Guy Kawasaki: Make Your Skills Your Greatest Asset

I was thrilled to be debating #growth strategies with other #CXOs and our esteemed judge Guy Kawasaki, and while the session pivoted to an AMA-style discussion, it was full of insights.

Guy Kawasaki, a #tech titan and renowned evangelist, will join as the judge for the debate.

This debate will cover various themes:
✅ How to adopt a growth mindset, develop grit and #resilience, and embody grace
✅ Why it’s possible to make a difference, become a better person, and lead a fulfilling life
✅ What ideas and #strategies enable you to transform your outlook to prepare for major changes

>>> Recording of the 6/07 Live Stream: Guy Kawasaki | HSE (hardskill.exchange)

Come support me in digging to the heart of the most controversial GTM issues that matter today. Unfiltered and unscripted, this should be fun and unexpected. Debaters:

Anne Hollander, Chief Strategy Officer, Thirty Capital
Ashley Welch, Co-Founder, Somersault Innovation
[ME! 😎] Michelle Killebrew, former Chief Marketing Officer - NTT Americas
Mary Shea, PhD CEO, Evangelist, Analyst, Ex-Mediafly, Outreach, Forrester
Matt Millen, Co-Founder & President, Regie.ai
Pedro LOPEZ SELA, Managing Partner, FrissOn capital
Rishi Sharma, West Coast Lead, Newlin Ventures
Stephane Maes, Managing Director, ADCR Capital
Teasha Cable, CEO & Co-Founder, CModel (Techstars '23)

Many thanks to Hard Skill Exchange for hosting the session!

The B2B Marketing Elevation Awards 2024

I was excited to be asked to be a judge for the #B2BElevationAwards. It was an honor and inspiration to see the strategic rigor applied to the problem statements, audience needs and the ingenious creative concepts and media plans applied to meet them. I love our craft. Well done, all!!

The Elevation Awards celebrate excellence in US B2B marketing. They recognize those who are setting new standards, raising the bar, and showing the world how creative and innovative B2B marketing can be.

The winners will be published in The B2B Marketing Elevation Awards 2024 Winners Report in September.

B2B Marketing Elevation Awards 2024

Meet the 2024 B2B Marketing Elevation Award Judges

Sales is King Podcast: 153 Why B2B Marketing Is Coming Up Short with Michelle Killebrew

Published on Dan Sixsmith’s Sales is King podcast on March 25, 2024

B2B marketing is under fire(again). IBM alum, Ted Talk(er), and CMO, Michelle Killebrew is back on SIK!

00:00:30 (Michelle'a Career Summary) Guest discusses her roles at CA Technologies, Broadcom, PwC, and NTT Limited, detailing her experiences and challenges.

00:05:13 (Evolution of CMO Role) Discussion about the evolving role of the CMO in the post-pandemic world, emphasizing the need for AI knowledge and performance measurement.

00:11:26 (Focus on Customer Success) Focus on the importance of customer success, the shift in demand from new logos to current customer base, and the role of customer success in revenue growth

00:16:51 (Breaking Through B2B Marketing Noise) Addressing the challenges of breaking through the clutter in B2B marketing, the demand for personalized experiences, and the need for authenticity.

00:22:06 (Future of Remote Work) Discussion on the future of remote work, emphasizing the need for intentional gatherings and the importance of personal relationships in remote working environments. Discussion about the challenges and changes in the role of the Chief Marketing Officer in the tech and marketing industry.

Challenges of B2B marketing (00:26:43) Exploration of the declining quota attainment and the impact of market consolidation on sales cycles in the B2B sales arena.

Impact of the pandemic on marketing strategies (00:29:10) Analysis of the macroeconomic conditions and the changing dynamics of buying behavior in the B2B market due to the pandemic.

The future of remote work (00:30:23) Discussion on the impact of remote work on sales and marketing teams, and the challenges of rebuilding institutional knowledge and relationships.

The evolving relationship between sales and marketing (00:31:53) Insights into the changing dynamics of sales and marketing operations, resource allocation, and the increasing complexity of the buying committee.

The role of AI in marketing (00:35:37) Exploration of the potential of AI in marketing, including its impact on team collaboration, optimization, and its role in operationalizing revenue flow.

The CMO's position in the C-suite (00:39:47) Analysis of the position of the Chief Marketing Officer in the C-suite and the challenges in contextualizing marketing impact in business language.

Marketing accountability and business outcomes (00:44:32) Discussion on the accountability of marketing for profitable growth and the challenges in predicting ROI accurately.

Navigating B2B Buyer Enablement With Michelle Killebrew

Published on the Pathfactory blog on March 13, 2024

Navigating B2B Buyer Enablement With Michelle Killebrew

As a marketing leader (and a revenue marketer at heart) it’s my job to take all of the marketing levers we have to help a company grow. Part of that is finding the appropriate marketing strategy to support the business where they need it most, and the other part is making it as easy as possible for a buyer to buy. “How can I best serve my buyer” is what every marketer should be asking themselves before they launch into any tactic that could affect the buyer’s journey.

Here are a few ways I keep my buyer’s experience top of mind:

Buyers are more informed than ever—keep it that way.

We know that 80% of the buying decision is made before a buyer even engages with a salesperson, and only 17% of the buyer journey is spent connecting with sellers. Businesses—and particularly marketers—have to provide an enriching online experience that differentiates from competitors.

If you have a buyer that’s actively consuming content and they’re looking for that next piece of that content to go deeper — give them more when they’re already in research mode. You’ve already got their attention so you need to keep it. Invite your buyer to re-engage without overwhelming them. Meet them where they are and give them as much as the content that they can consume.

Your buyer is the one that perpetuates your brand—you need to provide an experience that makes them elevate your brand for you.

Map your buyer’s decision-making process.

A critical aspect of the go-to-market strategy involves mapping out the buyer’s decision-making process. Ask yourself: what business challenges are buyers trying to overcome? What issues are buyers trying to solve? How can we, the marketers, create content that helps solve that? There are other intricacies at play, too, that go beyond researching if your software will solve their business issue: interactions with procurement, involvement with CFOs, and consideration of price thresholds are all interaction points that can be overlooked in a standard buying journey.

We know that once they reach the bottom of the funnel, they more than likely have a vendor in mind—so it’s crucial to meet your buyer at every touchpoint in the process.

Unify marketing and sales. 

Elevating the relationship between marketing and sales is a cornerstone of my role as a marketing leader. Personally, I approach this by having the Business Development Representatives (BDRs) sit within the marketing team, and this is to ensure that sales only receives warm and vetted leads. Without a clear relationship between sales and marketing, that’s when the leads get tossed “over the fence”, reducing the quality.

Under my leadership, BDRs do a warm pass-off meeting with the seller and the prospective buyer, then actively monitor and shepherd leads through the sales process with the Sales team, at least through to opportunity value. This is for accountability, rapport building, and metrics. There are a lot of ways to measure the quality of an MQL, and there are a lot of technologies and lead scoring frameworks to help, but the best way to gauge the sales readiness of a buyer is through qualitative feedback and conversation.

Stay aware of (but not distracted by) marketing trends. 

It’s always good to stay on top of new trends and technologies in B2B marketing, but they have to be the right fit for your team and your business. In my previous company, we’d approach marketing trends as a way to upskill and gauge as a group how they can help grow the business. We took a grassroots approach and created an internal community where people could share and apply new trends to special projects. These were initiatives outside of business as usual, that brought different team members together to focus on a new concept or pilot. This effort increased morale, was a great team building exercise, and allowed us to explore new and innovative marketing ideas together and in the context of our business.

Can Buyer Intent Lead To Better Insights?

Interview published on CMO Council blog on February 22, 2024

Authored by Tom Kaneshige, Chief Content Officer: CMO Council

NTT Americas CMO Michelle Killebrew is not just on a marketing journey, she’s shaping a narrative where marketing is synonymous with revenue impact. She’s investing in cutting-edge areas such as propensity models and buyer intent signals to make sure her team is targeting and engaging the right audiences.

“We are not satisfied with the status quo,” says Killebrew, “We are exploring diverse intent models to seamlessly integrate into our CRM system. It’s about gaining better insights into where and how our clients are engaging, and being proactive, not reactive. We’re not just preparing for conversations; we’re setting the stage for dialogues that matter.”

So far, so good.

Killebrew has developed many hyper-focused demand gen programs that span NTT Americas’ wide range of solutions. It’s a challenge trying to message multiple personas within a specific account. Some solutions are more tactical and so messages need to be aimed at technical people, while others are more transformational and require strategic conversations with the C-suite.

Marketing must work through ways to engage different levels in an account with messages that matter. This has led to a rapid evolution of marketing capabilities, Killebrew says, including the creation of standards for systems, people, processes, messaging and brand recognition across the globe.

“We continue to evolve and reshape how we go to market. For instance, our BDR team reports to me,” she says. “We are really unparalleled in terms of the breadth of our capabilities, which is wonderful.”

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Intention-Based Marketing: Leveraging Actionable Intelligence

The CMO Council’s new report Fire Up Your Revenue Generation Engine found nearly two-thirds of lead gen and engagement strategies are underperforming. Here’s an excerpt of the report:

Gathering actionable intelligence about a target B2B account, including individual members of a buying team, to understand demand and deliver the right content to the right person at the right time is really the great ambition of modern forensic marketing.

It also constitutes one of the biggest gaps in our study. Nearly 80% of highly evolved marketers are satisfied with their intention-based marketing, compared to only 17% of lesser evolved marketers. The reason for the gap is that intention-based marketing is hard to do.

READ MORE: Bad Report Card for B2B Marketers

Marketers need to analyze a host of buyer intent signals across multiple channels, from attending an hour-long webinar to visiting a webpage to sitting through a demo, in order to truly qualify leads. The absence of data (e.g., only attending a webinar) also needs to be factored into the equation. It’s all very nuanced and requires rigorous testing.

“The piece that goes with speed is really understanding the intent of the leads,” says Bill Cronin, former chief revenue officer at Xometry. “We’ve learned to ask more questions to get to the seriousness of the buyer, including buyers who may be a year away, through automated follow-up emails. Somebody who responds quickly tends to have greater intent.”

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This report is based on a survey of over 170 heads of B2B marketing, sales, revenue, growth, demand gen and campaign execution in Q4 2023. We conducted in-depth interviews with executives from NetLine, Autodesk, T-Mobile, NTT, ABM Consortium, TechTarget, IBM, B2B Marketing, Reachdesk, Momentum ITSMA, and Xometry.

DOWNLOAD: Fire Up Your Revenue Generation Engine

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Tom Kaneshige is the Chief Content Officer at the CMO Council. He creates all forms of digital thought leadership content that helps growth and revenue officers, line of business leaders, and chief marketers succeed in their rapidly evolving roles. You can reach him at tkaneshige@cmocouncil.org.

Why Marketing Needs a Collaborative Approach to Data

Published on LeadTail’s website on November 19, 2020.

Watch the full discussion here >

by the LeadTail Team

When marketing executive Michelle Killebrew started her career 19 years ago, she noticed something really peculiar. 

The planet’s biggest brands, many of whom should have known better, kept their data in silos. 

This information existed in a tangled clump of disparate databases and applications. Teams kept it isolated from other teams even though they all worked for the same team. 

It was like different departments — Sales, Marketing, Customer Care — were keeping deep dark secrets from each other. Or one team didn’t want the other team to know what it was doing because it was quietly plotting world domination. (Our money’s on Customer Care.) 

It was a mess. It still is. And not much has changed. 

Michelle, one of Thinkers360’s 150 Women B2B Thought Leaders You Should Follow in 2021, has launched a one-woman marketing crusade against the greatest data disaster of our generation: 

The damn silo.

And she means businesses. 

She will repeat the same message until every marketer in the land listens: 

Enterprises need a single source of truth. 

In this Leadtail TV episode, keynote speaker and best-selling author Bryan Kramer talks with Michelle, Products and Technology Leader at PwC, about the disastrous dangers of data silos and how marketers can get rid of them for good.

A Collaborative Approach

Data-driven enterprises and marketing organizations have never been more fragmented. 

“There are so many functional disciplines,” Michelle says. “But to go to market well, you have to ensure marketing and sales are interlocked, and sales and operations are interlocked, and product teams get feedback from customer success teams.” 

The solution is as clear as crystal. Enterprises need to collaborate: 

“Organizations should bring people to the table who adopt a real collaborative approach that defines team roles and how these teams come together. They need to orchestrate a plan that is truly operational, something that is truly executable, that they can launch together instead of competing with siloed objectives.” 

Michelle describes herself as “naturally curious” on her LinkedIn. And, like a detective in an Agatha Christie novel, she hopes to solve some of the biggest unsolved mysteries in data integration. 

She’s already solved the data silo conundrum:

“One of the things I’ve done in many organizations is design tech stacks from the ground up,” she says. “Enterprises shouldn’t trap themselves in a corner with data integration. They need to think long term and holistically about how they integrate tools and define data architecture.”

HIGHLIGHT: The Most Important Thing When Building Your Tech Stack

Now she wants to share this discovery with the world. With former stints at IBM and CA Technologies, and shout-outs from Entrepreneur (8 Digital Experts Entrepreneurs Can Learn From) and TopRank (50 Influential Women in B2B Marketing Who Rocked in 2020), Michelle talks about data silos, among other topics, as a speaker at events like TEDx.

And people are listening. 

A Strong Foundation

Data silos exist because organizations are oblivious to them. Instead of solving such a simple problem, marketers get distracted by fancy new technologies, like kids in a candy store. 

Michelle says organizations look for “shiny objects” to fix data integration problem when they should get down to brass tracks:

“If you have a strong foundation, and just keep it simple, you’re going to be that much more effective.”

So it’s all about that foundation:

“Ask yourself, ‘What do you need? ‘What’s impacting your business?’ ‘Does your tech give you insights so you can be more performance-oriented?’ If the answers are no, focus your efforts on strengthening that foundation.”

The Future of Data Integration

That foundation is a little shaky for some enterprises right now, pandemic and all. But Michelle thinks agile companies and marketing organizations have got this. 

HIGHLIGHT: How B2B Marketers Can Create More Durable Data Integrations

“Make plans and then see how they come together,” she says. “Don’t over-invest. Don’t overstretch yourself. Doing so could lead to frustration, exhaustion, or double work.”

Ultimately, everybody’s just trying to figure it out right now:

“So cut yourself some slack.”

And for those enterprises with data still trapped in silos? 

“Tight feedback loops and decision making.” 

Now It’s Your Turn

What do you think? Can marketers solve their data silo woes? And what does the future of data integration hold? Let us know what you think.  

Watch the entire episode here or listen to the podcast version here.

Want to have a conversation about social media? Let’s talk.

DemandGen Radio: Taking Risks and Performing at a High Level

Published on DemandGen Radio on August 6, 2020

Hosted by David Lewis Listen now >

Michelle Killebrew climbed to a high level within marketing leadership by taking risks and stepping out of her comfort zone to build new skills. In this episode, Michelle shares how her career path evolved, how she got started with writing and public speaking, and why it’s important to constantly be challenging yourself. Listen as Michelle shares the importance of self-growth and how to start performing at your highest level.

Listen Now

Once a week DemandGen Radio airs live, bringing you the top industry experts, thought leaders, authors, marketing technology firms, and senior marketing leaders from around the world to teach YOU the methods and technologies for high-performance marketing. Want to learn more about modern marketing? Check out the previous episode of DemandGen Radio: The D3 Methodology: The 5 “C’s” of Marketing Analytics.

Improving Marketing and Data Analytics with Proof: Episode 4

January 24, 2020

This video was shot on location at #PRovoke19 Global PR Summit in Washington, DC on 22 Oct 2019 where I was honored to join a multi-functional executive panel discussion on GTM alignment and marketing contribution "Lost in Translation: Why there’s a Proof gap between you and your C-Suite".

Michelle Killebrew, VP and Head of Marketing at PWC New Ventures, discusses how to better represent marketing initiatives as the value-driver they are, shifting the perception towards a more accurate view on marketing’s ability to grow business value.

Watch this video to learn how Michelle navigates marketing analytics and discussions to improve ROI and gain the attention of C-suite executives.

Don’t forget to like & subscribe to our channel so you can be the first to view new content from Proof about increasing value through optimized marketing analytics!

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Proof Analytics provides a powerful marketing analytics platform that’s fast, accurate, and easy to use. With Proof BusinessGPS™, you can see which marketing tactics and channels are yielding the best returns on your marketing investments through integrated real-time data, alternate scenario building, and proven algorithms and analytics. The best part? It’s all in one user-friendly dashboard for the entire team to stay on top of every marketing campaign.

We’d love to connect with you on our other platforms, find us here:

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