Sarah Moore 0:00
And I think any market or any cmo worth their weight and salt is going to aspire to to follow that lead because it's, it's really powerful.
Ben Kaplan 0:07
This is the podcast where we go around the globe to interview marketing leaders from the world's biggest brands, fastest growing companies
and most disruptive startups, re ideas package a certain way want to spread, they want to be told us 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.
I'm chatting today with
Sarah Moore CMO of beekeeper. That's the fast growing startup that's raised close to $200 million in funding and targets non desk, so called frontline workers with operational and communication systems. Sarah is a 25 year veteran of the Austin tech community. And she's helped scale software companies from zero to 10 million to $100 million in revenue. Because she came up through the sales and business development track for more than half her career. She has some very specific ideas about how to make marketing and sales work together like never before. Sara, one of the things that I think is that maybe unintentionally provocative statement that you make is you are all about making marketing useful. That implies that some marketing is not useful. So what is the difference between useful and not as useful marketing? And how do you focus on the steak instead of the sizzle?
Sarah Moore 1:37
It starts with the audience, then it starts with not being selfish. I think there's a lot of really less useful, I will say some might say wasteful marketing in the world that we're companies want to talk about themselves, what's really cool about their product, the feeds and the speeds, why you Ben need to buy my stuff. And that mindset is a lot less useful because it's less focused on delivering value, value, first and foremost, to our prospects and our customers. So useful marketing, and marketers who do a good job at this, really understand their customers pain points, their problems, the challenges that they face every day. And they have a very service oriented mindset toward communicating how we can help you, Ben, deliver an incredible podcast experience for your audience, because that's what you come to work every day to do, it just so happens that I have a set of products and services that will help you do an even better job at that than you are doing today. So useful. Marketing starts with a deep understanding and curiosity about your customers, and a desire to serve them and help make their jobs their lives better. So that's the first piece of it, there are other pieces. But it starts there that the second piece is more internal as a marketer who has a background in sales as a marketer, who was always disappointed by what I call ivory tower marketing, whether it's collateral messaging, presentations, or product demos that I as a salesperson can't use because it's out of touch with what I need day to day as a sales rep. That's another way that marketers need to be usefully to get curious about that internal audience, and what are my sales reps needing in the field day to day? What are the challenges that we're running into the obstacles, whether it be competitors, whether it be not having the right stories to tell, that are value centric, and also focused on the customer instead of too heavily centered on what our product does, rather, why we exist and why our customers will get value from a solution like our frontline Success System, I think that's a second really important way that marketers need to challenge themselves to be as useful as possible. Because that that usefulness is, is sometimes overlooked. And we have a habit of getting caught up in activities or daily activities with our campaigns or events or content or collateral are all of that. And we have a tendency to lose the point, like the whole reason that we exist in the in our position in the company and how we can help scale the business.
Ben Kaplan 4:03
Being customer focused and sort of customer focused and marketing. It strikes me as one of those things that kind of like the old adage about like, everyone thinks they have a sense of humor, but we can't all have a great sense of humor, right? At least some of us probably think we have a great sense of humor, but don't actually so talk to any marketer who says you know, yeah, we say screw the customer, right? We're all about us. Everyone thinks their customer focus. So what is the difference when you are truly customer focus, you truly make marketing useful in your language, and you just sort of think you are but you're not really
Sarah Moore 4:39
I grade useful marketing on a few different spectrums. The first it needs to either educate like teach the audience something they don't already know could be about their business. For example, at beekeeper as we build out our category we do step one is to help educate many of our prospects that the disconnect that exists Isn't there business between home office between leadership and the frontline workers not only exist, but it's a massive, expensive problem that delivers a lot of risk or carries a lot of risk for any frontline business. If they're not deeply connected with their frontline workers. They're wasting tons of money, losing customers and revenue and carrying unnecessary risk. We have to educate the market and our prospects about that problem that that is somewhat hidden in many of their businesses. So that's one way you can be useful as you can educate, you can entertain, you're right. Not everybody's funny. I'm not the funniest girl in the room. I appreciate a good sense of humor, though. And so as a marketer, I try to come up with ideas and challenge the team to create content that's going to be entertaining, especially in today's world where b2b marketing can be a diamond, it doesn't we can all sound the same. Everybody's customer centric and focused, if I'm not educating if I'm not entertaining, it's really easy for my prospects to kind of ignore me or be overlooked. And then the third one, and one of my favorites is a call to purpose a common cause. And so marketing that is renovating is rallying and motivating common effort to change the world and make things better is the third way that I think marketers can be useful. In every case. One of my favorite ways to do that is are we proving? Are we just asserting a thesis, for example, the frontline disconnect, or how are we able to back that up with proof and with examples that are concrete and understandable and relevant to the to the audience that we're trying to serve?
Ben Kaplan 6:28
Sarah, I just think you coined an amazing new term, while you were saying that because you said rally vaiting rallying, motivating, it was like fantastic. Like I think I think we need more we need to like rally Vate, our marketing teams, right, we need to like not only motivate them, but like rally them to do something usable. I love this. Yeah. Rally baiting concept. But yes, I, I haven't seen that generally. But I'm actually really liked that because to your point about making marketing useful, all those things you said certainly sound true to me. But I also think to make marketing useful, it has to be implementable, you have to be able to do something with it right to get like a fantastic plan. But to your point about, you know, even in beekeeper, right, like helping kind of like connect you and empower and making frontline workers successful. You have frontline marketers, you have frontline salespeople, and you have those that sort of maybe sit back and work on the overall plan. So how do you make it useful? How do you I'm gonna use your term rally to aid them to rally together and motivate them to go out with this, this message. That's important too, isn't it? It sure
Sarah Moore 7:39
is. Gotta break down the silos gotta gotta remind people that they exist in functional disciplines for a reason. Marketers, even within marketing, we have disciplines like product marketing, field marketing, digital marketing, then we look across the field to the sales team, the other salespeople, we have product, you know, our engineers, our developers, the way that you rally eight, God help me, I don't know about this term, and I'll go with it for now.
Ben Kaplan 8:05
It's your it's your term. I own it. I mean, pretty soon, you're gonna be at your next. This is a little aside here, but it'd be your next conference speaking keynote. Like, we're interesting here. We're very fortunate to have Sarah Moore, the founder of the rally baiting concept, that's what you're going to be known for, after this podcast lucky
Sarah Moore 8:24
lady who coined the term, the rally,
Ben Kaplan 8:26
but I'm sorry, but keep keep keep going. You were saying? Yeah, so
Sarah Moore 8:29
how do we how do we have to break down the silos between these disciplines and help the teams understand that just like a sports team, whether it's a soccer team, a football team, or whatever, there's every position on the field is necessary for growth to win a game or a match to score a goal. And so you have to create opportunities to make that tangible in the form of global campaigns, or in the form of product development, or maybe, you know, in in startup software companies, there's often, you know, companies will say, hey, our growth targets, we're gonna, we're gonna generate $100 million this year. And isn't that exciting, and that's gonna be awesome. And the C suite tends to get really excited about that. But they don't translate why your day to day marketer would care about generating 100 million dollars in revenue or your day to day product developer or your your, you know, CS professional, who's just trying to keep customers happy and may not be as revenue oriented. What we what we try to do is create to break that down into individual, you know, programs or activities that everyone can see how they contribute to that larger, larger goal. So there's a discipline, the OKR discipline that we embrace, where every every, you know, timeframe, whether it's monthly, quarterly, annually, we do ours Quarterly, we set we understand where we're trying to head big common strategy, common goal, not just revenue in our case, it's our just cause we have a y She has to connect frontline workers with everything they need to do great work. So workers live better lives and businesses thrive. That is our purpose. That's our why everyone in the company can get excited about that rally cry. That's why we exist and come to work every day, then we have to break that down into so based on where we are January 2023, what is our strategy to do more of that this year. And we we do that by establishing what we call rocks or objectives. And we'll have a brand related objective, a sales related objective, maybe ces or product related objective, each of those will have key results that are able to this is where we make it concrete, where we say, Okay, we're gonna move the needle on this thing, conversion rate, or this thing, customer acquisition costs. And then we you know, sort of Cascade all of that down into all of the individual disciplines. So those players on the field, who who play dif, different positions, get to do the thing that they're great at, but also see how that day to day translates up to an objective that is going to help us advance our cause, which is to close the frontline disconnect once and for all a beekeeper.
Ben Kaplan 11:07
Here's the thing about telling great stories. Research shows that our brains are not hardwired to understand logic or attain facts for very long, but rather to understand and retain stories, we respond to stories because they cultivate a motion and a sense of togetherness, a connection. And what do you tell a great story in a presentation that connects with everyone, you know it right away? You can see people suddenly perk up pay attention, nod their head and verbalize a response. There's nothing else quite like it. There's this notion of commander's intent, and maybe all all of these in OKR, you know, objectives and key results made famous by Google as a way to kind of align people in teams. But for the military, there's this notion of commander's intent. And Commander's Intent is this idea that everyone needs to understand that we're going to take this hill, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna control this hill, because the problem is you can give a lot of instructions on like, yeah, you're gonna you're the field truck, and you're gonna drive up the hill, and you're, you know, the tank, and you're gonna go this way up the hill and the year the air support, you go this way, but then in war in a battle, all of that breaks down and like, oh, no, I got an instruction. I'm supposed to drive up the road, the road doesn't exist anymore. It's gone. But that's what I was trained to do is go up this road, what do I do. And if you have context for all of that, if you have Commander's Intent, you're like, Oh, my job is a support taken the hill. So my road doesn't exist, I find another way to support the objective of taking that hill. And OKRs is kind of a a way by Google to kind of turn that into a practical thing that you can like rollout and measure and roll up people and write it down and do the things that you need to kind of do in a business. So in your marketing team, do you sounds like you have a lot of kind of different frameworks, ways of measuring ways of aligning? Is that something that you believe in?
Sarah Moore 12:54
Yeah, it's never perfect. It's always a work in process. But But yes, the that common common purpose that is rooted in measurable outcomes or objectives is how I think it's one of the most useful ways to break down those silos and ensure that the day to day activities that everybody's working on are useful and relevant to that common cause. So yes, we use OKRs in marketing and a bunch of other things to try to do that on a regular basis.
Ben Kaplan 13:24
I know you want to be customer centric, you want to talk to real pay points, you want to put on their shoes, so to speak. But if we're being honest here, how much of this is just like, you're in your you're defining a new category where there may be disconnect from the frontline workers. And you just got to make them afraid of being that if we're being honest, meaning like Southwest Airlines, you know, has a problem. They're canceling flights left and right. They're not communicating maybe with the people who are communicating with the customers, this is becoming a worse problem by the hour. I mean, you can do all the things being customer said or do you just like scare the bejesus out of people saying like, Hey, this is a huge risk for you, this could bring your business come tumbling down if you don't communicate better, or invest in the success of your frontline workers.
Sarah Moore 14:05
So personally, I prefer positivity to negativity. I think people are more drawn to the aspirational potential outcome, I think that has more longevity, more sustainability. So those those types of marketing messages are, I think, long term more effective than just scaring the bejesus out of people and trying to get them to act now or else because that fear based mindset can cause people to freeze. They may not they may, they may not. And I have in my career tried to sell solutions that were purely risk based. And so maybe that colors my my perception, but sure, no one wants to be in the position that Southwest isn't even southwest, I know, doesn't want to be in the position of losing hundreds of millions of dollars, because their frontline workers, their pilots, their flight attendants are disconnected from you know the very system that allows them to schedule flights which is how the company makes money. It's a good example that of course we'll use for the folks You are not like we'll talk to prospects. And we know when we look across our pipeline, the opportunities that we're working, our biggest competitor is not another vendor, it's status quo. Our you know, the investments that we're making an ROI is cost of inaction, like do nothing is the worst place to be. If you're a frontline business, you have to be taking action to solve this massive problem. So will we use stories like Southwest to help maybe motivate someone to act? Sure, however, I prefer the customer storytelling that talks more about this is a midsize. Some midsize construction customers in the US and in Europe who are using our product to solve their massive hiring and staffing problem. They have massive projects that they're having trouble completing, because they simply don't have enough people, they can't hire them fast enough, they can't onboard them fast enough. And so we prefer to tell stories like flag or forests or Wansbeck where simple mobile app that sits in a workers pocket gives them everything they need, is also a tool that will help those businesses ensure they have all the staff they need. And so these businesses are saving millions of dollars, using a simple mobile app, that aspirational storytelling I think is more effective, and is more likely to motivate the CEO to go save real money or generate real revenue than the risk of the meltdown. Because people have a tendency to say it's now not won't happen to me like that. There are many, many folks out there who are going to say woof, that's a that's a tough story. But that would never happen here.
Ben Kaplan 16:27
Our biggest competitor is not another vendor, it's the status quo. I liked that. That's that's a nice way of saying maybe something even more fundamental, which is that we're trying to build out our own category. Why do we not have a lot of other competitors? Because we're trying to define a new category? Why is the challenge, you know, the other option, the status quo, because we're trying to build out a new category? So how do you think about that differently? As a marketer? You've come from a sales background, you've been at different sales companies, you haven't always had to build a new category. How is it different? When you do?
Sarah Moore 17:01
It is more important that you get that fundamental question of why right? That you really understand the problem. And that it's a unique problem has to be a big problem. It has to be a shared problem across industries and persona. So
Ben Kaplan 17:16
why didn't you have to do that? Well, you have to do that? Well, because because the problem is, if you're in a competitive category, that's not a new category, lots of other people help you define it, your competitors, help you define,
Sarah Moore 17:27
define it,
Ben Kaplan 17:28
define it. So now you're like, Okay, it's undefined. So we've got to be kind of kind of spot on. That's number one. Okay. Make sense?
Sarah Moore 17:35
So that that y question is really important. Being clear in in your explanation about, like how, and what we do is also more challenging, because you don't have anybody to copy. And you're, you're educating about a problem people may not realize they have or you're trying to get them to think about their problems from a different perspective, than they're used to the burden of storytelling, and articulating and sharing useful resources and useful content, I think is higher, when you're building out your own category, you really have to, it's, it's challenging, it's hard, but boy, does it pay off when you get it right.
Ben Kaplan 18:12
every communication you have every message you have, the more you have it, if it's not really focused and targeted, actually probably makes things less clear. Right, even with collateral that's like, you know, pretty good individually, in the context of everything, you're just feeding more and more stuff. And usually, you know, for busy people, that makes things less clear, rather than more, even though you're trying to, you know, here's the here's the thing with with a category, like, we need to educate people, people need to understand, right, we're building a category, we need to do that. But you better be pretty focused and pretty precise. If you just add more content to it, it probably takes away from clarity, if you don't have a good sense of what the message is.
Sarah Moore 18:55
And and in fact, in the year 2023, the the old adage, less is more has never been truer because the you know, marketing is taking so many different forms, and it's everywhere and our audience is bombarded. You got to be clear, it's got to be simple. And if you have too much of it, you're right it just you know, you get you get too many words or too many notes people just too hard. Maybe you make the audience work too hard to understand what you're trying to say,
Ben Kaplan 19:24
you know, for the evolution for Beekeeper. I mean, you've shifted your focus you really like a communication platform for frontline workers. Now you're enabling success in a broader sense of success system for life success system. But is that challenging to evolve in that direction? Because you're involving to become more of a general platform. Of course, that's more use cases more market size, makes sense from Business Growth, but you've just sort of sacrificed some clarity in a new category you're trying to find right because like I get okay communication system. Okay. We're like Slack for frontline workers or we're like something else, right? I get it now or something bigger, it's even more exciting, it can impact your business more. But then how do I explain myself?
Sarah Moore 20:11
The change management aspect is a big body of work doesn't happen overnight. What we see though, is, it's more interesting, and it's more fun when our salespeople understand it, when the marketers understand it. There's sparks of creativity that happen this, you know, in the customers, one of the most exciting things as we've rolled out the started rollout to our category this year is when we when we present to our existing customers who are already fans who bought the old value prop communications platform, and when we share this new vision for them, and they, they go from kind of like, Hey, I'm happy to be at this, you know, advisory meeting to like really leaning in and asking us, can you please come share this, this what you just your vision with our leaders and our executives, because they really need to see it, there's a level of enthusiasm and excitement and opportunity to really have an impact make a difference in their businesses, that is motivating, not just to me as a CMO, but you see it with our day to day customer, the leaders that our customers, our salespeople, our developers are there's a this is the rally rallying part this there's a there's a rally effect that happens when when you're building a category, you get the problem, right, you get the sort of the division for the solution, right? There's, you know, magic can start to happen. And we've seen that with some of the category kings and queens you aren't
Ben Kaplan 21:29
you are rally vaiting The team, you are validating the team by doing the Sarah. And but what you're actually saying, though, is interesting, because what you're saying is the shift in positioning your hypothesis, and you already see some some evidence to this is that you went from selling a software solution that people would be like, you know, that they bought from you, right? They'd be like nodding your head and be like, yeah, cool, great product, too. Now, you're actually selling a vision for what this like, Success System for frontline workers could be to this construction company or the Southwest Airlines or to someone else, and they're like, getting excited, because they're like, I'm with you on the vision that would be amazing. As opposed to being like, you've got some cool software,
Sarah Moore 22:23
right? Maybe you were cheaper than the other guy. Okay. Okay, are you happy to be in the right time at the right place? Like, that's not as fun that's not as, and it's not as motivating to, to everyone involved. And the the inspiration like the the creativity, I think the the reason those of us who've been in software for decades, like me, I love the marrying of the creativity with the problem solving, like the the art and the science of getting this kind of thing, right? When you have a bigger vision, you're gonna get bigger ideas, you're gonna get to do cooler campaigns, cooler programs, the stories that you tell, are going to be more emotional and more compelling. So a good example of that is, in this process of designing our category, frontline success, we knew the worker, we hadn't focused on the worker enough, our value prop was very one sided, it was very corporate centric HR needed to communicate to frontline workers. And that just reinforces a disconnect and a leadership that may be out of touch with what the work because there was no tote closed loop, even initially with our community communications value prop. But when you change that around and you say, hey, actually our vision our mission is to connect the worker with everything they need to be a great you know, to build great roads or to, you know, take care of patients while in a hospital or to serve customers in retail restaurant, etc. Make you know, some of our biggest customers are like food producers like Cargill Tyson, to help their workers in a in a food manufacturing plant facility be more successful day to day that uncovers opportunities for programs and campaigns like our frontline hero award that we that we launched in the fall, where we weren't sure what to expect. But we went to our day to day customers who happen to be in comms and HR and said, Hey, will you nominate the worker workers who, who just do do great work every day? Who are the folks that you would like to have recognized, and in a matter of a couple of weeks, we got, you know, dozens of submissions of really cool stories, people who do really great work at our customers. And it not only rallied our customers to feel good about their investment and beekeeper that we're a partner more than a vendor, that our employees got really excited about working for a business that that helps people who make our food, who you know, run our hotels, who who build our solar farms or our roads like that we're able to recognize these people who tend to be taken for granted. And I'm not sure that campaign would have happened if we hadn't clarified our purpose. And our just cause those ideas don't just come about so that's that's the other reason that that this this category are one another way that category marketing is a little bit different than, you know, just trying to be a better widget and market into an existing category.
Ben Kaplan 25:08
One other tool in your toolkit to make marketing truly useful is the power of urgency to unite different parts of your company and your campaign together. Why did so many companies suddenly embrace remote work so quickly and efficiently during the pandemic? Well, they didn't have a choice. They had to take action, they needed to have urgency, they had to act fast. So to make marketing even more useful, center it not only towards your customer, but center it on what your customer needs right now. Go back I know, you know, you look to other marketers and leaders for inspiration, if you think about building out categories, particularly building out, you know, kind of the sort of the forefathers of all this the SAS companies, right, which are software as a service, which basically means you had to get sort of cloud as a category first, you think of like a Marc Benioff and Salesforce. And I know, you've looked at sort of building out this kind of CRM category. What do you take from that? What do you take from like, a sales force? You know, being actually an important company, even just popularizing that the idea that, yeah, we're gonna put everything on the cloud. And this idea that CRMs are really important. And in fact, there was a split within Oracle where Marc Benioff was before on what are we going to build next and he believed in the CRM and other people believed in it will eventually became an ERP and then NetSuite. So what do you kind of take from from from Marc Benioff for Salesforce as example and building out a category?
Sarah Moore 26:42
Well, you're talking to a girl who was a salesperson with a Rolodex, pre spreadsheets, even like, so I've been a fan girl of Marc benioff's for for a long time, early in my career would sell again, Siebel and Oracle and some of the software packages that I that I sold so so for a number of reasons, I think, it's it's a perfect example of the magic that can happen when when you have a vision of a category that that doesn't yet exist, you know, future state that doesn't yet exist, but should and is worth sacrificing for. I'm paraphrasing Simon Sinek another another one of my big influences. But when Benioff when they, when they did that campaign, you'll remember no software, like software with the line through it, you might remember that. Yeah, sure. It was clear, simple, controversial, shocking, a little bit got got people's attention. But it represented a bigger vision, like businesses were wasting so much time and energy with on prem software. And fundamentally, investing money in tech that wasn't getting used wasn't delivering on its purpose was slow, cumbersome, got more and more expensive over time. So it's it's examples like early days, that's some of what I take from the Benioff story. But over the years, they continue to evolve. I don't think they've ever strayed too far from that original vision, they just continuously evolve it and sort of help us you know, see the next mountain peak in the in the story that Salesforce is building. So today, I think that Salesforce has done an excellent job of from pricing and packaging, to messaging, to rallying a community of people who are not just users, but strong evangelists. You know, Salesforce administrator is a job title today, that didn't exist 20 years ago, when they were, you know, just just taking off. So there's, as a professional market or now, I studied that that's a case study. I'm always I always go back to if I get stumped or puzzled, it's a little bit of like, what would mark do like what what would what would the Salesforce is the world? How would they how would they tackle a problem like this? It's never follow the pack? By the way, the answer is never do what everybody else is doing. Instead of
Ben Kaplan 28:53
falling the pack you have to renovate. But But what what is interesting is that, you know, we could take our discussion about defining a category even one step further, because in the case of Salesforce, you're like, let's define the CRM category. Let's make it but oh, wait, then we grow, that we're pretty big. And now we're like, moving beyond the category we defined? Yes, you can use our CRM, but we actually do a ton of other stuff now, to find ourselves in a different way. And in some ways, was like, you know, what you've been doing a beekeeper from like trying to define this as communication platform frontline workers. Now it's this success system and plotline and all of that, that you're coming to, Salesforce has a really good job of building up that that category, and then somebody gets so successful, you got to keep growing, you got to do more, you got to keep evolving. And then you got to like break out of that category.
Sarah Moore 29:49
Yeah. And the business has had a lot of influence on all software companies, right. So you could say that they grew and made a name for themselves in the CRM category, but they're or even social causes that they now have a relevant voice in, whether it's equality in the workforce, pay equity, you know, they've really, they've really changed their other social issues that they've earned, you know, they use because they think they've earned the right to have a point of view, and to drive influence in the world beyond just the software that they sell, which is also really, really badass, I think, really cool. Well, and
Ben Kaplan 30:26
one of the things that's interesting too, about them is I don't know, how have you ever seen? I mean, I know this from sort of being in San Francisco, but have you ever been around like, Dreamforce their conference comes to town, I've
Sarah Moore 30:36
had an experience, it's it's more than an event.
Ben Kaplan 30:39
It's bigger than even. It's like, it's not exactly an industry trade conference, right? Yeah, it is. It's an attempt to like renovate. Like, it's a bit it's a big deal. It's a big deal. Yeah. Which brings me to a question for you. So I mean, one of the things that, that when you are defining a new category that you actually have to do at some point, and then you tell me if you're there yet is you've got to develop a community. And I don't know it, because that's part of how you define that category of a bunch of people who are interested in it. And it can't just be you. Because if it's just your company, you don't have a category, you just have like a product that is kind of unique, that probably doesn't have a huge market, you know, if we're if we're being honest, but if you get the community involved, it becomes a thing. You have Dreamforce, right. And people who don't even care that much about Salesforce CRM still participate, right? Then it becomes much bigger. So have you thought about marketing? Or do you do marketing, kind of via developing communities?
Sarah Moore 31:42
Apps? Yes, I have, we are just embarking on that part of our journey at beekeeper. So I don't have as many examples to pull from yet at at beekeeper, except to say we have customer advisory boards, every software company should have one if you don't get one today. Because that's it's one of a really valuable learning exercise to bring some of your valued customers together, and listen more than you talk and learn. And they get to learn from one another, you get to learn from them. So we have we have small communities that we've started that we hope will seed this broader, broader community. The communities today are are focused on one of our more, you no more common or popular personas. So I think we need to build some more variety or more diversity in the audience of our community in order for it to really work well, and to get the network effects that everyone aspires to when you have a community of evangelists that are, you're not the only one with the megaphone. They've all got megaphones. And suddenly, we have a movement, not just a product. So that is definitely what we aspire to. When I when I worked at spread fast. So this is a few years ago, that was one of the things that helped boost us from a successful respectable $50 million company to $100 million company that was acquired by a private private equity firm. I think it's one of the things that fueled our successful exit was building a community of not just customers, but but evangelists at multiple levels within the organization. We sold social media management software at the time. So this was now 15 years ago, probably. And that was changing social media change marketing. And we were kind of in the thick of it at the time, we needed more voices to help educate the market, that it was more than just a social monitoring problem isn't just a matter of having to understand and listen to what everyone was saying about your brand on all these new social media networks. That the the opportunity was, again, we kind of went for the aspirational storytelling rather than the fear. But we built out an ambassador program that had you know, I think 70% Penetration across our customer base. We also had an executive sort of roundtable suite. So we had leaders of digital at big brands like ESPN and target and NBA like brands, Wendy's brands that that were some of the Renegades that were doing social media really well. And in both cases, we want it to be useful. And one of the best ways to be useful is to bring the community together and connect them with one another as much as we connected them to to our business in our in our purpose. So you know, the Salesforce example, the trailblazers programs that they have, and all of the the content. You know, there are people who choose to spend their Saturday morning gathering with other Salesforce folks, because they're just so passionate about what they do. And I think any market or any cmo worth their weight and salt is going to aspire to to follow that lead because it's it's really powerful.
Ben Kaplan 34:45
Another aspect of potentially defining a new category community helps you do it. Another is we call our agency data leadership programs which is like using data to create rapid thought leadership and sometimes you will gonna kind of like steer people in the right direction, right? So like you're defining a new category, you want them to understand the problem this category can solve. So you ask a bunch of questions, and you do some surveys of leaders in the field, you do other things. What have you done in terms of, or have you thought about, you know, more defining your new category by using data. And using research and using if it's a report or a download, or something that's PR able to help establish that new category for you too?
Sarah Moore 35:28
Sure. One of my first tasks as cmo coming up on 18 months ago was to do exactly that. Go get curious about the audience. We have. Now, over a million frontline workers in our in our licensed population, we have approaching half a million of those weekly active users, we don't have to guess at what they think their pain points are, we can ask. And so fortunately, we did that. And we were able to prove that there is a disconnect between in this example, workers and their managers that use our product on a weekly basis, and give some specific examples of measure the results and show that what a manager thinks is going to motivate the worker may not be what they they're most motivated by today. So one specific example there will be when you when we asked those workers, we got we asked we sent a survey, we had 1000s of responses. I think this last one, it was something like 15,000 people responded, across regions across industries. And we see these really cool trends, where the top motivator for the way managers trying to motivate their team is through team engagement and recognition and acknowledgement. And we can see in the data that the workers care about that. But what they actually are most motivated by is predictable work schedule, the ability to ask for time off the understanding of how like understanding how their day to day work, connects to a larger corporate vision, that those are the top motivators for the frontline worker, and the managers may be a little out of out of touch out of sync. And so that's just the start. We've got our new research report will be coming out here in a month or so. And it's focused on retention, and what is it that why to work or stay? And we've got some interesting insights that we'll share when that report comes out. So long winded way of saying then that, yes, data, and one of the ways you can be useful is to teach the world something they don't already know. And data is a great way to do that.
Ben Kaplan 37:32
We would certainly agree with that. And maybe to wrap up kind of final thoughts a lightning round. First of all, what is the most underrated marketing discipline,
Sarah Moore 37:47
storytelling, telling compelling stories? And to today, I'm focused on video, storytelling, I think we at beekeeper need to improve how we do that. I think our the world is consuming stories every day, we've seen streaming services take off. I think explaining educating through the experience of others is one of the best ways the most effective marketing. I think it's underrated, I think, case studies and testimonials tend to be a box that we check as marketers. And the stories themselves could be so much more compelling and interesting if we if we realize we're not just writing a case study, but we're telling a story.
Ben Kaplan 38:28
And what is overrated in marketing.
Sarah Moore 38:31
I'm sure you guys are following the the all the marketing, kind of predictions around machine learning and AI. At the moment, I don't think I think it's cool technology that hasn't found a useful home in marketing. Like I think that there's a lot of energy being poured into AI and machine learning, and how it's going to change marketing. I believe it can make us way smarter and way more effective. But the examples that I've been shown, like the idea that I'm going to have a robot, right, my like improve my SEO strategy. I don't buy into that yet. I don't think it's that it's not that strong. It feels like a classic case of shiny object syndrome. Like yeah, it's new and it's in. It's an interesting, it's exciting, but I haven't haven't seen the application that is going to really change the game and make us like leapfrog from where we are today to where we are tomorrow. So I worry marketers is pouring a lot of energy into an area that isn't yet as useful as we need it to be.
Ben Kaplan 39:33
Okay, well, maybe the rope the you know, AI tool is not going to do your SEO strategy, but it might write you a blog post about strategy. Yeah, what would you advise South West Airlines to do now
Sarah Moore 39:47
saw the disconnect is the number one priority. I would the disconnect that exists between their pilots and their flight attendants and their teams that run the business.
Ben Kaplan 39:57
But then let's say they solve it then what then what Do you do? How would you? How would you message it? How would you market it? Is it beyond? Is it? Is there something you say? Is there nothing that can be said? What do you do at this point?
Sarah Moore 40:08
It's hard for me as someone who lives in Texas, because I've been a Southwest fan for a really long time. So I'm I'm a supporter. Well, and I
Ben Kaplan 40:16
think one of the one of the things essentially, about Southwest has actually, they've been historically a great case study, and being sort of customer centric, putting the gospel first. That's why we kind of Rose them to prominence, you know, to the point of saying, like, hey, we don't want to, you know, charge you baggage fees, because no one likes paying baggage fees. So our whole positioning is gonna be like, we don't do baggage fees. That's pretty customer centric. Right? That's nice. And yet you have this event that is sort of the opposite of that, where like, it seems like we don't we don't care about our customers at all. Because, you know, we just, we just screwed your travel plans.
Sarah Moore 40:50
I think, yeah, they've been about creating a great experience, like being that being a, you know, when you take a Southwest flight, you're entertained, you know, they you have a more direct route, you get there faster and more on time like that, that I think I would if I were CMO, I would I would study where we lost our way, because I feel they drifted from that somewhere along the way, Ben, and what what how do we get back to our core mission and our purpose? I believe that their employees, the folks on their front line, are have always been one of the greatest assets for Southwest. And so I would find ways to elevate their voices. Because if you win, if you went over the the employees at Southwest, their loyal, loyal bunch, I mean, there's some really brave individuals who have raised their voices on this topic. I would, I would, I would spend time studying that. So maybe my audience statement from the top like, get to know your audience, I bet in southwest case, in this example, the audience that matters, most of them in this moment is their employees, they can turn those employees, then the rest will will solve for itself. So maybe the brand campaign is is the the pilot who wrote the letter, it's you know, it's the the flight attendants that were stuck on the plane, and you know, get them to believe that things are things are going to be better going forward.
Ben Kaplan 42:07
And maybe that's can be contagious and spread a little bit if you if you start there. Sure. Well, and final question, what makes Marc Benioff a great leader? And what can us as marketers learn from him? Do you think,
Sarah Moore 42:21
I mean, he's a unique human being. So it's hard to, you know, I don't know if it's common folk can aspire to that to be just like Marc Benioff, but the he has a vision. And the vision extends beyond today, as his vision is not this quarter, or even this year. And so I think that is, that's one of the big things that distinguishes him from many other CEOs that he looks out on onto the horizon, and imagines a better future and then can translate that vision into action today, in the form of their products, and their, you know, their go to market, the brand. He's really, really smart brand marketer. Also, that's the first thing. I think he's got conviction in that as well. I mean, I've never been in the room when he when he when they make decisions about things, but I can imagine, he's not easily swayed. When people challenge his opinion, or, you know, say, Whoa, but you know, this competitor is doing it this other way. He sets the vision has conviction and is able to have that deliver that Commander's Intent, like you said, and be decisive and clear. I think he does. He's probably a good example, or case study on that, on that concept and that topic. Yeah, I think the rest of the stuff is is really in that vision. So like purpose beyond profit, Salesforce has had a purpose beyond just making money, like being useful there, this idea of we're going to make your the way you use technology easier back in the day to, you know, the the suite of solutions that they deliver to businesses, and how they help us run our businesses more effectively like that, that all is really, really smart. And I think the last piece is the packaging and pricing, the way the way that Salesforce has gone about proving the that growth isn't just from new customer base. But if you package the product, right, you can make a lot more revenue from the existing customers that you have. And I say that as a CMO at a company that was growing, and we always end up having, like the only thing you know as your Salesforce bill is gonna get more expensive every year. Even if you don't have a product, you're gonna have to figure it out, either through data or API calls or whatever like and because their product is so useful, like We're never getting rid of Salesforce, so we'll just pay more for it, I guess.
Ben Kaplan 44:45
According to Sarah Moore, CMO at beekeeper to make marketing useful, you've got to turn it into a real engine for growth. So don't just say your customer centric, be customer centric exists to solve problems for your customers. And then take delight in conveying powerful stories that turn your offering into a vision. Be like Marc Benioff at Salesforce. You've got to make your own category. It's a great challenge and a great opportunity. So keep it simple. Communicate a vision that can get people excited, wherever they are in their corporate hierarchy. Nurture your community. Turn your current customers into a powerful sounding board. And finally, don't just motivate rally the troops to take immediate action. Some might call it Ralph eight, for top CMO. I'm Ben Kaplan.
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