SG Podcast - Tracey- Episode 1 part 1
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[00:00:00] Richard: In the article, Three Ways to Nail Your Board Presentation by Harvard Business Review, they say the boardroom is a distinct forum that requires a different type of presentation and preparation. It demands elevated exchanges that leverage both the knowledge of senior leaders and the objectivity of seasoned directors.
[00:00:19] Today, our guest, a seasoned CPO and CMO, provides practical tips for navigating your first board meeting. Welcome to Some Goodness. Tracey, welcome.
[00:00:31] Tracey: Thank you. Thanks for having me, Richard. Happy to be here.
[00:00:34] Richard: Well, we've talked about a number of topics that as you've mentored other leaders that come up and one that comes up often is just this idea of navigating your first board meeting.
[00:00:46] I know that can be little bit anxiety inducing having a board to report to. And so, do you still think that's a great topic for us to dive into today? Absolutely.
[00:00:54] Tracey: Yeah, I think it is. I think it's coming up more and more.
[00:00:57] Richard: Well, let's dive right in. So I'd like to just ask you a few questions.
[00:01:01] Right out of the gate. It may be obvious, but I'd love your perspectives on why is navigating your 1st board meeting so important.
[00:01:10] Tracey: I think just like anything, first impressions are really important. And when you're going into your first board meeting, you're setting that first impression with the board and you have the starting point of what you will be reporting on.
[00:01:24] And you're setting the road map going forward. So I think it's really important to go in with confidence and a plan.
[00:01:31] Richard: And I know you've reported to a number of boards over your career. When you think about first impressions, anything come to mind that is like, Oh, I wish I would have done this better or different.
[00:01:41] I think sometimes, especially with marketing roles, you go in and you've got so much detail and you're proud usually of the marketing that you've you've. Kind of laid out and the numbers that you've posted, but I think the thing to keep in mind is the board really is interested in the business metrics and the business value and a mistake that is oftentimes made by marketing folks is that we go in and we talk about all of our marketing numbers, kind of almost vanity marketing metrics instead of making sure that we tie those to the overall business goals.
[00:02:17] Tracey: It's common because you're proud, you know, you're proud of what you've done, but you need to put yourself in their shoes and speak in their language.
[00:02:26] Richard: I love that. And as we've discussed before in B2B sales you know, you have to align your approach to your audience. Right? And so not only just thinking, what is the board care about?
[00:02:36] But I would suspect that if you can get some insight into the personalities. Communication styles of each of the board members that can help you further dial in your approach.
[00:02:45] Tracey: Yeah, definitely does. Hopefully you've had a chance to meet the board members before the first board meeting, but sometimes that's not possible.
[00:02:53] So I always do a bunch of research. You can find most things, on LinkedIn or, just just Googling and finding a bunch of background information. I always like to make sure that I see past board presentations as well. Yeah. Just to get a sense of what has been conveyed previously and maybe what's worked and what hasn't worked.
[00:03:12] But one thing I think to keep in mind as you're sort of digging in and trying to understand the audience is it was a stat I saw recently and it was something like, um, I'll get it wrong, but in the general vicinity of less than 10 percent of board members have operational experience in marketing.
[00:03:31] But most of them think that they're marketing experts. So that's not unlike most people, right? Most of us think we're marketing experts because we have an opinion and marketing pieces of it are subjective. So I think it's really important to know the audience know the perspective that they're coming from.
[00:03:49] And be able to speak speak to those perspectives and I have kind of 1 funny story that I remember 1 of the teams that I was on a board member was from Salesforce and he had a very just a great career. Very impressive career at Salesforce. It wasn't a marketing. But he saw the Salesforce marketing engine work, which is, you know, super, super impressive.
[00:04:14] Everybody would want to look at wouldn't want to be, you know, it's like Salesforce marketing. So he would bring this up at every board meeting with me. Well at Salesforce, we did, X, Y, and Z. And the assumption was always that we were sort of doing it wrong because we weren't following the sales Salesforce model.
[00:04:34] And it took me a while to, to figure out that what I really needed to do was fully understand the Salesforce model and then relate what we were doing to that. And also point out why we weren't doing some of the same things. We had a different audience, different prospect, different ideal customer profile.
[00:04:54] So while some of the processes and some of the goodness we could use, it wasn't We could take their exact machine and put it in our company and come up with the same results. So it was relating what we were doing to something common ground, something that he was very familiar with, and that helped a lot.
[00:05:14] Richard: Oh, that's that's great practical advice right there. Just the insight of really understanding the experience and maybe the biases. The board members so that you can kind of connect the dots for them and draw some distinctives between Hey this is common and or this would be relevant for our industry.
[00:05:32] But not this right? And draw out those. So you don't get unnecessarily critiques.
[00:05:37] Tracey: Exactly.
[00:05:38] Richard: I'm really curious. I want to just pause on that stat of less than 10 percent of board members have, marketing operational experience. So, um, kind of targeting our CMO or perspective CMO audience out there.
[00:05:54] Any other in particular advice for CMOs on just really, you know, because earlier you said, hey, . Don't get into the vanity marketing numbers too deep, but then now, they don't know marketing. So how do you strike that balance of educating them on marketing strategy and tactics and still meet the needs of what the board's looking for?
[00:06:13] Tracey: It's that's a really good question. Because I think that if you step back and think about. What is the board trying to accomplish and putting yourself in their shoes? They might not need to understand the marketing metrics. What they need to understand is how, what we're doing is relating to the overall business goals.
[00:06:34] So I would always go in and try to be very concise high level about what we've accomplished and how that relates to business goals and what we're planning on doing next. But unless they dig in and ask the questions on the marketing metrics, I wouldn't use the board time too much to try to educate them unless it really is necessary for the tying it to the business goals.
[00:06:59] Richard: Got it. Love that. So how is marketing a strategic enabler of the overall business goals and metrics? And don't just go too deep right away. I like that. Exactly. Well, so that kind of gets into my next question is okay. We got a wealth of information. We want to share. We need to get across our strategies, our tactics, our message, our plan.
[00:07:23] Right? All of that good stuff. Do you have any practical tips on just how to structure a presentation for maybe a CMO perspective?
[00:07:31] Tracey: Yeah, that's a great question. Well, I think it's maybe a little bit different based on the type of company that you're in. You know, I've mainly been in software companies and there's not been 1 situation where I wasn't brought in to affect a big change.
[00:07:47] So, I have always gone in with sort of a change agenda, and I think it's really important to start with clearly articulating your starting point. So, I try to do, I call it the from 2 slide. So here's where we are today. This is what we're moving from in multiple areas. Here's how we're building pipeline.
[00:08:07] Here's the status of the team, all of the different pieces of marketing and set the starting point. So everybody understands, you know, clearly this is the starting point. And then the two part is. What we're moving to, what's our North star in each of these areas, what are we trying to get to? And so if you structure the presentation that way, and each time kind of remind them of, here's where we started, here's our goal, and here's where we are along the path.
[00:08:36] And then also adding in since last time, since we met last time, here's what we've accomplished. And here's some trouble, you know, that we've had, maybe do a highlights and lowlights. Slide and then have a plan for how you're addressing each right for the highlights. We're going to double down in this area for the low lights.
[00:08:56] We're going to try something different and this is what it is. But again, high level succinct unless they want the detail.
[00:09:06] Richard: I like that a lot. And those who have worked with us over the years, probably recognize that that from 2 is a favorite of mine as well. Right? I like to call it a chain vision.
[00:09:17] And it's just a great, simple framework. Right? And I wanted to ask you, with that, in terms of that journey, right? And because I like what you said about kind of coming back to that on the follow on board meetings, because this, it is 1, 1 and done meeting, right? You're going to have multiple meetings and so you can plot your progress along the way any just kind of specific advice in terms of those highlights and low lights along the way.
[00:09:49] What level of detail does the board really want to get into or not want to get into?
[00:09:56] Tracey: Again, it's it's tying the reporting that you're doing the results to the overall company results. So I would focus on the results and not necessarily the activities that you use to get to the results. So I might if we're talking about campaigns, for example, I wouldn't go into we've tried 3 specific campaigns and here's the detail of those campaigns and, the results.
[00:10:18] The nitty gritty of each one of them, I would just say we've tried three specific campaigns, two of them really successful. Here are the results. The third one, not so great. Here's what we're doing to adjust high level and then tying that to the results to pipeline build for sales. And then closed revenue.
[00:10:38] So I do think it's really important for marketing to report the whole on the whole funnel. People don't like saying funnel anymore. I still use it because I think it's very descriptive. And I think it's important to show that you're owning and affecting the entire customer journey. So tied to business goals.
[00:10:57] Richard: I can appreciate, you don't want to get right away into the details, but, as a new leader, I want to be. Confident that I have all the answers and if it's not on the slide, I might miss some numbers or not remember. So any tips for just being prepared in case they ask some of those hard detailed questions.
[00:11:17] Tracey: Yeah, some people do a really good job of remembering all that, you know, off the top of their head.
[00:11:21] I feel like my brain has this this capacity where is I'm adding a bunch more information in some of it's leaving. So I don't trust myself to quote all the exact numbers. High level. Yes. So I always have a cheat sheet. And it's my detailed marketing reports. I keep it beside me. Just in case you've got that board member who's really interested and really wants to dig into the numbers call it a back pocket slide or a cheat sheet.
[00:11:47] I have one just in case.
[00:11:50] Richard: That's great. I love that. That's awesome. I want to ask just 1 more question on the presentation. Then we have 1 closing question, but. We like to have fun on this podcast and tell stories. And so I'm just curious have you seen any disaster presentations from other C levels or peers when you go to the board and you're like, Oh, I'm glad I wasn't her or him.
[00:12:12] Any fun stories you care to share?
[00:12:14] Tracey: Oh it's actually painful to even, I don't know if it's fun. It's painful to even remember it. There is one board meeting that I was in and we had we had come up with a Call it an elevator pitch, or you would call it a two minute story about the company. And one of the board members put the sales leader on the spot and just said, what is it?
[00:12:38] Give it to me. And he's stammered all over the place and it was just, it was not a good meeting and it was one of those, if he would have just relaxed and talk to the board member as if he was a prospect, it would have gone really well, but I think he just got like,
[00:12:54] Richard: Oh boy. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. We don't want to be caught in that situation.
[00:13:00] And so I think that points out just kind of another insight and that is collaborate with your peers. And I know you've led product organizations and wrote a R and D and all of that good stuff. And you've led marketing organizations. Yeah. I always think about kind of the three legged stool of being product, marketing, and sales to really drive the growth of the business.
[00:13:22] So, uh, in either of those roles, CPO or CMO, how much do you collaborate with the CSO in preparing for a board meeting?
[00:13:31] Tracey: 100%. So, uh, lots of collaboration to the point of developing draft presentations. Sharing the draft presentations with each other. Well, hopefully beforehand coming up with the outline.
[00:13:44] That would be typically what we would do practicing together and then co presenting in practice sessions to the CEO and to the rest of the executive team. Because you just do not want to have any misalignment. And, you know, a good practice session. We'll, we'll bring that out.
[00:14:04] Richard: That's great. And when we think about alignment, I know we've got another topic that we want to cover with you on sales and marketing specifically.
[00:14:12] So, for those of you that are interested in how do you align sales and marketing, stay tuned for for another episode, but let's, let's wrap up this 1. Any other tips when you just kind of think about back to your career and the number of different boards you've engaged with any particular practical tips or learnings in terms of what it took for you to get it right, or hone your approach.
[00:14:37] Tracey: I think it was really influenced a lot by the first board meeting I was ever in, and it wasn't a planned board meeting or it was the board meeting was planned. My involvement in it wasn't planned.
[00:14:49] I was with a small startup company. We were in the middle of, um, an acquisition. We were being acquired.
[00:14:56] It hadn't been finalized yet. And the CEO was in the board meeting. I wasn't in the board meeting and he was presenting something and got Literally pulled out of the board meeting because there was an emergency with this acquisition. It was falling apart. So the, the board said, great, go, why don't you send, you know, send someone else in to, to review the numbers.
[00:15:19] And we'll talk to you when you come back. I don't know if he really picked me to do it, or I happened to be the closest person on the way to his office, but he kind of tapped me and said, Hey, Tracey, go. Go do this, go talk to the board. Um, just give them an update on where we are. And yeah, luckily I didn't have time to get nervous.
[00:15:40] Cause it was just like on the spot. So I, I walked in and I didn't know any of them. So we did quick intros and then after that, it just went horribly because I just started giving them information that I thought they needed to know. And it, Apparently it was probably too detailed, not the right information and a very, um, smart, , experienced, kind board members stopped the whole thing.
[00:16:06] And he said, hey, how about this? Let me explain to you why we're here. Um, you know, we're here to help the company. Uh, we. Provide advice. We don't run the company, but we're sort of fiduciaries of the company. , so given that, , let us ask you some questions and. Then it went so much better because they asked me questions.
[00:16:31] I wasn't presenting because I wasn't really prepared to present. And in that meeting, I learned a lot about the level of detail that they wanted based on the questions. Cause there were a couple of times that I got stopped. They would say, Tracey, what about, you know, X, Y, and Z? And I'm saying, Oh, great. I've got a lot of information on X, Y, and Z.
[00:16:52] And then I would start. Giving the information and literally the chairman would kind of hold up his hand and say, great. Perfect. That's enough. We got it.
[00:17:02] Richard: Yeah, let's move on to the next topic.
[00:17:05] Tracey: And luckily now there's so many resources that I don't think I maybe they were back then, but I don't think so.
[00:17:13] There's associations. Like, there's this 1, um. Well, several board associations that you're going to join and they give you training on becoming a board member and so we have access to all of these things. So we can learn about what it takes to be a board member. I went through 1 of the training courses and I think that helps a lot.
[00:17:35] Because you're able then to put yourself in that board member's shoes and help them, help them understand and change your approach to the presentation based on your understanding of the board.
[00:17:47] Richard: that's amazing. I was going to ask, are there any resources that one can leverage versus just waiting to be thrown, thrown into the fire,, like you were.
[00:17:56] Tracey: Yeah, there's that association, but I also have this Great book that I would recommend there. Well, I'm sure there's several Harvard, business review did boards that lead a whole book on and the subtitle is when to change when to partner and when to stay out of the way. And it's advice for board members and,
[00:18:16] kind of details best practices, and I think any executive who's going to present to a board should get knowledgeable about that. So you can make sure that you tailor your presentation.
[00:18:26] Richard: Great idea. Another resource and reminder that we need to know our audience. What are they looking for? Why are they there?
[00:18:33] That's awesome. Well, thank you. Tracey. We're about out of time as we wrap up. You know, we're all about sharing goodness. And so I'd just like to give you one final opportunity, , to share anything off topic, not necessarily about board meetings that, comes to mind.
[00:18:48] Tracey: Um, I don't know if you know this, but I majored in college in math, computer science and philosophy, and I just love still love philosophy.
[00:18:57] And I have come across this,, Author that I absolutely love. It's Ryan Holliday and he's famous for the book. _The obstacle is the Way,_ and I think it's an incredible book. It's all about, um, I think the subtitle is "the art of turning trials into triumph" and it's, and it's kind of marketing, right?
[00:19:17] Positioning, you take something that could be negative. You flip it into a positive. And I really enjoyed the book, would recommend it.
[00:19:24] Richard: I'm, I'm intrigued already. I love it. Well, thanks again for your generous time with us. And we look forward to getting together again if you're game.
[00:19:34] Announcer: Yeah, of course. I'd love to.
[00:19:35] Thank you.
[00:19:36] Richard: Thank you.
[00:19:39] Announcer: Some Goodness is a creation of Revenue Innovations. Visit us at revenueinnovations. com and subscribe to our newsletter.
