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The First Team Mindset: How CMOs Balance Peers and Direct Reports · Sales Pipeline Radio

• 0:16
  Matt Heinz: All right, we are back here live at Forrester B2B Summit.
• 0:19
  We are at the marketplace floor, day two, next to the big boot — the big boot.
• 0:24
  The big boot is a staple of the convention center here.
• 0:28
  It was here before the convention center was built.
• 0:31
  It's an ancient boot.
• 0:31
  Kelly Hopping: Oh.
• 0:31
  Matt Heinz: It's been here a very long time.
• 0:32
  Kelly Hopping: It's like I'm back in Texas.
• 0:33
  Matt Heinz: Yeah — no, well, pretty much.
• 0:34
  I mean, but this is… well, you got boots here, too, apparently.
• 0:37
  Kelly Hopping: They do.
• 0:37
  Matt Heinz: But thank you for joining us.
• 0:39
  Normally we've been doing these just one-on-one, but finally we
• 0:43
  have all three mics being used.
• 0:45
  Jeff refuses to talk — he's over here only listening to us.
• 0:48
  He doesn't wanna, like… it's fine, it's okay.
• 0:52
  It's a long show — we might get you to talk at some point.
• 0:55
  But we have Kelly Hopping here.
• 0:57
  Kelly is the CMO at 6sense.
• 0:59
  We've got Natalie Cunningham — she is the CMO at Data Axle.
• 1:02
  We were gonna do these separately, now we're doing them together,
• 1:04
  and I couldn't be happier.
• 1:06
  Kelly Hopping: All right, that's—
• 1:06
  Natalie Cunningham: —worked out perfectly.
• 1:07
  Kelly and I have been hanging out all day at this point.
• 1:09
  Kelly Hopping: Yeah.
• 1:10
  Might as well record it.
• 1:10
  Natalie Cunningham: Right.
• 1:11
  Matt Heinz: Might as well record it.
• 1:11
  And I literally — we were just having, like, pre-show small talk, and I'm
• 1:15
  like, "This should be the talk." Like, this is just really good.
• 1:18
  And I'm gonna retell a story.
• 1:19
  So
• 1:22
  Kelly, CMO of 6sense, our partner on CMO Coffee Talks — every Friday
• 1:26
  morning we get, like, literally almost 500 CMOs joining for a conversation.
• 1:32
  Encourage people to have video on, it's like come as you are.
• 1:34
  We don't record these.
• 1:35
  It's just for CMOs.
• 1:36
  And so I… so Kelly's joining, she joined in from her laptop, you
• 1:40
  can tell she's at home somewhere.
• 1:41
  And so she gets up and sort of walks off, but apparently has one of those
• 1:45
  cameras that wants to follow you as you kind of go left and right.
• 1:48
  And she just disappears, so the camera freaks out.
• 1:51
  It says, "Where's a person?" It finally finds her son eating cereal at a table.
• 1:56
  And so it just sticks with him — it's just following, you know, her son's
• 1:59
  eating breakfast, and then finally finishes, gets up, takes it to the sink.
• 2:03
  Still following him around.
• 2:06
  And I'm surprised no one saw this, 'cause total athlete,
• 2:09
  like, sleeveless shirt, guns out.
• 2:11
  It was phenomenal.
• 2:14
  It kind of reminds me of, every once in a while we'll tell people, like, muting's
• 2:17
  allowed, it's very conversational.
• 2:19
  But a lot of people just listening in, and probably join and don't bother
• 2:23
  muting and then go about their day.
• 2:25
  And I've heard people order pedicures.
• 2:27
  I've heard people's Starbucks orders.
• 2:30
  In six-plus years of doing it, I'm really surprised we haven't
• 2:33
  heard anything, you know—
• 2:35
  Natalie Cunningham: Untoward.
• 2:36
  Matt Heinz: —untoward.
• 2:36
  Yeah.
• 2:37
  Yes.
• 2:37
  Untoward.
• 2:38
  But, you know, I think untoward might be a little on-brand for the
• 2:41
  group as well — you come as you are.
• 2:43
  Natalie Cunningham: There's no recording on purpose.
• 2:45
  Matt Heinz: No, there's no recording.
• 2:46
  There's no — we informally call Friday morning "First Sip Club," right?
• 2:50
  First meet in the morning, first, like, kickoff of the weekend.
• 2:54
  And we do that every week.
• 2:55
  Once a month, the third Wednesday of the month, we have a get-together
• 2:58
  in the afternoon we call "Last Sip Club." So First Sip Club, we
• 3:01
  say, is for coffee and learning.
• 3:02
  Last Sip Club is liquor and complaining.
• 3:05
  Kelly Hopping: Oh.
• 3:05
  Matt Heinz: And that we really don't record — really make
• 3:08
  sure we don't record that one.
• 3:10
  Kelly Hopping: Well, I try to come to all of them, like the 7:00
• 3:12
  and the 10:00 on Friday mornings.
• 3:14
  But I'm often sometimes in single-parent mode if my husband's got something
• 3:18
  else or he's traveling or whatever.
• 3:19
  So, yeah, I'm on at 7 a.m., but I've gotta make lunches and make breakfast and get
• 3:24
  the kids out the door in the process.
• 3:26
  So next time I should turn off the camera, or turn off the camera-follow
• 3:29
  feature of Zoom, and lock it in, so maybe it just stares at least at an
• 3:33
  empty sink instead of, like — my—
• 3:36
  —son eating cereal.
• 3:36
  Natalie Cunningham: I really think that feature should not be the default.
• 3:39
  I agree.
• 3:40
  It's invasive — it's terrifying.
• 3:42
  Matt Heinz: No, you never know what it's gonna pick up.
• 3:45
  Natalie Cunningham: It did, in fact, follow what was not the
• 3:48
  right person on a LinkedIn Live.
• 3:50
  So it wasn't a Teams feature — it was a LinkedIn Live, and it was with our camera.
• 3:54
  This happened very recently to me.
• 3:56
  So I'm still processing
• 3:57
  — Matt Heinz: we are recording this
• 3:58
  — Natalie Cunningham: I'm processing the trauma.
• 3:59
  It is still processing.
• 4:00
  So process it with me.
• 4:02
  Matt Heinz: All right.
• 4:02
  Natalie Cunningham: We did a product launch live with my
• 4:05
  chief product officer and myself.
• 4:07
  It was our very first one at this company — we're both in our first year
• 4:10
  — and I meticulously set that camera up.
• 4:13
  We tested it, we tested it, and we tested it again.
• 4:16
  And that feature turned on, and it had decided that I was the only one that
• 4:21
  needed to be on camera, even while my chief product officer was speaking.
• 4:25
  And then the desk next to me was probably more likely to be human than
• 4:29
  me, and so it started zooming in on the desk next to me — that no one was at.
• 4:34
  At some point, my director of marketing, who is the only other person in the room
• 4:37
  with us, is holding a laptop in one hand.
• 4:40
  She is physically holding the camera from moving in the other hand — like
• 4:44
  balancing on one leg, patting her head, rubbing her stomach.
• 4:47
  It was a mess.
• 4:49
  Matt Heinz: That's how the sausage gets made, though.
• 4:50
  People think this is just seamless, right?
• 4:52
  Natalie Cunningham: Oh, yeah.
• 4:52
  Matt Heinz: And there's a reason why we don't do this with a lot of video.
• 4:55
  There's a reason why Sales Pipeline Radio — I have a face for radio.
• 4:58
  You can see it from 10 years ago over there.
• 5:01
  It hasn't gotten better.
• 5:02
  Natalie Cunningham: Oh—
• 5:02
  Matt Heinz: —young Matt.
• 5:03
  So, yeah, young Matt.
• 5:06
  Well, I appreciate you both for being here.
• 5:08
  I appreciate that you're both part of the CMO group.
• 5:10
  I appreciate what we've been able to sort of build together there.
• 5:13
  I was talking to someone earlier this week that I think a community
• 5:16
  is just about the people in it.
• 5:18
  A good community that sustains is people that care about each other, that lean
• 5:22
  into each other, that support each other.
• 5:24
  I've been really heartened to see — we just launched, earlier this month,
• 5:28
  finally, after six years, sort of a one-on-one connection feature.
• 5:31
  So if you're in a particular channel, once a month you'll be
• 5:34
  randomly connected with someone else.
• 5:36
  And we launched it like a week and a half ago, and we're starting to see
• 5:40
  some people say, "I just met with so-and-so, and I didn't know them,
• 5:43
  and we connected on all these things." And sometimes it's not a work thing,
• 5:45
  sometimes it's a personal thing.
• 5:47
  I know we've got people in Austin, I think, whose kids
• 5:50
  play sports together, right?
• 5:52
  And/or they live in the same neighborhood and had no idea until
• 5:54
  they actually connected somewhere.
• 5:56
  Kelly Hopping: Crazy.
• 5:56
  Matt Heinz: And I think, we talk about our singularities
• 6:01
  and all of our frameworks and all of our orchestration, but we're just
• 6:04
  people trying to make it, you know?
• 6:05
  Kelly Hopping: Well, I'll tell you, Natalie and I were just talking about it.
• 6:07
  We met before here one-on-one, and we were talking about — certainly, as the
• 6:12
  CMO of 6sense, I love the community as it's kind of this moat around 6sense.
• 6:19
  Natalie Cunningham: Oh, mm-hmm.
• 6:19
  Yeah.
• 6:19
  Kelly Hopping: Like, I came from the competitor, and the one thing
• 6:23
  we couldn't undo or repeat was some sort of CMO community of some sort.
• 6:28
  And so we lost so many deals because they were so loyal to this community
• 6:33
  — they're like, "No, I'm gonna go with 6sense because I love that community."
• 6:37
  And I think that's something — and again, to your point, it's not
• 6:39
  about the product, it's not about features, it's not about technology.
• 6:42
  It's just about people that they enjoy being with, and they hold a lot of
• 6:44
  equity and value in those relationships.
• 6:47
  And so, yeah, I think it's one of those things — I've tried to rebuild
• 6:50
  it multiple times at different companies, and you just can't.
• 6:53
  Matt Heinz: It's really hard.
• 6:54
  Kelly Hopping: Yeah.
• 6:55
  Matt Heinz: And I think it's hard because the corporate objectives get in the way.
• 7:00
  It's a long-term play.
• 7:01
  Natalie Cunningham: Yes.
• 7:02
  Matt Heinz: There certainly are resources — you put into it money, technology, people.
• 7:06
  Natalie Cunningham: Yeah.
• 7:07
  Matt Heinz: And when we do that as marketers, we tend to ask
• 7:09
  ourselves, "Where's the pipeline?"
• 7:10
  Natalie Cunningham: Yeah.
• 7:13
  Matt Heinz: I've seen groups launch where they're like, "We're gonna
• 7:16
  grow a group. It's not gonna cost anything, but we're gonna have eight
• 7:19
  sponsors." Well, now you got eight companies that want you on the list.
• 7:22
  Now you got eight more companies that are pitching to you, and maybe
• 7:24
  that's okay — maybe the triage there, or the arbitrage, is okay, maybe
• 7:27
  you're okay to accept that — but we don't have any more time in the day.
• 7:32
  The number of vendors that wanna build a community, or want us to go to their
• 7:35
  user conference, or want us to spend time with them, is growing exponentially,
• 7:38
  and our time is becoming more finite.
• 7:40
  Natalie Cunningham: Yeah.
• 7:41
  Matt Heinz: So to be able to create something and to sustain
• 7:44
  something that sort of keeps that attention, I think is very hard to—
• 7:48
  Kelly Hopping: —do.
• 7:48
  Well, and I think we wanna, like, invest in — as CMOs,
• 7:52
  we wanna invest in one place.
• 7:54
  I'm gonna commit to doing this every week.
• 7:56
  I can't commit to doing four of these a week.
• 7:58
  I can't commit to doing different groups or meeting people across all of them.
• 8:02
  I'm gonna go with one and do it really, really well.
• 8:04
  Natalie Cunningham: I think that's the difference with CMO Coffee
• 8:06
  Talk, to me, as compared to other communities that I've been in or am in.
• 8:11
  It's focused on executives that are solving exactly the same problems you are.
• 8:16
  That's the difference — so many of the other ones, maybe it would be okay to have
• 8:21
  more sponsors involved, maybe it would be okay to get more vendor points of view
• 8:25
  if you were with a more junior audience, or you were with a broader audience.
• 8:29
  But that's not what I'm looking for in this.
• 8:31
  And, in fact, I actually haven't bought 6sense.
• 8:34
  I know the product really well — but I haven't bought 6sense, and I
• 8:37
  am in Coffee Talk, and it gives me a positive view of the brand.
• 8:41
  And you're right, it hasn't turned into pipeline or revenue
• 8:43
  for the 6sense team yet, but that doesn't mean it's not working.
• 8:48
  Matt Heinz: Well, let me give you examples of how that does work, though, right?
• 8:50
  Like, you may not buy 6sense, but if you evangelize it somewhere else, and you
• 8:54
  say, "You gotta join this community, it's fantastic," the halo effect for 6sense,
• 8:58
  by not making it a big 6sense thing, by making it CMO Coffee Talk, is enormous.
• 9:02
  But even though you don't put 6sense at the top of the page,
• 9:05
  you get credit for the community.
• 9:07
  Natalie Cunningham: That's—
• 9:07
  Matt Heinz: —right?
• 9:07
  And so having someone else come in, maybe they do have a need, or maybe
• 9:12
  they move to another company in six months and that company has a need.
• 9:15
  Natalie Cunningham: Oh, yeah.
• 9:15
  Right?
• 9:16
  Matt Heinz: Like, even internally for our tiny little consulting
• 9:18
  firm, we track both repeat customers and repeat executive sponsors.
• 9:22
  So we separate the account from the individual, and we have way
• 9:25
  more repeat executive sponsors over the years 'cause people move on.
• 9:29
  And that's one of the things I'm most proud of — if we've done a
• 9:31
  good job for the account, great, we've got some continuity, we're
• 9:33
  an approved vendor, wonderful.
• 9:34
  But if the people believe in us, that's great.
• 9:37
  And I think that — we talk a lot about the dark funnel, we
• 9:41
  talk a lot about word of mouth.
• 9:42
  We talk about, in cybersecurity, there's certain go-to-market motions where you
• 9:47
  can do it, but they're just gonna tell each other who to buy from, right?
• 9:50
  Natalie Cunningham: Right, right.
• 9:50
  Matt Heinz: And so I think having that sense of community and having
• 9:54
  that referral network — where even if Natalie's not ready to buy, she might
• 9:58
  be later, but she might also refer five other people, and three of them buy.
• 10:01
  And, so it's, sort of go and create attribution around
• 10:04
  that, but that is very real.
• 10:06
  Natalie Cunningham: Yeah.
• 10:06
  Matt Heinz: And the beauty of a community motion is if you can build that trust — if
• 10:10
  you have a community of 300 or 3,000, the motions are kind of the same, right?
• 10:15
  And so the scalability of that, if you could maintain the integrity
• 10:18
  of the group, is pretty special.
• 10:20
  I wanna pivot — I don't wanna make this a whole CMO Coffee
• 10:22
  Talk conversation with you two.
• 10:25
  You both are relatively new in your roles—
• 10:27
  Natalie Cunningham: Yes.
• 10:27
  Matt Heinz: —in your organizations.
• 10:29
  You came into companies where — I've talked to both of you about this
• 10:32
  — where you come into a company as the new leader, inherently they're
• 10:39
  expecting you to change things, they're expecting you to do new things.
• 10:42
  But there's things that have always been done, there's things that people
• 10:44
  are comfortable with — everything from traditions, to personalities, to habits,
• 10:52
  to sacred cows in a variety of formats.
• 10:55
  And so you've got a mandate to do something different, and you've got
• 10:59
  sometimes a culture and a go-to-market environment that, by definition, because
• 11:05
  we're humans, doesn't want to change.
• 11:07
  How do you navigate that?
• 11:09
  How do — 'cause, I realize how hard this question is.
• 11:12
  Natalie Cunningham: Yeah.
• 11:13
  Matt Heinz: But, and I don't expect you to have the answer, but what are
• 11:15
  things you're doing and have done that kind of help with that process?
• 11:21
  Natalie Cunningham: Yeah.
• 11:22
  It's such a tough question, and I've had this conversation over and over
• 11:26
  and over again, even today, this morning, with a couple of people.
• 11:31
  Absolutely, I don't think anybody has the clear answer.
• 11:34
  I think right now the things I'm focusing on are setting clear direction for what
• 11:40
  good looks like, and what outcomes I'm actually going to be paying attention
• 11:45
  to, and what the business cares about.
• 11:47
  Where in the past I think a lot of my organization has been incentivized for
• 11:51
  activity, and has been held accountable for more checking boxes on activity
• 11:56
  than they were for the outcomes.
• 11:57
  And so it felt scary to make that transition to outcome focus, but in
• 12:01
  fact, it's more empowering, because they get to make their own decisions
• 12:04
  about how they wanna execute.
• 12:06
  So we started there, and then the second piece has been really focusing on giving
• 12:12
  them space, at the beginning of a project or the beginning of a new campaign, to
• 12:15
  think creatively — and trying to remove these boundaries they have from prior
• 12:21
  experience, from their former manager, from even other companies, right?
• 12:25
  But in many cases, from their prior experience at the company, of, "Yes,
• 12:30
  but there's clearly a box I have to work within," and I'm trying to get
• 12:34
  them to understand that that's not true.
• 12:35
  That, in fact — a great example is, we're bringing brands together across
• 12:40
  different sectors of our business and unifying as one Data Axle.
• 12:44
  And as part of that process, we're going to build a whole new web experience, and
• 12:48
  I asked my team at the beginning to think big — give me big ideas, imagine you don't
• 12:53
  have any constraints, what would you do?
• 12:56
  And the first ideas that came back were iterations — safe, slight improvements.
• 13:01
  And I said, "Okay, but think bigger — no, I really mean it." And we just had to
• 13:06
  repeat it over and over again till they finally felt safe to say, "Okay, but
• 13:10
  what if we did a headless CMS, and what if we had this experience where they
• 13:15
  could actually engage in the product?
• 13:16
  And what if there was an AI bot on the site that they could chat
• 13:20
  with, but we built it ourselves?" It's the first time they came with
• 13:23
  new ideas, and they were excited.
• 13:25
  Kelly Hopping: Yeah.
• 13:26
  Natalie Cunningham: And I think encouraging that has made a big
• 13:28
  difference, and then it matriculates throughout the team, when you see a couple
• 13:32
  of people have that positive experience.
• 13:35
  Kelly Hopping: Yeah, I mean, I think for me, clarity from the
• 13:38
  beginning is really helpful.
• 13:39
  So making sure that the team knows kind of your vision for where
• 13:43
  you're going, recognizing that not everyone is gonna be on board.
• 13:49
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 13:49
  Kelly Hopping: Yeah.
• 13:49
  You know, I've talked before about "getting in the boats" on one of
• 13:52
  these Coffee Talks, and I've shared what that stands for on LinkedIn.
• 13:57
  But really, I want people who are bought in.
• 14:00
  And if they're not bought in, that is totally fine — there are a lot
• 14:03
  of companies out there — but I want people who are kind of bought in
• 14:06
  and they're gonna be open to it.
• 14:07
  I think some of that means they have to let go of some of the old stuff.
• 14:11
  So, for example, somebody on my team — or a couple of people on my team — it was
• 14:15
  coming up consistently, I'd get the, "Well, we're all drowning here 'cause
• 14:19
  we're doing the work of seven, but we had to let three go, so we only have four."
• 14:24
  And I'm like, "That was a year ago.
• 14:26
  At some point you need to reset and say, 'We have a team of
• 14:28
  four — what should we be doing?'"
• 14:30
  Natalie Cunningham: Mm-hmm.
• 14:30
  Kelly Hopping: And you, as the leader, have that responsibility, and
• 14:33
  they're like, "Well, but…" And I'm like, "No, you need to undo stuff.
• 14:36
  Don't do some things, say no to some things.
• 14:38
  And if you need permission to turn some of those off, come talk to me.
• 14:42
  And I'm happy to help you prioritize those lists, because I'm not asking
• 14:45
  you to do seven people's job.
• 14:47
  And so I want you to recognize that this is the new normal." And some of those
• 14:50
  people are still in the head space of, "But this is how we used to do it," or,
• 14:53
  "This is what I was used to." And I'm like, "No, no, we're not there anymore,
• 14:56
  this is a new model." Same thing with AI, I think, is another big one as part of
• 15:01
  that change — there's such a default of, "One of my team members resigned, I need
• 15:06
  a backfill." And I wanna say, "Let's reset that — what do you need the backfill for?
• 15:11
  Are you sure you need…" In this world of AI, for example, I lost a writer the
• 15:14
  other day — a senior writer. First thing was, "We need a backfill." And I'm like,
• 15:18
  "Do you? This is 2026." Not that we don't need writers, but maybe what you need is a
• 15:24
  content strategist, or a prompt engineer, or an SEO expert, and then we can create
• 15:32
  content out of that in a different way.
• 15:35
  So it may be just a pivot — it's not about less headcount, but
• 15:38
  it might be a different role, a different skill set, right?
• 15:40
  Natalie Cunningham: I love that.
• 15:40
  Kelly Hopping: And so I think, just getting people to think differently.
• 15:43
  And then the other thing I think — and Latane and I talked about it, we've
• 15:48
  talked about it offline, but we also talked about it on the Coffee
• 15:50
  Talk — is there's something about
• 15:56
  the new perspective that you bring when you come into a new role.
• 15:59
  Matt Heinz: Mm-hmm.
• 16:00
  Kelly Hopping: And even Latane's like, "I needed fresh eyes to come in." It
• 16:04
  was time, because I'd been in the same mindset for — it's hard, seven years in
• 16:09
  a role, to be able to bring fresh ideas — and you get permission as a new leader
• 16:14
  to bring in fresh ideas, and you don't have the kind of constraints of, "This
• 16:18
  is the way we've done it," or, "These are the people that I need, that I have
• 16:21
  relationships with." You don't have any of that, so you get a chance to be objective.
• 16:27
  Matt Heinz: Yep.
• 16:27
  Natalie Cunningham: It doesn't last very long.
• 16:29
  That was one of the learnings I had coming on at Data Axle — my CEO said,
• 16:34
  "Hey, listen, I know you need time, but I wanna hear your plan sooner rather
• 16:39
  than later, even if it's imperfect, because you will get indoctrinated soon
• 16:44
  enough, and we need your objectivity. In your first 90 days, I wanna hear a
• 16:48
  plan, even if there are question marks."
• 16:48
  Kelly Hopping: 100%.
• 16:48
  It's really smart.
• 16:51
  That's really good advice.
• 16:52
  Matt Heinz: So you both — just to reset, we've got two guests here on this
• 16:57
  episode of Sales Pipeline Radio, live at the Forrester B2B Summit Marketplace.
• 17:01
  We've got Natalie Cunningham, who is the CMO at Data Axle, and Kelly
• 17:05
  Hopping, who is the CMO at 6sense.
• 17:07
  You both gave some examples of creating kind of a safe place for people to
• 17:12
  change, for people to disrupt what they're doing, for people to try a
• 17:14
  different way, which I think is so important, 'cause whenever a new leader
• 17:18
  comes in, most people are afraid.
• 17:20
  Most people are, "Okay, there's a reset now on what I've always done, maybe it's
• 17:24
  not safe, maybe it's not comfortable." And so when you come and say, rightfully,
• 17:29
  "Well, maybe we don't need to replace that role, maybe we don't need to…"
• 17:31
  like, "Oh, here it comes," right?
• 17:32
  Here's all the change gonna happen.
• 17:34
  So when we see something different, because we're so tied to the status
• 17:38
  quo, we see those from a perspective of fear first, and that fear gets
• 17:43
  very existential — it gets very bottom-of-the-Maslow's-pyramid.
• 17:46
  So when you say, "No, I want you to be creative," some people are like, "This is
• 17:50
  a test." They don't believe you, right?
• 17:53
  And so—
• 17:54
  Natalie Cunningham: —absolutely, they don't believe you.
• 17:55
  Matt Heinz: Right.
• 17:55
  Yeah.
• 17:55
  And so it's not just that one thing — it's a body of work, showing that I am going
• 18:01
  to reward people that are leaning in, I'm going to reward people that have the
• 18:04
  company's needs in mind, not whatever you did Monday through Friday last week, but
• 18:09
  the things that are right for our company.
• 18:10
  That is a mindset that I think is learned over time for a lot of people, and is
• 18:16
  hard for more junior members of the team.
• 18:19
  And you both have all of the above.
• 18:20
  So how do you manage that change and that safe place to be disruptive
• 18:27
  and innovative, when you've got people coming with different
• 18:30
  emotional responses to that?
• 18:32
  Kelly Hopping: I mean, I think there's the hiring piece, and
• 18:35
  then there's a change piece.
• 18:37
  Like, I was just sitting in an interview presentation this morning,
• 18:41
  and, yes, I heard everything he said, I heard his plans, but I mostly was
• 18:45
  listening for a builder mindset.
• 18:48
  Matt Heinz: Mm-hmm.
• 18:48
  Kelly Hopping: I was listening for a curiosity.
• 18:51
  I was listening for somebody who looks like they were craving an environment
• 18:55
  that's dynamic — that they're willing to kind of try new things, experiment
• 18:58
  with new things, transform new things.
• 19:00
  And so I think we have a responsibility, when we hire people, it's not just
• 19:04
  on functional skill set, but on the mindset that they bring to a role.
• 19:08
  Now, for the people that are already in a role, I think that's a leadership
• 19:12
  responsibility to create a safe space where people feel like they can fail
• 19:15
  — whether it's testing some of these ideas.
• 19:18
  There's a robot walking right at me.
• 19:20
  Matt Heinz: It's a robot dog.
• 19:20
  Kelly Hopping: It's a robot dog?
• 19:21
  Natalie Cunningham: I thought that was an actual dog.
• 19:22
  Yesterday, there were real dogs here, and it got in a fight with the robot dog.
• 19:27
  Matt Heinz: It did.
• 19:27
  Yeah, it did.
• 19:28
  And — that's amazing — is that, are those teeth at the bottom of that?
• 19:31
  It looks like rotating teeth.
• 19:32
  It looks like it's about to come chew on an ankle.
• 19:35
  Natalie Cunningham: It's a little terrifying.
• 19:36
  Matt Heinz: It is very terrifying.
• 19:37
  Kelly Hopping: He just waved at me, and now he looks like he's
• 19:39
  like a bull, about to pounce.
• 19:40
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 19:41
  Natalie Cunningham: He just doesn't know we're live here with this thing, guy.
• 19:43
  Matt Heinz: They're remote control.
• 19:43
  We're live.
• 19:45
  This is the coolest thing I've ever seen
• 19:47
  — Kelly Hopping: —with a dancing dog.
• 19:47
  Matt Heinz: He's dancing?
• 19:48
  I don't think he's dancing, I think he's trying to attack.
• 19:49
  No — he's like, does he want a treat?
• 19:50
  Or he wants to play.
• 19:51
  Does anyone have a Milk-Bone?
• 19:52
  Anyone got some — hi, hi, buddy, how you doing?
• 19:54
  Kelly Hopping: Hey.
• 19:55
  Matt Heinz: We maybe do need to end on this.
• 19:57
  Does he eat batteries?
• 19:57
  I don't know.
• 19:57
  What do you give him?
• 19:57
  Kelly Hopping: Yeah, you should add video for this podcast, just for that dog.
• 20:00
  Matt Heinz: Just for that.
• 20:00
  Kelly Hopping: That's very cool.
• 20:02
  Anyway — where were we?
• 20:04
  Anyway.
• 20:04
  So, we're going back to safe space, people and safe spaces.
• 20:04
  Yeah, I mean, I think it's celebrating creative ideas, recognizing or setting
• 20:09
  a culture that great ideas can come from anywhere, not just from leaders.
• 20:12
  And, actually testing some things, and rewarding failure often.
• 20:19
  Natalie Cunningham: And creating, I think, some safe spaces for failure as well.
• 20:23
  A big thing that — sorry, I'm really distracted by this robot dog.
• 20:26
  Matt Heinz: I know, right?
• 20:26
  You keep staring at it.
• 20:27
  Natalie Cunningham: I need to like put my hand here so I don't look at it.
• 20:30
  So one of the things I've focused on is trying to find the right
• 20:34
  balance — and I have no idea if I'm right, I'm doing my best.
• 20:37
  Kelly Hopping: Yeah.
• 20:38
  Natalie Cunningham: Trying to find the right balance of bringing in some
• 20:41
  new talent — in many cases to fill gaps that genuinely we had a skill
• 20:45
  set gap, it's not just to bring in new energy, new thought processes.
• 20:50
  But that's my primary goal, actually, is to bring in someone that has maybe
• 20:54
  seen this done a different way, that is maybe a little further along in their
• 20:57
  AI adoption journey, or has experienced a different model than the rest of my
• 21:02
  team, so that I'm getting different thought processes baked into the team.
• 21:07
  And I'm also intentionally scheduling skip-level meetings with everybody
• 21:13
  on my team — it's a slog a little bit on my calendar, but I made it
• 21:18
  a priority to do that as quickly as I could when I got the team.
• 21:22
  And in that, there is no set agenda except I wanna hear an idea — like, anything.
• 21:28
  And no matter what it is, I make the space to talk through it with them, to play
• 21:32
  it out, and to encourage them to go try it, and then I share that feedback with
• 21:36
  their manager, so that they feel supported and that their manager or their leader
• 21:41
  is also supporting them trying something new, and it's not just coming from me.
• 21:45
  And we've had a couple of things that people have been able to try or recommend
• 21:49
  that they otherwise maybe wouldn't have gotten out, because they were afraid.
• 21:53
  Kelly Hopping: Well, on a skip level, where you're asking for an idea,
• 21:56
  that also resets a feeling of fear, because, one, you're asking to hear
• 22:01
  it directly, and you're looking them in the eye when they do it.
• 22:03
  But I've also realized — I realized, in the past few weeks, when I schedule
• 22:08
  one-on-ones with skip levels, their first thought is that they're getting fired.
• 22:11
  Natalie Cunningham: That's right.
• 22:12
  Kelly Hopping: And I'm like, "Why?
• 22:13
  Why would you think that?" They're like, "There was no agenda, I
• 22:15
  just didn't know what this was."
• 22:16
  Natalie Cunningham: Right.
• 22:16
  Kelly Hopping: Like, first thing I did was I asked my husband, "Do you think
• 22:18
  I'm getting fired in this meeting?"
• 22:19
  Natalie Cunningham: That's right.
• 22:19
  Kelly Hopping: They're like, "No, it wasn't — it was scheduled two
• 22:21
  weeks ago, not yesterday, so it's probably okay, it's probably…"
• 22:23
  — like, all these kind of things.
• 22:25
  And what I realized is because you're undoing potentially
• 22:28
  years of fear of, like—
• 22:29
  Natalie Cunningham: —and trauma.
• 22:30
  Kelly Hopping: This means — yes, trauma.
• 22:31
  Like, "I might get fired if I'm like…" And so—
• 22:34
  Natalie Cunningham: —then, they've been laid off before.
• 22:35
  They've had the 15-minute meeting show up on their calendar.
• 22:38
  I had exactly the same feedback.
• 22:40
  We had my EA put a note in the invite that specifically said,
• 22:44
  "I'm scheduling this with everyone, no pressure, it's an open hu—"
• 22:48
  Kelly Hopping: —check-in.
• 22:49
  Natalie Cunningham: Yeah.
• 22:49
  Just so they didn't panic.
• 22:50
  Matt Heinz: Yes, they probably still did.
• 22:51
  Kelly Hopping: We had the same conversation.
• 22:52
  Yeah.
• 22:52
  But yeah, I think what you get out of that is, hopefully, you reset a
• 22:55
  mindset that, like, "Oh, this is a comfortable place, I can bring ideas,
• 22:58
  I can bring innovation, I don't have to be scared of this meeting" — which
• 23:01
  is all a good culture builder anyway.
• 23:03
  Matt Heinz: Okay.
• 23:03
  Jeff, anything?
• 23:04
  We're gonna get you to this eventually.
• 23:05
  No?
• 23:05
  Just you good?
• 23:06
  All right, Jeff's good.
• 23:07
  All right, we've been talking mostly about leadership, managing through
• 23:10
  change, through new roles, and mostly talking about into your organization.
• 23:14
  I wanna talk about managing laterally and managing up, right?
• 23:17
  So you've got your peer group — a lot of CMOs and CXOs will say,
• 23:21
  "That's my first team, my first team is the leadership team," right?
• 23:23
  And that could be a hard message for a marketing team, or for your down-level
• 23:27
  team, to have not heard that before.
• 23:29
  I didn't mean to say "down-level" — it makes me sound like we're an MLM now.
• 23:29
  But, I mean, that can be—
• 23:29
  Natalie Cunningham: —down
• 23:33
  the pyramid.
• 23:34
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 23:35
  Like the — yeah — anyway.
• 23:38
  But there's your first team, and then there's the people that
• 23:42
  hired you, which is the CEO and the board and the investors.
• 23:46
  And there's the honeymoon period, which you kind of indicated you're out of now.
• 23:50
  So there's—
• 23:51
  Natalie Cunningham: —down the other side.
• 23:52
  Matt Heinz: Yes — there's the time it takes to drive effective change management
• 23:56
  in your organization, and then there's the other timeline that we have coming
• 24:01
  from our peers and from our overlords.
• 24:04
  How do you balance that?
• 24:08
  Natalie Cunningham: Alcohol?
• 24:09
  Is that an okay answer?
• 24:11
  Um, yeah, I mean, the real answer is, for me, I do prioritize
• 24:19
  my peers — my first team.
• 24:22
  It doesn't mean
• 24:26
  I'm deprioritizing my marketing team, but I prioritize time and
• 24:30
  input from my first team more than I ever have, I think, in prior roles.
• 24:34
  I felt like that was particularly important here, just given the size
• 24:37
  of the organization, the complexity.
• 24:40
  And then, I am lucky — I have a CEO who really gets it, who really gets marketing.
• 24:48
  He happens to have worked in MarTech marketing services for a
• 24:52
  lot of his career, so he's worked with marketers for a long time.
• 24:55
  And, to be fair, that is a lot of why I picked this job — I
• 24:57
  wanted to work for this CEO.
• 24:59
  He gets it, he trusts me, he allows me to do my job and pushes me to do it better.
• 25:05
  So it's easier when you have a good partner in your CEO, when you
• 25:09
  feel like it's not an overlord.
• 25:10
  Matt Heinz: Right.
• 25:11
  Natalie Cunningham: And then, certainly, I think the other big thing for me has
• 25:15
  been hiring and building a marketing leadership team that I can rely on
• 25:21
  to be the culture leader in the room, and to make marketing feel important
• 25:26
  and supported when I'm not there.
• 25:28
  I have to be able to put my VPs in a room and know that team is gonna
• 25:33
  keep the project moving forward, but they're also gonna feel supported
• 25:36
  and important when I have to go to a meeting with my chief product officer.
• 25:40
  They need to be me when I'm not there.
• 25:43
  And that — we just made a very recent hire and kind of rounded
• 25:46
  out my senior leadership team, and that has made all the difference.
• 25:50
  Kelly Hopping: Yeah.
• 25:50
  I would say I'm a big believer in first team, too.
• 25:53
  And that started the first time I ever managed people — like, when
• 25:56
  I was at Rackspace, we were big Table Group, Pat Lencioni fans.
• 26:00
  Did a lot of that first-team-building, Five Dysfunctions of a
• 26:03
  Team and all of that.
• 26:05
  And so that's kind of carried through.
• 26:06
  And then here now at
• 26:10
  6sense — if you've been following the news at all, you've seen that
• 26:12
  the entire leadership team is new.
• 26:14
  And so we had an offsite about a month ago, just the ELT, and it was entirely
• 26:20
  focused on team building as a first team, because we don't know each other well.
• 26:24
  We're all pretty new, so we had to build trust, get to understand how we
• 26:27
  work, understand each other's strengths, understand what makes each other tick,
• 26:31
  understand how we think, and kind of set some guidelines of saying, "Hey, how
• 26:35
  do we want to work as a first team?" So that was great for trust building there.
• 26:40
  And so I am a big believer in that.
• 26:41
  I will say that comes with maturity — I don't think, my first CMO gig — I'm
• 26:45
  on my fifth — I don't think my first CMO gig I was wise enough.
• 26:48
  I focused down on my team more than I focused on first team.
• 26:52
  And what it created was a lack of air cover for my team
• 26:55
  to work cross-functionally.
• 26:57
  And so what I need is: if I have good relationships with my CRO, my
• 27:01
  CPO, my CCO, it's gonna allow my team to work much more seamlessly,
• 27:04
  which I think is super important.
• 27:05
  Natalie Cunningham: But also, I think it sets a great example.
• 27:08
  This is a message I've been trying to push with my leadership team — you need
• 27:12
  to build relationships with your peers—
• 27:13
  Kelly Hopping: Yeah.
• 27:14
  Natalie Cunningham: —cross-functionally as well.
• 27:15
  This is going to serve your career, it's gonna serve your objectives.
• 27:18
  You don't do anything alone in marketing.
• 27:20
  Go build relationships with the VP of Sales, go build that relationship
• 27:23
  with your VP of Product — I promise it's gonna serve you.
• 27:26
  But I have to set that example as well.
• 27:27
  Kelly Hopping: Well, it's even good for the MLT to have good
• 27:31
  relationships, and not just put on their best behavior in front of me,
• 27:34
  but amongst themselves — do they get along, do they work together well?
• 27:37
  So I think that's important.
• 27:38
  The other thing I was gonna say was on the permission on
• 27:42
  managing up and those things.
• 27:44
  Honestly, I think — when I first got here, I was like, "We gotta hit pipeline."
• 27:48
  If I can hit my pipeline number, then leadership will give me breathing room.
• 27:53
  That's the other way you kinda get some space.
• 27:54
  And so I was like, "Okay, Q1, first quarter in, we gotta hit our pipeline
• 27:57
  target," which we did last week, and we still got two more days.
• 28:01
  Natalie Cunningham: Ooh, congratulations.
• 28:02
  Matt Heinz: Nice job.
• 28:02
  Kelly Hopping: Thank you.
• 28:02
  Yeah.
• 28:03
  We're coming in around 113%, which is awesome.
• 28:05
  Matt Heinz: Wow.
• 28:05
  Kelly Hopping: Yeah.
• 28:06
  Nice job.
• 28:06
  Feeling pretty good.
• 28:06
  So Q1 — so then I feel like I get breathing room now to go do all the things
• 28:10
  I need to do in the business, because the one primary benchmark has been hit, so…
• 28:14
  Natalie Cunningham: It's like the ticket to ride before you can do everything else.
• 28:17
  Kelly Hopping: Yeah, exactly.
• 28:18
  If I get that going, then the rest I get a little bit more grace.
• 28:21
  Matt Heinz: I love that.
• 28:21
  Kelly Hopping: Yeah.
• 28:22
  Matt Heinz: Well, I know you guys are busy.
• 28:23
  I appreciate you both coming and joining us.
• 28:24
  This is already, in the clubhouse, one of my top favorite
• 28:27
  podcast recordings from here.
• 28:29
  The only
• 28:33
  — everybody, if you're listening to this and you also recorded
• 28:35
  with us, you were wonderful too,
• 28:39
  but — no favorites, as I now say that, there's no favorites.
• 28:40
  But we had a guy on earlier who was a — he's, like, a four-time founder,
• 28:45
  and in his second startup, he had a quarter-life crisis, his words, and he
• 28:49
  used a combination of quantum physics, nuclear physics, consciousness, and
• 28:55
  meditation to figure out what he wanted to do next, and now he teaches
• 28:58
  meditation as a founder resilience tool.
• 29:01
  And he walked through all of this, and I'm like, "I have questions."
• 29:04
  Kelly Hopping: I have so many questions.
• 29:06
  We had — and yet, maybe no interest, I don't know which.
• 29:10
  I know — it's a little bit of a balance of, like, I wanna
• 29:12
  learn more, and maybe I don't.
• 29:13
  That was brutal.
• 29:13
  Matt Heinz: I wanna learn more, but—
• 29:14
  —I love it — but there's a lot going on there.
• 29:16
  But shout out to — yeah, that was a fun one.
• 29:20
  But anyway, thank you so much both for doing this, thank you for being here.
• 29:24
  Thanks, everyone, for listening.
• 29:25
  We'll be back for another episode here in a minute.
• 29:26
  Stay tuned.