Ep. 140: How B2B Marketers Can Build Greater Trust

How B2B Marketers Can Build Greater Trust

In many B2B organizations, the C-suite inherently distrusts the marketing department. There is this ideological disconnect between marketing, the C-suite, and the rest of the organization. One side is thought and process-driven and then there’s marketing which requires unconventional thinking, experimentation, and a deep understanding of human behavior. How can B2B marketers bridge the trust gap and build credibility inside and outside their organizations? How can they effectively get “buy-in” from the C-suite?

That’s why we’re talking to B2B marketing expert Gee Ranasinha (Founder & CEO, KEXINO) about how marketers can build trust with senior management and other business units. During our conversation, Gee discussed the pitfalls marketers should avoid, the importance of understanding your audience, and why it’s imperative to find those internal champions within the organization.

https://youtu.be/gKjLMRiWKCc

Topics discussed in episode

• Gee explains why the C-suite and senior management distrust the marketing department [1:52]
• An example of how marketers can improve their communication with the C-suite and other departments like finance [15:13]
• Gee elaborates on the role of research and strategy in building trust [19:59]
• How marketers can find their internal champion(s) and collaborate effectively with them [29:42]

Companies and links mentioned

• Gee Ranasinha
• KEXINO

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Gee Ranasinha, Christian Klepp

Christian Klepp 00:03

Welcome to B2B Marketers on a Mission, a podcast for changemakers, where we question the conventional, debunk marketing myths, provide actionable tips, think differently, disrupt the industries, and take your marketing to a new level, from improving your campaigns to making you a better marketer. These are the inspirational stories that will help us change the way we think and approach B2B marketing, one conversation at a time. This podcast is brought to you by EINBLICK Consulting, helping you to stand out in the market and drive revenue to your B2B business. And now your host, Christian Klepp. Welcome, everyone to this episode of B2B Marketers on a Mission. This is the show where we help you to question that conventional, think differently, disrupt your industry, and take your marketing to new heights. This is your host Christian Klepp. And today I’m joined by someone on a mission to deliver better B2B marketing solutions for startups and small businesses. So coming to us from Strasbourg, France, Gee Ranasinha, welcome to the show.

Gee Ranasinha 01:06

Delighted to be here, Christian, thanks for inviting me.

Christian Klepp 01:10

Glad to be connected Gee. And I’m really looking forward to this conversation. Because ma’am, have we got a lot of ground to cover. So let’s dive in. So Gee, you’ve got quite a distinguished background in the world of B2B marketing, but for this conversation, let’s focus on a topic that has become part of your professional mission, right. And we spoke at length about this in the previous conversation, how marketers can build trust with the C-suite and the rest of your organization. So I’m going to kick this interview off with something we talked about previously, the C-suite inherently distrust the marketing department. And shocker, it’s marketing’s fault. So why do you believe that?

Gee Ranasinha 01:52

I think there are a number of reasons Christian and I think it’s primarily due to the nature of work that happens within the C-suite, business departments compared with marketing. So I think there is a ideological disconnect between the C-suite senior management and marketing for a number of reasons, one of those reasons being that pretty much every other business silo within the organization operates in a very cause and effect. Let’s call it mathematical, almost Newtonian, in its approach, you know, two plus two is always four, everything follows logic, process and rigor. You think of it like engineering, or mathematics or something, okay. And just by happenstance, the vast majority of people in the C-suite, or certainly senior managers seem to have reached that position within the organization, through a route which takes them through economics, finance, engineering, science type métier, subjects, were like I say, Everything’s very Newtonian in its ap...