How to do a marketing interview

How to do a marketing interview

by | Feb 22, 2023 | Chief Marketing Officer, Marketing Talent Management

Technical skills, work ethic, company culture

As a long time tech CMO, I am asked often how to do a marketing interview at tech and SaaS companies.

Over time I learned to ask careful questions that focus on:

  • can they do the job?
  • will they do the job?
  • will they fit in with my company’s culture?

Today’s challenge with how to do a marketing interview

The marketing industry has done a disservice to many B2B companies.

A troubling reality is that almost anyone can call themselves a marketer. Our profession is full of folks who over-advertise themselves.

The requirements for being a high performing B2B marketing director, vice president or CMO have grown dramatically in the past few years.

Knowledge and efficient use of multiple technologies is now the baseline entry ticket. Add data analytics, AI, machine learning and metrics for a growing number of marketers.

More than a few B2B marketing candidates today are lacking in technical and technology skills needed to grow a brand, create effective strategy, or engage and deliver in-market sales qualified leads.

Of those, even fewer can work comfortably with the CEO and sales team to develop a shared marketing language and unified market strategy.

Marketing job interview with handshake.

All the interviewers need to learn how to do a marketing interview

As the interviewer, it’s your job to discover whether a candidate’s skillsets and capabilities are a true fit for your company’s culture, marketplace challenges and goals for growth.

If you know how to do a marketing interview, you can sort through candidates quickly.

Make the right hire and you will help your company’s market performance tremendously.

Make a wrong choice and the consequences will be frustrating, time-consuming and expensive.

Can they do the job?

It’s always easier and faster to use web video or the phone to discern a candidate’s technical and technology skills. There’s no point in bringing them on-site until you are satisfied that next steps are in order.

For marketers, technical skills include:

  1. Strategic thinking
  2. Creative thinkingCommunication skills
  3. Analytical skills
  4. Technology

Remember to take careful notes and refer to them when making decisions about next steps

The best opener for marketing interview questions

“Tell me how you became interested in marketing and how you got started…”

This is an easy question to help the candidate get comfortable with interviewing. Also, I like to know whether the candidate’s training is formal or informal.  I look for candidates who pursued an education in business, economics, marketing or similar and/or began in an entry level position in product management, sales, branding, advertising or product marketing.

Why? Early interest in sales and marketing can be a good indicator for motivation and career enthusiasm.

Remember, formal education isn’t everything. On-the-job training can also be valuable so it’s wise not to discount a candidate too early in the process.

25 Questions and Suggested Answers for Interviewers

I created a detailed guide on how to do a marketing interview. It’s an excellent tool for those who are not subject matter experts, and a great refresher for senior level marketers.

Top 25 marketing interview questions and answers for 2023

Available For Purchase

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Building Executive Brand Image

Building Executive Brand Image

by | Jun 28, 2023 | B2B Marketing

Here’s what I’m seeing in B2B marketing:

There’s a lot of talk on building executive brand image today. And for good reason.

I’ve been in the c-suite for decades, mostly in marketing.

Let’s look at the reasons why exeutive brand matters.

#1 – It’s getting much harder to differentiate

#2 – Most solutions seen as commodities

#3 – Lack of relevance & personalization in B2B

#4 – Ad-blocking & ad-blindness

#5 – People follow humans, not companies

Collage of business people, used to illustrate personal branding for executives.

Why build executive brand image?

You may not like their view, but plenty of B2B purchasers view most solutions as commodities at first glance.

Still, most buyers will pay attention to what makes you different, if they notice a human touch.

Think of executive branding as:

  • a GPS that maps prospective buyers to your company’s ‘why us, why now’
  • a meaningful narrative that causes something to happen
  • the hook by which an audience will place you on their ladder of experiences and preferences
  • a trusty loom that transforms mere threads into colorful tapestries that create visualizations

What’s not working?

😧 your history? not so much…

😧 leadership bios? meh…

😧 client logos…everyone has those

😧 speeds and feeds…worked in the ’90s

Building executive brand image is a touchy subject

Young man in shirt and tie, frozen in ice cube.

Many talented people feel frozen about executive branding strategies.

Yet they’re experiencing:

lack of market presence and acknowledgement

small fish in a big pond syndrome

not enough engagement with quality followers

missed opportunities in growth and career

Building executive brand image answers ‘why connect with you?’.

Also, it helps you resonate with your market. Remember, people buy from people they like.

Most executives have integrity and credibility, but those are not apparent to the casual observer. But in our new era of increasing distrust, your integrity and credibility can be a powerful motivator for others to engage.

Building an executive brand image is crucial for selling solutions and ideas, attracting talent, and moving up the ladder.

Opportunities abound

Ernest Hemingway writing at desk with pen and paper.

Yet, you don’t have to go all Ernest Hemingway to build an executive brand image.

Here’s the blueprint:

  1. Highlight your successes
  2. Show how you do it
  3. Talk the real you..be yourself
  4. Share your passions and motivations

That’s all there is to it.

If you don’t have the time or skillsets, hire someone to help you. Make a decision about investing in building an executive brand, just like you invest in exercise for your health and wellbeing.

It’s what we do…

I offer multiple solutions for tech and SaaS executives stories and brand image.

Would love it if you checked them out!

Personal Branding for Executives

The tech or SaaS sales conversation…fix it with simple sound bites

The tech or SaaS sales conversation…fix it with simple sound bites

by | Sep 27, 2022 | Chief Marketing Officer

Tech or SaaS sales conversation planning – a few simple sound bites

The tech or SaaS sales conversation.

A SiriusDecisions study found that 82% of B2B decision makers felt that tech or SaaS salespeople were unprepared for the meeting.

Many salespeople, even the pros, spend too much time on slides and not nearly enough time planning the sales convo.

Inevitably the slides often focus on the tech or SaaS salesperson’s company and solution, which is the wrong information.

Remember, by the time you’re in a sales conversation the prospect has already gathered 70% of everything they want to know about your solution from the web.

Waste not one minute repeating the obvious.

Creating sales convo sound bites

If your offering is complex, like tech or SaaS, you can’t have too many sound bites. Get together with fellow sales people and marketers to create them. Write on a yellow pad or, better, put them into an organized sales playbook, preferably digital so your reps have instant access.

How do I fix the tech or SaaS sales conversation?

So how do we fix this? Create 60-second conversational sound bites that lead the prospect where you both want to go. Some simple conversation planning will go a long way to getting a prospect to commit to the next step, and then the next.

A simple framework that we use is based on the customer’s decision making process. We find that customers want answers to three big questions:

    Why change?

    What is it about my current state that’s inadequate?

    Sound bite: “Lots of our clients have found themselves in that exact same situation. Their current state was too labor intensive and managed with spreadsheets (or whatever they were doing). What have you seen about our solution that makes you think we might be a good fit?”

    Why now?

    What will it cost your company to delay fixing this?

    Sound bite: “In one case a client was spending _____ annually on that situation. With our solution they were able to cut their costs by 75% and show positive ROI in the first year. Let’s calculate an average monthly or annual cost of delay, based on an estimated cost of ______.”

    Why us?

    Sound bite: “We’re having this conversation because you think enough of us, so far, to spend this time with me. What capabilities do you see that we bring to the table?”

    Create sound bites. Experiment with them. Watch your numbers go up.