Micha Hershman

As a startup grows, the dynamics of demand generation and key stakeholders involved in the process will indeed change significantly. It's a great question and something to be prepared for. Some thoughts: Early stage (seed/startup) key stakeholders: * Founders/CEOs: Expect Founders to take a very active role in demand generation at this stage. Brace yourself - they will have many opinions and very strong opinions. * Sales leadership: Collaboration with sales is crucial to align messaging with customer needs and provide fundamental enablement. * Marketing: Of course, you should expect work closely with product marketing and content creators. Growth stage key stakeholders: * Marketing team expansion: As demand generation efforts scale, expect to interact with specialized roles in demand gen, content marketing, and digital marketing. * Sales team growth: With increased pipeline expectations, the sales team will likely expand to deliver higher volumes without sacrificing quantity. * Customer Success: At some point retention becomes important (50% or more of revenues for high NRR companies), and customer success teams will want your support for content development, advocacy programs, and often technical operations support. Maturity stage key stakeholders: * Executive Leadership: As the company matures, C-level executives will be more involved in setting high-level strategies and ensuring alignment between departments. * Finance: Budgeting becomes more sophisticated, and finance teams will play a key role in setting targets, allocating resources and measuring marketing efficiency. * HR: Hiring and retaining top talent, including marketing professionals, is crucial. Recruiting teams will want your partnership in building the "recruiting brand." Enterprise stage key stakeholders: * Corporate Communications: Ensuring a consistent brand image and messaging across the organization becomes increasingly important. Expect to work more closely with PR and analyst relations folks. * Legal and Compliance: Especially in industries with strict regulations, legal teams become more involved in ensuring marketing materials comply with standards. Expect to be looped into key legal challenges, to audit marketing materials and to make broad changes to your collateral to ensure compliance with the law. * Partnerships and Alliances: Building and maintaining strategic partnerships can become a significant part of demand generation efforts. If you haven't had a Partner Marketing or Sales team, expect to loop them in closely to your messaging, enablement and demand generation efforts. Global expansion key stakeholders: * International Marketing: If your company expands globally, marketing efforts need to be tailored to different regions, requiring the development of and coordination with regional marketing teams. Working through what efforts are centralized versus decentralized will be a major strategic decision for your team. * Localization: As you enter new markets, collaboration with localization teams or third-party services becomes crucial for adapting content to local languages and cultural nuances.

This is an important question. Do it right, and you can accelerate your career, secure more exciting projects, and earn the trust of your leadership. Here are a couple of things I would tell my younger self: Speak Their Language: Your head of marketing and head of finance have a point of view on how to evaluate return on investment. Do you know what it is? Every person and every company does it differently: ROI, LTV/CAC, payback period, etc. What framework you use – and how it's calculated – does matter. But the first and most important thing you need to do is show that you understand their perspective. Demonstrate ROI: The next step is to get good at showcasing the return on investment of your demand generation efforts. Use data to illustrate how your marketing initiatives directly contribute to the company's bottom line (yes, MQLs matter, but more important is pipeline $ and closed won revenue). This tangible connection between your activities and financial outcomes is likely to capture the attention and support of senior leaders around the organization. If you can't show direct revenue attribution to revenue, can you create some proxy calculations based on established conversion rates? Build productive relationships (Eh... mostly with Sales): Highlighting the alignment between marketing and sales efforts is essential. Ensure you are targeting the same ICP, persona, geo, segment, and vertical. Emphasize how your demand generation activities contribute to pipeline and closed won. A united front between marketing and sales, especially in a B2B context, is likely to be a top priority for the C-Suite, making this alignment a powerful point of influence. Bonus points: go and EARN political capital by being selflessly helpful before you stomp in and SPEND political capital by demanding something. There's no end of good answers to this question, but personally I'd tell my younger self to learn what matters most to the business and then figure out how to provide it.

This is another hard one. Securing incremental resources for your marketing efforts involves making a compelling case to your executive leadership team. And sometimes these asks are absolutely critical to achieving the big, hairy ambitious goals you are being asked to achieve. Consider this step-by-step approach to making your case: Understand your needs: Start by thinking through exactly what resources you need and why. Whether it's a larger budget, additional staff, or access to new tools, developing a detailed and realistic (read: don't pad) understanding of how these resources will help you effectively make your case. Align with business objectives: Be sure your argument demonstrates how the incremental requests align with the broader business objectives and strategic goals of the company. I'd almost always recommend you start by emphasizing positive impacts to revenue growth - it's a language that everyone speaks. Build a business case: This is a critical skill to learn, early in your career! Write out a concise business case that outlines the expected return on investment (however your company prefers to measure that) for the proposed resources. Use historical data to support your projections wherever possible (and industry benchmarks where you cannot) and demonstrate the potential impact on the KPIs that you know matter most to your exec team. Highlight past successes: If you've got them, include similar, previous, successful initiatives that resulted in positive business outcomes. This helps build credibility and confidence in your team's ability to effectively utilize additional resources. Address pain points: Identify the pain points your team is facing that could be alleviated with additional resources. Clearly articulate how resolving these issues will lead to better business outcomes. Benchmark against competitors: If it's relevant, provide clear examples of what your competitors are doing. Prioritize: Prioritize your resource requests based on their impact on critical company objectives. Do your best to connect your request to established company priorities and justify how your ask contributes to achieving these goals. Demonstrate scalability: If you can, illustrate how the proposed resources will enable efficient scalability. For growth-stage companies, this is an especially powerful argument. Show a path to success: Outline a roadmap for how the additional resources will be utilized and the expected milestones along the way. This helps the executive (and finance!) team understand the timeline involved in achieving success. Share in advance and request a meeting: Sharing your materials - or at least an exec summary - in advance can help executive stakeholders come prepared. Make your case in a short, dedicated follow-up meeting. Ensure that key decision-makers are present, and allocate sufficient time to thoroughly discuss your proposal. Be open to questions, feedback, and compromise: Super important! Anticipate questions and be prepared to address any concerns the executive team may have. Be open to feedback and willing to adjust your proposal based on the discussion. My goal and rule of thumb is always to aim to get 80% of what I have asked for :) Follow up: After the meeting, follow up, and summarize the key points discussed, including the requested resources, their justification, and the expected outcomes. Recap any decisions that were made in the meeting and answer any outstanding questions. Where possible, repeat what next steps you agreed to. Remember, effective communication, data-driven insights, and a strategic approach are key elements in securing additional resources for your marketing efforts. Tailor your message to resonate with the priorities of the executive leadership team and emphasize how the investment will contribute to the overall success of the organization. You got this! P.S. Extra credit - finding a champion on the exec team (or someone close to them) can make or break your efforts. It's worth taking the time to figure how who can help be your advocate!

Tough one – unfortunately common and much easier said than done. Of course, managing competing priorities and ensuring focus in demand generation require effective communication and alignment with the executive team. Here are some proven strategies to work collaboratively with the CEO and executive team to prioritize and stay focused: Regular communication: Meet weekly with your Marketing leadership to discuss priorities and understand theirs. If there's a conflict, use this time to discuss and align. If oversubscribed, ask what other work this should replace. Listen carefully then ask better questions: Executives love to ideate, and most don't think their jobs involve providing a thoughtful filter. Get better at gently interrogating their thinking: Is this a nice-to-do or a must-do? Is this a now or a later project? What other work would you trade-off to make this happen? Listen carefully - executives often don't remember that their words carry weight and are just happy to be heard and considered. Speak their language: Use the metrics your leadership cares most about – the ones in your department OKRs or KPIs. Speak their language and address what matters most to them (hint: it's often pipeline and revenue). Leverage the work from your PMM friends to show how your efforts are 100% aligned with ICP, persona, geo, and vertical. If they're not aligned, you have a problem :) Plan 80% of your work: Marketing should plan the bulk of its work, providing momentum, alignment, and clarity to the team. Be clear with your team that you expect 20% of the work in any quarter to be fluid. This sets expectations and minimizes frustration when new priorities and challenges arise. Prioritize Ruthlessly: There are more good ideas than resources. Prioritization is an important skill. Work with your leadership team to develop a shared framework – the Eisenhower Matrix (effort & impact) is often a low-effort, common way to prioritize. Want to go further? Add a column for "confidence" to your matrix. Establish a running "marketing backlog" of great ideas. Meet with your leaders monthly to "groom" the backlog, make priority decisions together, and allocate resources. By improving communication skills, planning work thoughtfully, and making it clear that you're reserving capacity for late-breaking requests, you can protect your team and ensure the executive team feels heard.

Three common mistakes come to mind when Demand Generation managers are trying to influence the C-Suite: Focusing too much on the top of the funnel: Awareness, traffic, and net new leads are important. However, if they don't convert to pipeline and revenue, your efforts won't carry much weight, and you'll develop a reputation for focusing on "vanity metrics." Avoid this at all costs; it will impose a major tax on your career. Failing to understand the whole: We have to stay focused on our task—generating pipeline for the business. But if we don't understand the part we play in the entirety of the Go-To-Market (GTM) motion we will be forever constrained to low-level IC status. Failing the funnel math: You may think adding $1M to your paid budget is a good idea. Still, if you don't understand how those 4500 leads convert to 140 MQLs, 120 SALs, 40 meetings, 20 opportunities, and ultimately $200K in revenue, you are going to upset your executive team, damage the business, and sink your career. Understand your conversion funnel and get familiar with the downstream impact on revenue. Everyone in the C-Suite cares about efficiency, unit economics, and conversion. Work to develop that same level of awareness in yourself and watch your career skyrocket.

Another great question, one of the most sensitive and difficult! Handling a situation where two senior executive stakeholders disagree can be challenging, but it's critical that you develop the skills to navigate these moments diplomatically to ensure alignment and build your own reputation as a bridge-builder. Some thoughts: 1. Listen actively: * Seek to understand the perspectives of both stakeholders. Listen to their concerns, goals, and expectations carefully. Ensuring that they feel heard and respected is your first and foremost goal. 2. Search out common ground: * Identify areas of agreement or shared goals. This can be a foundation for building a unified strategy and serve the broader objectives of the company. 3. Take a data-informed approach: * Gather and look at supporting data wherever you can. Metrics can bridge gaps between differing opinions by providing an objective basis for decision-making. 4. Facilitate a discussion: * Arrange a discussion where both executives can express their views openly. Facilitate the conversation to the best of your abilities, ensuring that it remains constructive and focused on finding common ground. 5. Clarify objectives: * Move quickly to establish a set of shared objectives, finding compromise where necessary, and ensuring alignment with the broader business goals. Make sure both stakeholders understand the potential impact on the company's success and see it the same way. 6. Highlight risks and mitigations: * Acknowledge and address concerns raised by each party. Help them to do the same. Discuss potential risks associated with the proposed strategy and work together to develop mitigation plans to alleviate their concerns. 7. Propose compromises: * Where possible, suggest compromises that incorporate elements from both perspectives. This will go a long way to demonstrating flexibility and a willingness to find solutions that benefit the organization as a whole. 8. Align with higher-level goals: * Remind both stakeholders of the higher-level goals of the company and how the proposed marketing strategy contributes to achieving those goals. Reinforce the importance of unity in decision-making and the downsides of divided leadership. 9. Document agreements and decisions: * It's critical to ensure that any agreements or decisions resulting from discussions are documented and shared with both stakeholders. This will help maintain clarity and drive accountability moving forward. 10. Iterate and adapt: * Be open to iterating on the proposed strategy based on feedback and changing circumstances. Flexibility can be key in navigating complex situations. Want more? I recommend this excellent, short article from HBR on handling emotionally charged negotiations: https://hbr.org/2023/12/how-to-handle-an-emotionally-charged-negotiation?tpcc=orgsocial_edit&utm_campaign=hbr&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin

Don't believe the "experts". NO ONE knows the answer to this question with confidence). All that said, here are my hot takes: AI will have an impact on your career as a Demand Generation professional in the medium term. How? -Automation of your routine tasks: AMEN. This is a great thing and will allow us all to spend more time focused on more interesting creative and strategic problem solving. -Enhanced Data Analysis: Again, this is rad. Imagine you have your own, personal data scientist to help you parse the reams of data we collect as marketers, and develop real and impactful business insights. -Personalization at Scale: More great news here. AI will help us personalize sales and marketing interactions beyond the hard limits of 1:1 "account based marketing". That means more net new leads, more qualified leads, more opportunities, higher average deal sizes, more closed won and happier customers. -Improved Lead Generation and Nurturing" See above for personalization; it will have a meaningful impact on our ability to ship the right ad to the right prospect at the right time. It will help us customize our nurture streams and produce the right content. This is great news for all of us. -Content Creation and Optimization: This is probably where you can see the biggest impact RIGHT NOW. If you are not using free, off the shelf tools for content ideation, outline creation, narrative flow, H1 & H2 creation and editing for readability....you are missing out. Will this replace the Content Marketing Manager or Copyeditor role anytime soon? I don't think so. It's just going to make them more productive. -Real-time Customer Insights: I don't think we're here yet, but I think it's coming and it's a GREAT THING. In near-future states, AI will provide real-time insights into customer behavior and engagement, allowing for more us to be responsive and pivot quickly to marketing strategies. The big question for us human working professionals is, "can we increase our agility and be prepared to quickly adjust campaigns based on these insights?" -Skillset Evolution: Ok so this one is INTERESTING. You want to take a risk and get ahead of building an inevitably hot, in demand skill? Invest in your query development skills (I recently heard of a startup shutting down for a month to train their entire staff on this). Get proficient in using AI tools and platforms, understanding AI-driven analytics, and how businesses can integrate AI into your overall strategy. All that said, I don't think AI will replace your role in the next 5-10 years, provided you embrace and leverage the tools that are rapidly becoming made available to you. In the long term - ten plus years - AI will almost certainly transform the the role. Maybe even eliminate it as it stands today. But there's no need to panic. It may be hard to remember, but there were no "Demand Generation Managers" 20 years ago. And Marketers like you and me still have jobs.

Great question. Difficult to answer, without knowing more about you as a human (feel free to reach out to me on LI and we can chat more specifically). That said, here is my general thinking on the subject: First, leverage your experience. You sales background is a huge asset. Use your experiences to help the Marketing team get a better understanding of customer pain points, buyer personas, and the nuances of the sales funnel. Your team will find your knowledge to be invaluable in crafting effective demand generation strategies that resonate with potential customers. That said, you will have a lot to learn about how the function of "demand generation" works. * Digital Marketing: Learn about SEO, SEM, social media marketing, and content marketing. This is often the largest discretionary spend in your entire company. Experts here command executive attention, have a huge impact on spending decisions and can make or break your top of funnel volume. * Marketing Automation Tools: Get hands-on experience with tools like HubSpot, Marketo, or Pardot. Learn how scoring works. Get a sense of how email campaigns are developed, what your marketable database looks like, and how you can help the team improve their segmentation efforts. * Data Analysis: Marketing data is adjacent to Sales data, but it's a whole new pile of stuff (100's of metrics across the different parts of the org) to learn. Get a sense of what matters most and what are nice to do metrics. Develop skills in analyzing data to understand campaign performance and ROI. * Content Creation: Work with the content team to understand the machinery. How does content marketing generate leads? What content is mapped to what stage? How is that content scored? You can be a big help here; help the team brainstorm new and relevant topics at the awareness, consideration and decision stages. Help the PMM team develop one pagers for sellers that actually matter. I'd suggest that you work to deepen your understanding of the customer journey from awareness to decision. Spend some time with the PMM team, growth team, or your lifecycle marketing person. Get a sense of how your organization creates create touch points that guide potential customers through the funnel will be essential in a demand generation role. What are the "aha" moments in your product that signal a potential long-term paying customer? How many touches in your SDR sequences or in your marketing nurture emails. One interesting, big concept to consider: How can you start to shift your focus from individual sales (1:1) to broader, more programmatic marketing strategies (1:Many). Consider how you can leverage what you know, and how you can apply it at scale, to attract, engage, and convert leads to closed won. Making this mental shift will be critical to your success in Marketing and Demand Generation. This is a big one, a mandatory IMO. Please please please please please communicate your career aspirations with your current manager or HR department. You need to find the right balance between being direct but non-threatening. You want them to know what you want and when, but not make them feel like you have checked out or are not worth continuing to advocate for and invest in. Managing this carefully will be key to making a smooth transition between roles. The marketing landscape is constantly evolving. Stay curious, keep learning, and be adaptable to new tools and trends in demand generation. Attend events, participate in webinars, and read read read read read everything you can get your hands on. Continuous improvement will be key to your long-term success, whatever path you choose to pursue. Of course, I'd be remiss if I did not suggest you work to connect with professionals who are already in demand generation roles. You can't go wrong seeking mentorship from experienced colleagues and industry experts. Their guidance can provide valuable insights and help you navigate the transition smoothly. Some thoughts if you are still in your Sales role: Demonstrate your capability and interest in demand generation. Spend some time with your DG partners. Offer to assist with marketing campaigns, contribute to content creation, and help with lead nurturing efforts. Showcase your company knowledge, your proactive approach and you're going to win both kudos and a better chance at landing a Marketing role. Finally, I'd recommend working to build your "T-shaped career." A generalists breadth and broad understanding of marketing concepts will help you accelerate and become successful and valuable in smaller companies. As you grow, you'll develop the long leg of that "T" - your specialization. This will become more and more important as you grow in seniority and look to take on more senior roles. Companies usually hire because they have a problem they want to address, and they are looking for folks who have specialties in addressing them. This WILL become a huge part of your later career value proposition, so start thinking about it now.

To be successful as a Demand Generation Manager, both soft and hard skills are essential. More hard skills early in your career, and a clear shift to soft skills later. Here's my hot take: Hard Skills Data Analysis: Proficiency in interpreting data and analytics to make informed decisions. Ability to use tools like Google Analytics, Tableau, or Excel to track and analyze campaign performance. Getting comfortable with fast, sloppy startup math (vs the ideal but rarified state of statistical significance and variables with little swing). Marketing Automation: Expertise in using marketing automation platforms such as HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot, or Eloqua. Understanding how to set up and manage automated workflows, email campaigns, lead scoring and lead delivery systems will all pay off for you over time. CRM Management: Familiarity with CRM systems like Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics. Getting hands on with your reporting, and the data-bridge between sales and marketing, is critidal. You gotta be able to get in and generate your own reports. Knowledge of and experience with integrating your CRM and your MAP is a real bonus. Content Creation and Management: Skills in developing compelling content that attracts and engages potential leads. Experience with content management systems (CMS) like WordPress isa plus. But the most important elements are 1) research capabilities and 2) writing skills. If you can identify customer pain and write in plain, easy to read english EVERY job will be easier for you. SEO and SEM: Understanding of search engine optimization techniques and search engine marketing strategies. As you grow in your career, you will benefit from the ability to conduct keyword research, optimize content, and manage paid search campaigns. You'll need to learn platform specific idiosyncrasies, and be able to keep up with the ceaseless flow of UI updates, algorithm changes, pricing models and creative formats. Project Management: Competence in managing projects, timelines, and budgets effectively. Massively helpful skill that can quickly transform you into the most valuable person in your department and your leader's go-to person. Get familiar with project management tools like Asana, Trello, or Monday.com. Read a book, attend a class or better yet...get certified (your company may even pay for it). Outbound and ABM (Account-Based Marketing): Knowledge of Outbound and ABM strategies will become more important as your organization inevitably moves "up market". The ability to work with Sales to develop a target account list, assemble Outreach sequences, execute personalized marketing campaigns and develop custom reporting for your efforts (it's always a shitshow at first) are tremendously valued by Marketing leaders at late stage growth startups. Soft Skills Analytical Thinking: Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to make data-driven decisions. At every level of the Marketing organization, the capacity to interpret complex data sets and derive actionable insights is going to be critical. So is the ability to translate the data into "insights" that can shape your organizations go-to-market strategy. Creativity: Innovative thinking to develop unique and compelling marketing campaigns. The ability to generate new ideas and approaches to attract and engage potential leads will never go away. Finding alternative solutions to business problems is what startups are all about. Build your creative problem solving skill set and watch your career blossom. Communication: Excellent verbal and written communication skills to convey ideas clearly and persuasively. This one is under-rated. The ability to communicate effectively with team members, stakeholders, and customers is mission critical and will have a multiplying effect on your career. Every role you will ever have on a startup marketing team will be better if you invest in your communication skills. Not good at it? Now is the time to lean in and get good. Collaboration: Strong teamwork skills and the ability to work cross-functionally with sales, product, and other marketing teams. The willingness to share knowledge and collaborate on projects is going to matter more and more as you become more and more senior. In fact, your promotion to Director is dependent on it. If you can't partner with other marketing teams, with the SDR/BDRs or with Sales you are going nowhere my friend. Build a reputation as an amazing collaborator - it will serve you well for the rest of your career. Adaptability: Flexibility to adapt to changing market conditions, technologies, and business priorities. Startup Marketers must be open-minded and willing to learn new skills and adopt new strategies. It's literally part of the job description. If you tell your manager "this is not what you hired me for" you are the problem and you have likely stunted your career. Get flexible, stay flexible or get out of the startup ecosystem. Leadership: Ability to inspire and lead a team towards achieving common goals. Skills in mentoring and developing team members is crucial for leaders. So is the much maligned cousin to leadership, "management." Both are required to run a successful marketing team. Talk to the leaders you admire, ask them their secrets, read interviews and form your own point of view on what great leadership looks like...then go and be that person. Time Management: Effective time management and organizational skills to juggle multiple tasks and meet deadlines. Your going to run into the need to prioritize tasks based on their impact and urgency, at every level of the organization. Any success I have, from running a tactical meeting to delivering a major company strategy is constrained and multiplied by my ability to manage time well. Whew. That was a lot! But it's I think it's all true. By developing a blend of these hard and soft skills, Demand Generation Managers can navigate the complexities of modern marketing, drive effective campaigns, and lead their teams to success. Continuous learning and adaptation are key to staying ahead in this dynamic field. And remember, invest in your hard skills first...but don't neglect the soft skills. They are going to get you across that line from IC to Manager and eventually CMO.

Great question! Thanks for asking. I joined JumpCloud for five simple reasons (a framework I'll continue to use as I evaluate future roles): First, it's a great business with strong SAAS performance compared to industry benchmarks (especially in this day and age). Second, it's the right scale and complexity for me. Big and interesting enough to be a challenge for years to come...but familiar enough that I knew I could hit the ground running and begin to contribute right away. Third, and to the previous point, I joined JumpCloud because I thought I could help. They have problems to solve, I have the relevant skills and experiences. Fourth, it's a great product. You can validate that on the G2 grid - exceptional product satisfaction. As a Marketer, there is nothing worse than trying to sell a product that has poor market fit and does not provide customers with real value. Finally, the people are great. The C-suite is great. The Marketing team is great. The sales team is great. No politics, no bad apples, all good vibes and open minds.