Unlock the strategies behind the marketing rockstar Grant Johnson, CMO extraordinaire, as he lays out the roadmap to sync marketing objectives with the beating heart of a company's goals. In our candid chat, you'll gain a VIP pass to the inner workings of successful marketing tactics, as Grant highlights the critical role of authentic management and team investment—a lesson he's learned over a career sprinkled with B2B tech triumphs.
Prepare for a masterclass on scaling businesses and fostering intellectual curiosity within your team, as we dissect the complexities of expanding product lines, navigating mergers, and acquisitions with finesse. With Grant's veteran insights and our discussion on Billtrust'ss strategic focus on midsize to large enterprises, you'll be equipped to chart a course for growth and innovation. As we wrap things up, I share my excitement for his upcoming tennis tournament, underscoring the importance of personal growth and the power of community—a perfect backhand to end a session that's as much about building marketing muscle as it is about personal endurance on and off the court.
More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel
Unlock the strategies behind the marketing rockstar Grant Johnson, CMO extraordinaire, as he lays out the roadmap to sync marketing objectives with the beating heart of a company's goals. In our candid chat, you'll gain a VIP pass to the inner workings of successful marketing tactics, as Grant highlights the critical role of authentic management and team investment—a lesson he's learned over a career sprinkled with B2B tech triumphs.
Prepare for a masterclass on scaling businesses and fostering intellectual curiosity within your team, as we dissect the complexities of expanding product lines, navigating mergers, and acquisitions with finesse. With Grant's veteran insights and our discussion on Billtrust'ss strategic focus on midsize to large enterprises, you'll be equipped to chart a course for growth and innovation. As we wrap things up, I share my excitement for his upcoming tennis tournament, underscoring the importance of personal growth and the power of community—a perfect backhand to end a session that's as much about building marketing muscle as it is about personal endurance on and off the court.
More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel
Hey everybody, happy Friday. Yes, we made it through another week. Congratulations to us. I'm thrilled to have a true rock star CMO and I don't use that lightly today to chat all things marketing with Grant. How are you?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great. How are you doing, Evan?
Speaker 1:I'm living the dream, but thanks so much for being here. Followed each other on social media for some time. I've always been intrigued by you and your work. Before we dive in with lots of questions, maybe introduce yourself a little bit about your background and your roles, both at Bill Trust and the CMO Collective collaboration that you founded so many years ago.
Speaker 2:Yes, grant Johnson, I've been a B2B tech vet for my home career. I'm a five-time CMO and I have just passionate about marketing, passionate about building businesses and helping others succeed. That's why I got involved in the CMO collaborative. In fact, I have a site called CMO Mentor, cmo Mentorcom, where I provide best practices, advice for CMOs and aspiring CMOs, how to get there faster, bill Trust. We help companies get paid faster. Speaking of faster.
Speaker 2:We hand over from order to cash for B2B companies and we don't sell to consumers, so we're purely B2B and we help everything with automating financial processes, especially in taking the order, generating electronic invoices, taking payments and getting paid, so you can run your business better.
Speaker 1:I love that. What an elevator pitch. I love getting paid in general.
Speaker 1:I think we all do Good stuff. We're going to talk a little bit about that, but maybe talk a little bit about your marketing experience and particulars. To me, it's the best of times, the worst of times story, with marketing and social and digital. So many opportunities, so many challenges. Where do you start? Where do you start when you think about growth and focus and where to invest time, effort, energy, dollars? Maybe give us a bit of your philosophy, if you would around that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the definition of marketing for B2B bets, b2b tech folks especially, is about the setting expectations of what marketing can do, because it's probably the most subjective of the various functions within a business. You need your code without errors. Are you balanced the books precisely? But marketing is very subjective. So what I do is, when I'm starting a company, at the beginning of each year, I align with the rest of the executive team.
Speaker 2:What are our key goals? We have various objectives we're trying to achieve. We're going to grow revenue. We're going to increase net retention a great one for SaaS companies. We're going to lower the cost per customer acquired. We're going to increase the speed to which we can resolve any issues to have great support net promoter scores.
Speaker 2:Then I think about with the team I have the budget I have how can I best drive growth, support these key objectives? I'll say, for example, that there's something like hey, we're going to migrate from X-platform to Y-platform. That's a pretty technical thing and might have to do with some Cloud. I can't really help that. But almost everything else from go to market, employee engagement, driving our presence as the market plays, strategic communications like PR and analyst relations and social, as you said, and digital savvy, all these things we can really help a market. So I prioritize and align marketing objectives to company objectives, team objectives to market objectives, individual objectives, a team objectives.
Speaker 2:So people have most companies these days have MBOs. Whether your bonuses are not, you're tracking management by objective and everything. My mind is very metrics driven. You still need the great creative breakthroughs. I mean, we'll talk about brand at some point. What I came up with that a number of companies. That I think makes a difference. You can't just calculate. There's those intangibles, but that's the general approach to whether it's the first 90 days or the planning for the new fiscal year.
Speaker 1:Of it. Well, that's a very succinct summary of your philosophy there. The other thing that comes across in your work and your writing is your passion for team work, for team development, which everyone pays lip service to but is harder to do in real life in terms of helping your team members grow and succeed and nurture their passions and mentor and all that good stuff. Maybe talk about that any advice or effective ways folks can be better at developing their teams.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you just have to fundamentally care about people and their well-being. I think COVID changed the world right. I've always been driven. You don't get to head of any phones without being driven. I get that, but I wasn't always as empathetic as I feel I am today. My kids are my number one focus, but on my team I try to connect with everybody individually, whether they're direct report, one or two levels, on a regular basis.
Speaker 2:Hey, how are you doing? I remember during COVID, like are you finding work? Like Bouncer? You're going crazy, not going to the office, you're going crazy with roommates around. You're trying to do Zoom calls. How are you feeling? Have you taken the vaccine or not? That's your choice. I think that's really key, then trying to take an interest in what drives that particular person. People have asked you in your management style well, if you're in trouble and your team's not performing, you're going to get a lot of my attention. If you're knocking it out in the park, I'm just going to go fast and keep going right, keep swinging it, whatever it is right.
Speaker 2:But I think you have to care about people. They have to sense that People have a good bullshit meter Like are you genuine? I don't know how to be anything other than what you see is what you get authentic. I think people sort of they like that there's no pretense. Sometimes during your career you're trying to prove something. If you can be yourself, there's nobody else like you. That's my best advice. And then you put together a plan for that individual to how they can grow and really people will come to you telling them like Chris, I want to be promoted. I said really what makes you think that?
Speaker 1:And I said well, I spend this amount of time I said well, why don't we co-create?
Speaker 2:You tell me what you could do, I'll give you guidance, I'll get feedback and together we'll look at the milestones and by the time you're ready to be promoted, people will think I'm stupid if I don't promote you Because you've been exceeding all the metrics or expectations. So I think a lot of times early in somebody's career and I'm not going to say whether you're Boomer or your X or Y Gen Z, it doesn't really matter you have to have objective evidence that you've made the next leap. And it's hard for some people to hear that initially, but generally people come around to it and you can get to that end goal with a good plan and solid, consistent execution.
Speaker 1:I love that. Well, you started with a bit of the warm and fuzzy feel good and right to the execution side, speaking of which you know, I know from your bio you felt many companies double their revenue not exactly an easy proposition to do multiple times. So what's what's, what's your strategy there? I wish it were that simple to summarize in a minute or two, but you must have to be to.
Speaker 2:First of all, I've been fortunate, I think I turned down some opportunities, that it's smart and retrospect. So I picked good opportunities. I have like a seven point criteria. We'll go into another chapter. In general, you're sort of thinking about the market, the management team, the culture, the customer base and opportunities and all that and how, how double again as an organization and it's not necessarily double overnight, you know. Sometimes it's taken a couple years. Some of this has taken four years.
Speaker 2:You know, pegasus and stumble, cofax, double silence, double, diverse, double, yeah, so I've had a few doubles and some have taken a long notice. But it's really determining what are the growth levers, and sometimes it's organic, sometimes it's through M&A and many times it's a combination of both. And where, where can we compete most effectively? So in some cases it's expand the product line, other cases going to new geographies, other cases it's, you know, really increased the cross sell, which is something that was quite successful, and inverse. We doubled in the first year we did cross sell, we doubled again and at that point the math got harder. So we only went by 50% third year. You know, as the base gets bigger, it's harder to double.
Speaker 2:But I think you know, stay in the course, measuring, being agile I love, obviously, all the tools that are the disposal of a modern CMO, the Gen AI and the tech stack and everybody's adding, you know, more automation and insights to their application, you know. So you measure everything and you put gas where it's working and you stop doing things that don't work and then ultimately you can increase the efficiency of both your team and the dollars that you put to invest and, you know, work cross functionally. Sometimes we're growing channel partners versus direct market. Other times we're growing one vertical versus, you know, mid market. So I think I wish it wasn't one minute equation.
Speaker 2:It's a lot of hard work, but having the right company with the right team, it's a good start.
Speaker 1:Well, said the other thing you've seen quite a bit of their mergers and acquisitions and we've all seen them in our careers. Some good, Some go sideways For other reasons. What's your take on making acquisitions work before, during, after and the impact on culture and disruption and change, which is never easy?
Speaker 2:I've got a couple of great examples for you. But first of all, I think that you absolutely should be. You know this due diligence and you're looking before, you're meeting the people you're getting to feel for, you're looking at, you know what are the issues that you're going to have to inherit and deal with. But I'll give you an example where it worked and you know where it didn't work. In white, white culture is just paramount. So we had acquired a company when I was at Covax. They were called Kapow and they're still part of Covax. Wherever Covax has now changed their name since I left, I won't go there, but I flew up to the Bay Area. We acquired the company and you know we had a blue logo and they had a purple logo.
Speaker 1:And you know they said, look, I don't want to be part of this Covax culture.
Speaker 2:They said but we're growing and you know we're investing in you and this product is going to help us. I want to go back to the start-ups. There was nothing I could do. There was nothing a company could do. I mean, I personally, on my third day in the job, I flew up to this company with just a car to try to convince them. So it's not going to always work. So you've got to make sure the culture like you know who are the influencers, you know what's the founder going to do, you know what were people's career paths that they all just joined or they've been there five years or cashed out. You've got to understand that part, because you're really buying the intellectual property and the people. The people walk off the door.
Speaker 1:So that's the case where it didn't work.
Speaker 2:In other case, we merged with the perceptive out of Kansas City and we were based in Irvine, california, one of the Covax. And you know, I met with a team. There's a lot of trepidations like everything's going to be decided from California. We've lost our autonomy, we'll have no influence. So I actually it's sort of a case study where I said you know what, I'm going to just rebalance the team. So this person in Kansas City manages this person, irvine, this we had Sweden. You know this person, irvine, manage this person, sweden, this person, sweden, and it's this person in Kansas City, whatever.
Speaker 2:We sort of blended the team and so we were all one team with one common goal to grow the collective businesses. And I had very little attrition. I think if I just sat there this is back when you used to go to offices, right If I just sat there on the speakerphone and said here's what we're going to do, guys, let's go, they would have read screaming to the door. But instead it worked out and I'm still in contact with one of those folks. In fact, I've mentored 15 CMOs and one of those was she was on the fence at the time and so that was a positive culture, but you're absolutely right, you need all the due diligence, the financial savvy, but the people you got to bring them along and they want to kind of be want to be part of the go forward business.
Speaker 2:Otherwise you know you want to determine that fast, so your fence sitters can really hurt you.
Speaker 1:Great point. Yeah, participation is key. You know, this is the question. I ask a lot of people with so many areas in marketing now to focus on so many platforms, niches, social you know I'm on about 12 different platforms right now. How do you, and how do you, does your team, decide where to invest your not just money, but time, effort, energy for optimal growth?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a constant challenge. I've got about 40 folks on the marketing team about the right size for a company with our revenue. I've always leaned heavily into digital. I was fortunate early in my career when my first CMO gig at Pegasystem from 09 to 13, things were just taken off. I had peers that were at HubSpot and Eloqua and Marketo and so forth. We're pushing the envelope with each other. Now it's given that you've got to be digital and more digital with Gen AI than ever before.
Speaker 2:We try to have a good marketing mix. Because we sell to B2B, it's considered purchase, there's a buyer committee, there's multiple people at different levels and you want to engage them. Some prefer to watch your short content, what I call snackable content videos. Some might read one of your white papers. There's no one way. Some will come to the webinar, watch it on demand or watch it live, come to an event, press, shake hands and so forth. You have to have the right mix. I do lean more towards what I can measure and what I can scale faster. I don't think I can add 10X events and get the same pipeline, but certainly I can add 10X of variety of digital tactics.
Speaker 2:We do all the usual things. We do content syndication, SEO and searches and advertising and retargeting and nurture streams. We just balance all that. I encouraged the team to experiment Last year. I had the team. My director of content marketing led this. We did 400 Gen AI experiments and we've now adopted 15. Because everybody can automate some part of the job. Sure, content writing is a lot easier than graphic design or maybe marketing operations, but there's new tools all the time. It's a great time to be in marketing. I think you just have to maintain the balance. I put my energy where I think it needs the most help, where I have the most interest. That's how I balance my and my team's time.
Speaker 1:Well said. That's a great model for all of us out here. Speaking of AI and Gen AI, I mean I feel in the last year I've gone from my little team of three to having an AI virtual team of 10 based on all the tools and the new tech stack I'm using, and it's phenomenal. I can't believe how much my life has changed personally, professionally, but in a bigger organization. What do you think marketing leaders job will be now in this new world of AI, Gen AI moving forward?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've always been one. You have to embrace the technology and you have to figure out where it fits in the overall equation and it can supplement, augment what you're doing, and so I had my team always tried new things and sometimes they'll come to me say, hey, we were using this, but this is better. Can we swap? Well, yeah, as it costs neutral, or maybe even save money and find a better tool. So we look at all our vendors roadmaps where they're adding AI so whether it's our chat or marketing automation or ABM platform or web technology and kind of look at what they're adding, what we can take advantage of, and then make sure we don't break something when you add something, and that's always something. When you've got a tech stack and you're connected to systems of record like Salesforce, you got to be careful that one change doesn't cause another problem.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I think.
Speaker 2:I tend to hire people that have intellectual curiosity as well and want to continue improving right Because our we're in a competitive market.
Speaker 1:It's a dynamic market.
Speaker 2:We've got to continue to raise our game, and so let's leverage technology where possible. We can only work so many hours, and I'm a big believer in work life balance. You'll come to work excited Monday, not exhausted, so you do need to take time.
Speaker 1:Well said. So you've been involved in all aspects of the marketing game, but it's different B2B, but also marketing to small businesses, midsize, large, global enterprises very different propositions these days. You know, maybe talk about the challenges of each of those. You know categories and are you currently at Biltrox, for example, serving all those different size businesses as well?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're currently not serving small business. I've done that, I've done B2C and I ran North brand worldwide back in the packaging and you could buy store downloading software sass, you know when you used to buy software.
Speaker 1:Wow, what are we doing?
Speaker 2:We're gray hair to prove that we remember those crazy days. I was part of the yellow box team, but anyway, yeah, so small business. In burst we had the inverse card. They had that, and so anybody could get you know card to give you cash back and manage your expenses two for one. A lot of their companies do that, like you know a Brexit, for example, and so we don't do that.
Speaker 2:We have a, you know, because we're getting help, helping companies get paid faster. We're managing hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of employees, small businesses. They're not going to generate enough to where they doesn't mean they shouldn't, you know, digitize and be, but they're not the best fit for our capability or broad platform. We call it unified, that counts, receivable, unified they are. And so we, you know, for us, the corporate or mid market and enterprise, what we try to do is, you know, determine what, you know what the key buying criteria would be. And we really start by selling the business value. A lot of companies called the as is and the to be. So we say, look here's, here's the problem you're trying to solve. If, once we work together because it takes people, process of technology, here's outcomes you can achieve the ROI, you know, payback period, wherever it might be. And we find that if we make the business value tangible and the prospect agrees it's not our calculation, they have to use their own numbers Then we get a lot of great case studies where we show that we dramatically shorten the day sale on DSO stay sales outstanding.
Speaker 2:We've improved, you know, time that takes to lower the days. We have a days to pay index that we basically aggregate billions of dollars of payments data that we've managed and we can tell every vertical, every segment like are you getting paid faster or slower? And if you're getting paid slower, hey, we can help you get paid faster with our technology. So you have to approach it, you know, uniquely to that segment and many cases to that vertical, so that it resonates. People like to buy from companies who have sold the people they know, you know in their field. And so the peer influence and our community and our reference program and our you know built trust insight that we're doing in April and in Phoenix Arizona, all these things make a difference to try to influence the buyer to consider us and the customer to stay With us, in fact hopefully grow over time.
Speaker 1:Nice Great strategy. So, beyond Bill Trust, talk about the CMO collaborative that you founded and built and nurtured into quite an interesting organization. What's the ongoing mission and how can folks participate?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's chapters. Cmo collaborative is a website. There's, I think, 24 chapters. In fact, I'm driving after this call to LA. I'm in Southern California, so there's LA, orange County, san Diego, which is big Patropolis, right. We have an in-person lunch and meeting and there's a lot of virtual teams. One of the reasons there was something called the CMO Club Salesforce bottom. Then they shut it down. The CMO collaborative was founded. I'm not a co-founder of CMO collaborative, I'm just the co-founder of the LA chapter. So LAO seems like I'll help get this thing rolled. I've been doing it for a decade. Really, the fundamental is you've got each other's backs. We're helping each other with best practices. We have monthly expert webinars on how to use Gen AI, how to grow your career, how to influence the C suite, and you can just have pick up the phone private conversations because, like most CMOs, I can't go to the CEO and say I'm stuck.
Speaker 1:Well, I could, and he would appreciate the fact that I was honest, but he wouldn't be able to probably help me brainstorm.
Speaker 2:But how about? Let me just get a couple of CMOs on a Zoom or Teams call, say what have you done here? Plus, you just set up one-on-ones and you've got each other's back. You're helping each other grow and achieve your goals and it's good to have that trusted peer in your network because you can't go it alone. And that's what the CMO collaborative we're collaborating together for the greater good.
Speaker 1:I love that and I love peer groups and it sounds like it's a real community versus lots of masterminds. People want to charge you money or charge you to be a coach or mentor Not always the best option. Well, so excited you got your big event coming up in Phoenix at Build Trust. What else are you excited about of the next couple of months that's on your radar personally, professionally?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, personally and thanks for asking I am going to my fourth straight Nationals 32 people at U of T. A tennis player in Orlando. I guess I could play again, which is great, because I'm not super fast but I'm super consistent and they do it age groups 18, 30, 50, whatever and so I'm at a 4.0, and so I'm training for that. I've got a lot of tennis buddies and then I'm going to go watch the semis tomorrow in the desert Indian Wells, if you're a tennis player. So that's the personal stuff. And by next year my third kid goes off to college, so you've got the whole story there Professionally.
Speaker 2:I'm excited about getting us to doubling Right. I've only been here a year. It didn't happen overnight and we've got a good team, we've got a lot of good strategies and product and we've just got the overall mindset how can we get better every day? And so I think that's what I'm excited about. Obviously, our customer conference. We called it inside the row. We went to four cities, we had kind of these 50-person gatherings, we had a multi-hundred-person gathering, but we wanted to do the bigger conference, the bigger stage. Some keynote speakers were excited about that. So yeah, it's a combination of those two things Never a dull moment, but every once in a while time to take a breath.
Speaker 1:I love it. Well, you really appreciate your passion and your insights and it was fun just chatting with the audience here for a few minutes. Follow, reach out and follow. Connect with Grant on LinkedIn. He's prolific and has just tons of great insights and comments and thanks everyone for watching. Appreciate your likes, shares, as always. Thanks, grant.
Speaker 2:My pleasure. Have a great rest of the day, you too.
Speaker 1:Take care everyone.