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I want my customers to get promoted.
Someone has to put their reputation behind choosing our software. I want to help that person show their boss why it was a good decision.
And as marketeringleaders, I think it's critical for us to ensure we drive this mentality across our orgs.
So @GamacP and @DemandDarrell were kind enough to host me on @humansofmartech Podcast to share how I’ve approached this at Amplitude and MoEngage.
The sale is where we start having to prove them right.
youtube.com/watch?v=Di-pkR-_…
4 rules I used for picking my next marketing job:
1. Don't get too comfortable. With how fast marketing is changing, comfort is mortgaging your future for the present.
2. Go where the whole company is pushing on new tools. Engineering, product, and sales too. One department doing it alone isn't enough.
3. Be clear on where the tools stop and taste and decision-making take over. That part comes from time with customers, and it's hard to copy.
4. Pick a mission that actually fuels you, so going above and beyond means something.
Which one did you skip last time?
Judging big marketing bets quarter by quarter is a scam you run on yourself.
Big ideas almost always look wrong on spreadsheets. Early on they show up as cost without proof. They need time to land and to earn trust, and before that all you see is spend.
The pressure is reasonable. Boards want confidence, finance wants control, and leadership wants to know what a dollar buys next quarter. But asking marketing to prove a big idea in one quarter is like telling a pharma company to invent a blockbuster drug on a deadline. You accept a lot of misses because the one that works pays for everything.
So teams fund the safe stuff that justifies itself right away, and the ideas that could have mattered most get cut. Squeeze the variance out and the upside goes with it.
Protecting those few bets, before they look reasonable, is the CMO's job.
This is why I love early stage: Easy wins are forgettable. Hard ones change you.
Do the hard shit, not because it's fun, but because the win actually means something.
And honestly, the stuff I'm proudest of was never that easy. It's what I bled for and broke me a bit.
3 org chart mistakes killing your team's customer sense:
1. Thinking it starts with the org chart. Who owns demand, where PMM sits, how brand works with SDRs. Those calls matter, but everyone has to understand the customer no matter who owns what.
2. Letting brand and design off the hook. Your audience might be on Instagram while your budget sits on LinkedIn. Brand often spots that gap first, so PMM needs to work with them.
3. Building a team that's afraid to talk to customers. Customers tell you which routes not to take as much as which ones to take.
Which of the 3 is your team making right now?
Hot take: most of a marketing leader's job is getting out of the way.
From the outside it looks like sitting in the rooms and making the call. Most of it is making sure your team has what it needs, and knowing what your boss needs from marketing, like pipeline and brand.
It gets harder as you get more senior. More people means more tradeoffs, and your time turns into the scarce resource. You have to decide where your energy matters and where the team should carry it.
When did you last ask your team where you're in the way?
Steal my copy review checklist. It's for the whole team, not only the writers.
If one person is the only one who can spot bad copy, every review bottlenecks on them. You get decks that sound impressive and say nothing, and "this looks fine" when it clearly isn't. Usually the team has the talent. What's missing is taste.
What I train people to check:
1. Does it read like a person talking? Write more conversationally than feels safe.
2. Verbs over adjectives. Action carries meaning better than decoration.
3. Short, simple words. Nobody should have to work to understand you.
4. Does it need to persuade, or just state the fact and let the answer get obvious?
Then show examples that work and say why. Over time people start to feel it. They read a line and know when it's trying too hard.
Enterprise marketing in 30 seconds.
In enterprise, the products are going to be 95% the same. What's different is how you deliver the value and tell the story. I've run on 3 fundamentals across a few companies:
1. Understand the customer's problem well enough to talk about it with credibility. Market the problem.
2. Educate them on that problem, with or without you, with enough insight that they trust you.
3. Make them feel something in how you deliver it, so they think of you as a partner instead of another vendor.
Skip these and you'll spend money left and right without knowing what your team is or isn't doing.
If you only read one thing before your next late-stage deal, make it this.
Your buyer has to work there after you close. Every implementation delay becomes something they have to explain.
The sale is where you start having to prove them right. I'd take that seriously before sending another feature comparison.
Everyone's sleeping on the second sale.
From the Acquired episode on Ferrari: about 80% of new Ferraris are earmarked for people who already own one. That leaves fewer than 3,000 new customers buying in a given year.
The entry rung is usually a used Ferrari. Dealers keep 100% of the economics on those resales, so they're paid to recruit future owners. Ferrari decides centrally who gets each new car, and the supercar and Icona invites go to people who own at least 10.
So the business is mostly selling the next car to someone who already bought one.
How much of your marketing plan is aimed at people who already said yes?
If I were scaling a company from 50 to 200 people today, the first thing I'd question is the playbook that got us to 50.
What worked early usually worked because of who you were selling to. Early buyers already understood the space. They moved fast, put up with rough edges, and needed less explaining.
Later buyers show up on different channels, trust different sources, and take longer to decide. The language that landed with the first group falls flat.
So when pipeline slows and the exec team starts asking marketing hard questions, the instinct is to push harder on what worked. I'd spend that energy finding out where the next buyers hang out, how they learn, and what makes them trust someone.
Who's your next buyer, and where do they go for answers?
How I got my team through their first attempt in 15 minutes.
We sat down and made posters together with AI. Me included, figuring it out next to them.
Your team should get to watch you learn too. Helping people through that first attempt is part of my job.
There are 2 types of marketing-to-sales handoffs.
In the good kind, sales already knows why the buyer raised their hand.
In the bad kind, the buyer repeats everything they told marketing, and the rep burns the first 20 minutes rediscovering it. That's a trust tax, and you collect it on the first call.
I've seen it kill pipeline at 3 different companies. Which kind is yours?
My planning playbook. Before every quarterly plan, I tell the team 4 things they can expect from me and from each other.
1. We market the customer's problems. That takes time with customers, and it's non-negotiable.
2. We take full ownership. The job's not done till the job's done. A customer saying yes to a case study doesn't get you off the hook if it never gets published. Find a way to get it out.
3. We own distribution. Where is the audience, and how does the work actually reach them? If we don't know, we go find out.
4. We keep a growth mindset. Talk to customers, analysts, and influencers. Test campaigns before they go big. Don't put anything out you haven't tried to de-risk.
When the team knows what they owe each other, there's a lot less friction.
You've been sold a lie by your attribution report.
It can talk you into cutting something that worked. Before I move budget, I want to know what happened between the first interaction and the sale.
What's the last channel you almost cut because the report said so?
I wish I knew this sooner: experimentation dies first in calendars.
Leaders say they want experiments, then plan every hour of the team around delivery. With no slack in the system, new ideas stop showing up, and the conclusion is usually that the team lacks creativity. Teams respond to the conditions you give them.
When you do give them the time, be honest about the math. Maybe 3 out of 10 new things they try will work. The rest fail. If you praise the wins and pick apart the misses, people stop taking risks and you never get the 3.
So where is the slack on your team's calendar this quarter?
Kind of makes you think one step back on the touch ID, two step backs on the camera, but four steps forward on the foldable design and usability. Very curious how this plays into day-to-day life.
iPhone Duo: First impressions from someone who’s been using it for a week!
The good:
• “Best foldable by far.”
• The speakers are incredible.
• One of the biggest surprises is typing on the unfolded screen in portrait mode. The keyboard is so comfortable that he says he could write 5000 word essays on it.
The bad:
• Touch ID feels like a real step backward.
• Most apps look terrible and need updates.
• The cameras are a downgrade. (compared to the iPhone 18 Pro Max?)
What’s interesting is that he’s now using the iPhone Duo 90% of the time, switching back to his iPhone 18 Pro Max for the remaining 10%. Apple’s support for using two iPhones with one SIM makes this much easier.
One more interesting detail is that he believes many people will end up removing the inner display’s nano-texture layer, which he describes as a peelable screen protector.
Overall, despite the compromises, he considers it the best foldable he’s ever used.
I've run marketing staff meetings for years. Here's what actually works: asking the team what they get out of them.
Last time I asked, the feedback on our Friday meeting was blunt. It felt like we were wasting 45 minutes with no clear agenda.
So we split the jobs. Monday is execution and details. Friday looks back at the week: what got done, what didn't, the metrics, and what next month looks like.
That was not what I thought the team wanted. As the team grows, I ask again every few quarters.
When did you last ask your team what your meetings are worth to them?
Some advice that took me years to learn: a marketing leader has to be a shit umbrella.
Everyone has opinions on marketing, because words are cheap and everyone has access to them.
Your team can't absorb all of that and still ship. So you take the hit. Shield them from the crap and let the good pass.
The hard part is the second half. The person giving the opinion can't walk away feeling dismissed, because you never know where the great ideas are going to come from.
Do this before you launch. Ask:
How many features were validated with external customers?
How many beta customers used it and gave feedback?
How many will give you a testimonial at launch?
If any answer is zero, the launch is going to fail. Not all three. Any one.
Validation tells you the problem is real. Beta feedback tells you the product solves it. Testimonials are the proof marketing needs on day one. Missing one of those means the launch is guessing, and no amount of launch-day noise fixes a guess.
Get the zero to a one before you set the date.