LEADERS IN B2B MARKETING
LEADERS IN B2B MARKETING brings you peer-level insights into how senior marketing leaders make high-stakes calls under real commercial pressure.
We speak to VPs of Marketing, CMOs, and other B2B marketing leaders who share what actually happens behind the scenes: defending marketing spend as growth pressure gives way to profitability, deciding where AI actually earns its place beyond the pilot, and holding a clear position in a market where every competitor sounds the same.
If you lead B2B marketing at a growing company and want perspectives you can put to work immediately, this show is for you.
LEADERS IN B2B MARKETING
Ep. 8 - Leverage B2B Community Development to Reach Thought Leadership With Your Core Customers - with Rob Gonzalez
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A few years into scaling one B2B software company, its cold outreach had become exactly the kind of generic, forgettable email everyone else in the industry was sending. Close rates cratered. Once the team rebuilt outreach around actually being useful to prospects, win rates climbed higher than they'd ever been.
In today's episode of LEADERS IN B2B MARKETING, host Sammy Gebele sits down with Rob Gonzalez, Co-Founder of Salsify.
You'll learn:
1. How Salsify started building its digital DNA, and Rob's major responsibilities as CMO
2. The crucial role of the right customer for successfully scaling your product-market fit
3. Top advice on how to create and test valuable content efficiently
4. The evolution of B2B marketing, and why quality over quantity ultimately wins
5. How Salsify defines its own product category and builds thought leadership through community development
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Get in touch with Rob on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robgonzalez/
Rob's book recommendation:
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport | https://www.amazon.com/dp/1455586692
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Sammy Gebele and SAWOO offer a B2B community-building service that establishes you as a thought leader in your industry and helps you build genuine, human-to-human relationships with your dream clients.
Get in touch with Sammy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sammygebele/
More episodes and insights: leadersinmarketing.io
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Conversation originally aired on April 5, 2021.
Welcome to Leaders in B2B Marketing. I'm Sammy, your host and founder of the community. In the show, I speak to CMOs and DPs of marketing about the best practices and hard-won insights. Beyond the podcast, our community is all about connecting B2B marketing leaders like you to learn and grow together. Tell us your biggest challenge, and we'll personally introduce you to a peer who's lived through it. This will help you find your own way forward. And the best part membership is free. Visit leadersinb2bmarketing.com to sign up. And now let's get started with the show. Today we have Rob Gonzalez as our podcast guest, and I'm very, very um happy and honored to have you as our guest, Rob. He's the co-founder of a very fast-growing company and that he's gonna talk about in a second. So um yeah, welcome to the show. Glad to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Before we dive into the professional side of our podcast, uh, let me ask you two personal questions. Um, where are you right now? Where are you living?
SPEAKER_00I am living in the Berkshires in Massachusetts, in the United States. Uh, the Berkshires are wonderful, beautiful hills. It's very country, very rural, and I'm enjoying it very much. Um, so is it winter there right now? It is winter. There's I'm looking out the window right now, it's covered with snow.
SPEAKER_01Perfect. Can you go skiing?
SPEAKER_00Uh, you can close to here. We've had some mixed rainy days over the last couple weeks. So the uh the snow that was on the mountains and skiables is pretty icy right now. But in the next week or two, all the mountains will be open.
SPEAKER_01Perfect. So it almost looks like in my background here, I have some snowy mountains in my background. Um, perfect. Thanks a lot for that one. Um, what do you love to do outside of work?
SPEAKER_00Outside of work, I've got two little kids. Uh, they're four years old and and now one year old. So um they take a lot of my time. And then when I get free moments, I I exercise and I read, and that's that's pretty much it.
SPEAKER_01Um, what kind of exercise do you do?
SPEAKER_00I believe in uh weightlifting and high intensity interval training, so I'll mix those two um every day.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's efficient, very cool. And what do you love reading?
SPEAKER_00I it's a whole mix of a whole mixed bag. Um, I mean, traditionally I love science fiction, big science fiction fan. Uh but you know these days it's it's a it's a mix of a lot of nonfiction. So I'm reading uh Coming Into the Country by John McPhee, who's my favorite long-form narrative nonfiction writer. I'm reading a book that's a collection of essays from Derek Sivers, who I love. I'm reading a collection of nonfiction essays curated by Ira Glass, the host of This American Life Podcast. Um, I'm read just a whole I'm reading a book on how to take effective notes um that uh that walks through a system invented by a German uh PhD researcher that was highly productive in his lifetime. Um, that is called the Zeidel Kasten. Yeah, so just a wide range of books on a wide range of topics. I generally am reading at any given time about 10 or 12 books, and when I sit down, I'll pick the one that I'm most interested in and read 20, 30 pages and put it down. I might pick another one up and read you know 10, 20 pages and just go from there.
SPEAKER_01I absolutely can relate to that. Um, I do the same, and my wife tells me you are nuts, why do you do that? So that's that's good. Um, so now tell me about the company you co-founded. Um, what is Celsify doing?
SPEAKER_00Salsify was founded uh by me and two co-founders in 2012 and September. We founded the company to help brand manufacturers win on the digital shelf. Um, the three of us came from a company called Indeca Technologies, which invented search for e-commerce and was ultimately bought by Oracle for over a billion dollars in 2011. And we really wanted to do something else that was in e-commerce. And our observation was that manufacturers hadn't really been investing that much in digital. Uh, retailers had, like Walmart or Target or Home Depot, had been investing millions of dollars on their e-commerce presence, on delivery logistics. I mean, even back in 2011 and 12, they were already um along the e-commerce journey. But you think of like a Coca-Cola or a Levi's or a Mars or a L'Oreal or a Bosch or uh manufacturers like those, they were really digital back then. Uh e-commerce sales on Amazon and other channels were was was really a tiny part of their business. The vast majority of their business was still in store, the vast majority of their marketing was still through traditional channels like television, um, digital advertising, as uh as in through like Amazon advertising and and whatnot hasn't really been on the rise. So we founded the company to help them make that transition to digital, to help them build the digital DNA um and and ultimately win online. And that's what we've been doing the last uh eight and a half years.
SPEAKER_01Okay, amazing. And uh really interesting and crazy trip. You can just see by the amount of funding you raised. I mean, it gets more and more. So you you must be growing faster and faster. Um, interesting, right? You must be on.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's been it's been exciting. I mean, uh, it it's funny. You we started the business, and there's a certain amount of just I don't know, risk that you have to take in in doing it because the vast majority of the companies fail. My expectation was that I, you know, I believe that we were right about the market, but you can always be wrong about the timing or you could always mess up in the product. Um, and and so our thought was well, let's try this out and maybe it'll work and it'll be awesome, and maybe it won't, and we'll just go get regular jobs. Um, now we're eight and a half years on, we've raised over 250 million dollars, we've got deployments in over 80 countries. Uh, our biggest customers, like uh like a L'Oreal or a Mars, have us deployed all over the world. Um, we've you know, we work with brands in almost every single uh industry that you can that you can think of. Um it's just been it's been an amazing journey. We've we've really enjoyed it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's a topic we could have a totally separate podcast about, um, but let's let's stick to to us here right now. What is your job at Sify right now?
SPEAKER_00My job right now is I am the chief marketing officer of the company.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Um, so you're responsible to bring in uh what or let's ask openly, what is your responsibility? Because sometimes, I mean, it's generally clear what uh a CMO is doing, but it differs from company to company. So, what is uh what are you exactly responsible for at SACI?
SPEAKER_00So it at a very high level, the the way that I I I think about as a founder who's a CMO, um, we're creating a category, we're creating a new type of software product that did not exist before Salsify. And just like Salesforce created cloud computing, you're like you know, cloud cloud applications, um, uh, or uh HubSpot and Marketo created marketing automation. Um, we're creating a new category of software. We're calling it commerce experience management. And so, in doing that, for us, marketing has a particularly important role, which is to define the category through thought leadership and through community development. You know, we've got to actually uh create really, really compelling content that moves the industry and inspires people and helps support the champions that are trying to do the digital transformation within their companies that uh that we know is important and we know is possible. So, first and foremost, something that we do that that I think maybe not every company would invest as highly in is thought leadership for category definition and creation. Um, so I've got a large corporate marketing team that that builds content. Um, and we actually have we've got our corporate banner of Salsify that we put a lot of content out. We also have a uh spin-off organization called the Digital Shelf Institute, which is a community that involves people that that aren't even our customers, um, to give them a space to come together and share insights, share ideas, and we we we publish reports and thought leadership under that banner. So that that's one thing that we do. Um, another thing that we do, obviously, is the revenue marketing, um, which is common among most B2B companies. This is uh you know demand generation and pipeline development and things like that. Our revenue marketing team partners very closely with sales, and actually, the way that we measure them is not just in the handing over the leads to sales, but in uh are the leads that we're developing um actually turning into qualified pipeline that that converts. So the revenue marketing organization isn't involved at the top of the funnel, it's actually involved throughout the funnel and is measured on not just uh volume, but also conversion rates through it. Um and and that team also includes our our teleprospecting team, the the X the XDR organization that does cold calling and inbound processing and whatnot. Then uh we've got product marketing. And uh finally a new function that we're investing heavily in is community. Like I think that community is gonna be the core of successful marketing in the next 10 years.
SPEAKER_01Amazing. Thanks a lot for this uh very short, insightful overview. Um, now let's do a little thought game. Um, imagine you're the new sales and marketing leader of a company um and you found product market fit uh in your niche. Uh, what would you focus on first to scale fast?
SPEAKER_00Well, uh for me, not all customers are created equal. And you know, if you've really just found product market fit, and certainly this is true for Salsify, right? In the early days, we we started the company near the end of 2012. We had a product that was slable by April, I think is when we had our first paying customer paying us at that time $99 a month. Um, and so so it took us about six, seven months to get the product even in market. And then by the end of the year, we had a we had some more customers, and then obviously it would grow and grow and grow. But for for years, the customers were signing on board to a product that hadn't been in market that long, you know, that that hadn't had that much development into it, and that had gaps. And and we were we were first in our space. Um, and so they were willing to give us a break on gaps in the product, they were willing to give us a break on on bugs in the product and inefficiencies in the product. And so, my view is the first thing that that companies should do when they find product market fit is to really zero in on who their best customers are that are going to be the most forgiving of the gaps and try to find more people like that. Can you figure out what those people have in common? You know, I I think that a lot of companies have this tendency to uh try to target everyone who will eventually possibly be their customer with their marketing efforts, with their outreach efforts, with those types of things. And and that's a good way to get a lot of unhappy customers early. Right. So, so that's that's my number one piece of advice is the more intentional you can be about who your best possible customers are, who's the wedge um in the market that you can really form a nice community of loyal followers around? That is that's the place that you should focus as a marketer to start off with.
SPEAKER_01Amazing. Um, and if you think about the marketing funnel, the classic marketing funnel where you uh focus on on the one hand of uh generating leads and on the other hand of driving those leads uh from top to bottom, um, what would you focus on more?
SPEAKER_00You know, the number one thing, I think that good marketing for me is quality interactions. Um, good, you know, Seth Godin says this, right? Good marketing is uh generous, good marketing is a give, not a get. And where where I where I think that marketing can focus anywhere throughout the funnel is in teaching and education. If you've if you've got a product out there that adds value, if you've got a view of the world that you believe is true and that can be helpful to your customers, then the more that you give in terms of writing that down, in terms of instruction, in terms of thought leadership, in terms of education, in terms of challenging your customers to be better and challenging them to think about the future, uh the more helpful you are. And so when I think about driving throughout the entire sale, the entire funnel, companies these days are not just looking to transact and to buy something and have the seller walk away. Um, more and more these days they're signing up for long-term relationships, whether it's you know, software as a service or long-term alliances and whatnot. And so this idea that you're educating and you're adding value throughout the entire sales cycle is a signal that you care about them, that you're gonna be with them on the journey, that they're signing up for you not just for this transaction, but for years, and that you you're both gonna be growing together during that period of time. So, I my my view here is if you're if you're thinking about driving throughout the entire funnel, think about what's actually gonna be useful to them. And and test that. Create content, create collateral, deliver it, get their feedback, ask them if it was useful or not, ask them if they forwarded along. Find out what are the things that that have value. And the more, the more that you can create that's generous, the more that you can create that's a give, the more that you can create where even if the does the deal doesn't work out, they remember you and they think, man, those people were were smart, or those people were great, or those people added value in my life. Then in the long term, you guys will win.
SPEAKER_01Can you give us a hands-on example on um that just pops up your mind, maybe how you create and and test um new content that you came up with?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I'll give I'll give you uh I'll give you an example first of uh content that adds value, and then and then I'll tell you how we test it. I mean, so we've uh we created a data team at Salsify run by my co-founder Jeremy, who's our chief data officer. And one of the things that they've been doing is creating a data lake of information across all of retail and manufacturing. So we have uh just a cr access to a crazy amount of data of anything that happens online, a lot of things that happen offline across millions of products all over the world. And and that information is extremely valuable and can offer insight to folks that are in the market. And so one of the things that we've done is we created a tool where uh an SDR can go into the data lake and get products graded for a company they want to reach out to so that when they when they reach out, they can say, hey, look, we've looked at your products on Amazon and Walmart and Target and or Home Depot or wherever they happen to sell. And uh we found some we found some issues with your products. You know, here's here's your products, here's the issues that we found, here's your competitors' products as compared to your products and the things that they're doing well. And and you know, here you go. And at the end of the day, like, you know, we want to be able to work with the companies that we're reaching out to, but even if we don't, that that value that we've added, we put in work there, they can take those emails and they can bring them internally and they could make changes to their product pages and they could grow as a business. And we've helped them do that, even if they're not doing business with us, right? So that's an example of what I mean by being generous. It's like we're putting in work there up front to add value before before anything else happens. And the way that we can test whether or not something like this works is uh very mathematical in our case. I mean, it it might be it's a little harder if you're early stage, but um, in our case, we've got a relatively large SDR organization, we've got thousands of accounts that we reach out to, and uh numerically we can see what types of outreach get responses and and are open and uh and way whether they progress or not. So, what we'll do is we'll create something like that, we'll launch it to a subset of accounts, and we'll see whether or not the the response rate in those accounts is is higher than other places, right? So you can use something like that at the top of the funnel. In the middle of the funnel, uh it tends to be more presentation oriented. So so by the time you're in the middle of the funnel, you built the relationship. Um, you should have you should be developing or have developed a champion within the within the company. And you know, we'll sometimes ask them, like, hey, was that thing that we sent you valuable? You know, did you send it along? Right. And and uh, you know, not everyone will give you the direct feedback, not everyone has that type of personality, but enough of them do that you can actually hear from people what they thought they would what you what you'd uh they'd like you to do better. Um, another thing that we've done is I talked about community earlier. We created an executive forum under the Digital Shelf Institute, which has uh a hundred senior executive at billion dollar plus manufacturers that are in charge of digital that get together at least once a month. And what we can ask those people is this a useful piece of content or not? Is this something that you would share with your teams? And there are communities, so they'll tell us straight up if it's crap. They'll say they'll say, no, this is awful. Like this, or or uh yes, this is amazing. Um, could you change this? Or do you have this other data, or here's something that that I would like to see? And they give us direct feedback. So by having that community, it gives us a chance to iterate in a safe space before actually testing it out in the market. So so that's that's a long answer, right? Both in terms of giving an example of what what a generous piece of in uh piece of content or or give could be, and then also different ways that that uh we actively test it, uh test those types of things in market.
SPEAKER_01I I love it because it's it's different than the usual code outreach that you that you see nowadays, which is uh you WKC, it's a mass email, uh some little valuables are exchanged, maybe hopefully your name, maybe your company name, and that's may mainly it. And um, what you do is highly personalized. So someone takes the time, looks at um what you're selling on which channel, gives you hands-on insights and data points, even to your competitors and uh about your competitors. So that's that that must be reciting in much higher conversion rates, I assume. Um, can you give like um uh order of magnitude and how how much better this converts if you ever tried the the usual way of um mass mass emailing people, for example?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, we had um I uh I I will say a few years ago we were doing the mass email approach. Um, I mean it's it's an easy thing to stand up, you know. You you there's there's technology that makes it easy, right? Like you you buy a list, you get you get software, you put um SDRs on it, and you just blast away. Uh, and especially if you've got a relatively poor SDR leader where the emails that are going out are the same type of crap emails, like, hey, we're salsify. We were out we reached out to you because we saw that you run digital at whatever company. You know, we help companies like uh Johnson and Johnson and L'Oreal, and here's conversion rate improvements. And would you like to talk to us? Can we have 15 minutes? It's not exactly, you know, it's that's the that's the crap emails that that we were sending and that every other company in the world sends. Um so what what we could see with that email, and then throughout the funnel, was a real decay in uh pipeline conversion rates as as we scaled and as we were reaching out to more companies. I mean, earlier on, you say you just reached product market fit, and I said, well, then focus on your best customers. Um, if you're a small business and you're just getting started, your conversion rates often will look high because the people that are desperate for your solution are easy to convert, right? Um, the people that in like Jeffrey Moore's crossing the chasm example, the people that are the later adopters are harder to convert. They need more proof. Um, they're they're not necessarily looking for a solution. And and so when you start moving across the adoption lifecycle from the visionaries who are willing to try you out to the people that are more early adopters and then late adopters, um, your conversion rates are gonna plummet unless unless you're doing smart things to fight against it. So a few years ago, we were sending those really awful emails out. And what we saw over the last couple of years was the conversion rates at the top of the funnel and throughout the funnel really, really got pretty poor. Um, I mean, we we were uh I want to say to 2015, about every 10 opportunity, one out of about every 10 opportunities would close. And that number was substantially worse by mid 2019. And so we we had um uh this this is uh back when I took over marketing again. We invested really heavily in just cleaning up our communications, being more generous in our outreach, and focusing more on adding. Value back into the uh back into the funnels. And conversion rates are now higher than they've ever been throughout the entire pipeline. Um, now the market that we're in is, you know, we're manufacturing is going digital. We're we're in COVID right now. Everyone's had to go digital. There, the market is is friendly to um receiving help in terms of uh in terms of going digital. But uh but even so, you've got to rise above the noise, you've got to add value, you've got to give people a reason to actually want to communicate with you. And we've seen the uh the conversion rates go up significantly by focusing on those things.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's really interesting because um the usual mindset of um SDR leader or uh or or VP of SAIS is that takes more time. And so I cannot outreach to a thousand people, it's mainly only maybe a hundred or fifty or whatever, you know. But in the end, if if the bottom line is more and the interactions are better and you make more money, um, it's not only about the top of funnel. Yeah, it's also about uh focusing on um on what what helps you drive the white people through the funnel.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. And it depends on the business that you're in, too. I mean, there's uh there's a company called Viva Software Systems that sells to pharmaceutical companies. I know they have, I don't know, a thousand customers. They don't have a hundred thousand customers, they've got like a thousand customers, and they've got um, you know, they're they're a giant company, right? I mean, what are they worth? Tens of billions of dollars, they've got a couple billion in in subscription license revenue, uh, really high gross margins. I mean, this is just an absolutely stellar business. But they're only of a thousand customers, right? It's not like the world has a hundred thousand pharmaceutical companies, and that's that's uh kind of akin to the business that we're in. I mean, there's there's not five million manufacturers in the world, right? And and if you look at manufacturers at scale, manufacturers that have at least 50 million a year in sales, you know, there's not 500,000 of them. So on some level, if you're building an enterprise business, if you're you know a B2B enterprise company, there it's not a numbers game where you're just throwing mud at the wall and seeing what sticks the way you are with a consumer business, like a Google or whatnot. Um, on some level, if you're an enterprise company and you're targeting a particular market, you've you've got to make a lot of the shots that you take. And and you've got to be winning a good section of the market over time. Um, and there's not an infinite number of new leads you can put into the top of the funnel. So, so when yeah, when when somebody in sales might say, uh, you know, whatever, 100 accounts is not enough accounts for me to hit my number, uh, you know, another another point of view is well, 10 accounts should be enough accounts for you to hit your number. It's just a matter of working a little harder, right? On those 10 accounts. And the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but but uh but yeah, I I think if you're playing a numbers game where where the shots the the value of the shot hitting is very high, then it's absolutely worth putting in that effort to increasing the chance that the shot is gonna hit.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely agree. Um, let's go back to the one example that you gave about the CEO community. Um, how did you set it up and start it? Uh, and how did it change during COVID?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I mean, the timing was was extraordinary. So um I I hired uh Molly Schoental, who uh was one of the folks who ran Global Digital at Mars Corporation, uh, was an executive there. And she came to Salsify and is a consummate networker and knows lots of other VPs of e-commerce and manufacturing from lots of companies. Uh, and so in in 2019, we started running experiments of could we have little events that uh e-commerce leaders would get together and do something fun and then trade notes with each other. One event, for example, is we arranged for us a bunch of uh VPs of e-commerce to get a tour of an Amazon fulfillment center. Another one is we we picked five experiential retail locations uh around Soho in Manhattan, and we did a tour of those five locations, including getting the founder of Showfield's Mall to show us around Showfields and stuff like that. And so the people would come and they got the tour of those facilities and can can talk about it. And people were really it became clear that people were really interested in not in the events, as cool as the events are, but they were really interested in just talking to each other. Now, this e-commerce thing for manufacturing is so new that no one's really quite figured it out, everyone's making it up as they go. And the value of interacting with peers was seen as really, really high. The value of the events was seen as, you know, fine, right? And so coming coming into 2020, we thought, geez, you know, we should just focus on a peer community here because they're hungry for it. And and this would be really helpful to them. And we'll do it at our expense. And we think that uh we think that if just in the way that a rising tide raises all ships, if folks are getting together and trading notes, big picture, and we're the ones that are doing the connecting, um, it'll be it'll, you know, we'll win, they'll win, everybody will win. It'll be great for everybody. Um, so we were gonna do our first in-person event uh for with a with a heavy networking focus in New York City at the end of March. Okay. Obviously, that didn't happen. And so what we did was we immediately pivoted and said, we're going virtual. And Molly, Molly just did an exceptional job at this. Molly changed the entire program around from scratch, reenvisioned what what it would be like if it were fully virtual, and relaunched it right in the middle of March. Um, and it's just been just been hugely successful. I mean, she so she's she got a mix of guest speakers and she she got a really, really excellent core of a couple dozen executives to start off with, and people found it so valuable, they started inviting other peers from from other companies to come join. Um, and uh, and and that that's how we got it started. Um, so we just we created something that there for which there was a really detailed need in the market that that became clear to us in 2019 from some of the experiments that we were running. Um, and then we just invested in it uh to get the flywheel going. And now it's self-sustaining. Now, actually, the interesting thing about it is we've handed off the the directive of that that community to the community itself. So the community itself has a board of directors that directs how what the community events are gonna be are gonna look like and what the rules of community engagement are and how often they get together. And so for us now, we we don't really have to invest that much energy anymore. It's them running it on their own behalf. Um, and so we've we've gotten it to that point. And so now we're thinking, well, what what other communities can we spin up? So we're in the middle of spinning up a CIO forum where CIOs at manufacturers get together and talk about digital shelf transformation and systems rebuilds and stuff like that. We're we're uh starting up a community for practitioners. So we've been focusing on executives, you know, VPs, chief digital officers, CMOs, CIOs. But there's a lot of directors out there that are doing all the grunt work and your teams are doing all the grunt work. They want to talk to each other too. And and so can we create a space for them? So, you know, ultimately each one of these communities is going to follow that same type of model where we we start small, we start with a dozen or a couple dozen people, uh, we add value, and we you know ultimately we want these communities to be self-generating, to be able to run themselves, and and uh and I think there's a lot of potential for that.
SPEAKER_01Um if I were now the CIO of a company um and you just kicked off such an event, how can like how would it work for me? So I I get an invitation and is it like an online uh webinar, or is it like a a Zoom call, or how can I like can you explain to because it's it would be interesting to to learn how you do it, how you spin it off?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so um we they're all on Zoom from from from that perspective. So logistically it's relatively simple. For each of the communities, they they're interested in different things, right? Um, for the the VPs of e-commerce or CDOs, uh they really were just hungry to meet each other and to trade notes and um and see how other companies are operating. And so so that was that was relatively easy. All we had to do was create a space where that was possible. Uh for CIOs, the the needs are a little bit different. There's some CIOs have that type of perspective, but a lot of them are interested in knowledge gathering, right? And so for the CIOs to jumpstart it, we're jumpstarting it with a set of speakers, folks that are expert in various areas of technology that are giving presentations and that can that can seed topics for people to then to communicate with each other. We haven't yet got to a place where the where that forum is as as share out focused as the the e-commerce forum, but it's a different community. I think it'll get there eventually. Um, and so if you're a CIO, why would you come? Well, you know, you would come because the topics and the speakers and the peers that are coming are really interesting to you. You know, it doesn't cost you anything other than your time. And and it's and the forum has an exclusive membership where if you if you do come, you're committing to engagement over a period of time. So uh, and the reason that you're willing to do it is because you you know probably somebody who's done it and who's who's found value out of it. And and so for us, that works because you're talking about dozens of people at at the level of CIO, you're not talking about thousands of people, and and so you can you can really do the bespoke value setting um on almost an individual one-on-one basis on small numbers. Um, and so you know, just just I mean, for context, you know, Salsify has uh uh 800, 900 customers at this point, and we've raised over 250 million dollars. We've got offices in Boston, Chicago, uh London, um, our European headquarters is in Lisbon and Portugal. I mean, we so we've got we we're we're we're a material company, but we're talking about community forums that have 20, 30, 50, 80, 100 people, right? And and so a lot of these things, the numbers can be small, but the impact can be big. It's you know, it's so so when you when you ask like why would a CIO come, when you're talking about a group of 30 people that are CIOs from billion dollar plus companies and a topic that would get them interested, we can really we can really zero in on something that'll work there.
SPEAKER_01That's amazing. And what I like a lot is that it's it's almost like a startup in a startup, right? So you you have to test your way towards success and you don't build a fancy platform or buy something super expensive, it's Zoom. So you start with Zoom and a community and then you build it from there. So um amazing, really cool.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, I mean, I'm a I there I know there's I like I'm a software provider, so I I understand the irony in what I'm about to say, but there's there's fancy software solutions that you can that you can buy to solve almost any problem. And I I personally don't like spending money on software until I've proven that I can solve the problem and understand the problem enough to be even able to evaluate the software, if that makes sense. So, most of these things, like if I wanted to go out and buy a community management platform, which you know that's a category of software that does exist, and if I wanted to do it in Q1 2020 before having done any of this stuff, what the heck would I even be buying? What would I need it for? How would I measure its success? Who would run the thing, you know, and so on and so forth. So we're we're now a year into this, um, you know, two years if you encounter the early experiments that we're running, and we're only now getting a thesis on what scale might look like in this world, and only get only now getting to a point where I think we could start thinking about buying confidently. Um, and so so yeah, I I think in my view, and this is generally true of my view of tools, is that um you the tool you you know the tool doesn't solve your problem, you know, you solve your problem, and then the tool helps you accelerate or scale, right? And so that that's that's uh that's where I'm at. But yeah, we we we generally won't buy the tool until we until we do those things.
SPEAKER_01That's great also for me to hear because for us it's it's almost the same. So we are super small startup, but um we first basically build a war version with Google Sheets of what we do, and it worked. And now we build the software for this, you know. It's it's it's a similar uh line of thought, and it's amazing to see that it's that you you can and should maintain this line of thought, even if you're really going fast, and I mean you're you're big and um really successful. So it's uh it's cool, it's a kind of mindset that you can employ and that uh that you should keep, apparently.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, look, you know, we're in B2B marketing, right? There's a thousand software tools that you can buy, right? Or 10,000. I mean, it it's uh the Martech stack is ridiculously complicated. And I mean, you talk to I I'm in this uh uh CMO group uh with the Warburg Pincus team who led our led our series Series E. And everybody has an ABM software that they bought and sits on the shelf. Or has that or has bought or sat on the shelf. Everyone's got these stories of software that they buy and and it sits on the shelf. Um and so yeah, I I think that the the mentality of really dig at the problem on your own for a while before you before you look to buy software, I think is is is an important one and a good one, a good habit to be in.
SPEAKER_01So we come to our five rapid fire questions. Are you ready? Yes. Okay, so um we already talked a little bit about it, uh, but I asked the question anyway. Uh, what do you do to keep body and mind fit and sharp?
SPEAKER_00Exercise every single day, and I sleep at least eight hours every night.
SPEAKER_01I love to hear that because this whole I was a management consultant in my previous career, and it was like cool to work long hours, and I thought it's absolutely crazy. Doesn't make sense if you're paid to think you should have good sleep. So I love what you say. Um, your favorite business book.
SPEAKER_00It's not exactly a business book, but um, I think it's the most important business book written in a long time. It's Deep Work by Cal Newport.
SPEAKER_01Great. Um the f your favorite business leader you're following.
SPEAKER_00Ben Thompson from Stratekery. He's uh he writes a blog called Stratekery, he's out of Taiwan. I think it's the most thought-provoking smart um technical strategy writing that there is right now.
SPEAKER_01Cool. Um, who should be our next podcast guest?
SPEAKER_00Man, you know who I would love to hear you talk to? Uh, there was a guy that was on our board of directors for a little while when he was at Northbridge, Rick Fullup. Um, Rick founded uh desktop metal, which was just taken public this year via one of those SPACs. Rick is just an absolute master of a type of hype marketing that I'm not particularly good at, and and he's he's absolutely incredible at. And and there's you know, there's different there's different marketers that have different types of strengths, right? Um, like a uh David Cancel or Rick Fullop has this ability to do hype that is rare. And especially, I mean, where we are in the east coast of the US at Salsify, there aren't that many people that do that very well. It's more of like a West Coast thing to do the big hype. And so so a guy like Rick uh or guy like David Cancel would be just awesome to get on the podcast.
SPEAKER_01Thanks a lot. And what you say is interesting, it reminded me of of a founder. I know he said there's no one way to success, it's it's also usually whatever fits you uh in the founding team. So um yeah, maybe there could have been a totally different path for Celsify, but that's what your strengths are, and that's how you are successful. So that's what's working for you. Um, so last one you can directly address our audience. And um, is there anything they can help you with?
SPEAKER_00Anything that they could help me with. Oh man. Well, we are uh looking to do a lot more marketing in Europe this year. And we're we're looking to expand the marketing team in Europe this year. Um, so we've got our go-to-market headquarters is in London, and our support and services and general overall company headquarters in Europe is in Lisbon. And uh our focus has mostly been in the UK and the in the Nordics. Um, so anyone who's got experience taking a software product to the rest of Europe, especially if it's an enterprise software product um and and has experience doing that and wants to talk, I'm I'm all ears.
SPEAKER_01So someone you want to hire, so to say.
SPEAKER_00Uh possibly hire, possibly just, you know, if it's a CMO that's done this, that's uh that's willing to uh willing to catch up, I would love to love to talk to anybody who's doing that. That's it's a big part of where my focus area is this year is uh expanding the team and expanding the company in those directions. I think we're doing a lot of the right things, but the more that you can talk to peers uh who have been there, um, the more that you can you can anticipate potential landmines or or areas where you need to over overinvest more so than you might think um based on spreadsheet math, uh the the earlier you can learn those things, the better off.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, I love it. And Europe is definitely different than the United States. That's what we it is, yeah.
SPEAKER_00It well, it's I it's funny. I lived in the UK growing up for a number of years, which which isn't exactly Europe, but um but yeah, it is it's a lot more different than I think people people generally appreciate.
SPEAKER_01And where can people get in touch with you or reach out to you?
SPEAKER_00I am on LinkedIn. I'm Rob Gonzalez. Uh I'm a bald guy, so if you're searching for Rob Gonzales' and you find a bald guy I'm on there, that's that's generally the easiest place to get in touch.
SPEAKER_01Thanks a lot. That's it. Uh, amazing talk, a lot of insights. Um, it was a pleasure to have you as a guest.
SPEAKER_00Thanks so much for having me. I enjoyed it.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for listening to Leaders in B2B Marketing. To learn from and grow with fellow B2B marketing leaders, join our community. Tell us your biggest challenge, and we'll personally introduce you to a peer who's lived through it. This will help you find your own way forward. And the best part membership is free. Visit leadersinb2bmarketing.com to sign up. See you soon.
