How Can Marketing Have a Seat at the Table?

Ben
Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Sushi. Sushi, welcome to the show.

Shuchi Sarkar
Thank you, Ben.

Ben
Well, before we dive into the subject, which I think is super powerful for us to talk about today, Sushi, tell us a little bit about yourself, just a little bit about your background and let us get to know you.

Shuchi Sarkar
Sure. So Ben, as you know, I'm currently the CMO of a company called LTI Mindtree. This is actually a technology services company which is headquartered in India, but with global presence. And we do digital transformation for many of our Fortune 500 clients. And I've just joined them recently. Before that, I was the global marketing head for AWS for segments, so leading all the go-to-market for AWS for enterprise, SMB, startup, and ISV segments. I was previous to that, I spent a long time in Compact and HP, working across the globe actually in many different product categories. So I have a both a very strong B2C and B2B kind of background because of having done many consumer products and then now very enterprise and commercial products in HP. In between HP and AWS, I did a stint with a biotech startup. So that was a complete different scenario for me from tech to biotech, from large established corporation budgets and people to going to a startup where literally I was their first marketing employee and creating something from scratch. So they were in the cannabinoid space called Creo. And so, you know, I described myself as a marketing nerd. I just love every aspect of marketing. And I live in Palo Alto and, you know, been, I love coming on and shows like yourself and, you know, learning from people like yourself and other speakers and sharing whatever I know.

Ben
I love it, I love it. And I think this is gonna be a great conversation. I always get excited when someone describes themselves as a marketing nerd. I think that's a lot of fun. You know you're in for some really good insights. So I'm excited for the conversation. So today what we're gonna talk about is really, I think important for every marketing member and team. And it's really, how can you have marketing have a full seat at the table? And really not just be a growth center and be a growth center and not just a cost center. So Sushi, when you're looking at this, how do teams make that transition and how do they really facilitate making that change?

Transitioning Marketing from Cost Center to Growth Center

Shuchi Sarkar
Yeah, great question, Ben. So I think marketing in many organizations has already done this. I know in the B2B space specifically, this is a really big thing because you absolutely measured on the funnel and the velocity of the funnel and how you are, how many leads you're generating. So I think this, you know, transition is already happening. To me, it is a bit more holistic when you talk about marketing getting a seat at the table and being able to transform from an expense center to a growth engine. I think typically in many companies, marketing has always been that last mile function. It's always been almost like a service, an extension of the agency function where, you know, okay, this is what I need in terms of an ad or a social post or go, you know, do this event. And I think that marketers are so much more capable because we are really the voice of the customer. And what we need to bring into the organizations is that voice of the customer having the most amount of insights on who's our customer, what are their challenges, what are their motivations, what are they thinking, and how as a brand or a business or a product or a service can we actually solve their challenges and make them better at what they do. And I think that that is primarily the role of marketing. I think that the way to make this change is really to be very, very well versed, not only in your customer insights, but also developing a holistic marketing strategy, being able to demonstrate and build a customer buying journey and laying out across the sales funnel, across the customer buying journey, how does marketing intersect? What is the kind of messaging that you need to build for the customer at every stage? What is the best form of content or the content strategy that will deliver on it? And how do you activate that in a multi-channel approach rather than just doing your traditional events or email marketing? And I think if you use data to be able to measure at every stage of the buying journey, how marketing is impacting and how it's moving the customer through that buying journey, through the sales funnel is really the way to earn your seat at the table. And by also going beyond just the lead generation by really building value in terms of the strategy for your business. So, helping them fine tune their product value propositions, helping them fine tune, who should be the audience they should go after, what's the competitive advantage, coming with a lot of innovation and insights. I think as marketers, the best thing that we can do is to bring data and innovation to the table. And I've seen that sales teams and product teams as well are so open when you come up with new ways of engaging the customer, with new ways of helping them make connection with new logos or even expand their businesses and their existing accounts, they're so open to, let's go and try and do something new as long as you have that belief that, okay, this is what I'm suggesting, this is how we will measure it, and this is how we'll optimize. I always tell my sales teams that just as you optimize your account plans, as you go along in marketing also today, there's a lot of optimization to be done and not everything will work 100%. And so, you know, you also have to learn from what didn't work and optimize and go ahead. But if you are, if you have that belief, that confidence, that data, that insights, that measurement and accountability approach to say, listen, I'm in this with you and I want to be measured. I tell my CEO that I wish to be measured on revenue. I wish to be measured on the amount of leads that I get. And when I entered in a meeting and I speak from a customer's point of view, I talk about the journey, I talk about working across the funnel, I find that I get a lot of traction because there's data behind what I'm speaking. And so if we are able to measure, demonstrate, and show, we will get that seat at the table. This also leads to a huge transformation, which if you want, we can chat about more.

Impact on Culture

Ben
Yeah, I love that. And I love the approach there, the innovation and the data. That's what people are craving at the table. And I think that's so powerful to say, if you can provide those things as a marketing department, you're going to be able to have that seat. People are going to invite you there. I guess another question to follow up is how do we make this impact on culture? How do we influence the culture and help it really kind of take hold?

Shuchi Sarkar
Yeah. So, you know, it's always difficult because this involves a lot of change management, but the change management, you know, we always tend to say, but sales doesn't listen to this. And, you know, our C level is not open to that. But actually for me, the chain starts within ourself. I think marketers have to start believing that what they're doing is not a service. What they're doing is a value added function. Mentally, they have to make that change. Mentally, they have to become open and not only open, but actually embrace this idea of accountability, taking these goals, bringing this data and looking at every which way attributions, not a perfect science. So I understand if you feel that, hey, I don't want to set myself up for failure because attribution is not 100 % fixed. Our tools are not 100 % there. But I think that what people look for is, are you making an attempt? Do you really have, even if it's 70 to 80 % good data, do you come to the table with that thinking and that ideas? And the best way that I always tell my team is, you know, it's quickly go for the quick wins and establish your credibility so that you can lead to larger transformation. So I think it's a mental change that we have to do within ourselves as marketers. I think we have to be willing to experiment and learn and fail and build on our successes. So we have to get open to thinking that we should try innovation and try these different new things. And if we fail, we learn from it. Of course, if we fail at everything or we make the same mistake twice or thrice, the organization is not going to have that much patience for us. And also to start thinking that we must begin with everything being rooted in the customer. You know, many times and I go sometimes and I'm guilty of it as well, where you start making decisions based on, you know, what's going to be an easy thing to sell internally. You know, you go with things that are going to be easy to sell, which is going to carry everybody in the company along. But that's not the right way to look at it. We shouldn't be looking at it from an internal perspective. We need to start really begin from the customer. And if we do that 100 % shift in our way of thinking, that will also impact the way marketing can earn a seat at the stable. So from a culture perspective, it has to become a culture that is bringing innovation, is agile, is open to feeling and learning. As leaders, we have to create that safe space where people feel that they can actually do these thoughtful innovations, where they have the space to fail

and learn, where they can bring new thinking and new ideas to the table. We have to bring empowerment and accountability, not micromanage, but really give people the necessary coaching and also give the empowerment, but ask for accountability in turn, and encourage risk taking and encourage, you know, a human approach as well. I think what differentiates in my mind, at least when I look at leaders, I have always aspired to be, they've always led with a very human approach. And I think in today's time, that's much more important because when you make the shift in becoming a growth generator, when you move away from the traditional so -called role of marketing, you are insecure and you're putting yourself out at risk because you're not doing just the, you know, the design or the service aspect. So, you know, building that security, building that human empathy is also so important. And you will see as we change ourselves as marketers, the sales, the product teams, they will start responding and that culture shift will happen and marketers will get into boardrooms eventually in a much more important fashion. I think it's already there in CPG, in many of the consumer goods companies, frankly, marketers have been CEOs as well. But I think in the technology world and other places, it will happen as this transformation gets more and more into place.

Meaningful Data Points for Marketing

Ben
I love that. I think that makes a lot of sense. The whole point of getting the culture to be on board with this and to understand, and I love how you're addressing also as a marketer to embrace this new concept of what marketing is and to be okay with that new direction and really embracing the accountability. When it comes to data, and you talked a lot about that there and culture and having a seat at the table and accountability, what are some recommendations there of data points often in marketing will have, you know, vanity metrics? How can we bring meaningful data to the table to also help people in marketing have more of a seat in the table?

Shuchi Sarkar
Yeah, great question, Ben. So first, let me tell you that there is no perfect answer that anybody has found in this world. We are still evolving and growing in this particular field. So personally, I don't look at impressions and all that anymore. I think those are irrelevant to matrixes. For me, what is important is how has the engagement been? Have you seen the customer taking the next step in the journey? So, you know, having some of basic marketing automation and CRM platforms is so critical, whether it's a market or a HubSpot or whatever, making sure that you're able to track, did your activities lead the customer to taking the next step in the journey with you? being able to track whether something came from a social post, an event, your website, what did they engage with? And there are tools today that help you do that. And did that finally lead to a response or an unqualified lead? Were you able to nurture that lead to become a marketing qualified lead? And then did sales really accept it? And sometimes that's where everything breaks down, where marketing says, hey, I give so many marketing qualified leads, but sales does not accept those leads many times, even though they are, you know, qualified by budget authority need and time, what we call band. And I think it's important that that bridge be crossed as marketers with sales to ensure that the rules of engagement are very clear on how that marketing qualified lead becomes a sales qualified lead and later and you know, it's an opportunity. So there are systems. Is there a clear attribution model? No. Is the system 100 % foolproof, accurate? No, because it's as good as the data that goes in. So I find now, for example, You know, you put in all your data in your CRM, but then you're not updating the action. What really happened with the customer? How did you touch him or her? What was the action? What was the next action? It doesn't happen. And many times as marketers, we are at fault because we do one, you know, we do an event and then we just hand over those leads to the sales guys and we forget about them. But that's not the way to look at it. We have to look at things from a journey and a nurture perspective. So you've got leads at an event, now how are you nurturing them? How are you actually building the journey at this right stage then handing those leads over to your sales teams? So for me, that is more critical and there are data and there are systems and there are tools that allow us to do this now. Is it 100 % correct? No. But whether it's using a model, a tool like Marketo, or HubSpot, or a demand base, or any of these other things that allow us to get more intelligence, whether it's using everything that comes on in Adobe Experience Manager, whether it's being able to measure what's happening on your website, where the customer is engaging, what's the stickiness, all of those things are more important than frankly impressions or some of the old traditional ways. Even for brand, I think. Today there are so many ways to measure whether the brand, whatever work you're doing around the brand, is that really improving your brand health? Of course, ultimate. is your valuation and your share price. But even before that, you can do online surveys. You can see how many people are going to a certain page that you're promoting or how many visitors you're getting to a microsite that you might have built or whatever ways to really figure what is the impact that you are creating.

Ben
I love that. I love that. I love that approach. What's the impact that you're making and how does that impact data? Well, Sushi, we have run out of time in this episode. I've learned a ton. I love this mentality of getting organizations and marketing teams on board with really where they should be and what they should do. And I have learned so much. If anyone wants to reach out and further their conversation online, how can they find you and connect with you?

Shuchi Sarkar
Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. So Shuchi Sarkar, I think that's how you can find me on LinkedIn. And so best way to connect with me is on LinkedIn because I always respond when I see messages come through.

Ben
Perfect, and we'll link to your profile in the show notes. Again, thank you so much for the time today.

Shuchi Sarkar
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me, Ben. I really enjoyed our conversation.

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