SaaStr Podcast #198: Maria Pergolino, CMO @ Anaplan On How To Create True Alignment Between Sales and Marketing
Update: 2018-10-31
Description
This post is by Harry Stebbings from SaaStr
Click here to view on the original site: Original Post
Welcome to Episode 198! Maria Pergolino is the CMO @ Anaplan, the company that allows you to accelerate decision-making with effective planning. To date, Anaplan have raised over $299m in funding from the likes of Meritech, Salesforce Ventures, Shasta, DFJ Growth and more incredible names. As for Maria, prior to Anaplan, Maria was Senior Vice President of Global Marketing and Sales Development at Apttus, where she directed go-to-market strategy, sales development, customer advocacy, demand generation, strategic events and communications initiatives. She also has held leadership positions at Marketo, Shunra Software (acquired by Hewlett-Packard), and Chubb Ltd. It’s also important to note, Maria is renowned for building world-class teams that drive growth, product differentiation, and category development.
In Today’s Episode We Discuss:
- How Maria made her way into the world of B2B marketing? What were her biggest lessons from the days of Marketo?
How does Maria balance between driven decision making vs data-driven in B2B marketing? Is there anything wrong with instinct driven? How can marketers confidently back up their thesis with substantive proof? How does one successfully sell that to leadership?
Maria is famous for rallying teams around her ideas, what has Maria found to be core to the success in gaining this collective approval and excitement? What is the right way to approach the marketing portfolio of strategies as a whole? What channel or segment is Maria currently most excited for?
How does Maria evaluate the current event landscape in terms of effectiveness? Are we in a B2B event bubble? How can companies determine whether this is the right strategy for them? Would Maria agree with Joe Chernov, “To do events, you have to have an appetite for losing money?” What does Maria and her team do to get the most out of events?
What does the term “marketing playbook” really mean to Maria? What does Maria mean when she suggests that marketers can let their own playbook get in the way? Why does Maria think it is absurd for there to be misalignment from sales and marketing?
Maria’s 60 Second SaaStr:
- What does Maria know now that she wishes he had known at the beginning?
Who does Maria believe is killing it in B2B marketing today?
Advice commonly stated in SaaS that Maria disagrees with?
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Jason Lemkin
Harry Stebbings
SaaStr
Maria Pergolino
Transcript
Harry Stebbings: Hello and welcome back to the official SaaStr Podcast with me, Harry Stebbings. It would be great to hear your thoughts and feedback on the show. You can do that on Instagram at HStebbings1996 with two bs. It would be great to see you there. However, to our episode today, and I’m so proud to welcome one of the hailed CMOs of our day in the form of Maria Pergolino, CMO at Anaplan, the company that allows you to accelerate decision making with effective planning.
To date, Anaplan have raised over $299 million in funding from the likes of Meritech, Salesforce Ventures, Shasta, DFJ Growth, and more incredible names. As for Maria, prior to Anaplan, Maria was Senior Vice President of Global Marketing and Sales Development at Apttus, where she directed go to market strategy, sales development, customer advocacy, demand generation, strategic events, and communications initiatives. She also held leadership positions at Marketo, Shunra Software, which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard, and Chubb Limited.
It’s also important to note, though, that Maria is renowned for building world class teams that drive growth, product differentiation, and category development. I do also have to say a huge thank you to–who else–but the wonderful Mr. Jason Lemkin for the intro to Maria today. I really do so appreciate that.
Now without further ado I’m thrilled to hand over to Maria Pergolino, CMO at Anaplan. Well, Maria, it is absolutely fantastic to have you on the show today. A big hand to Jason Lemkin for the intro. Thank you so much for joining me today, Maria.
Maria Pergolino: So happy to be here. Thank you.
Harry Stebbings: I would love to kick off today with a little bit about you. Tell me, how did you come to make your way into the wonderful world of SaaS and really come to be one of the most well-known and public CMOs of our day, now as CMO with Anaplan?
Maria Pergolino: That’s a big question. I appreciate it and very kind. I think that the way that I arrived to where I am today is just a really big focus on my discipline. I am a passionate marketer. I then have moved through some great organizations. That’s come from, I think, my discipline in marketing and really understanding how to size a market, how to understand where opportunity is. I’ve fallen in love with B2B marketing, where you’re marketing to other organizations, often trying to solve big problems that are going to have a big impact on business, society, all of the things that we care about. I love what I do. I just keep taking challenge after challenge. I love it.
Harry Stebbings: I love that kind of go-getter approach. I do want to kick off today with one of my favorite conversations, actually. One of my kind of nerdy passion projects, which is decision making. If marketers are accused of anything it’s being maybe just slightly intuition-based in their decision making. Maria, starting on this, can I ask, is there anything fundamentally wrong with instinct-driven decision making in kind of B2B marketing?
Maria Pergolino: I think this is such a good question and I think one that is hard to tackle even if we were to take a day. Our instincts are good. That’s why we think about instincts as a positive thing. Often, they are in a great direction. I don’t want to, when somebody has a gut feeling, it’s often important and something that should be explored. We often use that to create a strategy. Strategy is the most exciting part of marketing. To me, marketing is the front of the ship. It is the part that the outside of the company sees and it is what provides direction for the entire organization. It’s definitely the voice.
What you see from great marketing organizations is great strategy. What then I think gets people into trouble is then using that gut to say this is then how we’re going to move forward. This is how we’re gonna execute. The problem with that is is that the thing that really connects strategy with execution is a plan. Without that plan you can’t come up with the metrics that you’re gonna measure success with. You can’t come up with targets or forecasts of what you’re going to achieve. You end up just doing a bunch of things. You may have a great strategy and there may be some great intuitive points but how do you know if it’s working? I t
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