SG EP 47
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[00:00:00] Richard Ellis: 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.
[00:00:18] Richard Ellis: Welcome to some goodness where we engage seasoned business leaders and experts to share practical guidance and tips to help new and future C-level leaders maximize their impact. My guest today is Tracy Mustachio, multi-time CXO. Sometimes operating as a chief marketing officer, sometimes as a chief product officer.
[00:00:39] Richard Ellis: Uh, just love her background and her wealth of experience. Tracy, welcome.
[00:00:43] Tracey Mustacchio: Thank you. Thanks for having me, Richard. Happy to be here.
[00:00:46] Richard Ellis: Well, um, we've talked about a number of topics that, uh, as you've mentored other leaders that, that come up. And one that comes up often is just this idea of navigating your first board meeting.
[00:00:58] Richard Ellis: I know that can be a little [00:01:00] bit, uh, anxiety inducing, uh, having a board to report to. And so, uh, you still think that's a great topic for us to dive into today.
[00:01:07] Tracey Mustacchio: Yeah, I think it is. I think it's coming up more and more
[00:01:10] Richard Ellis: first, just right outta the gate. Why it, it may be obvious, but I'd love your perspectives on why is navigating your first board meeting, uh, so important.
[00:01:19] Tracey Mustacchio: Well, I think just like anything, uh, first impressions are, 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, and you're kind of setting the, the roadmap going forward.
[00:01:37] Tracey Mustacchio: So I think it's really important to go in with confidence and a plan,
[00:01:40] Richard Ellis: 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've done this better or different?
[00:01:50] Tracey Mustacchio: I think sometimes, especially with marketing, marketing roles, you go in and you've got so much detail and you're proud usually of, of the marketing that you've kinda laid out [00:02:00] and, and the numbers that you've posted.
[00:02:02] Tracey Mustacchio: 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.
[00:02:25] Tracey Mustacchio: It's common 'cause 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.
[00:02:33] Richard Ellis: I love that and, and as we've discussed before in B2B sales, you have to align your approach to your audience, right? And so not only just thinking what does the board care about, but I would suspect that if you can get some insight into the personalities and communication styles of each of the board members that can help you kind of further dial in your approach.
[00:02:52] Tracey Mustacchio: Definitely does. Hopefully you've had a chance to meet the board members before the, the first board meeting, but sometimes that's not possible. [00:03:00] So I always do a bunch of research. You can find most things, you know, on LinkedIn or you know, just, just Googling and finding a bunch of background information.
[00:03:07] Tracey Mustacchio: I always like to make sure that I see past board presentations as well, just to get a sense of what has been conveyed previously and maybe what's worked and what hasn't worked. But one thing I think to keep in mind as you're, you're sort of digging in and trying to understand the audience is that 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% of board members have operational experience in marketing.
[00:03:36] Tracey Mustacchio: 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 'cause, 'cause we have an opinion and marketing pieces of it are subjective. Uh, so I think it's really important to know the audience, know the perspective that they're coming from.
[00:03:54] Tracey Mustacchio: And be able to speak, speak to those perspectives. And I have kind of one funny story that I remember. One of the [00:04:00] teams that I was on, a board member was, um, from Salesforce and he had a very, uh, just a great career, very impressive career at Salesforce. It wasn't a marketing, but he saw the Salesforce marketing engine work.
[00:04:16] Tracey Mustacchio: Which is, you know, super impressive. Everybody would wanna look at, you wouldn't wanna be, you know, it's like Salesforce marketing. And so he would bring this up at every board meeting with me. Well, at Salesforce we did, you know, X, Y, and Z. And the assumption was always that we were sort of doing it wrong because we weren't following the Salesforce model.
[00:04:38] Tracey Mustacchio: And, uh, 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. Also point out why we weren't doing some of the same things. We had a different audience, different prospect, different ideal customer profile.
[00:04:58] Tracey Mustacchio: So while some of [00:05:00] the processes and some of the goodness we could use, it wasn't, um, we could take their exact machine and put it in our, our company and come up with the same results. So it was relating what we were doing to common ground, you know, something that he was very familiar with and that helped a lot.
[00:05:17] Richard Ellis: That's great practical advice right there. Just the insight of really understanding the experience and maybe the biases of the board members, uh, 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, but, but not this, right?
[00:05:36] Richard Ellis: And, and draw out those so you don't get unnecessarily critiqued.
[00:05:40] Tracey Mustacchio: Exactly.
[00:05:41] Richard Ellis: I'm really curious. I want to just pause on that stat of, uh, less than 10% of board members have, you know, marketing operational experience, so targeting our, our, our CMO or our prospective CMO audience out there. Uh, any other m. You know, particular advice for CMOs, you know, 'cause earlier you [00:06:00] said, Hey, don't get into the vanity marketing numbers too deep.
[00:06:02] Richard Ellis: But then now you know, they don't know marketing. So how do you strike that balance of educating them on marketing strategy and tactics and, and, and then still kind of meet the needs of what, what the board's looking for?
[00:06:13] Tracey Mustacchio: 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.
[00:06:28] Tracey Mustacchio: What they need to understand is how what we're doing is relating to the overall business goals. 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.
[00:06:57] Richard Ellis: Got it. Love that. So how is [00:07:00] marketing a strategic enabler of the overall business goals and metrics? It don't just go too deep right away. I like that. Exactly. That kind of gets into, you know, my next question is, okay, we got a wealth of information we need to share, we need to get across our strategies, our tactics, our, our, our message, uh, our plan.
[00:07:19] Richard Ellis: Right? All of that good stuff. Uh, do you have any practical tips on just how to structure a presentation from maybe A-A-C-M-O perspective?
[00:07:28] Tracey Mustacchio: 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 one situation where I wasn't brought in to affect a big change.
[00:07:42] Tracey Mustacchio: Uh, so I have always gone in with sort of a, a change agenda, and I think it's really important to start with clearly articulating your starting point. So I, I try to do, I call it the from to slide. So here's where we are today. This is what we're moving from in multiple areas. Here's how we're [00:08:00] building pipeline.
[00:08:00] Tracey Mustacchio: Here's the status of the team. You know, all of the, the different pieces of marketing and set the starting point so everybody understands, you know, clearly this is the starting point. You 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?
[00:08:19] Tracey Mustacchio: 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, and then also adding in, since last time, since we met last time, here's what we've accomplished. Here's some trouble, you know, that we've had.
[00:08:39] Tracey Mustacchio: Maybe do a highlights and lowlights slide and then have a plan for how you're addressing each, right? For the highlights, we're gonna double down in this area. Uh, for the low lights, we're gonna try something different, and this is what it is. But again, high level succinct, unless they want the detail.
[00:08:58] Richard Ellis: I like that a lot.
[00:08:59] Richard Ellis: And those who, [00:09:00] uh, have worked with us over the years probably recognize that from too, is a favorite, uh, of mine as well. Right. I like to call it a change vision and, uh, it, it's just a great simple framework with that. In terms of that journey. Right. And uh, 'cause I like what you said about kind of coming back to that on the follow on board meetings.
[00:09:21] Richard Ellis: 'cause this is a one, one and done meeting, right? You're gonna have multiple meetings and so you can kind of plot your progress along the way. Any just kind of specific advice in terms of those highlights and low lights along the way? What level of detail does the board really want to get into or not want to get into?
[00:09:40] Tracey Mustacchio: Again, 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, if we're talking about campaigns, for example, I wouldn't go into, we've tried three specific campaigns and here's the detail of those [00:10:00] campaigns, the, the nitty gritty of each one of them.
[00:10:02] Tracey Mustacchio: I would just say we've tried three specific campaigns. Two of 'em were really successful. Here were the results. The third one not so great. Here's what we're doing to adjust kind of high level and then tying that to the results to pipeline build for sales. Then closed revenue. So I do think it's really important for marketing to report the whole, on the whole funnel.
[00:10:24] Tracey Mustacchio: People don't like Sync Funnel anymore. I still use it because I think it's very descriptive and, um, I, I think it's important to show that you're owning and affecting the entire customer journey.
[00:10:35] Richard Ellis: So I can appreciate, you know, you don't want to get right away into the details, but you know, as a new leader, I want to be confident that I have all the answers.
[00:10:44] Richard Ellis: And if it's not on the slide, I might. You know, miss some numbers or not remember, so any tips for just being, you know, prepared in case they ask some of those hard, detailed questions.
[00:10:55] Tracey Mustacchio: Some people do a really good job of remembering all that, you know, off the top of [00:11:00] their head. I, I feel like my brain has this, this capacity.
[00:11:03] Tracey Mustacchio: Where is, as I'm adding a bunch more information in some of it's leaving, so I don't trust myself to, 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.
[00:11:22] Tracey Mustacchio: Call it a back pocket slide or a cheat sheet. I have one just in case.
[00:11:27] Richard Ellis: That's great. I love that. Uh, we like to have fun on this podcast and tell stories, and so I'm just curious, uh, 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.
[00:11:41] Richard Ellis: Any fun stories you, you care to share?
[00:11:43] Tracey Mustacchio: Oh it, I don't know if it's fun. It's painful to even remember it. There was 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, a two minute story about the company and one of [00:12:00] the board members put the sales leader on the spot and just said, what is it?
[00:12:05] Tracey Mustacchio: Give it to me. And, uh, he stammered all over the place and it was just, it was not a good meeting. And it was one of those, if he would've just relaxed and talked to the, the board member as if he was a prospect, it would've gone really well. But I think he just got like, ah. Oh boy.
[00:12:23] Richard Ellis: Wow. Yeah. We don't want to be caught in that situation.
[00:12:26] Richard Ellis: And so I think that points out just kind of a another insight and that is collaborate with, with your peers and yeah. I know you've led product organizations and ro uh, r and d and. Yeah. All of that good stuff. And you've led marketing organizations. Uh, I always think about kind of the three legged stool of being product, marketing and sales to really drive the growth of the business.
[00:12:47] Richard Ellis: So, uh, in either of those roles, CPO or CMO, how much do you collaborate with the CSO in, in preparing for a board meeting?
[00:12:56] Tracey Mustacchio: A hundred, a hundred percent. So, uh, lots of [00:13:00] collaboration to the point of developing draft presentations. Sharing the draft presentations with each other, well hopefully beforehand coming up with the outline that that would be typically what, what we would do practicing together and then co-presenting, um, in practice sessions to the CEO and to the rest of the executive team.
[00:13:20] Tracey Mustacchio: 'cause you just do not want to, uh, have any misalignment. And, you know, a, a good practice session will, will bring that out. That's
[00:13:29] Announcer: great.
[00:13:30] Richard Ellis: Any other tips when, when you just kind of think about back to your career and the number of different boards, uh, you've engaged with, uh, any particular, uh, practical tips or learnings in terms of what it took for you to kind of get it right or, or kind of hone your approach?
[00:13:47] Tracey Mustacchio: I think it was really influenced a lot by the first. Board meeting I was ever in. And it wasn't a, a planned board meeting or it was, the board meeting was planned. My involvement in it wasn't planned. Mm-hmm. Uh, I was with [00:14:00] a small startup company. We were in the middle of an acquisition. We were being acquired.
[00:14:05] Tracey Mustacchio: 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 and we'll talk to you when you come back.
[00:14:30] Tracey Mustacchio: 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, Tracy, go. Go do this, go talk to the board. Um, just give them an update on where we are. And, uh, it, yeah, luckily I didn't have time to get nervous 'cause it was just like on the spot.
[00:14:51] Tracey Mustacchio: So I, I walked in and I didn't know any of them, so we did quick intros and then after that it, it just went horribly because [00:15:00] I just started giving them information that I thought they needed to know and it. Apparently was probably too detailed, uh, not the right information, and a very, um, smart, experienced, kind board member stopped the whole thing.
[00:15:15] Tracey Mustacchio: 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, of the company. So given that, like, let us ask you some questions. And then it went so much better because they asked me questions I wasn't presenting 'cause I wasn't really prepared to present.
[00:15:45] Tracey Mustacchio: 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, Tracy, what about, you know, X, Y, and Z? And I'd say, oh, great, I've [00:16:00] got a lot of information on X, Y, and Z. And then I would start.
[00:16:02] Tracey Mustacchio: Giving the information and literally the chairman would kind of hold up his hand and, and say, great. Perfect. That's enough. We got it.
[00:16:09] Richard Ellis: Right. Yeah. Let's move on to the next topic.
[00:16:14] Tracey Mustacchio: Yeah. And luckily now there's so many resources that I don't think I, maybe there were back then, but I don't think so. Um, there's associations, like there's this one.
[00:16:24] Tracey Mustacchio: Um. Well, several board associations that you can 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 one of the, the, the training courses, and I think that helps a lot 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.
[00:16:56] Richard Ellis: That's amazing. I was gonna ask, are there any resources that one [00:17:00] can leverage versus just waiting to be thrown, thrown into the fire?
[00:17:04] Tracey Mustacchio: Yeah, there's that association, but I also have this great book that I would recommend there. Well, it's, I'm sure there's several. Harvard, um, business review did boards that lead the subtitle is When to change, when to partner and When to stay out of the way.
[00:17:19] Tracey Mustacchio: And its advice for board members and kind of details, best practices. And I think any executive who's gonna present to a board should. Get knowledgeable about that so you can make sure that you tailor your presentation.
[00:17:32] Richard Ellis: Great idea. Another resource and, and reminder that we need to know our audience. Yes.
[00:17:37] Richard Ellis: What are they looking for? Why are they there? That's awesome. Well, thank you Tracy. Uh, 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, uh, that comes to mind.
[00:17:53] Tracey Mustacchio: I don't know if you know this, but I, um, I majored in college in, uh, math, computer science and philosophy, [00:18:00] and I just love, still love philosophy and I have come across this, um, author that I absolutely love. It's Ryan Holiday and he's famous for the book. The Obstacle is The Way, and I think it's an incredible book.
[00:18:15] Tracey Mustacchio: It's all about the subtitle is The Art of Turning Trials into Triumph and it's kind of marketing, right? Positioning. If you take something that could be negative, you flip it into a positive, uh, and I really enjoyed the book, would recommend it.
[00:18:28] Richard Ellis: I'm, I'm intrigued already. I love it. Uh, well, thanks again for your generous, uh.
[00:18:34] Richard Ellis: Time with us and, uh, we look forward to, uh, getting together again if you're game.
[00:18:39] Tracey Mustacchio: Yeah, of course. I would love to. Thank you.
[00:18:44] Announcer: Some Goodness is a creation of revenue innovations. Visit us@revenueinnovations.com and subscribe to our newsletter.
