SaaStr 198: Decision-Making in B2B Marketing; Instinct or Data-Driven, How To Create True Alignment Between Sales and Marketing & Why Sometimes You Have To Throw The Marketing Playbook Out The Window with Maria Pergolino, CMO @ Anaplan

Maria Pergolino is the CMO @ Anaplan, the company that allows you to accelerate decision-making with effective planning. To date, Anaplan have raised over $299m in funding from the likes of Meritech, Salesforce Ventures, Shasta, DFJ Growth and more incredible names. As for Maria, prior to Anaplan, Maria was Senior Vice President of Global Marketing and Sales Development at Apttus, where she directed go-to-market strategy, sales development, customer advocacy, demand generation, strategic events and communications initiatives. She also has held leadership positions at Marketo, Shunra Software (acquired by Hewlett-Packard), and Chubb Ltd. It’s also important to note, Maria is renowned for building world-class teams that drive growth, product differentiation, and category development.

In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How Maria made her way into the world of B2B marketing? What were her biggest lessons from the days of Marketo?
• How does Maria balance between instinct driven decision making vs data-driven in B2B marketing? Is there anything wrong with instinct driven? How can marketers confidently back up their thesis with substantive proof? How does one successfully sell that to leadership?
• Maria is famous for rallying teams around her ideas, what has Maria found to be core to the success in gaining this collective approval and excitement? What is the right way to approach the marketing portfolio of strategies as a whole? What channel or segment is Maria currently most excited for?
• How does maria evaluate the current event landscape in terms of effectiveness? Are we in a B2B event bubble? How can companies determine whether this is the right strategy for them? Would Maria agree with Joe Chernov, “to do events, you have to have an appetite for losing money? What does Maria and her team do to get the most out of events?
• What does the term “marketing playbook” really mean to Maria? What does Maria mean when she suggests that marketers can let their own playbook get in the way? Why does maria think it is absurd for there to be misalignment from sales and marketing?

Maria’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. What does Maria know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
2. Who does Maria believe is killing it in B2B marketing today?
3. Advice commonly stated in SaaS that Maria disagrees with?

Read the full transcript on our blog.

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Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Maria Pergolino