BSMS 60 - How to hire a SaaS marketing leader

Brian Graf: Hi there, and welcome to episode 60 of B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks. I'm Brian Graf, I'm the CEO of Kalungi, and today I'm here with Kalungi's co founder, Stijn Hendrikse, who's a serial SaaS marketing executive and ex-Microsoft product marketing leader. 

Today, we're talking about how to hire the right marketing leader.

This can be a really daunting and also tricky decision to make. As a founder or a leader of a B2B SaaS company, the cost of making the wrong decision can be quite high, with lost budget, equity, and often most importantly, time. In this episode, we'll give you an overview of some of the factors to consider when you're going about your hiring process, including the level of experience, the industry expertise of the candidate, And the culture fit and what to look for in each area to make the best decision.

We'll also discuss how to define success for the role that you can set the right expectations with your new marketing leader and maximize the value they can drive for your organization. Let's get into it. Okay. So here we are again, Stijn, and we have a new topic today that I think is interesting. And we've touched on it a few different times with different angles, but I wanted to come back to it because I think it's really useful for, For our audience and just something that doesn't get talked about all that much.

And that is really how to hire a marketing lead or, or a leader within your team. That's, that's fairly talked about, but also how do you get hired. If you're a marketer or a marketing lead, or even a fractional executive. How do you make yourself stand out from the other wave of. Fractional executives that are coming up and all of the solid resumes and solid LinkedIn profiles that are out there.

How do you make sure you are the one that stands out and gets that dream job? So, you know in this episode i've we've already talked about this from the hiring perspective in I think episode 13 Of this podcast and you Stijn gave some great points on kind of the leadership management and roi a piece of things but Maybe we can just start with You know, as you're thinking about hiring a marketing leader, say in a company, what are the things that you look for?

What are the qualities that you look for, you know, resume pieces and then we can go from there. 

Stijn Hendrikse: I'm asked to help the CEO or a founder find their next marketing leader. It is the first thing I always want to make sure I understand is where they are? Where's the company on the journey of this kind of strategy?

Versus technical needs from their marketing leader. We have another article about this that we'll post here in the notes that is really a framework on when you get to the MVP. It's a very different part of the journey than when you have to get to product markets. Again, the MVP is a very strategic phase where a lot of, there's so many unknowns where you're testing kind of a concept of a thing that you think exists.

You think you can build a solution for a very strategic and it's very important that the founder usually is kind of the marketing leader themselves. Or they have someone who's very close to them who's helping them on that part of the journey. Where, when you, when you have that established and you have maybe a couple of clients that you're working with in the MVP state.

Who is testing? And helping you build the product and giving you feedback, but they're not necessarily paying you yet. To go from that to go to part market fit is usually getting a little more skill. How do we get 100 clients for 10 people who pay this? And that's much more technical. Now you have to kind of go recruit a bunch of people.

people, maybe knock on some doors, have a program, maybe a beta program. So the marketing leader that you need then is maybe less of a strategic CMO who's going to question maybe the position and question even the resonance of the company. It's much more like, Hey, I'm going to recruit 10 people to use this.

And, but then when you get out of product market fit and you get to the T2D, T2D3 part of the growth phase where you have to now diversify your demand jail and then focus on customer attention and figure out how to grow ARPU. It's a much more strategic effort. Yeah, right. So now you have to have someone who understands positioning and packaging and pricing and kind of identifies six P's of marketing the distribution strategy.

The more traditional P's are about case and promotion. And of course, in the new world, that means. Do you go to market through a channel or not? Or do you go direct? Do you stick with a very tight ICP? Or do you broaden it a little bit? At what point do you go global instead of staying in one country.

These are super strategic questions that you actually get to when you're getting out of product market fit and now you want to go after 10 extra growth without being able to just do what you have done so far. So that's my first big question. Question to Philip. Do I need a CMO? Do I need a marketing leader who's going to fit one of those three kinds of stages of the growth journey?

And then the second is, are you ready to hire someone in house? Because you're willing to invest the time it takes to get an in house candidate, not only hired, but on board. It can easily be a year. It's at least half a year to both hire a full time marketing leader and then Also allow them to be onboarded and then kind of build a team.

It just takes a little longer. But if you're ready to do that, if you have the two, three, four years of runway in your cash because you're either funded or profitable, then you need to at some point have that internal, you know, full time marketing leadership. Maybe you're ready to do that. Or are you still in, you know, I don't know exactly where we'll be a year from now.

I have limited clarity on how my cashflow situation will be four or five months from now. I need a quick hitter. I need someone who can just So then you're kind of looking more for a contractor. It could be a fractional CMO. We've talked about that in another podcast. You know, how do you kind of make that trade off?

But if you're now hiring your first client, I believe you would still look for a contractor instead of a full time long term hirer. That's the second question I I would like to get answered. And then the third one, and this is I think the most interesting one for this episode of the podcast.

Marketing is usually a mix of art and science. And when you hire Your CMO, the best CMO, I think, complements the founder or the founders on either the science or the art side. So some of your founders have a very natural ability to be numerical, you know, very analytical, very good at kind of planning and turning a strategy into execution.

In that case, getting a CMO is maybe a little more creative, who really gets the art part of building a brand, and building an audience, and building connections with audiences, and the communication side of that art. So that might be a great profile. But if you have a founder who is much more of the creative type, who loves to start things, but maybe is not a great finisher, Who's very good at the ideation part of creation and creativity, but maybe less on how to make that turn into something concrete and build a team around that and have them kind of turn the big ideas into great execution.

Then you want a CMO who's good at that. Who's good at making the trains run on time and being very data focused.

So those would be three things that I would like to get answers to right before I come up. Okay, this is the profile of the CMR we're looking for and then we'll talk more in this podcast about the technical implementation of the search. But yeah, that's what I'm, we're on the start track. 

Brian Graf: Yeah, absolutely.

It's in the article that you're referencing. We have this chart where it has, you know, strategy by strategy on the y axis and maturity on the x axis of the company. And it is interesting to see that you really need a high strategy in the beginning. And then as you start to get traction, you know, It jumps down into tactics, and then it jumps back up.

What's interesting, especially for early stage is that you kind of need almost since you don't have that much budget, right, to hire a full team around an executive, it's almost better to get a jack of all trades marketer who can, who is strategic, but can also jump in and just get their hands dirty and get things done.

Because when you're at an early stage, right, your job is to Test the market hypothesis and go get customers where, you know, you don't know what the go to market strategy is. You need to go build one. It's a very different skill set than that more mature phase that you were referencing where that person needs to be a pure strategist and needs to be able to run a team of 15, 20, 30, 50 people.

Very different skill set. And so it's really good to know where you sit in that continuum and, and start to tune your search appropriately. What do you think about, you know, say that we've, we've gone through and we've answered all those questions. What do you think about experience when you're looking at candidates?

You know, there's tons of candidates out there. 30 years experience tons of gray hairs as we like to say right and others that are more fresh Right, and maybe a little bit more risky. What do you think about when you're looking through resumes and finding those different scenarios?

Stijn Hendrikse: It's something of course that you need to go faster. You need someone who's done many things you need to do before experience can also Hold you back if it's, you know, something that maybe it's not the right For where you are in your growth journey. Let's first talk about where it really helps you.

There's so many mistakes that you can attract that you can fall into by either entering the wrong market or hiring the wrong agency or Implementing the wrong tools. The wrong CRM system or the wrong type of website infrastructure. Hiring the wrong team. There's probably nothing more costly than that.

So all those things will usually benefit from someone who's done those things before. That, I think, is the, is the upside of having. Someone who's really experienced and then of course you have to make sure that you're looking for the right. It's not necessarily the amount of years Having been a marketing leader or the large team that someone has led or the large amount of revenue That they have generated, but then they do Something that resembles the next stage of growth that your company is going through You just went from 1 to 6 million ARR maybe in the first couple of years.

Now you have to go to 10 or 11. Can you find someone who's done that? And maybe the states that come after that as well. Because you want to give someone something, also an interesting product, not just the same as what they've done before. But yeah, hiring someone who's only worked in a 300 million AR environment, although they have a ton of experience, might not be the right fit for what you need if you need to go from 6 to 10.

My experience can also become a sea anchor a little bit. You have someone who's, who's, who's gotten used to doing things in a certain way. It's not necessarily open to meeting your team where you are, where your company is, having the flexibility, the agility to fit the specific challenges that you're facing.

Curiosity is a more general, I think, attribute, tenet, I guess, for a great candidate because every early stage company is going to be different. Even if you're in a certain revenue band, if you're in a certain market, the amount of folks. People in your team are still small, so having a certain type of people in your team could make the leader you need very different from having a different type of person.

I think experience to be valuable has to be appropriate for what you need, but nothing can be, it can beat the experience impact of not hiring the wrong team, not going into the wrong market, not building the right or implementing the right tools, et cetera, et cetera, because those can be very costly mistakes.

Brian Graf: I think the Having, you know, the experience of a Fortune 500 company, right, looks great on a resume, but, but definitely may not apply to your pre-revenue or 10 million, 20 million, 50 million, even startup. The variables that they were working within, right, in the system that they were working within is not nearly the same as, as your company likely, and so it's really good to think about what the systems were that they Thrived in right in their previous roles versus what you need them to do.

But I usually think about it when I'm seeing a lot of experience. One of the big benefits of it is that it's almost knowing which screw to turn. And which screw not to turn. There's a story that I'm going to butcher, that is, you know, a homeowner needs something done on their house and the higher contractor to do the work, the contractor comes over.

You know, and within 30 minutes is out the door saying like, Hey, yeah, it was easy. I fixed the job. Right. Everything went well, and a week later, the homeowner gets a 500 bill. What the heck. You're only here for half an hour, how are you charging me this so much? This doesn't make any sense, and so the homeowner complains about the bill, and the contractor sends a revised invoice over, and there's two line items on it.

One is turning the screw, which is 1, and then there's knowing which screw to turn, which is 499. And that is kind of the beauty of experience. That's right, it takes something That could be so difficult and time consuming and frustrating and costly, right, and makes it easy. And it's almost, you know, magical to the point where you don't even have to think about it.

If you get the right experience, that is. Versus if you don't, right, it's, it almost takes a smooth C and turns it into a rough C. It's much more difficult to get where you're going, you're going in many more different directions. Different directions. And can be a much more arduous process.

And so that is kind of like in general, how I think about experience and how, how beneficial it can be. But I guess it's not, not necessarily a good thing. As, as you were saying, Stijn with the wrong types of experience, it's not as beneficial as you might hope. Particularly, I guess, in the companies that we like to work with, where, where it goes wrong is if someone almost has too much experience and wants to go into more of the C suite, board level, consultative approach, where they don't really dig in and do much of the work, they like to show up for the meetings and have a bunch of really good ideas, but don't necessarily No, or have the energy to, to really dig in and get them done or to, to, to see them to fruition.

And especially with the companies that we typically work for, you know, they, the, the marketing leader needs to be able to get their hands dirty and they need to. They need to be able to dig in and really push for results. 

Stijn Hendrikse: Well, another challenge is that if you have done something before, especially if you've done a lot, it might not be that interesting for you.

So, being very extreme means that it might not be really something you want to do again. Finding that right balance by hiring someone who's going to be excited about the role also because they can learn from things that are new, but also apply all their experience. Developed experience, if there was rights, we would have to pay the rent dollars that you want to spend.

Industry or product type or service level expertise when you're, when you're going through the hiring process, is that critical for you or can that be forgiven? 

Stijn Hendrikse: It goes back a little bit to, if you have a really strong founder who has a ton of industry expertise, then maybe the CMO doesn't need to necessarily bring them.

Powerful to have the other side of that coin and being able to translate some of these very industry specific parts of value proposition to other audiences rather than maybe are important for the buyer's journey, but are not necessarily covered by what the current team knows a lot about and how to do on the other hand If you count on your CMO to drive the brand and the reputation and the position of your company from a content perspective, right, that's one of their jobs.

Yeah, you do need someone who's either able to learn or is already experienced in kind of the job to be done, the use case, that's the industry that you're servicing.

being able to show up and to differentiate yourself as a company is all about all time these days. So the CMO is going to be your chief content officer. And then that is going to be more important that they bring that. But I also, and it goes back a little bit to the art and science kind of equation.

How much does the CMR compliment the other people that are already in the executive team, not just the founder, but maybe the chief sales officer or the R and D. Leader if they are very strong and within the expertise and they're able to have a critical intent and they don't have to bring all that.

Yeah, perfect. I don't have much to add to that. I think sometimes people can get hung up on trying to find a leader that has the perfect amount of industry expertise. And that can, especially if you're not in a fully established industry, it can be really difficult without just directly poaching them from a competitor, which is a pretty difficult task. I think what you said about complimenting the founder and the executive team is perfect. I think it's really important to get someone who has tangential experience at the least. They need to know how to run a fair marketing leader. I need to know how to run the go to market that you need to run.

And, you know, They need to have worked with a similar type of industry and a similar type of go to market, similar type of product, I think would be really helpful. But you definitely don't necessarily need direct industry experience. 

Stijn Hendrikse: Yeah, I mean, this is maybe one of your first hires in the marketing team.

Oh, if it is, we talked about this in our last episode, it usually has to be someone who's pretty good at conduct, leadership, etc. So if this is still a really small team, then CMO may have to be that person. But then if you already have some great team members, then the CMO being able to coach them and have them really be the subject matter, which is also totally fine.

Speaking of teams, I think one of the, I guess the last big bucket that I like to think about when hiring a marketing leader But really any hire is culture fit and i'm there's a ton of literature and and debate on this but how important is culture fit to you when you're when you are Hiring, what do you look for to ensure a good culture fit as much as you can in the interview process?

Talk us through that. 

Stijn Hendrikse: Yeah, this is first of all this one of your leadership team hires. So it's extremely extremely important If it doesn't fit the values of the company, it will really slow you down. If you have a strong, you know, value system, if you have a really good culture, the team is going to be so small.

The first job they have to do is any job that's needed by the company. That's how small the team probably is. So it's a great question. So I think if you can make that a big part of the early stage of an interview process to see. I like to let people do some homework before they do interviews.

When people show an interest in a role, you know, they can write something short about, you know, what they think the company's future could look like, what are the challenges that we face, what do they see online about the company. I mean, you let someone do this, even the way they communicate about doing some work for the hiring process and how they show up is going to give you a good sense if there will be a culture fit.

And you always want to enrich your culture with some new aspects and diversity is, of course, fantastic, but only to the point where it would take maybe a year. It could hold back some of the things that you really like in the group that are not going to be supported by the SNR. What is your experience with this Brian?

If you come into a company, also as a fractional CMO of course, where have you felt there was a really good fit and where not? And kind of how did that happen? 

Brian Graf: In the hiring seat, I really like to, I'm all about EOS entrepreneurial operating system right now and applying that within Kalungi. But when I'm looking at hiring, right, I think there's the right person in the right seat.

And so you can. Even if they have an impeccable resume, they check every single technical and, and performance related box, right, but just aren't fit your core values, especially as you noted, Stijn, right, them being in a leadership position, it's, it's almost, it's a deal breaker. You can't, you can't hire someone fit because the impact that they'll have, not only on the marketing team, to use a marketing leader as an example, but then throughout the leadership team and the rest of the company is just really hard to combat if they're a really poor culture fit.

So I like to push those pretty hard and like to really dig into each core value if I can with that candidate to make sure that they, they are aligned with, with what we need for our culture. You know, I feel like as a fractional CMO, there have been some companies where I've come in and just fit with the culture.

I'd align with their core values. I think about feedback the same way that they do. I think about performance the same way that they do. And that has been a really smooth transition. There have been other companies where I've come in as a, as a fractional, right. And I guess transparently, right. Had to kind of play the politics game too, to be able to navigate core values that maybe didn't fit as well as, as well as I wanted to.

And, and performance aside, I think honestly, the fit. The lack of a fit there made the the contracts or the engagement shorter than they would have been right because just naturally it becomes apparent that there isn't quite a fit within the leadership team right and they'll be quicker to move on into somebody that does it right and it ends up being for the best for both parties and you can.

You can always try and finesse your way around right and do the extra work to To make it work, but you know at the end of the day, it's hard to Hide or to work around for a long period of time. I mean, I feel like it naturally kind of sorts itself out. What have you seen as you've been a fractional?

Stijn Hendrikse: I think the the tendency for a marketing leader to have to to to Take a lot of the load on their shoulders You Of things that the company, that the team in the company doesn't like about their image and about how they shop in the market and how their family members at home feel about it. Means that you're in the leadership team, you're a really easy target for criticism, for challenges, et cetera.

So someone who is a good fit is also comfortable being vulnerable. I think this is not necessarily unique for a specific culture of a specific company, but I think it's a good cultural trait for a marketing leader. To be comfortable, to lead with the red, as we like to say, to be, to be comfortable, to be okay saying, hey, marketing will always be things that are not going to be perfect.

I think when I look for culture fit I look for some of those traits that are more generic, I guess, but they're just very important for the role. Cause like just the engineering leader might be able to hide a little more, the marketing leader cannot. They're just very, it's a very public role.

That's the only thing I want to add. I was wondering if we could switch a little bit in the conversation, Brian, to some more very sort of practical things. What I think is a very good practice when you hire a C model is to write up what outcomes you're expecting. You know, actually build a couple of Scorecards.

They say, Hey, if I get the perfect CMO, these four would be the four things that would be put on their dashboard or are there OKRs? I always thought that as a very important part of doing an executive search in general, it's for CMOs even, even more. Any thoughts on that? 

Brian Graf: Yeah, I think that's absolutely, it's a best practice and it's, it is better to do honestly as you're starting your search than you know.

Six months to a year in a two year new hire. I think especially And what's interesting is that as a fractional CMO I've seen one end of the conversation and then also as the CEO working with other marketing leaders I've seen the other seat right? And so it is I've gotten to see both sides of the table, I guess but it is really I think as, as an executive, right.

It can be tempting to have one view going into a relationship and have those goalposts move as the relationship evolves. And so to your point, Stijn, it is really important to think about what are the, the few key metrics that really this, this role, right. Marketing is a performance based role.

And so you hire that to, to add pipeline, to add MQLs, right. And so knowing how much they need to move and what And how fast I guess is really critical in hiring the right person, but be giving them the right budget and resources and then see holding them accountable to the end result. I think from my perspective, the key, the key driver, right, is marketing qualified leads, especially to start.

And that is if I, if I could only choose one, that would be it. A lot of founders can be tempted to say, Hey, I want my marketer to drive revenue. And I. Get the sentiment right and I it is good to have marketers fully aligned with sales on a target like that But if we're just going to talk about marketing in a nutshell, they don't have the majority of cases.

They do not have the span of control to really impact that number the way that they should if you're gonna If they're you're gonna hang it around their neck, that's my biggest target But they're you know, depending on the company that you're in brand awareness metrics are really important Especially in when you get into the larger stages right, conversion rates down the funnel Number of, you know, marketing qualified leads within the, the ICP.

And then of course, as the marketing team gets to be more mature, then I think you can start to hold them the marketing leader to sales qualified leader meetings that actually happened or opportunities or dollars in the pipeline. Right. But I do think that the MQL is a fantastic place to start if you want to just simplify and have them.

You know, especially as they get going, make sure that they move one number. That's the number they have to move. 

Stijn Hendrikse: Yeah. Well, the marketing leaders fail in the first year. It's interesting because at the end of the year, the founder and the CEO don't like the results. And I was there to communicate those expectations of the first couple of months of the employment and usually that wasn't.

Okay. And it's great to do it even before you start hiring. 

Brian Graf: Yeah. And, marketing as you, as you were mentioning earlier, marketing is such a broad discipline that is, particularly as companies are starting up and even, you know, even getting into the 20-50 million plus range of a RR. Marketing is so broad that it is almost, almost impossible for all of it to be going 100 percent well.

So you were talking about leading with the red earlier. It's, if you're not leading with the red, something's wrong, honestly. Because there's, there will always be something to be improved. And I think that just being clear on, Coming back to the metrics approach. Being clear on what the most important metrics are to move will help you to prioritize the right things and not get distracted by things that sure could be improved.

And always things can, if you, if you spend your time chasing fires, you won't be able to move the numbers that really need to be moved. So as a founder, right, it's really good to be clear on what needs to be done while you're hiring for this role. But as the marketing leader, right, it's really good to set the right expectations.

And align with the founder on where I need to take this company. And then let's get to the other stuff later. Let's get to that next year. Let's get to that next quarter so that we can move the really important metrics. Do you want to go through the 10? Cmo interview questions quickly or 

Stijn Hendrikse: let's look at everything we talked about You can find in one of our more articles There's a list that I've published at some point that are the ten questions that I like to at least have in front of me when I interview a CMO candidate.

None of this is of course to be used verbally or to be exactly verbatim. But it is kind of a good set of questions that gives you a good perspective on candidates for multiple sites. The first one, especially when you're hiring someone at the stage of the company where you are looking for growth in funnel and performance through a number of lenses.

The first question can be, hey, what do you have on your marketing dashboard today? What are you tracking? What, for you, is a good, meaningful OKR? What do you look at weekly? What do you look at daily? What do you look at monthly? So that's my first question. The second question, a completely different type of area, is how do you approach branding, both at the company level, but also at the product level, at the services level?

It gives me a sense of how they think about a brand. From, is it just a logo or a name, or is it something that also includes things like values and culture? And neither of those answers is good or bad, but when I look for a certain candidate for a certain type of organization that is a certain part of the journey, I need to know if someone is really good at getting just the visual identity of a company to the right spot.

Or they're really good at channeling the whole leadership team on kind of the values that maybe are supporting a certain brand ambition. And depending on where a company is, they may need more of one or the other, ut getting a sense of how candidates sort of have either experienced those sides of the journey of copy and branding or not is really a really important question.

Then the second one, I'm sorry, the third question is, What are the biggest challenges for a CMO these days. I mean, I'd like to understand how many bruises a candidate has and what they've learned from, so this question gets me a little bit of depth. But then also, are they ready for some of the challenges we may have in our company where the, the executive team looking for the CO to be the, maybe the, the, the knight in shiny armor who comes save the day, whether it's fellow performance or the fact that our website maybe is not great or the team is not performing.

Asking a new kind of what they think are the biggest challenges for a CEO these days gives me a good sense of whether that will fit or be ethical. And those are referred to you Brian and we have several more set up. Do you want to maybe walk through a couple that you'd like to ask? I love the marketing dashboard one just because it shows how strategic versus tactical that marketing leader is and also just shows the rhythm that they'll be putting their team through, right.

Brian Graf: And how analytical their approach will be in terms of generating the right results and, and understanding the connection between the right leading indicators and the right results. So I'll start there, but I think it's a really good one. Is this a question around their approach to marketing, to digital marketing.

And how they think about things like inbound marketing versus outbound marketing or even long term growth versus short term impact. Both of those things are, they're balanced questions. But it's, I think it's very easy for certain marketers who have grown up in certain go to market motions.

To be very Very used to a certain type. But, but that, that type of go to market motion may not fit with your company. And what you need. And there are marketing leaders who come from companies with tons of resources who can really focus on the long term and they don't need to be profitable right now.

But maybe your company needs that profitability upfront. And it's really good to align with them on that and really to understand Where they will impact on how they think about that. You could absolutely bring in a really qualified marketer, marketing leader who is just focused on, I'm not, I don't care about profitability within the next 6 to 12 months because I'm building a brand.

And I want organic scalability, which isn't technically the wrong answer, but it might be wrong for your company. So I really think that that short term versus long term view and prioritization is really important. And then, of course, inbound versus outbound, depending on your average contract value, depending on your Go to market motion.

Having a balance of both can be really important and knowing the relationship between the two, how the two different go to market strategies feed off of each other and make the whole greater than the sum of their parts is really important. That's my favorite, I think, but I do like, I also like just asking them to almost start.

Pretend like they're the marketing leader within the room. And really testing how much research they've done on the company and just asking them, you know What you know if you're the leader right now, what strategies and tactics would you put in place? What are we doing wrong. Where can we improve and force them?

to get a little bit more tactical with their answers and and be more specific because it's easy for people of that Caliber to to sound really good in theory right and in generalizations But when you start to really Nail them down on specifics. Then I think it becomes a much more real conversation. It also will show you how well they deal with conflict and how well they'll deal with disagreements And how well they could be more of a culture fit in your team.

So I'm a big fan of that question as well. I think there's Four questions that we've eight optional ones. There's a whole bunch of we're in another article as well We have two blocks. I think brian the one with the 10 Mm hmm. I have a question on how to hire a shareholder. 

Really good resources for you if and when you are hiring a marketing leader.

I think you know picking and choosing the right Combination of questions as you're taking them through. We've you know, we columbia Hires at the end of our engagements more often than not we will hire our replacements right in terms of marketing leaders And so we do this all the time and we will use we use these questions, right when we're hiring that marketing leader It's worked really well.

So Hopefully it works well for you. Do you want to touch on just in general, right, any considerations about compensation before we wrap this topic? 

Stijn Hendrikse: If you're an early stage company, it has to be okay getting compensated partly by what you're going to learn. There's going to be a lot of opportunity to Thanks to be the owner of the problem and have a lot of empowerment and freedom to take your way.

And they say, first of all, you may not get paid the same. I think we've got a much, much more mature conference. I think if a CMO is able to get away with a contract that's a little too rich for the blood of a company, they'll just be meeting that problem down the road, like a year, year and a half in.

It's one of the reasons I think that the work of a CMO is sometimes not to succeed with the purchase of these companies, because the compliment just becomes unbearable. Okay, then you don't see all of the boards and five. I know they're going to be realistic and that's just not going to end well. So just be, if you want to work in a smaller, earlier stage company, you got to be careful, you got to be okay with maybe making a little less than you would make in a CDC or a larger, more profitable later stage company.

And then, there's the whole, you know this is, Is salary and benefits versus Upside in the form of bonus and then maybe participation in the form of equity I think it's absolutely appropriate For early stage calls to to expect one of their executive team members to to be willing to be baited In equity for a good chunk of their upside I don't think that can replace having also good salaries for the work you do.

You need to be able to do the work full time and be focused on and not have to do other things on the side because you have to make your income. So I think that is an important component to have a really decent salary that is good for you to live on, to take care of your family, and then have a lot of other benefits.

Maybe upside in the form of real equity that requires you to be part of the team for a longer time. There's a vesting schedule that's really meaningful for you, that has real, real, real interesting upsides. And then a bonus, if the, if the sales team is on kind of sales commission, and there's a way for you to also in the marketing team get a little more of an immediate reward for performance.

I think it's fine, but you have to be careful. You have to be able to have KPIs that are real. Easy to measure, not easy to gain. So having a bonus in a marketing team is usually a little less interesting for me. The problem with bonuses, 10, 15, 20 percent bonuses, is that if you don't have real sales targets that you can target to, like in a sales team, then you end up having interfaces that are going to be arbitrary.

MQLs or other forms of early stage KPIs do not necessarily pay for themselves, but the company is not giving any money if you get an MQL. Not a customer yet. So it's hard to pay those bonuses for the company out of actual money made extra. And then it's easier to game. And then when you have, for example, OKRs, which I'm a huge fan of, the tendency will be to tidy OKRs between conversations with the partners, and then that defies the purpose of OKRs having to be really stretched.

So anyway, I'm a fan of a good salary with a very nice term of equity that is really aligned with the company's long term success. As a marketing leader, I'm a fan of bonuses. Then one last thing. It is very common these days. If you're an executive to negotiate some form of parachute clause, if you are giving up a very specific job where you have to use for employment, etcetera, requiring A startup where you go to, to say, if it doesn't work out and it's not for us, you know, but for something maybe we could have done a better job, you know, qualifying you as a candidate, et cetera.

Then having your equity vest or maybe some form of getting some form of payout. If the relationship ends early, getting a couple of months of salary, so that you're able to find something new. It's very appropriate for an executive. Maybe when you're more junior, higher, it's totally fine to get a couple weeks of service.

But if you're an executive, you give up a lot of, maybe, other opportunities if you commit to a stern. You want to be able to have your Executive be all in, yeah, to not again have to do things outside. So in that sense, yeah, a good version clause that has maybe two, three, four months of required pay, if it doesn't work out, then maybe the rest of the equity.

Isn't it appropriate for an executive to be all in? 

Brian Graf: You hit all the high notes. I think just more, the only thing else that I'll add is More in general, right, as you were talking, this goes back to experience as well, right, and, and even having, having that candidate who has taken a similar company in a similar industry through the exact same path that you're looking to go through, right, is a fantastic thing to look for, but in terms of compensation, that they may very well be outside the range that you're willing to pay for, right, right.

And if you, as a founder or an executive, decide to stretch yourself and your company to go get them, right, the, as you were saying, Stijn, the expectations may rise to the point where it's not even reasonable, regardless of how talented they are. And just think through that. Possibility of having somebody on your team that is that much of a drain on resources they may just may get to a point where regardless of how good they do the company just can't pay for them at that point.

And so you have to weigh that The risk of hiring somebody with so much experience and that is so burdensome financially on the company, right, with the rewards that they can actually deliver. I think that's just a really, it can be so tempting to find that perfect candidate and really want to splurge on them because of all the possibilities, but you just have to be realistic with what you can afford.

Okay, well I think that about wraps it up. We hope this was helpful. I think, you know, you know, In general, there's so many when you're hiring a CMO in particular, but as an executive, there's so many different variables to consider. So it is really important. To think about. The budget that you have for the candidate, the amount of experience that you need, but then also, right, how they're going to fit with your culture and how really what the needle is that you need them to move.

So do some of that homework yourselves before you start interviewing candidates. And I think you'll, you'll end up in a much happier place. Where you really can, you'll find the right person for the right seat that can really move the company forward. So thanks so much for your time, Stijn, and your insights as always.

Thank you. Thank you to Adriana Valerio for producing this episode and the Kalungi team for helping us make this whole thing work and of course, you, for choosing to spend your time with us. 

As a reminder, all the links we mentioned in this episode can be found in the show notes. And if you want to submit or vote on a question you'd like us to answer, you can do that at kalungi.com/podcast. 

Every time we record, we take one of the top three topics and jam on it. Thanks again.

Listen to more episodes

Head back to the B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks home page for more.