Episode Summary
Charlie Harris, Chief Marketing Officer at Connective3, explains why past success cannot define a company’s next growth strategy. She shares how direct conversations with enterprise buyers revealed new challenges, changed positioning, and strengthened internal decisions. Charlie also explores the revenue impact of customer insight, executive events, thought leadership, and LLM search.
Highlights
Introduction
YouTube Short
Episode Q&A Videos
5:37 | Valuable Peer Conversations Create Trust Before the Pitch
“If you can take valuable experiences away at each of those eight touchpoints that aren’t, ‘Here’s our product,’ then you have a much stronger chance of converting that client when you do get to pitch stage. It has to be that kind of more protracted sales cycle, and hopefully we've found a way of making valuable connections at each of those eight touchpoints.”
2:16 | Enterprise Growth Requires a New Customer Understanding
“When you start looking at enterprise, their challenges are vastly different. For me, it’s been an education that’s come from having those conversations with clients that I’ve spoken to, and then seeing how that needs to go back into the business and inform our future marketing strategies as well.”
3:16 | Executive Events Reveal the Customer Problems You Miss
“What you start to see in those conversations is the threads that connect them and the challenges they’re facing. You start to realize that the challenges they’re facing are not the challenges that you’re wanting to solve, and you have to then pivot from there.”
6:47 | Customer Evidence Gives CMOs a Stronger Boardroom Voice
“I think that’s the thing that you need to show that the strategy is working. When you shift and change services that maybe aren’t as effective, push your marketing strategy live, and start seeing the leads come in off the back of that, it obviously then converts to revenue. That gives you what you need to build a foundation to continue to pull and tease on things that have to change.”
5:58 | LLM Search Makes B2B Brands More Discoverable
“I would advise anyone working in B2B to really make LLM search or AEO part of your strategy if you’re not already. Last year, 13% of our revenue from inbound came from the website. This year, 70% has come from the website, which is a huge swing.”
0:42 | Start Your LLM Strategy To Create a Lasting Growth Advantage
“Go and spend some time on your LLM strategies, because I think with search, the earlier you start doing things, the faster you will get the returns. I can categorically tell you it will drive growth for your business, and it’s outstripping everything that I thought I knew in terms of growth.”
Key Takeaways
Future Customers Matter Most
Growth strategy must reflect buyers a company wants to win and retain over time consistently.
Evidence Creates Credibility
Customer conversations give leaders facts to improve positioning and internal decisions with confidence and clarity.
Revenue Validates Marketing
Marketing performance becomes strategic when it connects customer insight directly to revenue and measurable outcomes.
About Charlie
Charlie Harris
Charlie Harris is Chief Marketing Officer at Connective3, where she helps shape the agency’s growth as it moves into larger markets and enterprise relationships. She combines marketing leadership with high-level business development, giving her direct exposure to evolving customer needs. Charlie has helped build an inbound growth engine rooted in events and company-wide thought leadership, while supporting Connective3’s growth from seven people to 150 and through private equity investment. Her perspective centers on sustainable growth, customer insight, revenue accountability, and keeping an entrepreneurial mindset as a business scales.
From the Guest
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Full Episode Article
Title: "The Growth Pivot: Stop Building for Yesterday’s Customer"
This article is based on an interview with Charlie Harris, Chief Marketing Officer at Connective3
Introduction
Growth becomes harder when a company pursues larger customers with different expectations, buying processes, and internal complexity. What worked with earlier customers can become a blind spot when leaders assume the same positioning, services, and sales motion will work at the enterprise level.
Charlie Harris, Chief Marketing Officer at Connective3, has seen this shift firsthand while helping a rapidly growing agency evolve its marketing and sales approach. Her experience shows why customer conversations must shape strategy before a company invests heavily in the wrong message, offer, or market.
Build Strategy Around Future Customer Needs
A company can be proud of the customers that helped it grow while still recognizing that its next buyers may need something very different. Charlie explains that she didn’t reach this conclusion through internal planning alone. “I actually started talking to our customers, and that was in the kind of sales capacity of my role, and realized that a lot of who I thought we were and what I thought would resonate with them didn’t anymore.”
That discovery matters for B2B leaders pursuing larger accounts. Existing customers can validate the current business, but they cannot always represent the market a company needs to reach next. As Charlie says, “When you start looking at enterprise, their challenges are vastly different.” Leaders need direct conversations with the target audience to identify where their assumptions no longer apply.
Use Executive Conversations to Stress-Test Positioning
Executive events can provide far more than leads. They create an opportunity to hear patterns across several target accounts in a setting where people are willing to talk openly. Charlie explains that when senior leaders share their challenges, “you start to realize in those conversations, actually, the challenges they’re facing are not the challenges that you’re wanting to solve, and you have to then pivot from there.”
That insight can protect a company from investing in an offer that does not fit enterprise requirements. Charlie discovered that a measurement solution her company had developed could not integrate with the data stack of a larger target customer. “Our solution was essentially inferior to their data stack, and we literally couldn’t plug the two together.” The product still had value, but not for that audience. This is the value of listening before scaling a service.
Bring Evidence and Recommendations Back to the Boardroom
Customer insight becomes more powerful when it improves internal decisions. Charlie does not treat external feedback as a reason to simply reject an existing strategy. Instead, she brings evidence and a practical recommendation to leadership. “I always try to go into those conversations with, firstly, the evidence. I’ve had this conversation. I think perhaps this isn’t quite right. And then, a solution off the back of it.”
This approach gives marketing leaders a stronger role in shaping investment, targeting, and positioning. “We have to think about what’s happening outside of our world, and then how do we better position ourselves to tackle those challenges.” For companies using an ABM go-to-market strategy, this means customer learning should become a regular input into account strategy, content, offers, and sales enablement.
Conclusion
Customer obsession is not simply about collecting feedback or improving an individual campaign. It is about making the customer the most credible source of strategic direction. Charlie’s experience shows that direct conversations with future buyers can uncover gaps that internal teams cannot see from inside the business.
The strongest growth strategies are not built around yesterday’s customer profile. They are built around tested understanding of the buyers a company intends to win next. When CMOs bring that evidence, along with a clear path forward, they can influence decisions that strengthen relevance, revenue, and long-term enterprise growth.
ELEVATING CONTENT MARKETING STANDARDS RAISES A CRUCIAL QUESTION:
Why shouldn’t the very act of creating thought leadership content also spark new conversations with in-pipeline deals, top prospects, and high-priority customers for revenue expansion? Or serve as the cornerstone for learning and applying voice-of-customer strategies? That’s the power of ABM Podcasting—engaging B2B buyers and customers in meaningful conversations that uncover essential go-to-market insights, support long sales cycles, reinforce your market perspective, build peer-level trust, and dismantle objections that kill deals.
Steven MacDonald
Steven MacDonald is the founder of Content Strategies, CEO of a MarTech SaaS Company, fractional CMO consulting with leading B2B companies and former Director of Strategy and Client Service at top ten digital marketing agencies.
Steven MacDonald
Steven MacDonald is the founder of Content Strategies, CEO of a MarTech SaaS Company, fractional CMO consulting with leading B2B companies and former Director of Strategy and Client Service at top ten digital marketing agencies.
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