Creating Demand Starts with a Story
Ben Slater, SVP of Marketing at Beamery, shared the importance of understanding the future of the workforce and the internal role of marketing.
[MUSIC]
Welcome to Pipeline Visionaries.
I'm Ian Faison, CEO of Caspian Studios.
And today we are joined by special guest Ben.
How are you?
I'm great man, great to be here.
Excited to have you on the show.
We've known each other for a little while here.
So finally getting a chance to talk in public about all the great things that
are going on at Bemory.
Yeah, absolutely.
Looking forward to it.
And today's show is always brought to you by our friends at Qualified.
Qualified is number one conversational sales and marketing platform for
companies, revenues,
teams, they use Salesforce.
Head over to Qualified.com to learn more about how you can have smarter, faster
conversations
with your buyers right on your website, Qualified.com.
Ben, starting off, what was your first job of marketing?
So I slightly fell into marketing, I started my career with different jobs in
finance and
PR and I ended up getting in at the grounds more of a startup in a pretty all
encompassing
commercial role.
And that has kind of evolved into building and leading marketing teams across a
couple
of high growth startups and the current business.
She's a good example, so Bemory I built and led marketing from pre-revenue to
post-series
D, you know, unicorn valuation.
So it's been a fun journey.
Tell us a little bit about what it means to be SVP marketing at Bemory.
What's the scope of your role?
Yeah, so the scope is pretty broad.
It encompasses, I guess, all the different aspects of marketing.
So the team is broken down into three core groups.
We have revenue marketing, product and solution marketing and then corporate
marketing.
So that's customer marketing, social content.
The BDR group at Bemory also reports into my into myself.
I love it.
And we're going to dig real deep into that throughout the rest of the episode.
Let's get to our first segment, The Trust Tree, which is where you go and feel
honest and trusted
and share those deepest, darkest pipeline secrets.
Zoom it out.
What does Bemory do?
I'll dig a sort of step back for a second.
So what we see across society is we have this accelerating pace of
transformation and businesses,
government societies, right?
A struggling with skill and talent gaps.
So what we do at Bemory is we provide a single platform to help organizations
understand the
skills of potential that they have today in their workforce, where the gaps are
We provide them with a technology stack to either help them hire Stanley to
fill his gaps or
to develop the talent that they have in-house to build the workforce they need
in the future.
So we call it talent lifecycle management.
And that's really because we're helping organizations with every stage of the
journey from planning
to talent attraction to hiring to up-skilling and to the ability as well.
And what are the types of customers that you're working with?
Yeah, so we're very focused on really the world's largest businesses.
So it's, you know, Fortune 500, Global 2000, like accounts, so it's businesses
like Accenture,
Wells Fargo, Amazon.
Our sweet spot really is around organizations that have a high degree of
complexity.
And those that are looking to bring in a continual flow of high skills.
They have been rikers for those organizations. Talent tends to be,
or talent challenges tend to be the most acute.
What does that buying committee look like? Who are the different people that
are involved in that
purchase?
Yeah, so the call buyer for us is an HR, but as with many enterprise sales, we
have
touchpoints in IT and in finance. And what's been really interesting to observe
over the past,
eight to 10 years, is that talent has gone from something that is talked about
as a corporate
priority to something that is very much, you know, number one on the CEO agenda
, right?
I think business leaders are painfully aware today that if they don't transform
their workforce,
they're going to be in trouble in the future. And, you know, we've seen HR go
from a business
unit that's trying to get a seat to the table to one that is primarily
strategic within the
organization. So, you know, we've been proud to be part of helping to power
that change.
And it does mean that now when we think about the value proposition that we
have to business,
it tends to be a lot broader. So just how it tends to be, you know, how is the
organization
thinking about the future of their work? Awesome. How would that allow them to
achieve certain
business objectives?
You mentioned sort of the CEO being such a key stakeholder in talent and
obviously talent,
life cycle management impacts the entire sort of company. I'd imagine that, you
know, those
key sea level stakeholders are important, sort of no matter who they are.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, obviously for us, the primary stakeholders are still
going to be on
the HR side. But if you think about the role of the business leader, right, a
departmental leader,
their role is to ensure that they have the right people in their group to meet
business objectives,
right? And often most people are the ones that don't actually have a good lens
on the skills
that they have in their team today, where the gaps are and how best they can go
to fill them.
It's also a goal of us to provide those people, those business leaders with
those kind of
structured work force insights, not just the folks on the HR side.
Yeah, I mean, I think that that's also interesting about any HR solution. I
used to work in HR
and back then, when you're thinking about sort of like your workforce planning
and you're thinking
about talent and you're thinking about all those things, like it's every single
business unit
is thinking about their own talent. They're worried about it. It's not just the
CEO, like you said,
which is, I think it's every year is like the number one priority that CEOs
talk about is their
talent. But also all those business unit leaders, like that's their number one
priority is figuring
out how to keep, retain, upskill, all those things to make their workforce
better.
And so they are key stakeholders in this, even if they're not in the buying
decision at all.
Exactly, right? And I think the other thing that's changed in the world of
talent planning,
right, is that every organization starts the year with a plan. And the reality
is, is that
often after a couple of months, that plan is no longer fit the purpose. And I
think we're at a
point now with AI in different types of technology where we can actually allow
managers to adapt
those plans on the fly, right? And to leverage the insights that obviously
businesses like
Bemory can provide around the skills that they need to achieve business
objectives, right?
What's missing and how they get up to close those gaps. So to give you an
example,
let's say there's an opportunity to acquire a company. How should a leader
think about that
opportunity? What are the skills that they might be able to bring in through
that acquisition?
Is, how does that compare to hiring those skills in the same market? So I think
we can
start to give business leaders almost decision intelligence around talent,
which is a very
different proposition to, to, I think, what we were already ready for and
focused on in the world
of HR 10 to 15 years ago, which was ready process optimization. And then how do
you start your
marketing team to go after those accounts? For us, if we think about the demand
process,
what we are really focused on is not just demand capture, but also demand
creation, right? I'm a
huge believer that creating demand, it all starts with the story, right? So it
's a story that's not
just about your product, but about a fundamental shift in the market, right?
Something that is
either creating your category or accelerating it, something that's
fundamentally impacting your
buyer and the way they go about their role in a day to day basis. And for us,
this is the
focal point, I think, marketing, we cover so much in a kind of modern strategy,
it's very easy to
end up siloed. So for us, what we focus on is the integration of the different
groups in marketing,
right? And I think this is best articulated when we think about the integrated
campaign strategy
that's so core to the way we go to market. So that's what's the big message?
What's the big story that
we think is most relevant to our audience and that's in line with our point of
view on the market?
How we ensure that there's internal alignment around that story? How do we
create a go-to-market
drumbeat around that story? And then how do we bring that to life across
different programs,
different channels, different teams? And how do we make sure it's not a one and
done,
but something that we're committed to for a significant period of time? Because
I think
if you get the storytelling right and if you're able to tie the different
channels and programs
together in a way that is consistent, clear, not just the external audience,
but also for internal
teams, it can really be a force and I'll deploy up the demand. I think we often
think about optimizing
and making incremental changes to channels and to converge rates. And sure,
that's important.
But in a world where I think there's increasing commoditization of a lot of
these things,
particularly with AI, for me, what is a differentiator is really great
later authentic storytelling that allows you to lead with value in the market.
And if you're doing
that, then I think you're giving yourself a significant opportunity to be
successful.
What would you say is Ben's marketing strategy for Beibery?
This might sound like an oversimplification, but I think there are three key
areas of a
successful marketing strategy. One is to build a brand that customers love. The
second is to
generate and capture demand and create revenue. And the third is to build and
tell a compelling
story about the product in the market. For us, there's obviously always perm
utations of that,
right? Things that are important at different times, but it really comes back
to those fundamental
pillars. Now, if we start to peel back the layers of the onion a little bit and
we think about,
okay, the market that we have at Beibery, we're really focused on the 4500, the
world's largest
organizations. And that allows us to invest more in programs that are focused
on personalization
for different, smaller segments of accounts. It allows us to invest in creating
custom
experiences, but those accounts be there's online or offline. And it allows us
to work really
closely with the different parts of the go-to-market organization to build
engagement in those accounts
and obviously to try and convert them into into sales opportunities and revenue
I think for me, it's always helpful to have those principles to fall back on.
But I think for us
capturing demand, turning those accounts into into prospects and opportunities,
and then when
they become customers, helping them understand that a value of helping recompat
the most impact
to their organization is the focus. Any other sort of thoughts on strategy here
before we get into
tour tactics. One of the most overlooked areas of marketing is the internal
role of marketing.
There's so much focus and I think particularly now in a more resource-to-str
ained environment,
there's so much focus on the external doing more with less, creating the same
types of revenue
outcomes that the doing of the less budget or whatever it might be. We have to
remember that
that every organization that we work at is a living organization, rights, and
many of these
organizations are going through change, changing strategy, changing product
message, and marketing
is an amazing opportunity to be the internal communications engine. That
reminds people of
the mission of the business that brings people back to the product strategy
that brings people
back to the why of the organization that provides a pedestal for executives to
share the strategy
of their different areas. I think it's so easy to mistake
receipt of information for understanding of information. We look at all of the
forest data
around a number of touch points it takes to create some kind of brand
impression and the fact that
those are going up. The same thing is often true of the internal audience. I
think the
marketing is a really important partner in terms of that, the entire
communication strategy.
To repeat the message, to drive understanding of the strategy and to make sure
folks are
really keenly aligned around the priorities, I think it's something that never
gets a
massive focus on marketing organizations. One other question is, obviously, you
've been there
for a long time at B-Marie. You've seen the evolution of this company grow into
unicorn status.
Any other thoughts of being at an organization for so long and seeing those
growth phases happen
and having to level up each time as a marketer, level up your marketing team
and level up your
positioning in the market? The role of the marketing leader at the different
phases of
company growth are fundamentally very different. In the early stages, you are
trying to test and
validate both product direction but also messaging and also good a market and
channel fit.
I always equate this phase to hand-to-hand combat. I think at this point,
hiring is different.
Often, you are trying to bring in undiscovered talent because particularly at
the early stage,
the perfect candidate with the perfect resume, why would they come and join
your business?
Often, you are looking for the skills, the attitude, the traits that usual will
make someone
successful. I think as you start to build momentum, then it becomes okay, what
are the one or two
big channels who want to take a battle and what's our point of view around the
market? How do we
tell a story that is distinctive and that is genuinely different? How do we
start to work more
effectively across the go-to-market organization to try efficiency to scale?
Then, obviously, as you continue to scale, a lot of it becomes around
operationalizing
different strategies. What is the thing that you do on the first day of the
quarter,
the tenth day of the quarter, the third day of the quarter to really run an
effective revenue
strategy? What is the role that markets in place within that? Obviously, none
of this is
possible without hiring fantastic leaders. I'm obviously lucky to have some
amazing folks from
the team that have driven a lot of the success. We've been able to have this as
a company.
You have to be very open to change leading through these different stages and
you have to be
aware that you may have to morph your role, the things you do, your attitudes,
your day to day,
every three months to be successful. Such a unique position that you've been in
And so, it's cool to hear that. Yeah, it's getting a lot of fun.
All right, let's go to the playbook. This is where you open up that playbook
and talk about
the tactics that help you win, whether you're three channels or tactics, that
are your uncuttable
budget items. The first is digital. When I say digital, I don't purely mean
acquisition or
direct response channels. I think we as marketers today have an amazing
opportunity to innovate
across digital. And for us, particularly selling into an enterprise audience,
the focus is creating
a consistent clear, but also a personalized experience across the online
channels that we
work through. We do a lot to create a digital surround of our top accounts,
ensure that the messaging that they see online is personalized to their
industry,
to their pain points, sometimes even to their account. And we're sending them
to different
personalized landing pages or sources of content. And we're following through
that experience with
the way that our BDR team are reaching out to them. So I think that's the first
investment area. I think our strategy around digital will change. I think we're
probably moving
towards one that is more focused on storytelling versus directly generation and
a couple of reasons
for that, which we can certainly get into. But as a grouping, I think you have
to be optimizing
that in today's world. And you have so many tools that make it easier and
better. I think the second
one for us is our community programs. And we have two different primary lenses
here. We have what
we do with customers, our regional user groups, CAB. And this is amazing, right
? Because customers
love to come together. They love to talk about best practices, they love to
hear from other customers.
And, you know, every time we do these events, people leave with their sort of
bean-free batteries charged up, right? And they leave with new friends, they
leave with new connections.
And we always have a string of customers who are pretty up their hand to host
the next one, right?
So those have been fantastic. And we're looking to continue to invest in scale
and those. But then
we also have kind of significant global community events. So we've for the last
five or six years
run an annual thought leadership conference called Spark Live. This has been, I
mean, often
largely by virtue of the pandemic, something that we move online. But it's an
amazing opportunity
to bring our community together, to elevate our customers. We do our customer
rewards
at this show as well. We have customer speakers, we bring in analysts. And, you
know, we've, I think,
successfully made it one of the primary shows in our industry for, well, for
leadership,
it's sort of future facing content around the industry. And I think the third
lens we have
with community is partners. So, you know, we're lucky to have deep partnerships
with, you know,
some of the big players in our space, so that IP Workday or SAP or Microsoft.
And we've been able
to tap into their community either, whether we're either through sort of shared
events or
through kind of smaller programs as well. And that's been a real R.C.M.E.D. is
labored for us in terms of being able to add more value to a lot of the
programs that we have in
market already. The final piece, I think, particularly with the acceleration of
AI,
every organization has an opportunity around content and creative. But the
opportunity is
incumbent on raising the bar and picking a few mediums that you want to go deep
or to win on.
I think AI brings everyone up to a certain level, right? It makes it easy to
create
content, right? And I put some inverted commas around that for folks listening
in.
But it doesn't help you do the things that are totally unique, right? It doesn
't help you do
this medium, right? At least for now. But, you know, the companies that are
willing to take the
time to invest in that, take the time to invest in unique storytelling, I think
that's going to
become rarer of rarer, just given the fact that it's going to be so easy to go
from zero to one
with AI. So I think that can be something that is, you know, a significant
opportunity to businesses
and then something that we're trying to focus on. So zooming in on community, I
think it's super
interesting that, you know, community is a huge bucket for y'all. Obviously,
when you're selling
like Fortune 500, big accounts, and anytime you're selling enterprise, that who
you're getting in
the room is like so much more important than if you're selling like SMB or
something like that,
where like, you know, Fortune 500's look to their peers more than the average,
right? So that makes
sense to me, obviously. But sort of all the different types of community
engagement type
things that you're doing is really interesting. And having sort of, you know,
looking at not just
like one type of thing, but looking at it from a different bunch of different
angles, including
partners as part of a community play, how do you see like your investments in
community?
Like, how do you make those investments in community?
We're a business that's looking to build a new category, right? And I think
that puts
a maybe additional focus on community. And one of the reasons we think about
this as a multi-layered
exercise is that my belief is that so category creation to be successful, you
need to have a
hero of your category, right? And that can't be the sea level executive that
everyone else has
tried to reach, right? And for us, it was the sort of the person we saw that
was kind of underserved,
but also critical to where the industry was heading was there. And we initially
looked at this person
as a talent operations, right? The operational leader that sits at the heart of
the different
systems that are being implemented on the HR side. So I'm actually out of with
community,
we're really focused in on this person. You know, we build a podcast, so then
we built a string of
different learning materials, we built a, you know, a certification. We really
went all in. And I
think that helped us create an understanding and awareness of be re in the
person that was going to
be both a natural champion, but also a natural implementer about product. But
that's not sufficient,
right? Because as you say, selling to large organizations, the level that you
're at within
businesses is hugely important. When it comes to these sort of more senior
level community strategies,
we use a couple of kind of key tactics. One is actually advisor led, right? So
we work with a
number of advisors at Bemire that have very strong communities at the CXO type
level, right? And
they either run events, which we can be a part of, or they're able to make
really helpful connections,
either to our CEO or to one of our founders, or, you know, critical junctions
in the sales process.
The other is what we do with our thought leadership and customer programs. We
strategically make
asks or create opportunities for leaders at both our customers, but also target
prospect
accounts to contribute or to be part of the leadership campaigns. So it's by
globe, which I
mentioned, which is our annual conference is the biggest example there. And
what we'll do is,
we'll either invite folks to speak, or we will encourage them to apply the
certain awards,
all based on where they might fit in terms of prioritization.
It's just interesting sort of thinking about it all as community and making
bets on the different
sort of pieces that you do there. I always felt like your user conferences is
like one of the
most incutterable budget items, because where else could you do that, right?
There's no,
there's no sort of like other way that you could have the type of serendipity
and large-scale
interactions and, you know, do all this stuff, but it's also like a crazy
expensive thing. And so,
I think people have sort of been figuring out like other ways to shape the
community. But I think
what's tough about that is like what your customers want and how you serve them
versus getting a
couple of those customers in the room with your prospects, or with people just
generally who
want to be better in that talent operations type role is, you know, there's a
bunch of different
ways that you can invest your dollars that way, whether it be, you know, exper
iential or content-based
or sending them fun stuff in the mail, making t-shirts like there's all sorts
of different
things that you can do to like elevate that community and help them do their
job better.
Yeah, like 100% and the reality is no one is buying your product because they
weren't, you know,
a new piece of technology. They're buying your product because they want a new
set of outcomes
for their business or they want to get promoted, right? And our job as an
organization is to help
them achieve that set of outcomes. We're successful if our champions get
promoted, right? That's what
we want to see as a business. Okay, what about something that you're not going
to be investing in
over the course next year? I think about this in a few ways. So there are areas
where we're
dialing back. One of the areas where we are reducing some investments is trade
shows, right?
I think we as marketers have been told this, we told this lie, right, for the
last, however long,
really, that you are conspicuous by your absence at these trade shows, right?
Right.
Therefore, you need to be there, you need to be able to make booths and, you
know, what do you
or not, right? For us, if we look at the ROY we get from these shows, you know,
some it's good,
some it's bad, right? I think we'll be looking to dial back on some of the sort
of traditional
shows in the industry where, you know, people are there with the big booths to
be there versus
their generated set outcome. The other thing that I'm bearish on going to next
year is a lot of
kind of classic, classic lead gen channels. This is nuance, right? Because
bringing new names, new
contacts, new leads into the database is important. And those contacts being
aligned with our ICP and
with the personas we're trying to sell to is again, important. I think that if
you take a step back,
the conversion rates from some of these classic lead, channel, lead gen
channels
to opportunity over even to that new revenue, their infinitesimal, right? So I
think we as marketers
need to think about, okay, where do we get the most leverage and how can we use
the channels we have
to create an understanding of the category that we're in or the story that we
have as a business or
the problems that we solve and then how do we have a really focused, good
market effort to come
over the top of that, right? And to drive demand because just relying on leads
coming in and
qualifying the lead and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, the very
classic in-bound
marketing motion is not sufficient. It's interesting that you say that because
you have such an
enterprise motion and you have such a community led motion where it's like, I
would rather tell
my customer stories far and wide than try to capture people's email addresses.
You know what
I mean? And if you ask C-level executives, stuff like that, and if you put them
in rooms with each
other to catch up with their peers, like, oh, yeah, I saw your face all over.
This is like the
old Salesforce playbook of like, you know, you put someone's face at Moscone,
that's 80 feet tall.
It sparks conversation, right? It's like, yeah, I've seen your face everywhere.
That works,
that play works every time. How do you view your website?
Our website is there in my show shop window, right? I kind of view it in with
two specific
priorities, right? Number one, it needs to tell a clear story. And anyone that
lands on the website
should be able to understand what Bemory is and the value that they can add.
Obviously, they're
going to be nuances that are core audience. It's going to be more relevant to
them. But anyone,
any business persona should be able to understand the value that we can add to
their organization.
The second is obviously we need to be able to provide different journeys or
experiences for
different types of people, right? There needs to be an opportunity to explore
the website,
the resources, the thought leadership we have in a way that's contextual to the
problems
that someone might have, right? That navigation experience needs to be
available in front of
mind. We don't right now invest in deep personalization or a lot of AP testing.
Being an enterprise
business, obviously, you're not experiencing maybe Amazon homepage levels of
traffic, right?
So it means that testing Red Buff and Buzzers Blue Buff is maybe going to give
you less interesting
data, but we're still not going to focus on how we provide the right experience
Let's get to the dust stuff. This is where we talk about healthy tension,
whether that's
with your board or shell, seems you're a competitor, anyone else. How do you
approach
disagreements with folks, Ben? I think comes back to having a clear business
first mentality, right?
What is the right thing for the organization? And how do we start the
conversation with that in mind?
I think then there's a lot of context that's simple, right? So I think
particularly with
with kind of dust subtle disagreements with different executives, often that
comes down to
people fighting the corner of their team, right? And I think an executive team
is successful if
the executive team is their first team, right? They're not a representative of
marketing or of
sales or of HR. They are a member of the top team, right? And they need to have
that mentality.
How do you think about partnering with sales and generating wins?
Yeah, so I think a lot of it comes down to clarity of goals, right? And
transparency in terms of
communication. So number one, we all need to be looking at the same data, right
? The go-to-market
organization in general is very met-cricked. And I think the sales and
marketing relationship
is successful when it becomes focused, not just on the data, but also the
operating rhythm, right?
So what do we do on the first day of the quarter? How do we adapt strategies on
the 10th day of the
quarter of the day, because telling us something different, right? And then to
come back to this
idea of communication, right? I do think it's essential for marketing leaders
to think about how
they can adjust communication to different stakeholders within sales. I don't
think it's
purely the relationship that you have with a CRO, right? Or even the kind of
regional
sales leadership. I think it also comes down to how you think about
communicating where you work
with the field, right? And really, I encourage the folks on the team to think
through, you know,
what's in it for the seller at the end of the day, right? Like, why should they
care about what
we are sharing? And that's not designed to be cynical, right? But ultimately,
what we need to do
is provide things that help be more as a company win, right? And the
information we share needs to
be couched in that context. How do you measure success? I think as a marketing
leader, you can
end up as a little bit of a hostage to data, right? Because you can measure
everything. You have to
come back to a couple of core metrics. For us, PyPLAN is the biggest driver of
success.
And we have leading indicators that we'll look at, specifically, you know, the
number of net
new meetings that we're creating and conversion rates associated with the
different stages of
the funnel. We'll slice that by channels, but ultimately, it comes back to, are
we creating
enough PyPLAN to be successful in the future? And is that PyPLAN capacity?
All right, let's get to our final segment. Quick hits. These are quick
questions and quick answers,
just like how qualified helps companies generate PyPLAN quickly. You can go to
qualified.com to
learn how to tap into your greatest asset, your website, to identify your most
valuable
visitors and instantly start sales conversations quickly. Easy. Just like these
questions, go to
qualified.com to learn more. Then quick hits. Are you ready?
I'm ready. Let's do it. Number one, do you have a hint on your skill that's not
on your resume?
I'm a slightly solid cook. I can whip up a range of different meals. Baking is
where it
falls apart because I'm not great at following recipes. I would say that's
probably the one.
Do you have a favorite book podcast or TV show that you'd recommend?
I'll give you maybe one that hasn't come up before. I would heavily recommend a
four soon to be five part by all pick of Lyndon Johnson. It's a guy called
Robert Caro, who is
broadly recognized as one of the best historical biobipers ever. It's an
incredible journey through
his life, how he came to power. An amazing understanding of someone who I think
is a hugely
important figure in 20th century history. I listened to it unrollable. I didn't
read it. I think
folks should be prepared that each book is at least 40 hours long. It's a real
time commitment.
I would highly recommend that. The other that's stock of mind is on a totally
different
note, which is Outlive, a new book by Peter Ertsia about longevity and that's a
whole different
kind of fish, but also very interesting. What is your best piece of advice for
a first time
head of marketing? No one is going to look out for your well-being, apart from
yourself.
And you need to take the time to do the things that will give you mental
clarity,
whether that's exercise, timing, family, meditation, whatever it might be,
but you have to pride-face that you saw. Been wonderful chatting with you.
Always great catching up and really fun finally having you on the show.
Everybody should go
check out GoToBeemery.com. They have obviously very cool marketing and also
tell them life cycle management. Go nudge your CHRO or your chief people
officer and tell them to
check it out. Any final thoughts here? Man, look, I think you've done it for me
. It's a great little
CTA, I appreciate it, but in a great conversation, I'd love to catch up and
talk to the marketing.
Awesome. Thanks so much and take care. Thanks again.
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