Pipeline Visionaries

Caspian Studios

CMOs and demand gen leaders dive head-first into their strategies and tactics for building a pipeline machine.

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Top 10 Pipeline Visionaries Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Pipeline Visionaries episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Pipeline Visionaries for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Pipeline Visionaries episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

Pilot, Prove, Scale

Pipeline Visionaries

10/15/24 • 42 min

This episode features an interview with Niki Hall, CMO at Five9, a company that provides cloud contact center solutions, facilitating billions of customer engagements annually for 2,500+ customers.

In this episode, Niki discusses the role of a CMO as a business professional first, and how important it is for them to bring customer insights into the overall company strategy. She also dives into her approach to experimentation and enhancing authentic marketing with the customer voice.

Key Takeaways:

CMOs should see themselves as business professionals first, and marketing professionals second. As a business professional, they need to be honest about what is not going well, so while you need to highlight wins, you can’t focus too heavily on what is going well.
CMO's need to bring out insights to inform strategy, anticipating future issues that could arise. It’s essential to use customer insights to inform overall business strategy.
Experiments are important, and you can pilot and prove new ideas at a small scale for proof of concept. Leaders should invest in and encourage experimentation.

Quote:

“ Pilot, prove, scale. So, I always ask my team to try new things, pilot it, prove it at a smaller scale. Once we've proven it out, then let's scale it globally. So, I've always set aside money for experiments and encourage my leaders to do that.”

Episode Timestamps:

*(03:09) The Trust Tree: Having the right ingredients as a company

*(14:02) The Playbook: Having a clear, differentiated message

*(37:12) The Dust Up: Grounding in common understanding

*(39:25) Quick Hits: Niki’s Quick Hits

Sponsor:

Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links:

Win Customers with Binge-Worthy Content

Pipeline Visionaries

09/17/24 • 50 min

This episode features an interview with Jason Ing, CMO at Gusto, a company that automates and simplifies payroll, benefits, and HR, while providing expert support. Jason was early on the ground at Xbox and Prime Video, playing pivotal roles in revolutionizing online gaming and digital media.

Jason offers a behind-the-scenes look at marketing major shifts in entertainment consumption, like launching Netflix on Xbox and his role in getting Amazon fire sticks into our homes. He also dives into his current marketing strategy at Gusto.

Key Takeaways:

Everyone loves good content, and creative, entertaining content attracts and retains customers.
Commitment and excitement about a long term vision can lead to groundbreaking success, even if others are skeptical initially.
There is value in trying out unexpected or unconventional strategies, such as direct mail for Amazon Prime Video.

Quote:

“As it relates to Netflix, and streaming overall, this was during the years in which people were still getting Netflix by mail. That was what they were known as. But the technology was being built and the amount of Xboxes we had in living rooms in the U.S. households and across the world was at a point where these streaming providers could create a viable business by getting into all those living room spaces. And this was before TVs were all smart-TV-enabled. So, it was really cool to see a vision for the future. And there was a bit of belief that you had to have around knowing that there was a better way. When you're fortunate enough to work for a company that is as successful as Microsoft was, and it's even more successful today, the company was willing to think long term. And I think that was really the first time in my career where I was exposed to this idea that you had to manage things on a day-to-day level and for the short term, but you had to have long-term vision and commitment to it. And I think all of us who were there, we were just very much bought into that idea, that there was just a future that was around the corner.”

Episode Timestamps:

*(29:09) The Trust Tree: Bringing elements from B2C to B2B

*(34:58): The Playbook: Controlling the narrative through brand

*(45:39): The Dust Up: Tension around partnership deals

*(47:42): Quick Hits: Jason’s Quick Hits

Sponsor:

Links:

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Caspian Studios

Get Off the Treadmill: Make Space for Creativity

Pipeline Visionaries

05/13/25 • 43 min

This episode features an interview with Alison Lange Engel, CEO of Ceros, a company that provides tools and services that empower companies to create interactive content with unparalleled ease and efficiency, driving customer engagement.

In this episode, Alison discusses the power of interactive content and how to differentiate your brand amidst increasing noise. She and Ian dive into the importance of being unique and how creativity is a competitive advantage.

Key Takeaways:

Creativity is a competitive advantage, even more so as copying assets gets easier with AI. CMOs need to get their teams off the treadmill and make space for creativity, inspiration and ideation.
The sea of sameness is real, especially in B2B, and the world continues to get noisier. You have to disrupt and have conviction behind your big bets; check box marketing won’t cut it anymore.
Originality is as important as ever, but teams have to find ways to do more with less and won’t succeed if they are only trying to differentiate themselves through words, tone, or processes.

Quote:

You're going to miss the opportunity to differentiate and tell a unique story, right, if you have your team on a treadmill constantly. And that's how most people feel. But, as a leader, you've got to create space for it and find inspiration. Encourage your team to bring ideas. We would bring magazine clips in. People would bring in their pets. People brought in old, you know, pictures, family mementos, what matters to them. You've gotta get to the heart and soul of what you're trying to do to kind of unlock your team and have your company, you know, feel fresh, feel modern, and have people take risks, right? Great companies take risks and you have to kind of create that environment to do that. The brands that don't, are in trouble and the brands that do are the ones that win.

Episode Timestamps:

*(05:50) The Trust Tree: Experiences over static content

*(25:36) The ROI of creativity

*(36:29) Advice for CMOs on creativity and boldness

Sponsor:

Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com. Qualified helps you turn your website into a pipeline generation machine with PipelineAI. Engage and convert your most valuable website visitors with live chat, chatbots, meeting scheduling, intent data, and Piper, your AI SDR. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links:

Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
Connect with Alison on LinkedIn
Learn more about Ceros
Learn more about Caspian Studios

Don’t Waste Time on Buyers Who Aren’t Ready to Engage

Pipeline Visionaries

02/11/25 • 30 min

This episode features an interview with Drew Chapin, CMO at Certinia, a platform that connects all aspects of services operations, from services estimation and delivery to customer success management and financial planning and accounting.

In this episode, Drew discusses monitoring buying signals and generating the right traffic to your website. He also dives into inheriting a rebrand and some of the nuances of marketing in a private equity owned company.

Key Takeaways:

Cold calls, cold emails and the days of expecting someone to fill out a form to get content are over. B2B marketers need to stop making friction or blockers.
Nothing fails like success. If you just continue to execute what has worked in the past, you're going to miss innovation opportunities.
Aspire for a champagne flute funnel over a martini glass funnel. Maybe not as many leads are coming in at the top, but they are higher quality and converting and much higher rates through the funnel.

Quote:

“85 percent of the time the buyer will go with the first vendor that they contact. So, building that trust with the buyer over time is critically important. And so, you know, in the old days, you put a form in front of every piece of content and we would optimize around the contact information. And then you'd pass that along to some BDR and they would just be banging their head against the wall, calling people who weren't on the buying committee. They weren't ready to talk to a salesperson, you know, and it just was waste so much waste. And so what we're trying to do now is we're trying to monitor the activity at the target account level and look for buying signals”

Episode Timestamps:

*(02:51) The Trust Tree: Stretching the dollar in a PE-owned company

*(06:28) The Playbook: Generating quality traffic to the website

*(24:28) The Dust Up: Proving ROI to the board

*(26:59) Quick Hits: Drew’s quit hits

Sponsor:

Links:

Connect with Ian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianfaison/
Connect with Drew on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chapindrew/
Learn more about Certinia: https://www.linkedin.com/company/certinia/
Learn more about Caspian Studios: https://caspianstudios.com/

Accountability in Experimentation

Pipeline Visionaries

02/13/24 • 39 min

This episode features an interview with Riikka Söderlund, CMO at Katana Cloud Inventory, a company that provides SMBs with easy-to-use inventory management software, to get them the real-time data that they need.

In this episode, Riika discusses staying accountable for intentional experimentation, how she invests in talent and why she dislikes the term “marketing strategy”.

Key Takeaways:

Experiments should improve results and should fit within goals. Including experiments in your overall budget, instead of pulling them into a separate, “experimental budget” keeps you accountable.
Talent development is an uncuttable item and marketing leaders should align individual growth aspirations with company goals.
Being right isn’t always enough. Marketing leaders need to be strong internal communicators and influence opinions to get the right results.

Quote:

“ I have a gazillion other marketing KPIs, of course, but at the end of the day, if we're not driving revenue, then it doesn't matter. I am not a fan of measuring leads or MQLs. Honestly, revenue is the only metric that tells you, did you generate pipeline? Did you reach the right audience? Is your value proposition correct? And is your brand resonating with that target audience? It's the only one that combines all the aspects of marketing.”

Episode Timestamps:

*(02:42) The Trust Tree: Why Riikka doesn’t believe in the term “marketing strategy”

*(12:53) The Playbook: The importance of content and intentional experimentation

*(31:54) The Dust Up: Becoming a strong internal influencer

*(33:45) Riikka’s Quick Hits

Sponsor:

Links:

Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
Connect with Riika on LinkedIn
Learn more about Katana
Learn more about Caspian Studios

Part 5: Top CMOs Share Their Most Uncuttable Demand Gen Budget Items

Pipeline Visionaries

11/16/21 • 27 min

Find parts one, two, three & four

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Episode Timestamps:

Part five of this special mini-series features 12 CMOs and marketing leaders from some of the world's fastest-growing companies, including:

*(4:00) - Amanda Malko, CMO, G2

*(7:40) - Raj Khera, Head of Growth, SalesIntel.io

*(9:05) - Katrina Wong, VP Product Marketing and Demand Gen, Segment

*(11:11) - Morgan Norman, CMO, Dialpad

*(12:30) - Kady Srinivasan, SVP Global Head of Marketing, Klaviyo

*(13:55) - Joy Corso, CMO, Vonage

*(15:05) - Justin Shriber, CMO, People.ai

*(18:40) - Susan Beermann, CMO, NAVEX Global

*(20:21) - Keith Messick, SVP Marketing, LaunchDarkly

*(22:20) - Kyle Lacy, VP Marketing, Seismic

*(23:45) - William Tyree, CMO, Revenue.io

*(25:30) - Jon Miller, CMO, Demandbase

Sponsor

Demand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links

Follow Ian on Twitter

Connect with Ian on LinkedIn

www.caspianstudios.com

Brand as the Hub of Your Go-To-Market Approach

Pipeline Visionaries

04/02/24 • 48 min

This episode features an interview with John Solomon, CMO at Therabody, the wellness tech pioneer that brought us the Theragun, among other products that optimize human performance and unlock the body's natural ability to achieve health and well-being.

In this episode, John shares his strategy to overcome the “Kleenex problem”and dives into how they prioritize the entry point to their brand. He also talks about how he structures his team with the brand at the center to avoid silos and strengthen their go-to market strategy.

Key Takeaways:

Focus on the product that serves as the entry to your brand to get customers into your ecosystem.
Distinctive brand assets are essential and need to be protected, especially for companies facing the “Kleenex problem”, when their product name becomes synonymous with the product and less associated with the company brand.
Structuring your brand team at the center of the marketing function helps avoid siloes and strengthens your go-to-market strategy.

Quote:

I'm a big believer that your kind of brand team has to sit in the middle. It's the hub of your going to market approach, right? And so I have the brand team really thinking about it in those three areas that I talked to you about before, the performance, wellness, and beauty. And then we have specific brand managers that really think about specific audiences. But that's who's driving the integrated process. That’s who is bringing the functions together, saying, hey, we're launching this product, or, hey, we got Mother's Day, or, hey, this week we have sleep week. And then bringing together what's influencer, what's PR, what's the site, what's email, what's media, what all of those teams are doing to drive that integrated process.

So that's what I'm a really big believer in and how you structure things. Or else it becomes really siloed. It becomes fragmented. You have one team going over there shooting that content. Another team going over there doing that and it oesn't hang together. It's not bigger. It's not like 1 plus 1 equals 4 or 5.

Episode Timestamps:

*(13:19) The Trust Tree: Addressing the “Kleenex problem”

*(34:27) The Playbook: Capturing attention through television

*(45:03) Quick Hits: John’s Quick Hits
Sponsor:

Links:

Being Led Astray: First- and Last-Touch Attribution

Pipeline Visionaries

04/22/25 • 46 min

This episode features an interview with Bill Macaitis, Founder & CEO, SaaS CMO Pro, where he shares growth strategies for SaaS and AI companies. His past roles include CMO positions at Slack and Zendesk, and SVP of Marketing at Salesforce.

Bill joins the podcast to discuss findings from a recent survey of over 300 B2B marketers that gives insights into marketing strategies and budgets. He shares what they learned about marketing versus sales budgets, the most common attribution model, and more.

Key Takeaways:

Companies that are growing the fastest, invest the most in marketing. While cause and effect of that correlation is unclear, it’s an interesting finding.
Pipeline generation was one of the most tracked metrics for CMOs, which is a nice move away from only looking at MQLs or leads. Unfortunately, awareness was rarely tracked, making it hard for marketing teams to invest in long-term initiatives.
A lot of companies, 65 percent, continue to use first or last touch attribution models.

Quote:

So, what we learned is a lot of companies, I think especially in their earlier stages - percent still use first- or last- touch. It's kind of crazy. I'm still shocked by it. I remember my time at Salesforce, I was running the marketing ops team at that point, along with a couple other teams, and I just did a deep dive into attribution. Like I really wanted to understand like, hey, how many touches are people having with us before they became a lead? And then how many touches before they became a customer? What we would see is people would have 10, 20, 30 interactions or touches with us before they became a lead, and then they'd have like another 20 or 30 before they became a customer. And just imagine giving all the credit to the very first or last thing. And by the way, it's one of the reasons Google got so big was because a very common last touch thing is they will search on your company name. Branded search, right? And it's like, oh, like the SEM guys are like, this is amazing, right? We need to spend more on Google because they're producing these massive deals. And it's like, well wait, what about all the stuff in the middle?

Episode Timestamps:

*(03:48) Marketing Strategies and Budgeting

*(22:31) Attribution Models in Marketing

*(26:44) Top Metrics for B2B SaaS and AI Companies

*(31:06) Marketing's Role in Revenue and Expansion

Sponsor:

Links:

Help Your Customers Where It Hurts with Melissa Sargeant, CMO at AlphaSense

Pipeline Visionaries

12/13/22 • 35 min

This episode features an interview with Melissa Sargeant, CMO at AlphaSense. AlphaSense is a market intelligence platform used by the world’s leading companies and financial institutions. Melissa runs worldwide marketing initiatives including corporate and product branding, demand generation, product marketing, public relations, inbound sales development, and more.

On this episode Melissa shares her insights into customer pain points and how to solve them, utilizing macro-themed marketing, and why SEO is important for your website.

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“You can't show value for what you're providing, if you can't make a connection between the pain and what they're trying to achieve in their roles, particularly on a market intelligence platform.” - Melissa Sargeant, CMO, AlphaSense

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Episode Timestamps:

*(02:49) - Melissa’s role at AlphaSense

*(05:11) - Segment: Trust Tree

*(10:35) - Utilizing marco-themed marketing

*(15:24) - Segment: The Playbook

*(16:17) - Why SEO is important for your website

*(17:22) - Customer pain points and how to solve them

*(26:33) - Segment: The Dust Up

*(29:46) - Segment: Quick Hits

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Sponsor:

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Links

Goodbye Traditional Outbound, Hello Hyper-Personalized Content

Pipeline Visionaries

11/21/23 • 45 min

This episode features an interview with Sarah Cascone, VP of Marketing at Bluecore, a retail marketing platform that enables marketers to turn data into revenue-generating campaigns, in minutes.

In this episode, Sarah educates us on what her team calls the Relationship Demand Gen Chain, how to foster a meaningful customer community, and how ruthless prioritization is a super power. Sarah also shares with us why she believes traditional outbound is fading away and that now, marketing is all about curating hyper-personalized content.

Key Takeaways:

Building out the Relationship Demand Gen Chain: Turning overall demand generation into pipeline. Sarah’s four points of focus are: points of view - educating the market on your points of view; points of entry - how you’re engaging with your target audience; points of leverage, where you can organically access your personas; and points of conversion - where your prospects have meetings with your sales team.
People buy from people, not companies. When you build a community around what you stand for, it’s a lot harder for prospects to walk away from that community anchored with your service or product offering.
Always have something to drive your target market to. When your prospects are ready to buy, they’ll enter into that conversation with your sales team. So before that point, it’s imperative to be connecting with your prospects and community at large organically and often.

Quote:

“ I think traditional outbound is fading away. That is why we've kind of pivoted our entire SDR team into this ABX account based experiences role. This goes back to in enterprise, where tech solutions are oversaturated, most prospects are not buying from just like a cold call or a cold email. So, the way we kind of integrate the SDRs and the ABX team, really is what they are, into that relationship demand gen chain totally elevates their value because we're becoming known and respected in all of the activities we're doing between thought leadership, events, and community, which gives them the ability and the time to curate their outreach based on the very specific research they're doing on the specific company so that they can speak to exactly what the person that they're going to email is feeling the pain that they're feeling, who, if we're doing our job right, has heard our point of view all along, has been part of our community, now they want to take a call with us...So goodbye, like cold calling and blast emails from the SDR. Hello, hyper-personalized curated that's built right into the marketing engine.”

Episode Timestamps:

*(03:25) - The Trust Tree: The Relationship Demand Gen Chain

*(09:06) - The Playbook: Building a community around what you stand for

*(36:14) - The Dust Up: You can take the girl out of NY but you can’t take NY out of the girl

*(40:33) - Quick Hits: Sarah’s Quick Hits

Sponsor:

Links:

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FAQ

How many episodes does Pipeline Visionaries have?

Pipeline Visionaries currently has 234 episodes available.

What topics does Pipeline Visionaries cover?

The podcast is about Marketing, Management, Cmo, Advertising, Growth, Podcasts, Business, B2B Marketing and B2B.

What is the most popular episode on Pipeline Visionaries?

The episode title 'Help Your Customers Where It Hurts with Melissa Sargeant, CMO at AlphaSense' is the most popular.

What is the average episode length on Pipeline Visionaries?

The average episode length on Pipeline Visionaries is 41 minutes.

How often are episodes of Pipeline Visionaries released?

Episodes of Pipeline Visionaries are typically released every 7 days.

When was the first episode of Pipeline Visionaries?

The first episode of Pipeline Visionaries was released on Jul 8, 2020.

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Pipeline Visionaries

Caspian Studios

Top 10 Pipeline Visionaries Episodes

FAQ

How many episodes does Pipeline Visionaries have?

What topics does Pipeline Visionaries cover?

What is the most popular episode on Pipeline Visionaries?

What is the average episode length on Pipeline Visionaries?

How often are episodes of Pipeline Visionaries released?

When was the first episode of Pipeline Visionaries?

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