Saima Rashid: 0:00 I came in with the benefit of. I was a 6Sense customer for five years, and so when I joined the company, it was all about let's show how we're using it. The fact that we were marketing to marketers is exciting, right, because marketers get it and because we were the target persona, we recognize that by showing them the power and the promise of the platform, versus just telling them it's just so much more interesting.

Kevin Kerner: 0:26 Hi guys, I'm Kevin Kerner. I'm the host of Tech Marketing Rewired. You know, this past week I was so honored to have Saima Rashid on the podcast, catching her right as she was taking a little time off after an incredible run at 6Sense and right before starting her next chapter, which should happen in the next couple of weeks. Her rise there, as many of you know, is nothing short of remarkable, making the leap from a deep analytics role and background to leading the entire marketing organization for one of the biggest brands in MarTech. And because of that unique journey, I reached out to her and I wanted her perspective on a couple of big things. First, I was really curious about the playbook she ran at 6Sense and what it takes to build such a great brand and demand engine and become a customer zero of your own product, which the team was very good at. But I also wanted to tap into the insight she's gained from talking to literally thousands of marketing leaders through the CMO Coffee Talk community and the Revenue Makers podcast at 6Sense. And we got into so many things, including accountability, ai, talent mandates and all kinds of other things that CMOs are facing right now. Conversation is a fantastic look inside of one of the sharpest minds in the industry.

Kevin Kerner: 1:41 But before we start, I wanted to mention that this podcast is sponsored by my company, mighty True. We are an agency that focuses exclusively on the technology industry, and we work with tech CMOs to close the gap between a bold strategy and actually getting it to market. You can learn more about us at wwwmightyandtruecom. So let's get to itmightyandtruecom. So let's get to it. This is Tech Marketing Rewired. Hi, simon, how you doing.

Saima Rashid: 2:16 I am doing so good, Kevin. How about you?

Kevin Kerner: 2:19 Good, really good. Thank you so much for being on. I'm very honored to have you on the podcast, especially after taking a little time off as somebody who's been working since gosh I was, you know 20 years old, full time and um.

Saima Rashid: 2:52 it is one of those rare blessings to be able to take some time off and and spend it with the family and focus a little bit on yourself, and so it's it's been a fantastic six weeks of just being um. I feel so grateful for it.

Kevin Kerner: 3:08 So great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you miss the uh the podcast life? I watched your uh revenue. What is it? Revenue makers?

Saima Rashid: 3:16 Yep Revenue makers. I miss the. I miss the camaraderie with my co host, I miss talking to really interesting people. But I'm doing that right now with you. So yeah it's all good.

Kevin Kerner: 3:27 Yeah, great. Well, we have a lot to. There's a lot I want to dig into with you. I thought what we'd do is have a couple of different pivots or themes for the podcast. The first one I wanted, since you've had such an amazing career at 6Sense and they're such an impressive brand, I wanted to talk a little bit about that career. And then I also wanted, since you also are very connected with the CMO Coffee Talk community, I thought I would pitch some imperatives that I'm hearing from my friends that are CMOs and marketing leaders, and we kind of talked those through as well. Does that sound good?

Saima Rashid: 4:02 Sounds fantastic.

Kevin Kerner: 4:03 Cool, cool, let's dig into it. So let's roll back the calendar here back to your six cents days, and I thought it was interesting that you were brought in in the world of analytics. Like, your background is a really strong analytical background which is kind of a dream background for a CMO, I think a marketing leader a dream background for a CMO, I think a marketing leader. I was going to ask you you know, analytics is very, is very much numbers and it's creative in some way. But then you have the marketing side, which is also sort of intangible. And when you first started in the leadership role that you're in now, after the analytics experience, how did you transition from the analytics side to a more department-facing management role?

Saima Rashid: 4:50 Yeah, I think it was an evolution, and I would say, even when I was in pure analytics roles, which I have been for 20 years, the data is great, the data is important, but unless somebody is doing something with it, or unless you're translating the data into actual insights and then driving action from it, who cares?

Saima Rashid: 5:12 And so, even when I was a senior analyst analyzing data, it was much more about the application and the insights, and so I feel like I've been playing the role and preparing for, you know, the leadership role my entire career, oftentimes sharing insights and recommending actions, and oftentimes just being given the keys and being told go do it yourself, you know.

Saima Rashid: 5:37 And so even pure analytics roles, and even the best analytics people I've worked with and that I've hired and that I've mentored, it is all about doing something with it and taking that next action, and so I've always been doing that, and I was hired at 6Sense to build out that function and bring, you know, help the company scale, for, you know, after so many years of hyper growth, there was a need to really put in certain measurements, practices in place and consistency around an operating rhythm.

Saima Rashid: 6:14 All with the goal, though, of let's go make the things that we do better. Let's look at what the insights are, let's find what's working well and do more of that. And so, regardless of you know this would be a message really to anyone in an analytics role make the role what you want it to be. Make sure that you know. The best dashboard that you're building should go well beyond just taking those metrics and putting it on a slide what is happening, what is the outcome, and if you're not being heard, go higher. If you're not being heard, you know, put in more concrete recommendations, because you have a lot of insight and a lot of goodness to share and you want to make sure that it's being leveraged.

Kevin Kerner: 6:55 Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's interesting just hearing you talk about that. Like, the good analytics role is really storytelling and it's interesting that you move from this analytics role, where you're probably a pretty good data storyteller, into a creative role and brand role and those type of thing. I bet that transition was actually pretty a pretty good one for you.

Saima Rashid: 7:14 It also, I think, speaks to how marketing itself as as a function, has changed. It's become so more tech, much more technical, so much more data driven over the past. I want to say five, six years that my experience lended itself very well and, by the way, it also allowed me to expand my horizons Brand design, product marketing, PR, analyst, relations all functions that I'd never owned in the past. All functions that I'd never owned in the past, and so being able to learn from fantastic folks who are experts in those fields, and being able to also bring my data lens to those fields that maybe historically hadn't been as data-driven, I think it was a perfect balance.

Kevin Kerner: 7:57 Yeah, and I think you even in some of my research I think you even moved from the mindset of measurement there at 6Sense, from MQL, to more meaningful type of measures. Can you tell us when you arrived in that more leadership role like, what type of measurements did you put in place? Did you say, OK, I'm going to have to change the mindset of some of the measures here.

Saima Rashid: 8:16 Yeah, I think you know 6Sense was ahead of its time. I mean, it is an account based platform and so a lot of the measurement was rooted in accounts, meaning it is an account-based platform and so a lot of the measurement was rooted in accounts. But when you are going to make a move from an MQL-centric approach to a broader account-based approach, the metrics change, of course. But you have to bring an entire organization along that journey and, by the way, that's not just the marketing team, that is your board, that is your executive team, that is sales, that is the BDR org, right, everyone needs to be on board with a shift like this. And how do you start that? You start that by telling the story. I think we're hitting on a theme here now.

Saima Rashid: 9:02 But telling the story of how you're winning today, I think, unless you're selling a very transactional product, which most enterprise companies aren't, right, you are talking to multiple people. It takes many, many touches along that buyer's journey, right? 10, 12 people, hundreds of touches along the buyer's journey. And we know that buyers tend to B2B buyers specifically, tend to be anonymous and they don't really want to chat with sales. They want to do their research themselves and talk to their peers. And so how do you control that entire journey, or how do you at least orchestrate a journey and visualize those touch points and share that with the folks who you are trying to convince that we need to do this differently? Once you do that, everyone understands.

Saima Rashid: 9:50 Okay, this is not a last touch or a first touch attribution story. It is the sum of all of those activities that are helping us influence the buying group, educate them so that when they are ready to talk to us or talk to any vendor, they've included us on that list. And so I always start with the end in mind, start with what good looks like, make sure there is a shared understanding of what it takes for us to win, and then the metrics, of course, follow and only amplify the goodness that's happening. Whether it's, you know, high intent accounts, whether it's our penetration within those high intent accounts, whether it is how those accounts are moving through the journey, whether it's the mix of tactics or mix of marketing campaigns that they're interacting with, whether it's here's where sales gets involved and here's where marketing gets involved. Here's the handoff. All of those metrics, then, really lend itself to telling that story of a very complex B2B buying journey.

Kevin Kerner: 10:53 Yeah, I'm really glad you said that because I've heard so many like attribution is something that comes up so much and it seems like a bad, you know kind of a difficult topic to discuss with people because you get it gets real wonky in terms of first touch, last touch, you know what attribution model are you going to use, but it's really so much more nuanced and I think that's what you're saying is there's a story that to be told in all those touches that just influences, and so marketing influence is really important and how you tell that story to sales and executives. It's really good that you touch on that. The one thing I also saw was that I think it's important for 6Sense marketers to be kind of seen as customer zero. So they're like should know how to use the platform, which I think any good marketer these days needs to be. A technical marketer, like you have to know the tools.

Kevin Kerner: 11:41 Why was that? I don't know if that was something that you instituted or it was there before you, but why do you? Why is? Was that part of the success there and can you share? Can you share a story, maybe, of where you're like oh man, we were using the tool and it really led to a groundbreaking thing for us, not just for our customers.

Saima Rashid: 12:00 Yeah, every day, I would say. I came in with the benefit of. I was a 6Sense customer for five years, and so when I joined the company, it was all about let's show how we're using it. The fact that we were marketing to marketers is exciting, right, because marketers get it and because we were the target persona, we recognize that by showing them the power and the promise of the platform, versus just telling them, it's just so much more interesting, and it also, beyond that, of course, lends a sense of credibility to what the platform can do. It showed our openness as an organization to open up our playbook and show what's working, which also helps us drive innovation within the organization, because if we know we're opening our playbook, we're sharing what's working. Everyone in the team wants to continue to push the platform to be the best it can be, and so we love sharing what works, but also being open, and sharing here's what didn't work necessarily, and so learn from our mistakes, learn from our challenges.

Saima Rashid: 13:08 I think it was hugely successful. It allowed us to of course, you know again build a trusted relationship with our target persona, but also it allowed us to inform the product roadmap. It allowed us to get early access and be alpha testers for what's coming up, so that by the time a new product came to market, we'd already shown the playbook, we had it ready to go and we had success metrics and criteria that we could also show. I think the most successful example since you asked is probably when we launched our AI email product, probably four years ago or three and a half years ago. That was early days of adopting AI to actually interact with your prospects, and we were early adopters and we were able to, by the end of the first year, have 25% of our net new business pipeline being generated autonomously using AI agents.

Saima Rashid: 14:08 I mean, crazy town, right, it's just so exciting to be able to do that, but it doesn't happen overnight. And so being able to say, here's the place that worked, here's what you need to institute from an operations perspective, here's how the handoff from BDRs to you know, from marketing to BDRs changes, here's how we handle the change management with the BDR org. I mean, there's so many learnings and so many marketers were interested in that, and so I think, if you have an opportunity of being customer zero and showing that, it's a fantastic way to show the promise and the actual use of the product, but also, just, you know, be open and honest.

Kevin Kerner: 14:49 Yeah, the build it in public, like the part of the brand of 6Sense. The build it in public thing is so cool and there's other brand tech brands that do that and they tend to get very loyal customer bases because they can see the mistakes you're making and they can see how you're tweaking the system. They might see it end up back in the product roadmap.

Saima Rashid: 15:11 Yeah, one of our. You know we have an annual customer conference. We have we had fantastic customers and the highest rated session every year was the Sixth Street Live session, where me and the marketing team got up there and said here's what's working for us and, you know, walk through plays had a great Q&A. We loved doing it.

Kevin Kerner: 15:31 Yeah, people love that stuff and I see a lot of content from that so it's really awesome. So that gets me to like the brand side of things. Because tech companies I think this is changing, but tech companies have been notorious to dig into demand too much without a strong brand 6Sense Or has probably the strongest brand in the category. You're kind of a category creator. I wonder. I wonder, was there a moment when you're? I guess there probably wasn't at 6Sense because you had such a strong brand. But many of the people I talk to there's a moment when they're when they're investing in brand and they're like, is this going to work? And then they hit a bad quarter and then they have to go back to the demand side. How did you hold your nerve on the brand stuff? Why was it so important to you?

Saima Rashid: 16:27 we told, as a marketing team as well, that you have to be thinking of a holistic brand to demand strategy and I say this as an operational data analytics person who had a pretty hefty pipeline goal to hit but you can't over-rotate on that. Great brands have higher average selling prices. Great brands have lower customer acquisition costs. The research is out there, right? You shouldn't have to necessarily even fight that fight, because it is a known thing strong brands to perform better. Now, how can marketers really take that and do something with it is every single campaign that we stood up at 6Sense, and even before 6Sense in my career it has been about telling the brand to demand story.

Saima Rashid: 17:07 So it's not just a bottom of funnel campaign. What is the top of funnel portion of it? How are we moving the needle with accounts in our ICP that we know would benefit from this right, starting with this holistic strategy of who is the ICP? What do they care about? How do we start those conversations early on? And then how do we bring them through to that journey where they'll ultimately convert?

Saima Rashid: 17:30 You need to really be hitting all phases of that journey, no matter the campaign that you're launching, and so everything that we did. Whether it was a net new product launch, whether it was a new campaign that was going to be hitting on specific use cases, we always started right from the top of the funnel and made sure that we had a cohesive strategy and a cohesive set of marketing tactics to hit all of the areas of our prospects and meet them where they were in their journey. Because not everyone's ready to register for a webinar, not everyone's ready to talk to sales, that doesn't mean you shouldn't be in front of them speaking to the problems that they might be facing.

Kevin Kerner: 18:10 Yeah, it's so logical. I mean, it's how we buy, right, If you're going to buy something. It's just how you evaluate products these days. What were the markers that, though, that you had that were you using at the brand stage to at least evaluate what it was brand working? Was it impacting demand down funnel? Like what did you look as an analytics person?

Saima Rashid: 18:30 I'm interested in hearing what you're yeah, so much so we obviously there's tools out there that can help you understand share of voice and power of voice. We use the 6Sense platform to understand what portion of the ICP moved from showing no intent to showing early signs of intent, and so that progression of accounts through the funnel. I think your web traffic is another great indicator. So what is the direct traffic? What is the organic traffic that's coming your way? And then also you know keyword consumption Is your brand being mentioned? Is it being referenced? Is content being consumed that is more top of funnel? Is content being consumed in places, on third-party websites, where you wouldn't have otherwise known? And so all of those metrics, some through the 6Sense platform, some elsewhere and some just through Google Analytics, played a role in us telling that holistic story of where we're showing up and beyond just, you know, reaching the target account. Are they actually engaging with the content?

Kevin Kerner: 19:30 Yeah, great stuff. Yeah, that's really good for people to hear, because I think people don't think about those measures enough. And you have to. In some companies you really have to defend that brand investment, so just having that, looking at it from a full funnel perspective, is really smart. Okay. So now I want to pivot a bit from the success experience to your experience leading talking to so many CMOs, because you had the podcast, the CMO coffee talk community. I mean you probably have one of the best views of I don't know, is it probably literally hundreds of CMOs that you've talked to, Thousands?

Saima Rashid: 20:04 Yeah, maybe thousands.

Kevin Kerner: 20:05 Yeah, if we need it, we need a CYMA GPT Like we need to put your GPT.

Kevin Kerner: 20:13 But yeah, I wanted to throw out a few imperatives that I'm hearing about and then we'll talk about your own and just see get your perspective on them from a broad CMO perspective. So let me start with just the AI mandate. I'm hearing that you know from conversations I'm having, there's a big gap between executive sort of AI mandate that's going on and what marketers are actually able to execute on the ground. Do you see that gap and why do you believe it exists? Like what's the reason for the gap?

Saima Rashid: 20:41 Yeah, I do see a gap, but I do see across the C-suite. I think the chief market officer has been the one that's really been carrying the gauntlet in so many companies of actually driving AI innovation and adoption. I see it and I hear from it, from so many CMOs who have been kind of given that, hey, we need an AI strategy, let's go implement it. Also, I think some of the very early you know more, you know use cases that come to mind are related to marketing, content creation, right Design really lend themselves well to implementing AI. I would say the biggest sort of way to overcome that gap is I don't think necessarily the marketing leader needs to be the one doing it, but I think they need to create a culture of innovation within their organization, create a culture where you are giving people the freedom to try new things, even fail, but at least iterate quickly enough. At least iterate quickly enough. And so that can be done by creating.

Saima Rashid: 21:45 You know, at 6Sense I instituted a marketing AI, a monthly AI lunch and learn. Anyone from the marketing team could come up and show you know what's working for them. Here's how they're using AI in their role. I think you can do hackathons. Where. Get the marketing org together for a day and ideate within your individual teams how AI can be helping. There's tools out there, there's so much information out there. So I think creating that culture, obviously within your overall organization's AI guidelines right, but encourage the experimentation, encourage the innovation and I think teams will feel empowered and maybe get over some of the fear of AI is going to come and take our jobs. The goal is not to have AI take your job. The goal is to have AI streamline your work, maybe allow you to iterate faster and then focus on more interesting things for your own career growth, and so I think it really starts at the top, but it doesn't, it can't only be there.

Kevin Kerner: 22:51 Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent, yeah, and it's. We do a thing we call sparks once a month or whatever we were trying to do every couple of weeks, but it's basically the way I see AI is like you. Some of our people need to just see a spark of how to use it.

Kevin Kerner: 23:05 There you go. So we just exposed them to these different sparks this last week and this one kind of fell flat. We did AI Studio in Gemini and of course you can create a bunch of media but you can also create apps and it was a little too complex for people that weren't like super into the AI thing. But the time before we did deep research. But it really is like you just need the spark. You need something in the back of your mind that goes oh, I remember I did this here and I can now apply it to something that happens. So I completely agree.

Kevin Kerner: 23:36 There is, I wonder, your perspective on just tool sets. And there's so much technology out there that's promising AI and you've got sort of the big players like 6Sense or Salesforce has their own embedded AI, and then you've got all these little micro tools that are like fit for purpose. I mean, there are literally probably thousands of them right now. As a CMO, I have an opinion on this. But as a CMO, how do you rationalize Like, what are we going to use in the stack here?

Saima Rashid: 24:05 Think, personally, I have seen that a more cohesive strategy as opposed to individual point solutions that might do a thing here or a thing there. I lean more towards a more cohesive strategy. You want AI to be helping with consistency of your message. You want AI to be helping with speed and efficiency. Right, that only happens when the tools are integrated and singing from the same sheet of music. So I think that choreography of your tool sack is really important. And so, where we can consolidate, I'm a fan of consolidating because it eliminates gaps. It eliminates, you know, issues with handoffs or just you know the left side not really sounding like the right side, so I'm a fan of using that where you can and driving better integration.

Saima Rashid: 25:04 But certain point solutions sure, if they can help you, you know, in a vacuum, that's great too. I think as long as the AIs are trained with contextual knowledge of your brand, of your customers, of your messaging, it's the most crucial thing, because, in a world where everyone is using AI, at this point everyone's going to start to sound the same. Everyone's going to start to, you know, mimic each other's messaging. And the best companies are the ones that will always infuse their humanness, their soul, their brand into the AI and maybe use it not just as a end product, deliverable, but maybe as the starting point, so that there is that you know, beautiful sort of. You know AI plus humans working together to create something fantastic.

Kevin Kerner: 25:57 Yeah, very good. Yeah, that was my thought too is consolidation of platforms to the big guys because they're doing so much innovation, and very selective use of all the other tools, because there's so much goodness in the stack that you have, it's just hard to you know. There's not really much of a reason to go outside and just keeping a count of all that you know it's tough.

Saima Rashid: 26:17 Yeah, avoid random acts of AI and random acts of marketing you still want. It goes back to the same principles we started with Create a cohesive, full funnel journey for your prospects. Use AI, by the way, to help it and superpower it, and all of that, but you've still got to be crafting a really relevant journey. And that doesn't change whether you're using AI at all parts of it or whether you're not.

Kevin Kerner: 26:43 That's right. Yeah, totally Okay. Let me pivot to the second imperative, which I'll call the accountability mandate. So there's so much pressure on CMOs these days I'm sure you're hearing it in the coffee talks Like how do we do this right? What's the real accountability challenge that are facing CMOs in boardrooms? Like what are you hearing them say beyond just hitting a pipeline number, what's the challenge that they're facing?

Saima Rashid: 27:12 Yeah, I think it's a very consistent challenge. I'm hearing and I'm sure it's not limited to marketing but marketers are feeling it Limited or reduced budgets, reduced headcount. The goals haven't changed, by the way, and you know so. There's just heightened expectations of what marketers are being expected to achieve. Qualified pipeline is a fantastic metric for a CMO to be able to, you know, get a seat at the table and show the impact of marketing. But I think what CMOs need to be doing is learning the language of the CFO and being able to you know, beyond you know, a qualified pipeline goal share, the overall impact of what their organization is accomplishing. That includes hitting on the brand metrics that we spoke about. And, especially in a world of, you know, aeo and GEO, where you know the SEO game has changed, you need to be showing how you're influencing early stages of the journey, how your PR is really helping get you mentioned by the LLMs.

Saima Rashid: 28:16 I think you also need to be speaking in the context of what good looks like. And so, when I say speaking the language of the CFO, what are the benchmarks of your size, of your team, of the output of the team, of the efficiency right? How do you compare to companies in a similar industry, in a similar size. What is your you know your pipeline, golden number right Spending X dollars of marketing budget yields X dollars of qualified pipeline, and how are you improving that? What is your people to program ratio? If you take a dollar from here and put it here, what will the outcome be?

Saima Rashid: 28:55 And so, being really comfortable with your numbers and having a really defensible strategy to show that not only do you understand all of the mechanics of how this works, but that here's how you are adopting your strategy to meet the reality of today's market, because the playbook that we ran three years ago doesn't work anymore, especially when we're being squeezed with higher expectations. You've got to be able to show how you're going to be impacting that strategy and how you are going to change and adapt. It's not easy, especially if you haven't had to do it, but I think the more CMOs can get there and so many brilliant CMOs I talk to every day like they are there, they understand this and they are telling that story in boardrooms to the C-suite and, beyond that, sharing that with their team so that the entire team understands. Here's the reality. Here's what we're working towards. It's going to be hard, but we can do it together, and I think the more you can align the entire org around that, the better it is for everyone.

Kevin Kerner: 30:00 Yeah, really good. What about the CRO, the chief sales officer? I love how you frame the CFO relationship. In my experience, CFOs can be very rational. They don't seem that way, but if you present the data in the right way, they'll listen to you. What about on the sales side?

Saima Rashid: 30:18 Oh my gosh, that goes without saying. I think that's probably why I didn't even mention it, because one of the most important relationships you're fostering as a CMO is that alignment with sales. I would go a step beyond and even say with your chief customer officer, because marketing is going to have an upsell goal or influence, upsells, influence retention. Marketing needs to be partnering with both the CRO and the CCO, even as we're going back to identifying the ICP, because we don't necessarily want to be selling churns, we want to be selling to customers who are successful. That relationship needs to be a daily, weekly alignment relationship.

Saima Rashid: 30:59 You asked, when I joined 6Sense, what did you put in place? And one of the first things I did put in place was the operating rhythm of a biweekly pipeline meeting that eventually moved to a weekly cadence where the CMO, the CRO, representation from CS, representation from ops, folks they were all in the room so that we all had a shared understanding of here's what we're doing today, here's where we're finding the red, by the way, here's maybe where there's a problem and here are the actions we're going to take to address it. So it's not sales versus marketing versus customer. Everyone is in it together and we are coming back week after week and making sure that we're continuing to all have a shared, consistent understanding of reality and maybe a gap in where we need to be and then how we're going to tackle the gap.

Kevin Kerner: 31:49 Yeah, I love that you said I didn't even think of the CSO, because of course you have to talk to that, but I think it takes a certain amount of you know. There's a certain amount of empathy that you need and understanding of what they're up against and you really it's a service organization. Marketing to some degree is a service organization to sales, and that goes the other way too, because they have to follow up on the stuff. But I think there is a lot of uncomfortable relationships that marketing leaders may have in both directions CFO and CRO and it seems like data and understanding lies at the pivot point of making those two things work.

Saima Rashid: 32:29 It can be a great point of alignment right, the data can and, by the way, that goes right back to even earlier than reviewing the data. But what are the goals that we are setting for ourselves as an organization? I am a fan of a single pipeline goal, not a marketing source number versus a sales source number. Of course you need to break things down by channel, of course you need to be looking at specific levers, but there should be one pipeline goal that we're all working towards and we're all going to work on it together. If there's softness in one area, here's how another area is going to pick it up. If AEs are generating less pipeline this quarter, here's how marketing is going to step in and vice versa. But again, having that shared North Star helps drive the alignment then throughout the journey.

Kevin Kerner: 33:20 Yeah, good stuff. Okay, let me go to my third mandate, which is the talent mandate. So just finding the right people, keeping the right people. What do you think the most critical skill you see missing from marketing teams today that's going to be more non-negotiable over the next couple of years, or is there? Probably? I've hired many, many, many people over the years.

Saima Rashid: 33:50 I think there's something to be said about a curiosity and a drive, and I don't think that's changed in the 22 years that I have been working. We want to hire curious people who want to do really great things and are driven to do it, and so consistently having that, looking for that and then getting out of their way, frankly is what a leader needs to be doing, and so empowering the team to do that Skills specifically. I think, again, curiosity and drive will bring folks who are looking to innovate, who are looking to simplify the things that they're doing, who will adopt or be early adopters of new technology, who will be curious enough to go find better technologies to streamline what we're doing, who will take inspiration from great campaigns that are out there, right. So I think that comes with hiring well and then creating a culture of innovation.

Saima Rashid: 34:52 I am a very staunch believer that you need diverse teams to be able to get diverse viewpoints, and so I think that again goes back to hiring and building a team of if everyone looks like you and sounds like you and agrees with you, that's a problem, and so you know, encouraging right from the onset of when you're posting a role, what is the pool of candidates that you're looking at.

Saima Rashid: 35:17 Making sure that you've got a mix of viewpoints and a mix of people coming in helps build the best teams. And then I think performance management is really, really important. I think you know making sure that you are evaluating your teams, you're speaking to your teams, you've got really clear goals set for them and you're having regular conversations to make sure that they're being challenged, that they're being inspired, and, if not, you know you might need to have difficult conversations. I think feedback is a gift. I am a fan of delivering feedback in the moment, good and bad feedback, so that everyone is on the same page, and that, again, is just really important to me as a leader, and it goes back to that. You know your question of skills and empathy and building fantastic teams.

Kevin Kerner: 36:12 Yeah, what are the? What's the environment out there like right now for CMOs? As you talk to all these different marketing leaders, how are they feeling about the availability of these, these type of people Like what? What? Just what's the general feeling? I know a lot of people that are looking for roles that aren't cms, so what's?

Saima Rashid: 36:29 the environment like for hiring right now I think the environment is that there's a lot of really great people on the market yeah, I totally agree, yeah, a lot of fantastic talent out there and um, folks who have, you know, played multiple roles, seasoned players who are able to come in and do great work, and so, um, and because budgets and headcount has been declining for many, many marketing teams, folks who are on these teams have had to wear multiple hats and change the way they're doing things and get scrappier, and so I think, you know, there's fantastic people out there and CMOs are very lucky that they have a pick of really great candidates and CMOs are very lucky that they have a pick of really great candidates.

Saima Rashid: 37:16 And I hope that you know things turn and we can get all of them into fantastic roles.

Kevin Kerner: 37:22 Yeah, it's amazing the talents that's available right now and AI is kind of a superpower to make people more generalists across so many different things. So I'm just finding some people that are T-shaped but you know, the T is real wide across but the bottom thing is like expanding too. I don't know if that ends up being a square at some point. It's so general, but there's a lot of good people out there. So those were my three mandates, but you have a lot more perspective than I do on some of the conversations with CMOs. Are there one or two other things that you're hearing from the CMO community that are strategic imperatives for the upcoming year or things they're struggling with? Just what's your perspective on the CMO mindset right now?

Saima Rashid: 38:05 Yeah, I think you hit on the most important ones. I think, more tactically, cmos really need to understand the AEO and GEO landscape and understanding how their search and their web traffic is going to change in the new reality, whether it is changing the way they are producing content, whether it is taking on tools to allow you to build for the new reality. Either way, it just seems like there's, I think, more panic out there of our traffic's declining and what are we going to do. But I think it's an opportunity here for CMOs to really lean in into third-party resources, into other areas that maybe have been a little bit on the back burner, to meet the market where it is. I also think you know net new tools.

Saima Rashid: 38:54 The landscape is changing so much. So staying on top of what is working with your peers, what is working with your competition it's, I think, in times of change, it's an amazing opportunity to innovate and to try new things, and so I would say you know there's an opportunity there over the coming year. I will say we hit on this earlier. There is still a huge importance on the overall brand to demand journey and I think it is imperative that CMOs and marketers in general are focusing on that entire journey from the top of funnel, investing in brand, investing in community, investing in great content that is helpful, as opposed to just there to get the conversion Again. With the proliferation of AI, there's so much nonsense out there that it really comes back to basics of creating high quality content that solves a problem for your target prospect and is just meeting them where they are.

Kevin Kerner: 40:02 Yeah, go figure, that's what it's always been. Maybe the channels have changed and the formats a bit, but it just goes back to the basics. I'm wondering it's an amazing thing and I can't completely describe it right now, but we're seeing a lot of activity through ChatGPT and deep research. I just talked to someone yesterday who found us through deep research. I'm wondering for a more established brand like 6Sense, were you seeing activity coming directly from the AI search engines at the LLM?

Kevin Kerner: 40:31 Absolutely, absolutely Did you quantify the percentage Like was it a significant enough percentage yet?

Saima Rashid: 40:38 It's still small. I think the panic is out. There is a bit more than maybe reality.

Saima Rashid: 40:43 It is still and we have a great brand. So there's a lot of direct and organic traffic that came to sixcentscom. So the proportion coming from LLMs was small, but it was increasing and it was significant enough that we did need to be. You know, we were absolutely putting things in place on the website and in the content and in our channels to make sure that we were speaking to what the LLMs were. A great little trick is, by the way, ask the LLM. You know where am I mentioned? What can I do to be mentioned more? What are your recommendations? Right? Like it's obviously ask it questions about you know your market and you know vendors in the market and comparable solutions. But, like, just ask it, what do I need to do to be for you to cite me more? And it's actually a really interesting exercise. Could you get some good tips in there?

Kevin Kerner: 41:34 Yeah, completely. I am finding that the stuff that comes through deep research I don't know if you found the same thing they seem to be better qualified than a cold form submit. Let's say Something about someone seeing deep research. It's almost like it's more trusted because it's coming through the AI, Like the AI has been really smart and it's called out. These people, these, let's say, vendors or partners and the people that I'm talking to that come through ChatGPT, seem to be already pre-vetted and like way down funnel. It's really interesting.

Saima Rashid: 42:08 It really is. There was some research we had done at 6Sense where we saw that 81% of the time B2B buyers have picked a vendor before they're ever going to reach out and they end up going with that chosen vendor, that first conversation that they have most of the time.

Saima Rashid: 42:28 And so we've got really savvy buyers, we've got really well-informed buyers, and so we've got to continue to make sure that the content and the campaigns and the collateral that we're putting out there is helping them get to that point, because you want to be the one controlling that 81% of the journey.

Kevin Kerner: 42:44 Yeah, and if you're not on day one list let's say you're not a sixth sense but you're competing it's got to feel really challenging to try to get to that level of day one or at least the top three. Because you hear stats like this you know if you're not in the top three, if you're not on the day one list, then you know they already have you picked out. So for smaller brands it's got to be. I don't know if you have CMOs in the Coffee Talk community that are with smaller brands, but what advice would you give a CMO if you are in a not in a category leadership position? But you're, and you hear these stats, like what would you do?

Saima Rashid: 43:22 What would you tell them? Yeah, I'm going to sound like a break on record, but I would say go to the data. What would the deals that you are winning, the demand that you are generating, where is that coming from? That's a really great indicator of you. You're doing that Well. You might want to lean in more and put some more gasoline on the things that are working. At the same time, then start to investigate those other areas that aren't working as much and start to really adjust. And, you know, fix those specific channels and test to see what would work well for you. So when you know what's working, well, great, that's a great starting point to lean in. And then, of course, go broader, understand.

Saima Rashid: 43:59 Okay, if your inbound funnel is weak, here's what we need to do. If specific advertising isn't working, are you targeting the right accounts? Is your like, go down. I mean, I'm in the data and I love going deep. Is it specific ad copy that's working better than other ad copy? Like, you really got to get in there and diagnose and dissect. But for brands, I mean, if you are generating some demand, what's working? Go, do more of that.

Kevin Kerner: 44:28 Yeah, really good advice, because you can get lost in the in the stats of. I'm never going to make it up to those top three, but it's doing something is better than doing nothing or getting lost in just the broadness of it all.

Saima Rashid: 44:40 So I think it's yeah, and maybe it's a real one specific persona in the 12 that we know is in the buying team that is really receptive to what you're doing Great, how do we go deeper with that persona? And then how do we expand to meet those other ones? So it goes back to having a really good understanding of your ICP, of the buyer's journey, of the buying group, and then making sure that you are meeting all of them where they are.

Kevin Kerner: 45:04 Yeah, love it. Okay, well, that's been great. That's kind of a master class of the CMO mind. I wanted to do one more thing before I let you go. I do this thing called AI Roulette, where I put a question in perplexity and then it comes out with a amazing question better than I could ask. So I'm going to click. I've already put in your profile and a little bit about your background. I put in the brief from our conversation today. So I'm going to hit, click, hit, send here.

Saima Rashid: 45:30 Should I be scared?

Kevin Kerner: 45:31 No, it hasn't done anything crazy yet, but this might be the first time. You never know, simon. Okay, so here we go. Okay, simon, imagine you could go back to your first day at 6Sense and leave a sealed envelope on your desk. Inside is a single sentence, a piece of advice based on everything you know. Now, what does that sentence say?

Saima Rashid: 45:58 What a great question.

Kevin Kerner: 45:59 It's a great question.

Saima Rashid: 46:01 If I could put a sentence in. It's a very short sentence and I think I learned this very much at 6Sense. The sentence is say yes. And it is say yes to whatever challenge or opportunity has been given to you, whether it's in your role description or not.

Saima Rashid: 46:23 By the way, I mean for a data and analytics leader to end up leading all of marketing tells you that you've got to be going beyond maybe the four box, the box, the four sides of the box that you know your role description is. You've got to say yes to figuring it out, to trying the new thing, to having the hard conversation, to putting yourself out there, and so that would be the sentence, and it's actually, I think you know, when you've taken some time off, you really have an opportunity to have a retrospective, not just on, you know, maybe the last couple of years, but even longer than that. And I would say it has been a hallmark of my career to lean into the yes. Even when it's scary, even when you don't know what you're doing, you've got to at least start with you know, trying and saying I'm going to do it.

Kevin Kerner: 47:20 I love that answer. So simple, but you're right, I love it. By the way, did you see the movie yes man?

Saima Rashid: 47:28 I have not seen it. I feel like I need to.

Kevin Kerner: 47:30 You need to see it. It's with Jim Carrey. He has to say yes to everything, and so the whole movie is him saying yes to all these crazy things. So you should watch it. But it turns out well for him in the end. The yes actually works and he you know he ends up getting everything he wants in life just through saying yes. So really good, yeah, Okay. So I'm really honored that you spent this time Great. All this was just really really great, especially as you're taking some time off, so I really do appreciate it. Saima, I know people can get ahold of you during the LinkedIn channel and I would recommend people watch the podcast 6Sense Podcast, which is fantastic, and I'll put those links in. But are there other ways that you want people to keep in touch with you?

Saima Rashid: 48:17 LinkedIn is the best way. I'll be updating in a couple of weeks on the next gig that I am so excited to take on, and so I hope people will connect and I hope people will follow. I always love learning from everyone.

Kevin Kerner: 48:32 Fantastic. Well, thank you so much, saima, and hopefully we'll meet up live at some point in the future. Thanks, Kevin.

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