impact very generally, but is there anything you can break down for us, any type of rubric or process you do to actually prioritize?

Susanne Rodriguez: Yeah. So, it's, interesting you brought up, website testing, conversion rate optimization is a big priority for us. And what we've started doing is we have this, we are focused on what we're calling the big swings. We've done a lot of testing that, and ties or, really just not they're just not big enough swings to make an impact.

And so we formalized our, testing calendar so that we are prioritizing big changes that have big impacts to have big results. It's exactly what you're saying, that you know, sort of it trickles down to every aspect. You know, a small percentage point improvement and conversion has such an impact, down the line. And it is it's probably a bit of that instinct that we talked about, earlier about when to trust your gut, about knowing what is a risk worth taking because, you know, it's a sort of using quotes here.

The, it's a big enough swing that it is going to be impactful. And when it's worth taking that, risk and when you need to be a little bit more guarded and deliberate, you know, I'll say it, obviously our culture is really good at embracing risk and, you know, being responsible. But as a marketing team, we are constantly trying new things.

And we certainly are not, a risk averse culture.

Daniel Burstein: Let's talk about that testing and try new things. Because you mentioned let your team take a chance on testing it and prove you wrong. And you learn this from working with Tara Warner, the director of Demand Generation Abac. So how did you learn this from Tara? It sounds like there's a really interesting test behind this lesson.

Susanne Rodriguez: Yeah. So I love to be proven wrong. And, Tara on my team was super bullish about this new e-book program and that I had really serious doubts about. Her theory was her theory was sound. You know, the the details around why I had a problem with it almost aren't important, but it was just something we tried before.

And I would say my instincts were that it was a, going to be successful. But, you know, her, she wanted to launch this program, bringing in people with a problem where we would give them advice on how to solve it, and then they would use that interaction with Avic, you know, and consider us for solving the problem through automation.

So like I said, I was highly skeptical, but, I trust Tara, and she really believed in it. And so we took a chance on testing it. And I will tell you, we're really seeing this approach beginning to pay off. And what I love doing is, you know, to I love having my opinion challenged. And so when someone proves me wrong like this, example with Tara, I really encourage them to share their victory with the team.

So we can create this team culture that feels empowered to take chances. Because, you know, we talked about earlier, I'm really direct and, you know, this whole concept of providing clarity and being open and honest. So just because I'm expressing my opinion where I don't, I might not like something. I don't want the team to feel like it's shot down and we can't go ahead and try it.

So, you know, we so we celebrate what we call, proving Suzanne wrong when we have these instances where I like being challenged and testing new things. And we really celebrate when, I guess I'm proven wrong.

Daniel Burstein: I love that that's that's great. And it's a great way to model the behavior for your team. But I think this brings us kind of back to where we started. So we talk about when you trust your gut, when you're not trust your gut testing is a way to to challenge your gut, if you will. But you also didn't mentioned in that beginning in hiring about like, okay, you have a specific rubric.

So I wonder what are the things you're looking for? Like where are you looking for diversity and where are you looking for, specific things that the whole team has to have because you mentioned risk. And that is such an example of, okay, this is either a team culture. It's not. And I had a similar experience where you talk about I love your experience because we had someone we had just hired on our team and junior writer, and we were in a meeting, so our CEO, Scott McLaughlin, he's kind of one of the forefathers of conversion optimization and testing.

And so we were in a meeting and and he asked this, you know, young writer, fairly new, what was his idea for this? And he said, let's put it into a test. And so we tested Flint Hill again, the founder of the company, father conversion optimization versus new writer. The great thing is a new writers and new writers line one.

And not only did it when I was, in Las Vegas at the Aria Hotel in the front row, I got this email from him where he said it one 15 minutes before Flint was about to go on stage and teach at our email summit, partly about AP testing. And so I wanted to give Flint a hard time.

And so I just said, hey, buddy, like, here's to give you some confidence on stage when you're going to speak about, like, I know so much about testing to teach everyone, like this guy, we just hired BGU and then what he did next really surprised me. I was just teasing him and trying to give a hard time because a great speaker, he said, oh, we got to show that.

And so 15 minutes later, like my email was up. And that was how we opened the whole summit in like front of a thousand people. Like, I love like your example too. He was saying like, hey, this is testing. Is it having people on your team? You really got to challenge your assumptions. So I love what you did there.

But then it also brings a, you know, round, like what you were saying is like, there are some areas we want diversity, but I also think there's some things that's like, well, the whole team needs to have. Don't know. If we get back to your other rubric, we talked about your hiring rubric and how you figure that out, how you kind of fit all the pieces together on that team.

Susanne Rodriguez: Yeah, absolutely. So certainly that rubric for hiring is varies based on the role. But I would say general characteristics that I'm looking for in marketers is, you know, first and foremost, creativity. How can you be in marketing without being creative and not just creative in the traditional sense, but, you know, finding creative, innovative solutions to age old problems?

And there's a balance of that creativity with also being analytical because we talked a lot about testing. But you have to be able to, put your creative ideas out there and have a way of speaking to whether, you know, your creativity, produced results or not. And then, you know, I really go for that, drive and, you know, winning spirit, this love, seeing a test win or seeing something thrill or the thrill of delighting a customer, you know, just that, that spirit, combined with, a desire for collaboration.

And then I would say, you know, bringing it all together with, agility, right? Being able to move quickly and, decisively, in a fast moving environment is a great fit for a marketer at all. Beck.

Daniel Burstein: And so there's a one same question I ask everyone at the end of how I made it marketing, and I might have inadvertently just asked you, you might have answered it, but I want to ask it again just to see if there's anything we've overlooked. What are the key qualities of an effective marketer? It sounds like you outlined many of them there, but is there anything else you want to mention to, like, you know, let our audience know about?

Susanne Rodriguez: Yeah. I mean, the only thing that is I did not mention is I think you have to love what you do. I wake up every day so excited about the work that I'm doing, and it just you can see it, it comes through. And, the work I do, you know, with leading a team and just being, you know, genuinely enthusiast tech, it's contagious.

And so I would just say telemarketers out there find something you love marketing, find something you love doing. Because it makes it a whole lot more fun and also makes you a lot more successful.

Daniel Burstein: I got it, I got to get underneath that and ask real quick too. You mentioned that you are so not this person that you're marketing to. So I wonder, you know, a lot of times I think B2B is, I don't know, a nice way to say it. We're in the attic. We're in the basement, you know what I mean?

We're not. It's not everyone thinks of when they get into marketing. It's going to be like Harley-Davidson and Porsche and stuff. So. But I hear this passion coming through for you. So where is that passion coming from? If you mentioned, like, you're the opposite of this technical audience.

Susanne Rodriguez: Yeah. Well, just because I'm not, you know, a network administrator that's super technical. And I know that our customers are smarter than I am. But that does not mean that I don't understand their pain points. And what their day to day life is like and the challenges that they are up against. So that's the difference where I might not have the most in common with our customer, but you better believe I understand their pain points.

And I'm really passionate about, the work they do and how, you know, it can help them solve those problems. So it's a matter of understanding the day to day problems they're running into versus, you know, understanding how they do their job. I think is the difference.

Daniel Burstein: You know, I always talk about, as marketers, a great thing we get to do is build things. But you do bring up I do think something else we get to do is understand people's goals and opportunities. And really help serve them. It's not just selling stuff, right. It's not just getting leads. It's really helping people meet their goals and opportunities when we're doing this.

Well, I think so. So thank you. So much for sharing your passion with us today, Suzanne, and all these lessons and stories and your career. I really enjoyed this.

Susanne Rodriguez: Yeah, this was great. Thanks so much for having me. I really enjoyed the discussion.

Daniel Burstein: And thanks to everyone for listening.

Outro: Thank you for joining us for how I made it and marketing with Daniel Burstein. Now that you've got an inspiration for transforming yourself as a marketer, get some ideas for your next marketing campaign. From Marketing Sherpas extensive library of free case studies at Marketing sherpa.com. That's marketing RPA Paycom and.