1) Tell us about your role at DiscoverOrg and how you got here?
As the Chief Growth Officer at DiscoverOrg, I’m responsible for our customer experience, marketing, product management, and partnership functions and ultimately aligning the organization around our most strategic opportunities for growth. I held a similar role at another TA Associates portfolio company before coming to DiscoverOrg.
2) What is it that you found lacking in the technographics landscape when you initially started versus now?
In the last few years, sales and marketing teams have realized what a powerful predictor of customer acquisition and retention technology install data really is – and that having that data embedded into your overall prospecting strategy is crucial. What we’ve found, though, is that most stand-alone technographics providers offer a limited view of this data. Some focus on technologies that are behind-the-firewall, others focus on SaaS platforms that can be discovered through digital footprints. Our customers really want both, and we simply found that our own tools and processes delivered the best results.
3) We recently read about how you increased your technographics data base by a mammoth percentage.
Other than the main agenda of providing sales and marketing teams with a wider option on the tech stack is there any particular reason that you decided to make the shift? In addition to providing more accurate and comprehensive data, we have found that sales and marketing teams don’t want to go to 10 different providers to get 10 individual data points—they don’t want one for contacts, one for technographics, one for firmographic data, one for intent data….that’s just overwhelming. They are looking for a 360-degree view of their target accounts and customers, in one place, and that is what we are delivering.
4) Given the changing dynamics of advertising and marketing where do you see DiscoverOrg fitting in the ecosystem?
Put simply, DiscoverOrg’s data helps organizations get smarter about who to target, when to connect with them, and what to say when they engage – whether that is through digital advertising, email, cold calling, direct mails, social engagement, or any other form of prospecting.
5) What is your most effective digital marketing strategy for reaching out to buyers across the world?
For DiscoverOrg, we’ve found that the most effective strategy is to orchestrate multiple touchpoints across our target buyers – which, by the way, means we also spend a good deal of time really understanding who that best-fit buyer is. We leverage advertising, emails, calls, direct mails, social, and a very robust SEO and SEM strategy to drive engagement.
7) What tools would recommend to CEOs and CMOs as a sales hack in 2018?
Great data and insights on your target buyers. Period. Most teams are operating with bad data in their sales and marketing systems and it doesn’t matter if you have the best marketing content and programs—bad data will sabotage and drain your efforts.
8) How did you manage to integrate deep and verified firmographic, technographic and intent data together and strategize it along with dealing with the dire data complexities that come along with tech integrations?
To put it simply, we focus on gathering and maintaining a great data platform and then building the integrations into the systems that our customers use the most. Every customer’s data processes are a little different, and it’s our job to make it as easy as possible for them to surface and engage with the data WHEREVER they want their teams to live every day—whether that is directly in the DiscoverOrg platform, natively in Salesforce, or in their email marketing system.
10) Which startups in the martech and adtech industries are you keenly following?
I’m really interested to see how all of the various marketing engagement startups— from ad retargeting platforms to social engagement platforms to email platforms—start to evolve into multi-channel orchestration platforms. There are so many startups that offer point solutions, and they do that one thing incredibly well, but at some point, marketing teams aren’t efficient when they are trying to run these programs in 20 different platforms.
13) What is the best part of working with DiscoverOrg? Can you share with us some fun pictures of your much hyped work environment?
I’ve worked at companies of every size and scale, and DiscoverOrg combines the best of both worlds. We operate at a “startup” pace in an innovative, fast growing market that allows us to be creative and nimble, and yet we have the scale and resources of a large company to operate towards a longer-term vision. To be more than $100M in revenue and still be showing up on the Inc. 5000 list every year is a testament to this ridiculously smart team.
14) What book are you currently reading?
“Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter” by Liz Wiseman
15) One piece of advice you always follow irrespective of circumstances:
People won’t always remember what you say, but they will remember how you made them feel.