Category: Show Notes

Renegade Thinkers Unite has moved to renegade.com! As a subscriber, you should have received an email with the subject line ‘Activate your Email Subscription to: Renegade Thinkers Unite’. It may be buried in your inbox, or even the spam folder, but if you click the link in that email, you’ll continue getting notifications when each week’s new episode is published.

With 25 years in the tech industry, Conversica CMO Rashmi Vittal knows a thing or two about sales and marketing alignment. She knows that it’s about “company-wide enablement” as opposed to “sales enablement.” She knows the value of a simplified product message. And she knows the common excuse, “Well, I gave leads to sales and they just didn’t do anything with them,” just won’t cut it.

In this week’s episode, Drew and Rashmi discuss her nine-square “Alignment Between Sales and Marketing” grid. It’s a simple yet thorough model, one that recognizes that achieving alignment is about constant evolution and clear communication. Be sure to tune in to hear how Conversica applies this grid in action, as well as how they’ve pivoted in 2020.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• How Conversica aligns sales and marketing
• How to simply your product messaging
• Why company-wide alignment is a continuous evolution

Renegade Thinkers Unite has moved to renegade.com! As a subscriber, you should have received an email with the subject line ‘Activate your Email Subscription to: Renegade Thinkers Unite’. It may be buried in your inbox, or even the spam folder, but if you click the link in that email, you’ll continue getting notifications when each week’s new episode is published.

If you could go back in time and meet one historical figure, who would it be? For Drew, the answer is obvious: Dr. Benjamin Franklin. This should come as no surprise to anyone who knows Drew. As a proud Franklin nut, he considers the man who sold a revolution to a king to be America’s first-ever marketer. That’s why it was a no-brainer when we discovered a special “time travel” button on Zoom—we just had to give Dr. Franklin a call.

For Renegade Thinker’s Unite’s 200^th episode, Drew travels through time to catch up with Dr. Franklin. While covering Franklin’s life and accomplishments, they discuss the value of humor in marketing, how to lead courageously, and why relentless curiosity is key to success. Be sure to tune in for Franklin’s take on the topics of today in relation to events of the past, you won’t want to miss it!

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why Benjamin Franklin is the original renegade marketer
• How Dr. Franklin successfully sold a revolution to a king
• How curiosity makes marketers courageous, artful, thoughtful, and scientific

Renegade Thinkers Unite has moved to renegade.com! As a subscriber, you should have received an email with the subject line ‘Activate your Email Subscription to: Renegade Thinkers Unite’. It may be buried in your inbox, or even the spam folder, but if you click the link in that email, you’ll continue getting notifications when each week’s new episode is published.

What does B2B excellence look like in a downturn? When faced with this question, the software company Coupa quickly adopted a story of resilience. The decision to change its messaging allowed Coupa to change buying committee perspectives on its offering—if the prospect’s goal was to preserve capital and mitigate risk in the long-run, Coupa had the solution to get there.

Coupa’s strategy has proven effective, and the company’s skyrocketing stock is proof. In this week’s densely packed episode, CMO Chandar Pattabhiram uncovers how they pivoted under pressure, harmonizing their messaging and releasing it to a 100% digital world. He also shares valuable insights, like Geoffrey Moore’s concept of “provocation selling,” the 4 P’s of pivoting, and how Coupa is taking action against social injustice.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• How Coupa changed their go-to-market messaging
• How to show B2B buyers why your solution is necessary
• Chandar’s 4 pivoting P’s: positioning, posturing, programs, people

Renegade Thinkers Unite has moved to renegade.com! As a subscriber, you should have received an email with the subject line ‘Activate your Email Subscription to: Renegade Thinkers Unite’. It may be buried in your inbox, or even the spam folder, but if you click the link in that email, you’ll continue getting notifications when each week’s new episode is published.

While California went into shelter-in-place in early March, Talend CMO Lauren Vaccarello read an article about a popular bubble tea franchise laying off 400 workers in less than two weeks. With a self-prescribed “healthy sense of paranoia and a very strong desire to grow the business,” Lauren jumped into action. She knew that, if the company wanted to survive the long road ahead, they needed to ditch everything they were working on and start fresh, and they needed to do it fast.

Talend’s new 2020 playbook reflects the power of agility in the face of a crisis. They repositioned their messaging in just ten days with full C-level support, then planned not just one, but three user conferences in under two months. Tune into this tell-all episode to learn why doing things the “wrong” way is sometimes the right one, as well as how fearless leadership and empathy are key to both short- and long-term success.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• The difference between 2020’s recovery playbook and previous playbooks
• How Talend fast-tracked its new brand messaging
• Why empathy needs to be a part of virtual event planning

Renegade Thinkers Unite has moved to renegade.com! As a subscriber, you should have received an email with the subject line ‘Activate your Email Subscription to: Renegade Thinkers Unite’. It may be buried in your inbox, or even the spam folder, but if you click the link in that email, you’ll continue getting notifications when each week’s new episode is published.

Right around mid-March 2020, every brand, B2B or B2C, had to take a cold hard look at their brand promise and consider its relevance. Was the brand promise that seemed so right in the go-go months before the pandemic suddenly tone deaf? For Jakki Geiger, CMO of Reltio, a Silicon Valley-based data management platform, the answer to that question was “yes.” Practically overnight, the idea of “winning” seemed out of step with their customers, many of whom were focused more on surviving and less on thriving. So, what’s a savvy marketer to do?

In this remarkably frank episode, Geiger shares exactly how she and her colleagues shifted gears and found a new, more relevant message around “serving, protecting, and retaining.” It’s a story of agility, determination, customer-centricity, and fearless leadership that almost any marketer can learn from. Drew and Jakki cover a lot of ground including the role CMOs can play not just in driving leads (which she did) but also driving social change in areas like diversity.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• How Reltio pivoted their messaging during COVID
• Why customer centricity should be a top priority for B2B brands
• How CMOs can influence company and social change for the better

Renegade Thinkers Unite has moved to renegade.com! As a subscriber, you should have received an email with the subject line ‘Activate your Email Subscription to: Renegade Thinkers Unite’. It may be buried in your inbox, or even the spam folder, but if you click the link in that email, you’ll continue getting notifications when each week’s new episode is published.

If you’re looking for an example of a high-quality virtual event, you’ve got to check out Skillsoft’s Perspectives 2020. Drew did, and he was absolutely blown away by the online summit. In fact, it was so engaging that he just had to interview their CMO, Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek (Michelle BB for short) to learn more about the work that went on behind the scenes to create a global experience that rivals pre-COVID physical events. 

In this episode, Michelle generously shares the details behind the making of the event, as well as other tips, like how they’re measuring its success and how they plan to use the momentum to generate demand. We’ve also got a special Q&A session with a live audience of CMOs: Gabi Zijderveld from Affectiva, Ian Howells from Sage Intacct, Holly Rollo from RSA Security, and Mark Floisand from Coveo. And while you’re here—be sure to check out Skillsoft’s Post-Perspectives e-book!

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• How Skillsoft pivoted from a physical to a virtual event
• Michelle BB’s tips for planning and executing virtual summits
• Highlights and successes from Skillsoft’s Perspectives 2020