The CMO does not create a world-class brand–the product and the people do.

Electric is the fourth B2B SaaS start-up I’ve led marketing for. Three of them are located in New York City, and one of them is located in Providence, RI. I saw double-digit growth at one of them and triple-digit growth at two of them (I’ve not included Electric’s growth here). 

When I get hired, CEOs* typically look to me to drive growth. There are generally two pillars of B2B marketing which accomplish this: 1. making thoughtful investments like a hedge fund manager and 2. creating a brand ethos (both design and message) that speaks to humans.

The art of balancing the two pillars thrills me, but there are two fundamental reasons a company accelerates growth–and it has very little to do with marketing. It has everything to do with:

• A five-star culture. EQ must genuinely exist at the exec-level, not just IQ
• A beloved product. The product must be indispensable and delightful

EQ AND IQ matter

Treating your employees and your colleagues like human-beings matters. It matters a lot. I’ve never led by scaring people into hitting their goals, and I’ve never micromanaged their desk time. They are adults. I set goals, support them when they need help, make sure they’re resourced to do so, and get out of their way. There’s certainly a balance–you don’t want to seem apathetic, but I hire people to get the job done. When you care personally about your team, I’ve found that they would run through the wall for you, and this is where the importance of a 5-star culture is critical. It’s not snacks, or free lunch. If they know you genuinely want to see them succeed, then the sales team will sell more, the marketers will have more creative ideas, the product and engineering teams will build more innovative solutions for customers, and the customer success teams will actually care to solve their customers problems.

However, this starts at the very top–the CEO. She/He needs to be committed to treating their executive team with respect and radical candor. I’ve seen lack of emotional intelligence work against a CEO which resulted in 100% executive turnover in under a year for simply not treating their colleagues well**. A CEO that cares, will foster this in their exec team and that trickles down.

That’s how the world-class brand starts. Oh it’s possible to do so without emotional intelligence, but I can’t think of one company that has a toxic culture and a brand everyone loves. It may exist in the short-term, but it will not last. If you can find an example of one, please send it my way.

Do people actually need and like your product?

I can’t remember who first shared the product perspective with me as to whether or not you’re marketing or selling a pain killer vs. a vitamin, but in researching this, it seems to have been coined by a man named George Deeb in Entrepreneur (2014). This has stayed with me for a long time, because I found out later in my career that this is a critical question to ask yourself when joining a company as the CMO.

Simply put, does the product solve an actual problem or is it a nice-to-have?

The latter becomes a very expensive Sales and Marketing problem, because it impacts your go-to-market (GTM) strategy. For example, can you capture active demand or do you have to actively tell people why your product is something they need. I prefer the former, albeit this probably means you’re playing in a highly competitive space. I was lucky finding Electric–it’s a painkiller with low competition, because the problem we’re solving is hard to solve for and requires complex AI algorithms which not everyone dares to try. Simply ask these two questions if you’re unsure:

• What is the annual retention rate and NPS? If the retention rate or NPS is low, this will be a very expensive sales and marketing problem over time. Businesses grow through referrals, it’s key to the flywheel

The flywheel is the part that helps a CMO create a world-class brand. If people need the product and their experience has been delightful, they will naturally share this with others. It’s called word-of-mouth. Nothing new here, but to be clear, it’s the product that perpetuates that over time, not the CMO. I make investments to help amplify this, but the ground swell must comes from the product.

Notes:

*For the record, Ryan Denehy did not have “build a world-class brand” in the job description for the CMO he was looking for. Actually, he didn’t have a job description. He had both foundational elements (great culture and beloved product), and I asked to work for him.

**This type of turnover would not have been an issue if the functional leaders were not able to perform their duties, but this was quite the opposite in this particular example.