JG 0:00
Leadership is about sacrifice. Leadership is about connections. Leadership is about bringing people along for the ride in a way that you believe in them. And you believe in yourself.
Ben Kaplan 0:11
This is the podcast where we go around the globe to interview marketing leaders for the world's biggest brands, fastest growing companies and most disruptive startups. Re ideas after a certain way want to spread, they want to be told to someone else simple, surprising, and significant. Data to unlocking viral creativity is to make it rapidly scalable. This is top cmo with me, Ben Kaplan. Today, I'm chatting with John Shapira. His friends know him as JG the Chief Marketing and solutions officer for SAP, a publicly traded enterprise software company with more than 100,000 employees worldwide. The world runs better with SAP coolest software company. With years of experience in product management and new product innovation, marketing and partner development at Microsoft and Hewlett Packard, JG has grown revenue, improve margins, and occasionally crushed the competition. Interestingly, he has navigated both the corporate and entrepreneurial worlds. Previously, he co founded a technology firm that was acquired by Intel, and is now a case study at Harvard Business School. So how do you turn a commodity product in something that inspires your customers? And how can you coach your team to realize their full marketing potential? Let's find out with JG cheer apparel. First of all, what does it mean to be a solutions centric marketer?
JG 1:40
Well, what that means is we go beyond just offering products to our customers, what we really seek to do is present the solutions that they can use and get productive with almost immediately. So effectively, we look at a customer, we understand the context, we understand the world in which they operate. And we offer them a solution that fits exactly what they're looking for. Sometimes we have all the count confidence on our shelves. Sometimes we work with partners to assemble a service story, sometimes we sell, we work with other ISVs to basically complete the picture. But ultimately, the way our customers experience us is through a series of solutions and solutions using the English word is the answer. So we want we show up with answers.
Ben Kaplan 2:28
It's interesting, because I've heard you talk about the difference between I'm gonna call that JG your ham sandwich theory. And as the difference between we can sell you bread and cheese and ham and we can sell you that or we can sell you a ham sandwich and what we decide to sell you and what we decide to market you whether we choose door A, the ingredients door B the ham sandwich actually has profound implications about aligning your whole marketing department and what you're actually messaging. So what is your ham sandwich theory?
JG 2:59
Well, my Hampton is exactly that. I mean, you know, sometimes you just want to have a sandwich. Or sometimes you say, Look, I have the time to buy all three things, all the ingredients separately, and assemble that sandwich together. Now how you essentially deliver that has profound implications in how demand generation works, how you might run your digital means of engagement with your customers, how your go to market ultimately works, right? So think about it, if you open the package, you've assembled a ham sandwich, the way you deliver that ham sandwich, right is very different than let's say you brought the ingredients, bread, cheese and have. So we the way you deliver it the way you experience, it completely changes. So it's incumbent upon us to really understand now just as a shift to the SAP context, the industries that we are operating in the needs of those industries, the solutions that we offer that and as a company, we have answers for every room in their house, whether it's the finance department, the operations department, the supply chain, the the HR department, the marketing department, the technologists in the organization. So we've got an answer for every part of that organization. But that organization requires us to show up with answers, solutions, not technology bits and bytes that they have to put in yet.
Ben Kaplan 4:20
So meaning that if I'm going to use your analogy here, you may have the hand sandwich that's on the hoagie roll for a certain type of audience, you may have the ham sandwich that's like a kind of nice low carb wrap because they need it you might have the ham sandwich that's I don't know your little finger tea sandwiches with you know the crust cut off the bread. I don't know how far we can take this big but your solutions oriented you're selling the ham sandwich but you're trying to have for wherever that organization a version of that sandwich that makes sense for them or else you're gonna change the ham to Turkey or roast beef or something else and provide the solution they need.
JG 4:52
You nailed it, and ultimately, you nailed it. So and ultimately for us, you know, if you were to look at the company SAP a It's been in business for 50 years. Last year, we celebrated our 50th anniversary, a company that has been successful for 50 years is a company that really understands its customers. That's the one thing I learned here. This is a company that's incredibly customer obsessed, it is so focused on exactly how to make these customers successful. And because of that, and the only way you get that is if you basically show up in all of the ways that the customers expect, you're not just selling them products, you're ultimately assembling these products in the way that you describe. I love that the hoagie roll the crustless?
Ben Kaplan 5:35
And how does that have practical implications with I don't see any large enterprise companies saying, Yeah, we don't care about our customers, you know, we could care less, you know, whatever they do, we sell what we sell, right? There's gonna be at least lip service paid. But some companies and you've had a lot of the big enterprise companies, including most notably to long stints at Microsoft, everyone kind of says their customer centric, if you're solution centric, you meet the customer where they are, how is that different than just being technology centric? You're a deeply technological company, or let's say another one is your less common in technology. But you can be very brand centric, right? You're like, this is what we brand, this is what we stand for. And that's centric. What does it mean to be customer centric, compared to a lot of other players that are going to have solutions, which can mean services they offer that customize?
JG 6:19
Or you're absolutely right, that every customer is, is I mean, you know, across the board, services that customers customers are their only religion, the big differences in the space that we occupy, there's an I do see a ton of our industry, right being so focused on technologies for technology's sake, nobody clarifies exactly how you can use it, and what some productive ways to get started as that is the biggest difference we have. So let me give you a very practical example. When we think of customer journeys. Now remember, in the pandemic, most of customer journeys, most of the ways you describe products to customers, or how customers experience it has shifted to reach a digital means. This means that we not just take a customer through the product, if they wish to experience a product, we take them through the product. But for the most part, we also have to help customers understand the solutions that are offered. Effectively, what I'm describing here is sometimes we tell them about the bread, the cheese and the hat, and we help them to assemble that sandwich on their own. Or sometimes we show them the ham sandwich, and we let them experience have the assembled sandwich in the way that we've sort of assembled. So in most cases, in companies, it's either one or the other. In our case, we got to do both really, really, really well.
Ben Kaplan 7:39
So do you market to your customers, the ham, cheese and bread? Or do you instead message the entire ham sandwich? Look at this sandwich is terrible. The so called Paradox of Choice says that there's a tendency for people to get overwhelmed when they are presented with a large number of options. So what most of us want is actually limited options. We want to have the ham sandwich made for us. But we also might want to choose whether it's served on whole grain bread, piled high on a hoagie roll, or wrapped in a spinach tortilla, give us choice but make those choices limited and tailored to what we actually need.
And one of the unsung jobs of a CMO is just aligning a lot of people in the same direction. And when you're hiring for marketing positions, sales positions, there's a lot of movement between big enterprise companies, you tend to look for people that have experience that you're looking for. So you pull people from other companies, they may not necessarily believe in this ethos, or this alignment, they might not understand what it means. Or they might tell us our metaphor, like they come in, they're like, Yeah, I get here, you want me to sell a ham sandwich, but they're gonna focus all about like that ham is expertly cured and smoked, and there's brown sugar on it, they're going to take us through every feature of that ham, because that's what they were taught to do. And the problem is you've got 10s of 1000s of employees, and you got really big teams, how do you confer people over and align that when people says yeah, I know what you mean by the ham sandwich, but that's not what they do.
JG 9:16
Look, I think it comes down to two things for for me in particular, I'd say and this is as much about your the way you show up at your organization than anything else. SAP is Moto is run simple. And that core philosophy if you were to spend a minute and reflect on it run simple. Isn't everything that we do, what I add to it is radical prioritization. Right? What I always say is that not everything is important and for to align an organization the more things you have on the list to align, the harder it becomes. It almost has to be a series of concentric circles. There has to be something at the core that is so in violate. so vital that everybody understands that when you start to get it you get them method to the madness in the next concentric circle, and the next and so on and so forth. So it's like a set of rituals that you have to do. And it's never one and done. And I think that's one of the mistakes that I see lots of folks make. They say, Well, I told you this, why am i Repeating this to you again. So sometimes you've got to keep stressing the same things over and over again, so that the organization understands what you're about. This is one of the reasons why every company that I see has something called a, you know, when the fiscal year ends, they have a kickoff, right, for the new fiscal year, one of the things I do is I, you know, I don't change my stump speech, right, I keep saying, so if you were to look at it in any sort of journey, particularly the journey that I'm in, right now, if you were to go back and look at my last two speeches, you'd find that they're incredibly consistent, the priorities are not changed. Because we serve the same markets, we serve the same customers, our products continue to get better, our agents continue to improve. So the reality is the core of what we are, cannot change. So I think, to me, it's more of a cultural change and the change in you that you have to be in these roles to drive success within the larger organization,
Ben Kaplan 11:11
I think when you're talking about repetition of the message and consistency of the message, the issue is on any kind of large organization, there's a whole bunch of decisions that are going to be made that affect the fate of the organization, they affect the success of the marketing and solutions department that are going to be made by people when you're not in the room, right, you're not going to be there, particularly in a large organization, but really any organization, and they're going to have to take some ownership of this decision. And you know, they may not have been trained in the decision for this exact scenario, this exact situation. And they're going to make the call and your success as CMO is going to be related to what call they make. And so the only thing they have to guide them in that is what are our values? What's our North Star, what have I heard maybe JG say again, and again and again, that it's so embedded in me that Oh, that's right, we're solutions centric, we run simple, we radically prioritize, that's what we're gonna do in this case. And that's how you can help steer the ship, even when you're not in this meeting that you didn't know was critical, but it's gonna make or break this customer. That's your most important customer.
JG 12:19
Look, you absolutely nailed it. For the most part. It's also an act of empowerment, right? So it's part of you, right, you repeat certain things, and you say, these are my priorities. But the reality is, if you can't empower your people, empower those marketers and power the people down the line, you know, you'll never be successful in your mission, because you consistently have to convince people why this is important, right? And have them own it, you know, and have that pride of ownership spread the far and wide and deep inside all of these organizations, or never really come together in a way where you can be successful. And when I say you, I mean the royal you, I mean, the entire organization, right. So ultimately, you're touching on things that are I would say vital, not just in large organizations, but in smaller organizations. I mean, you know, I've started companies. And, you know, I still remember, there was a point I still remember this, okay, I was this was these were, this was a years ago, but when we went from being an intimate a 3040, person organization, like a company, to where we started to see success in the marketplace, and we started to expand. And pretty soon I'd walk into work and see people, I never knew what I'm saying, these were all hired, somebody else hired that, right. So I'm like, why these people. So when you get to that number, like 100, maybe 200, you know, and you have people spread across multiple divisions are ostensibly carrying the same badge, working on the same mission, the act of basically building fans, the act of bringing people along for the ride, becomes one of the most vital and important things a leader can do. And that's not a statement about a CMO. It's a statement about CRO, a CEO, you know, so on and so forth.
Ben Kaplan 14:02
And one of the challenges with that for any kind of growing organization, and then I want to touch on your unique background that you have. But one of the challenges is this idea that at the minute you stop having for a smaller organization. And by the way, I should say that SAP, I think lost market cap, I think it was worth $140 billion. There's a lot of CMOS of companies that are listening that are worth 139 point 9 billion less than that, or smaller, right. And one of the things that happens is in your example, is you stop meeting with everyone, so you don't even know who's being hired. So the issue is that not only do you have to challenge these are your values, I need to impart them, I need to be consistent, but someone needs to hear and receive that and impart it to someone else you're never gonna meet. And so how do you think about that in your message to where you don't want it to be comedies have a very analog example but like a photocopy of a photocopy. It's like someone has a photocopy of the message. They make a photocopy of that something gets lost in the translation and you're run simple, radical prioritization becomes something total They are different than you intended. And that's the message they get. So how do you do that? And how is this relevant to the smaller organization?
JG 15:07
Look, I think whether you're in a small or large organization, there's one thing I think is the most vital thing and you have to and this, what I'm going to tell you here has to come from inside you, right, and you have to absolutely believe in it. And I absolutely believe in what I'm about to tell you. Leadership is about sacrifice. Leadership is about connections. Leadership is about bringing people along for the ride in a way that you believe in them. And you believe in yourself, that you can lead people through all of this, I will say that there are three things that everybody needs everybody, you need it, I need it, people that work in any organization needs it, it's something to believe in. It's someone to believe in. And someone who believes in that, right and you the act of leadership, the duty of care that goes with leadership is working hard, right day and night, obsessing about your organization, how big, large or small in figuring out the different ways you can sort of motivate them and give them those three things. Right. So one small, you know, sort of vehicle I use, I'm giving of my time, right, so I am ready to meet anyone in my organization at any time, I'll make time for that. Sometimes it may not be during the, you know, the working hours, but I'm able to make my time available to them at any time of the day. Right. The second thing is I also use things like open office hours, where I host a forum, anyone can walk in and ask me anything that they desire, right? And if I can answer it, I will answer it, you know, so part of this is keeping the communication going. You know, it's part of it is keeping the dialogue going. So people understand what you stand for. Now, if I were to show up in a new organization, say, Hey, guys, this is who I am, these are my values, believe me, because I told you that these are my values. It's a, it to me, it's hollow, how leaders are experience is through the day to day actions, when you say I'm going to do this, and they experience it in that way. Right. So part of this is the hard work that you have to put in to make sure that people understand who you are as a leader, what's absolutely critical for the organization, what your values are, and what your values are, what you will stand for what you won't stand for. And that to me is, I will tell you, it's a daily process.
Ben Kaplan 17:19
One of the most underrated aspects of effective leadership is having a consistent message. It's human nature to become frustrated when people don't immediately grasp a new idea or concept. What if consistency, and repetition is a requirement for learning. Consistency is about making sure that your communication elements stay aligned to your central idea or message regardless of the channels or executions you use. Repetition is about communicating your message over and over both strength and how our brains retain information. Consider that most of us live in a perpetual information rush bombarded with all kinds of messages and data. In this world we live in important messages can easily get lost, confused, or go unnoticed. Simply put, a consistent message helps combat uncertainty, a prime driver of stress that affects performance and engagements, being consistent in your messages, therefore helps you provide greater certainty to your team, which builds and strengthens internal trust. earlier in your career founded a technology firm it was acquired by Intel. Is that where you learn this from? And do you recommend like as an experience for a CMO to go start a company? Is that important in your views on leadership and marketing? Is it something that's just unusual? And it makes you unique? How do you rate that experience? And do you recommend that to
JG 18:47
others? Look, I have been a seeker? So I don't know. And so the things that I've sought, may not be fit for everybody out there, you're contemplating a journey are on the same journey as I am, right. But what I will tell you is I have always sought out one singular thing, how to scale things. But I continue to be a student of scale. Right? So what makes you successful as you go from, say, $5 million in an annual run rate to say $100 million? How do you take 100 million and grow it to a billion? How does billion get to be 5 billion so on and so forth? What you learn about yourself the skills that you bring in the kinds of things that you have to do changes at every level of scale. And so all I've loved, right, so I can't tell you that there was a pivotal moment where I learned all of these things. I can't even tell you I've learned all of these things. What I will tell you though, is that I continue to learn and the greatest gift the startup places like Microsoft and now SAP has given me is they have given me the patience and the space to sit back and reflect on different levels of scale and How I can apply myself to help these companies or these organizations be successful and above all, to help grow the people so that they tune in that time can step up and continue to scale and continue to build. And ultimately, when you think of this, had there been, the one thing I'll point out is, you know what I want more than anything in this world, I want the folks that work together with me that I had the pleasure of partner collaborating with to go on, and do even bigger things. That to me is a movement. Right? So to me that, that I wish that to be my my legacy,
Ben Kaplan 20:39
when you think about scale is a challenge for a lot of leaders. And they don't have to run a team as big as the marketing or solutions team at SAP. But you mentioned achieving scale. And the problem is, no matter how good you are at it, they're still one of you. And you are talking about being quite generous with your time. What is it about that that makes you choose to do that? Because you're a scale oriented person, and some people listening might say, and other CMOS listening might say, I mean, that sounds great in theory, but there's no way I could handle all the meetings of people who would want to meet with me, why do you choose to do that? And how does that give you scale? If that's what you're after taking the time to do that matters?
JG 21:19
Look, I think then the only thing I will tell you is that I think building building fans building belief in the organization, as you continue to scale businesses is the most important thing you can do. It's the most important act of alignment you can do. The other thing that I also recommend that your listeners do and think about now, everybody speaks about this, but I think this is very, very vital hire well hire, well hire good people hire people that are that have complementary skills to you, that people that you can look at and say, Holy smokes, I'm learning something from this person. Okay? And but you are united in the same sort of value system and beliefs about, you know, creating great leaders about creating great businesses so that when you walk together, like you may, you may learn from each other, but you united in that journey. And when people see that sometimes, you know, you can't just see the stuff when people see that they like, Okay, I see what it takes to be successful. Here, I see what the method to the madness is. So the ultimate act of leadership is clarifying the method to the madness. And the ultimate act of scale is continuously evaluating what the madnesses and what that method is, as you start growing and scaling things. And that's a statement about businesses, and which is ultimately in the technology game. It's supported by people. You know, people make these businesses and you want to invest that time, and help people scale help people understand what their purpose in that journey is. And ultimately what that method is.
Ben Kaplan 22:53
It's always tough to find the perfect candidate who not only possesses the necessary skills, but also aligns with your organization's values and culture, especially for critical roles. So what do you do if you come across a candidate who has the required skills, but may not fit the organizational cultures and values? Or what if you're not exactly sure if they're a cultural fit? At top, my agency in such situations, I've often asked myself this related question, if a big part of leadership is investing in my team, can I provide the type of resources and support needed to make this candidate incredibly successful? And incredibly fulfilled? can I provide them with what they need to have the most rewarding role of their careers? If the answer is no, then I may have to pass even if their skill set fits. But if the answer is yes, then I know we have sufficient alignment, and can make things work over time.
JG 23:58
I think that you want to find fantastic leaders who can do the job well. And I always sort of look at when I hire, I always also look at it, are people teachable? Or do they have skills that are complementary? Are they going to fit in culturally, right? And if these things are all true, you invest, you sort of make a bet and you invest, but it can't be that you wake up one day and say, Well, I was on this forum and this person didn't show up well, so I guess I'm cutting bait that doesn't work either. Because to me, you know, leadership and, and management in particular me is about a God that only works in the space that you're trying to help that person right help that person grow just like they are helping you grow. Right so I wish there was like a one to three easy thing I can take off for you. But ultimately, I think investing in people is probably the most profound thing I do right? Regardless of the function I'm in at the border here at SAP as well as my work prior
Ben Kaplan 24:56
as you focus on the people which is I think super interesting is especially at a technology company, right? Where people naturally says they're usually not thought of as people centric companies, you have a real focus on people. What do you do in terms of SAP go from here to your point, you're very consistent in your message, you're not changing that we're no longer a solution centric company where something else you're not doing that, how do you continue to innovate, move into a new direction, looking at new opportunities, and also knowing there's the classic Innovators Dilemma, which is that when you're big, there's always the the up and comers that don't have as big as ship as you, they're usually a little bit more nimble, they can adjust. And they can always and they're usually too small for you to pay attention at the beginning. But they get bigger and bigger, they meet at nipping at your heels, unless you keep innovating. So how do you think about innovation innovation in your teams, given your size, and given that you're established and and you're one of the major tech companies
JG 25:54
here to it comes down to a couple of things. The first thing is in my role as speak to myself and how I sort of approach it, my closest cross functional partnerships are with my product leaders and my sales leaders, okay, if you can't understand exactly what is being built, and why, and how that's being experienced by your customer, or at the at the point of attack, as it will, you know, you've lost the plot as a marketer. The second thing is what I bring into that relationship, and my core value add is the fact that I am I have only one religion, that is my customer. I'm ruthlessly focused on what my customers need. And I'm ruthlessly prioritizing exactly what gets built and why whether it solves a big problem, and more importantly, how this can be packaged together in a way that is transformative in the industry. Right? Not every customer out there is saying I want the latest and greatest things, what they want is to experience technology better. So the case of SAP, the world's most valuable data flows through SAP. So the whatever is most valuable their financial data, their operational data, their HR data, their marketing data, they all sit inside SAP systems. Now, what does that mean? Do I build a wall around it? And say, I'm sorry, customer, you can't touch it? No, I've got to find the next wave of growth will be to help customers unlock this data for machine learning for deep analytics purposes. Right? That's a new innovation thing. Some of it will be things we build on our own. Some of this will be partnership, that's one of the reasons why I also am responsible for partnerships. The second area is there's a shortage in customers today of what I call core development talent, right? So gone are the days when I wanted something, and I'd call somebody up in it and say, hey, I want this app, can you build it for me? Right, there's a there is a move towards every person and organization becoming developers, marketing, people are extending things, maybe, you know, they look at their CRM system and say that, look, I understand exactly how the lead was obtained. I want to qualify them further. And I understand that the criteria to qualify them is one, two, and three. Rather than call someone to play with that data, you need to equip for them the tools to do it themselves. So the whole, you know, sort of a notion of saying that low code, no code, application development that turns everybody inside an organization into a developer is something that I'm super passionate about. And I've got unlike that Valve automation is here to stay. So we've got to find ways to improve productivity in organizations so that customers can unlock more productivity and automate boring repetative tasks. I'm also passionate about that. So I gave it three areas where SAP is constantly innovating. So there's a core, but the edge of that corner is where you're trying to really sort of find new ways of basically going, going up products, but more importantly, serving our customers.
Ben Kaplan 29:03
I want to end on something we do call the lightning round. These are rapid response questions. It's gonna go across the board i What kind of short answers but I want to get your take on a few things that help us understand how you think about marketing. First question is, What's the best advice you ever got?
JG 29:20
Best advice? I have a Glock Be fearless.
Ben Kaplan 29:23
Be fearless, who gave you the advice and what was that been impactful in your career?
JG 29:27
Be fearless. My father gave me that in my late father gave me that advice by my mother appreciated in a different way. She called it be brave. It was very profound to me because lots of times we use our own. We argue against the ourselves sometimes either not to make the right decision sometimes because it's politically expedient sometimes to pull up by punches. Part of this is to basically say that what's the worst that can happen? You must always be brave enough to state your case. You must be brave enough to do the right thing. You must be brave. enough to basically bring things together just because it's hard. Just because it's scary, is not a good reason for you not to do something that is right. That's what it means to
Ben Kaplan 30:09
well said. And second question for you, Elon Musk, over extended, or a prolific entrepreneur,
JG 30:17
why not boil? Why not? Both? I mean, look, there's a reason he is overextended is because he's a prolific entrepreneur. And, you know, you got to respect someone who absolutely believes in their own abilities and their own, you know, sort of ways of doing it, it's probably not what I would do. But, you know, you got to you got to see and recognize him and his strengths, where he believes they are,
Ben Kaplan 30:42
what are your shortcomings as a CMO? And who do you surround your with, to help complement those to move the organization forward,
JG 30:52
I am a product centric CMO. So if you haven't guessed, I come for IBM, I'm an engineer by training. So I've come to the art and craft of marketing through product. That's my, what I call my safety blanket. So anytime I discharged my craft, you know, sometimes I find myself standing more towards the product side of things. So one of the things I am continuously learning is the other aspects of being, you know, CMO, for example, you know, global events, you know, a different kind of, say, pushing the organization maybe to a more towards a brand centric approach, right? These are things that are not naturally done. So I do work and I surround myself with people that helped me understand what that is, and at some point also helped me work through the complexities of that craft as well. Right, so you can't me so in many cases, you've got to figure out where your wheelhouse is, what your strengths are, and whether that's strength, those strengths are important to you, as you sort of discharge your journey and you work on things.
Ben Kaplan 31:58
And finally, what is one underrated marketing trend that you think is going to shape the next five or 10 years and all of us aren't paying attention to quite enough?
JG 32:11
I do love it that it's underrated. But I think automation and marketing is here to stay AI in particular, the way core content copy gets written campaigns are going to be built things like machine learning AI, they have not you entered the realm of marketing in a profound way, but I think you're going to see it, make rapid strides on next five years, I will completely change the craft of marketing.
Ben Kaplan 32:36
According to JG Shapira, CMO of SAP, the first step of effective marketing is understanding how customers experience our products. does the customer want to engage online? does the customer want to try before they buy? If you remove the white space between you and your customer, if you make a ham sandwich that actually fits their dietary needs, and taste profile, you'll have a north star to guide key marketing decisions. Jg says it's a similar sense of alignment between you and your team. Does your team want to meet with you without having to jump through lots of hoops? Does your team want to feel like you believe in them just as much as they believe in you. Leadership is a constant process of communication, connection and empowerment. And it's crucial to hire the right candidates for leadership positions based on complementary skills, cultural fit, and teachability. So be fearless. develop talent, run simple. Surround yourself with great people and be generous with your time. You might even invite your colleagues out for lunch, I'd suggest a ham sandwich for top cmo on Ben Kaplan.
Tom Cain 33:51
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