TOP CMO: Robin Saitz, Rockwell Automation - 'Beyond Product Sales'

Robin Saitz  00:00

The ideas around sustainability. Those are our customers objectives. And so it's core to what we do. We are all also helping our customers achieve their sustainability objectives.

‍

Ben Kaplan  00:12

This is the podcast where we go around the globe, marketing leaders from the world's biggest brands, fastest growing companies and most disruptive startups, great ideas after a certain way want to spread, they want to be told to someone else's 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 Robin Saitz CMO of Rockwell Automation, a global leader in industrial automation and digital transformation. Robin's track record includes steering Plex systems through his acquisition by Rockwell and pioneering marketing strategies for companies like a vecto and Brainshark. at Rockwell, Robert has focused on marketing for their software as a service businesses fix and plaques, positioning them as key growth drivers. So how do you evolve marketing in an engineering lead organization as largest rock? Well, let's find out with Robin. Robin, first of all, you're CMO at a company that's known for its industrial automation, the nature of its work is changing as you acquire other software companies and expand into other areas. But what is it like to lead marketing at an organization that isn't traditionally probably a marketing lead organization, generally more of a technology or engineering lead organization?

‍

Robin Saitz  01:41

Thanks, Ben for having me today. You know, what I would say is that Rockwell Automation has a very long history, we've been around for 120 years. And the company is very well known in the industrial automation space, to the point where I love to share the story about my father. So when I took this job, my father was so excited, because he had been in the materials handling and pollution control business for his entire career. And he knew Rockwell Automation, from his years in, in the business and so it has just a very, very strong brand. And very well known like I said in industrial automation, but as the company has been transforming over the last, you know, 567 10 years or so, the the marketing side becomes much more important so that we can reinforce and communicate how the company is transforming amongst those who know us and then also established the brand in its evolved way it with those who don't know us.

‍

Ben Kaplan  02:54

And you come in specifically as part of an acquisition of an acquisition of a software company as Rockwell Automation changes from hardcore physical manufacturing of things to become more of a software company. So what is it like to one be acquired and have a new culture and you have to merge all that and to to be one of a number of acquisitions, Rockwell's growing through acquisition? How do you think about that, as a marketer, when the players can change, new cultures have to be merged? And you yourself had to think about that?

‍

Robin Saitz  03:23

Yeah, it was interesting for me, a long time ago, I worked for PTC for many, many years, and we acquired on and out 25 Different businesses while I was working there. And so I have been on that end of the acquisition process, and now being acquired by Rockwell through the Plex Systems Acquisition was, was a new experience for me. And you know, I have to say, Rockwell, in its acquisition strategy, really appreciates not just the asset that comes over, in our case, software solution, smart manufacturing, smart plat smart manufacturing platform solution and in our Plex system solution, but also all of the people and the expertise that come with it. So, you know, again, Rockwell deep, deep domain expertise in manufacturing in industrial automation, and has been in the software business over the years. But what Rockwell saw in Plex systems and other acquisitions that it has made is not just the the assets and the products that we're purchasing, but also the expertise that the employees of those companies bring to the company. And, and joining Rockwell, we felt that you know, we felt the Paul from people who've worked at Rockwell for many years, who wanted to learn from the folks at Plex and about software as a service and cloud solutions and how do you sell and market and and develop those solute solutions perhaps differently than other types of products that Rockwell has offered in the past, and bring that expertise over to infuse into the rest of the Rockwell culture.

‍

Ben Kaplan  05:08

One of the things that is interesting when you look at Rockwell Automation overall now is that I think the company has, as we've chatted about before elevated different people that came from other disciplines and there was a willingness to do that. And you yourself are elevated into the CMO role. How does that work successfully, we have a global marketing agency. So I've seen the opposite, right, where a company acquires all the people and gosh, one or two years later, those hold teams are actually gone. Either people are fed up and they resign or the positions removed work the opposite in your case, and I think other CMOS might be interested, see, how does that successfully work, the integration and people are welcomed, maybe even elevated? Yeah, I mean, I think that

‍

Robin Saitz  05:45

there was a tremendous amount of respect shown by Rockwell leadership and Rockwell employees, towards the employees that came in through the acquisition that I joined through Plex systems. And they, they sort of, you know, ring fenced us a little bit and said, Keep doing what you're doing. There wasn't like an immediate type of integration, just like put us in and, and deploy us into all of the other functions in the organization. But instead, they had an opportunity to see us in action, in the way that we worked, something that you wouldn't normally see in a diligence process, right, because usually, those are short period of time, and you don't get full exposure to that. But they got to see us in action. And they got to know us. And we worked very closely with Rockwell leadership. And over time they, they gave me the marketing leadership role. Our head of software development in the production, Operations Management Area is a flex employee, our head of product management is also a Plex employee. And our Head of Sales for all software is our former Plex Chief Revenue Officer. So they, they saw the experiences that we had, and they got to know us. And they asked us a lot of questions. They listened to us and our observations. And, you know, moving into a role like this, I had to do a lot of listening, I think I spent the first three months or so because it's a very large company, I spent a lot of time listening to all different parts of the organization, and understanding what they felt was working where they thought we could make differences and, and not making rash changes immediately. But just really understanding things and then beginning to infuse my own experiences into, in my case, the marketing strategy.

‍

Ben Kaplan  07:37

So where are you now? What are you trying to get through what's on the agenda, because it's also a company that is transforming as well into the next iteration of Rockwell, what have you been able to accomplish, and what is the next five months after this look like,

‍

Robin Saitz  07:49

I'm trying to bring in new ways of thinking around our approaches to integrated campaigns, for example, and really, not that Rockwell hasn't been because Rockwell is a customer driven organization through and through, and really understanding what's most important to customers. But in our marketing approach, we've had opportunities to look deeply at what matters to our customers and understand their buying behaviors, and tune our marketing campaigns to that type of market intelligence. That's something that I've always done in my previous roles, my previous marketing leadership roles. And here at Rockwell is the same thing is making sure that we're looking at our, our marketing campaigns in a very integrated way, thinking about the market intelligence that's going to inform what we do, thinking about whether or not campaigns are demand generating whether or not they're about lifting up the brand, and always making sure that our sales organizations and our partner organizations are prepared to catch any demand or interest that we generate. And so looking at that in a very integrated way, is, is an important way of thinking that I'm bringing to our marketing organization. We also have a large flagship event that we do every year that work Rockwell has been doing for a couple of decades called automation fair. And I went to my first automation Fair last November. And there are there are new ways of thinking that we're bringing to automation fair and and continuing to, to elevate the brand through that but also bringing new experiences to to those events

‍

Ben Kaplan  09:34

to get specific. What's an example of like more integration, if it's more integrate that you're doing now, where it would have been more siloed? Before was an example of something that operates differently or you'd like to operate differently?

‍

Robin Saitz  09:45

Yeah, I think you know, for me, as I said, sort of in that final comment about partner and sales enablement, like, personally, I feel like don't bother running those campaigns unless the partners and the and the sales organization are available. Ready to catch the demand. And so thinking through the, the full lifecycle of a campaign and the tactics that are informed by our buyers behavior, you know, it's our job as marketers to be where our buyers are in their buyers journey. We know that the buyers journey is not a straight line, especially many of our solutions are more of an enterprise solutions selling process. And so it involves many people. So deeply understanding our personas, understanding their language, and leading with their language. Because we we should not lead with all about Rockwell and how great Rockwell is and our great products, we should lead with our customers business challenge and what business outcomes they're trying to achieve. And only until we've earned the right to start talking about Rockwell do, we then begin to introduce how we can solve their problems, but we have to earn that right. And our tactics need to be aligned in a way that allow the customer to connect with us and help them understand that we really understand their business. And then we can bring, we can begin to bring in things like products and solutions and services and software and all the things that we sell. But leading with that doesn't really make sense. And it doesn't help bring the customer along in their process.

‍

Ben Kaplan  11:25

At its best marketing is about storytelling, including stories about your company, its culture, and its reason for being, but also stories about your customers or clients and the problems you solve for them. Storytelling is an important part of what you do. Because it gives customers an understanding of who you are, and what your values are, in a way that permeates everything you do without the customer having to study your next press release, product launch or white paper. When customers feel like they know your brand intrinsically, there'll be more likely to trust you with their business. The connection therefore, between storytelling and trust shouldn't be overlooked. Robin, how do you think about best Jean being empathetic with the customer? Putting yourself in their shoes, I was chatting with the CMO of SAP big enterprise software company. And one of the things he said to me was the difference between Do you message the individual parts of the ham sandwich? Like the bread, the cheese, the ham, the lettuce? Or do you be like we have a ham sandwich for you? Here's the ham sandwich. And then we can go in and explain the different components and other things like that. Like how do you think about messaging from a customer's point of view, but you can still like customer point of view, you got some ham for you all because a customer point of view, I've got the whole ham sandwich for you as well.

‍

Robin Saitz  12:46

Yeah, I'm I prefer to approach it from a solution. Perspective. Again, just like the SAP CMO talked about, we're about solving customer problems. And the way we can solve a customer problem is different depending on what industry they're in, or depending on their maturity level. And so and we have lots of solutions, like I said, I mean, the company has been around 120 years, we have, you know, so many hardware and software solutions. And so it's our job to help configure and deliver that solution to the customer, but also to help them find it on their own in their own process, right, because we need to balance both. So if a customer already knows they want distributed control system, we need to have optimized our search engine optimization so that they find us for that. But if they know that they are just trying to they're just they're trying to optimize production. And they're not exactly sure what components they need, we need to be found for that reason as well. So again, as I said before, we want to meet the customer where they are in their buyers journey, and in their maturity model and make sure that we are found, and we can connect with them in that process.

‍

Ben Kaplan  14:04

You referenced the SEO example. That's one marketing discipline where it's very, very apparent of this idea of customer intent. Right. So I want to price you against for other widgets, because I'm ready to buy. And I just want to know now, is it that I'm doing some research. And I generally think this is the solution I want but I just want to confirm it just want to know and just have some reassurance that I've made the right decision is it much earlier in the process? And I'm gonna have five different ways to solve something, you make one of the five but I might be all over the place. And I have four other ways that I'm solving something, or is it just that I've been introduced to Rockwell Automation some other way at a conference, it's something else and it's like I had to check out this company and I don't even know what area I'm playing in. I just think he might be able to help me if you're a customer lead or customer focused, they need to go to different places for all of those things depending where they are. They can't go to all the same place.

‍

Robin Saitz  14:54

I love that. I love your question because it's it's exactly what we deal with every single day. And the a great example of this is what I, we we've created what we call the anatomy of a, of a marketing sourced deal. And when this particular example is interesting, so we are we've done in marketing our homework. So we've done what we call watering hole studies. So we understand where buyers go in their buyers journey to get information when they're buying solutions like ours, we've done that for a number of different personas and buying groups. And we know, for example, that industry analysts are very influential in the buying process. We also know that peer reviews and peer connections are very influential in the buying process for manufacturers and solving problems that we solve. And so we work really hard. For example, just recently, we were just announced as a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for manufacturing execution systems. Well, a couple years ago, we were in maybe we were in the Challenger box, at the time, and we had a customer come to us a prospect come to us inbound, because the industry analyst had referred them to us using this magic quadrant. And that customer, that prospect was not even in our database, we were not marketing to them at all, they found us because we were in that particular asset and that industry review that industry analyst review. And then we were able to see their behavior online, and all the different tactics that they engaged with, and when they qualified, and we were able to pass them over to our sales development team, and how sales and marketing work together all the way to close that particular deal. And I love that example. Because it it shows that it's not a straight line, sometimes it is we do have some high velocity solutions that we sell very quickly. And that process is a shorter process, but and has fewer people involved in it. But we need to be prepared it at Rockwell in our marketing organization to be able to serve all different kinds of buying processes, because we have solutions that are, you know, sold quickly. And some that take a longer process to sell and have many more people involved in the buying process. So we have to be there along the way, we need to explore things like intent, and help. What I like to say about intent with our sales organization is we tried to make the haystack smaller for you, right so that you can find the needle in the haystack with intent, versus all the companies you could possibly be contacting. So we use that as a tactic as well. So we look at all of those different tactics, Ben, and there's no one answer, depending on because we're a very large company. And we have many different types of solutions that we sell. You highlighted

‍

Ben Kaplan  17:47

two things, you highlighted analysts, which have a title that identifies them as like influential in the industry. So you can reach out to analysts, you have mentioned peer reviews. So those are no one has an official title, but they work in the industry. That's important. How do you think about tracking those relationships? Or what do you do? Because it tends to be this like, Oh, that's great. It's like lightning struck in a bottle. Someone we would talk to the analyst, the analyst spoke to someone they referred the person, you got to do a good job of tracking that deal and closing that deal. And there's a lot that went into closing that. So team gets credit, but you want more of those moments. So is there anything you do to track? I don't know the key relationships in certain industries, the ones you have to nurture at your conference, other ones? How do you think about that? Because lots of people think about relationships or networking as a warm and fuzzy process that is hard to scale. It's valuable. But how do we scale it?

‍

Robin Saitz  18:34

Yeah, well, we do have I mean, we do have an analyst relations team. And we have, you know, press and media team that are who are identifying key influencers in the in the ecosystem, and we stay in close contact with them and stay tight with them as well. You know, the other thing that we have is we have this fantastic what we call results achieve campaign, which really highlights our customer successes. And so, you know, I mentioned peer reviews and peer networking, which is the softer side of that. But we also try to capture those stories, and leverage those stories in a wide variety of marketing tactics. And so we nurture our relationships with our customers, we like to say we, we look to turn our customers into fans, right? So we, we have I don't know if you're familiar with David Meerman Scott, and his work, but he came out with a book recently called Fan autocracy a couple of years ago. And it's about this idea of providing amazing customer experiences and prospect experiences in the buying process. So that a company does become a customer and then once they do become a customer, turning them into fans, because this is a virtuous cycle, right? We want them to in particularly in the SAS space, we want them to renew their their engagement with us, but we also want them in a company like Rockwell that has a very large portfolio of solutions, we want them to come back and ask us to solve other problems for them. So tracking the tracking the engagement with our customers and prospects, as a way to highlight them through our marketing tactics is important. But then also providing them with those, you know, peer to peer opportunities that they get it, you know, attending automation fair, for example, or any any number of events that we might offer. We look at all of that,

‍

Ben Kaplan  20:30

when you talk to a lot of large companies in competitive industries, a lot of people will talk about share voice, right? So if there's like thought leadership, if there's a discussion of a topic, what's the entire pie is the whole discussion, what's our slice of the pie, which is important, especially important for thought leadership? One thing I think, doesn't get talked about, as much this is important with these relationships is what we call share of mind, which share of mind is it doesn't necessarily mean like the published article that was, you know, the industry, trade magazine, or newsletter, whatever. I mean, that's important, but share of mind is, hey, there's 400 people in this industry who really matter to us. Some are analysts, some are peers, some are journalists, writers, some are others. And how many of them know that we're in the space? How many of them can explain where we fit, you know, maybe in that Magic Quadrant? Maybe someone else? How many of them know that we've got some really like innovative solutions, or a really customer focused approach? And so one opportunity? And is there any talk about that, it just reminded me of being able to track that share of mind. And that's almost like data studies, we do with leading indicators and lagging indicators, leading indicators, like share of mind, the lagging indicator, is share voice. So when you get share of mind with right people, then you get Share of Voice, and maybe you get the deal flow later on, once you have that awareness, but it's a tougher thing to track. So we need those kinds of metrics,

‍

Robin Saitz  21:44

right? It is, for sure a tougher thing to track. But as as I say, like, you know, as I talk about performance of campaigns, for example, just because a particular campaign flipped one prospect from you know, interested to a lead, doesn't mean all the things that we did, leading up to that moment in time worked important. In fact, they were probably more important, right in their engagement, even though they didn't score high enough, until they did x, y, z. And so that's, again, why I like to think about our campaigns in a very integrated way. Because all of the tactics that we do, developing those relationships with influencers and engaging with them, getting them involved in some of the tactics that we that we, that we run, you know, we recently released our state of smart manufacturing report that we do annually and working with the influencers, to brief them on it so that they're aware of it and begin to share it them share it themselves amongst their network of people is really important. But it's hard for us to draw a straight line from XYZ influencer, who shared the state of smart manufacturing report to, you know, Joe Smith, who does lead our product production operations at a particular food and beverage company, it's hard to make that direct connection. But I wouldn't say don't do that, because we can't make the direct connection. Finding ways to measure it, and track it would be would be fantastic.

‍

Ben Kaplan  23:15

And the other point I thought you made that was interesting was you were talking about customer experience, obviously important because you want to renew customers, you want them to be lifetime customers. But this idea that customer experience starts during the marketing and sales process, that it doesn't start when they sign the contract, and that that experience there matters. And to me that's relevant to what you said before about being integrated. And you were talking about integration with sales, integration with customer success, integration with product teams, because if you're not integrated, it's not likely to be a great customer experience. And if customer experience starts, then then we've all got to communicate and talk together and work together, wouldn't you say?

‍

Robin Saitz  23:51

That's right. And in fact, recently, we had a sales, a global sales leadership meeting where we specifically talked about the role sales plays in turning fans into customers, essentially making fans from the experience that they that they offer to our customers in the way we engage. And our approach to selling is this idea of outcome based selling, which is value based selling. And, and it leads with, again, a salesperson who's done their research before they go in and talk to the customer in the first time, and make sure they understand what's publicly available. And then letting them know that they have been doing that research and listening and asking more questions and not leading again with the Rockwell story, but instead, understanding what ABC company is doing and what their what their priorities are. And and each subsequent meeting that they have with that customer should reiterate and reinforce. This is what I heard the last time what's changed Mr. Mrs. Customer since the last time we met, and I'm meeting with this other person And today from your organization, are they going to share with me something that is a different point of view. So they're constantly integrating those experiences and what they're hearing and demonstrating that they're listening. Meanwhile, along the way, marketing is, you know, running tactics alongside and providing opportunities for that company to learn more about our point of view on a particular industry, or how we would solve a particular problem, and we're there and ready for them, once the conversation can shift from focusing on the customer's business challenge to focusing on how we solve that problem. And I believe and we believe and see this in our, in our customer experiences in our selling process is that when you focus on them and their business challenge, and and what they're trying to achieve, the customer is going to have a much better experience through the selling process and hopefully become a fan and want to want to do business with us.

‍

Ben Kaplan  26:00

Also, when you think of you, I mean, you mentioned your state of smart manufacturing report. And a lot of companies are doing this, we create a lot of these reports for companies to make these kind of like white paper thought leadership type reports. But one of the challenges with it is not just to make it a standalone report, and people consume it. And basically, you get a win if they read it and they become a lead. And then it just goes into a funnel. But how does it follow through so that the sales team even has an idea of what that report is and how it exists if people are interested in it. And some of the themes in it that could actually be useful for selling, you could help find a solution for them. How does that pull through? How does it be not just like the front door to your sales funnel? Hopefully they come in and do it. But how does it mean something all the way through. And that takes more integration and thoughtfulness to do that. And maybe it's not just one report, maybe it's five different ones for each of your personas. And one version that goes to the product operations guy at the food and beverage company you mentioned, because it's different, and it doesn't have all the technical details, but it has what's relevant to him

‍

Robin Saitz  26:53

or exactly. And in fact, that state of smart report has been often we have often produced it in different for different industries for different personas on different sort of trending topics. And as I said earlier, you know, don't bother even writing that report, if you don't enable the sales organization, to be able to cut to talk about that report, and to be able to not just share it on their own, but use it in their selling pursuit and add value to the conversation through that we, you know, when we when we release that report, we look at many different venues for sharing it, we do webinars on it, we reference the data from it in other other campaigns. So it it is a it's a giant piece of work that we do. But it's not a standalone piece. It's integrated into all the things that we do in marketing, and all the things that we do in the selling process.

‍

Ben Kaplan  27:49

And I think one thing that is also interesting about reports is that they can also have a new life and become more relevant based on what's happening in the industry. So if there's news that comes out, if there's other things that you can actually engage with reporters and say, Hey, here's this big announcement that's happening. And here's what's happened in the industry. Let's look at our report, we have some insights on why that's happening. And so sometimes there's a little bit of a, let's build it, we release it, tada, it's on our website, move on to the next report. But there could be a whole life of relevance to it. Because if it's a good report, it's probably related to industry trends, industry, news is happening all the time. Therefore, we can reference the report. But sometimes we forget, because it was a lot of work to do the report, you know, let's move on to the next one we got an editorial calendar to do, but there could be a life of its own. And particularly, that even helps out the sales team. Because if they're not jumping to report to report the report, and they can leverage it more than they're more integrated to echo your earlier point.

‍

Robin Saitz  28:44

I think sometimes companies get bored with their own stuff. And they don't realize that, you know, something like that has legs and can be used, you know, we use that report for an entire year before we start working on, you know, the next version of it, the latest version of it. And one of the things we're particularly proud about this year is that, you know, that report was a report that Plex systems had done for many years. And Plex was really a North America focused company originally from a marketing perspective, we have global customers at flex as well. But our marketing was largely focused on North America and as part of Rockwell now when we release that we released it in, you know, nine different languages simultaneously and the press release went out on all those languages. And we had our PR folks out in all of the regions you know, pre briefing, various different influencers in all parts of the world and it was a very exciting experience for the whole marketing organization to to see that asset be leveraged globally.

‍

Ben Kaplan  29:50

For many companies, sustainability is now part of your overall story. Seek to connect your sustainability story to your company's business strategy. ambition and culture. When done well, the result is not just a standalone sustainability strategy, but rather that your company's business strategy itself embraces sustainability. So can sustainability become a lens through which your company makes business decisions? Can business leaders within your organization share how their decisions linked to sustainability? If you can answer yes to both of those questions, then you are truly engaging in sustainability. Storytelling. The final thing I want to ask you about it's just being a big, historically industrial automation company, you have many other lines of business you're turning into now. But to what extent do you now need to think about impact on the world whether that means sustainability? And I know you do things like manufacture sustainable electric vehicle batteries? Or you're transporting COVID-19? vaccines? Are your providing clean drinking water? And I know you personally have interest in STEM education? How do you think about all that? Is that just like a lane of its own, you sort of have to have it because you deal and resources and there's a lot of interest right now and protect, you know, protecting our resources and make sure they're there for future generations? Or is it some other way integrated more into the marketing? How do you think about a lot people kind of struggle with isn't its own lane, we kind of just need to do it whenever we're passionate about it, but it's kind of be its own? Or is there a way that it ties into everything else and even, you know, helps you close deals?

‍

Robin Saitz  31:25

Yeah, I would say, you know, for Rockwell, it is core to who we are, you know, our focus is expanding human possibilities. And so because we sell to manufacturing companies and organizations that are doing amazing things like life saving vaccines, like you talked about, and electric vehicles, we're also in, you know, food and beverage, across the board and in in a whole variety of areas. And, you know, if you've ever been on a roller coaster, Rockwell is probably controlling the motion of that roller coaster. So we're in all sorts of different parts of, of so many different industries. But because we're in all of those industries, and because of the work, the actual work that we do in creating industrial automation equipment, and digital transformation solutions, the ideas around sustainability and, and accelerating transformation and empowering the workforce. Those are our customers objectives. And so it's core to what we do, it's woven into everything we do, you know, we publish our sustainability report, like many companies do, annually, but we are also helping our customers achieve their sustainability objectives. And our customers are struggling every day with making sure that they are that they fill the pipeline with future skilled workers. And that's a challenge that Rockwell has, and one that we we through are sort of creating shared value. We are We are engaged with programs that drive more students and interest among young people into engineering and skilled, skilled staff STEM related jobs. So to me, and everything that we do at Rockwell, it's like core to what we do, it's not a, it's not a separate lane, it's just infused and what we're trying to do and help our customers.

‍

Ben Kaplan  33:33

And probably, to your point, your earlier point, if you're customer focused, then that gives you the Northstar, if it's core to our customer, it's core to us, if it's related to our customer, it's related to us, if it's a problem for a customer, they're up at night about it's a problem for us, and we're up at night about it too. And that helps it sounds like you navigate some of those things. And if you have that as your north star that helps you prioritize is this critical is it core, if it is to our customer than it is to us.

‍

Robin Saitz  34:01

And and it's and it's a plate, it's something that we can do to help them we have solutions that help our customers, you know, with energy management and making those decisions we have we are our solutions helps simplify their processes and automate their processes and, you know, begins to shift the needs in the in their workforce requirements. And then we also invest in programs like the first robotics program, which is a, you know, a global program to stimulate interest in science, technology, engineering and math. Professions and we have programs where we train military veterans in the advanced manufacturing and production roles, and you know, many engagements with universities. So we have so many we're focused in so many areas because that are important to our customers and trying to advance those, those, those interests for them. And it also simultaneously helps it helps us advance it for us for ourselves.

‍

Ben Kaplan  35:13

According to Robin Saitz successful marketing is all about understanding the customer, meeting them where they are, and leading with their business challenges and desired outcomes. It's about turning customers into fans to excellent customer experiences and ongoing engagement. Robin says sustainability shouldn't be a separate Lane in business strategy, but a core part of a company's identity and mission. It's about helping customers achieve their sustainability goals, and also addressing the challenge of filling the pipeline with future skilled workers. To paraphrase Robin, at the heart of every successful business transformation is a deep commitment to the customer. It's about seeing their challenges as our challengers, their goals as our goals for TOP CMO. I'm Ben Kaplan.

‍

36:06

This was brought to you by TOP Thought Leader. Find out more at TOPThoughtLeader.com