Manoj Jasra, CMO at Emids, discusses his experience as a B2B CMO and strategist, emphasizing how to create value swiftly within organizations while addressing stakeholder expectations. He highlights critical aspects of launching in new roles, including learning the business, building relationships, and securing budgets, while also discussing the evolving role of AI in marketing and the importance of clear communication.

“Understanding why the company exists in the first place is extremely relevant. It’s the foundation of everything you’re going to do and the basis of your strategy.” – Manoj Jasra

Manoj’s insights highlight key truths in B2B marketing. He stresses that internal communication is vital for alignment and operational coherence, while clearly defining the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is essential for crafting targeted marketing strategies. Content and thought leadership play a crucial role in engaging potential clients during their self-education journey. By utilizing advanced tools like AI for market insights, firms can develop data-driven strategies that produce quicker results, with effective communication and execution being critical for success.

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[Transcript]

[00:00:05] Steve MacDonald: Welcome everyone to the C-Suite Sales and Marketing Perspectives Podcast. I’m Steve MacDonald, your host. Today, we’ve got a very special guest and subject. We have Manoj Jasra. Now, Manoj, you are a three-time B2B CMO. You specialize in PE-backed startups and companies. You’ve worked in a lot of different industry sectors, both B2C and B2B, so you’ve got a very broad perspective that you’re bringing to the podcast today.

[00:00:37] Steve MacDonald: Before we get into our subject matter, which is how to take the CMO and PE-backed perspectives that you have and create value quickly—because one of the things we all know is that we don’t last long as CMOs. B2B CMOs have the shortest tenure in the C-Suite.

[00:00:56] Steve MacDonald: So, one of the things we can do right away—and I know you’re starting a new role right now—is how do we create value quickly, not only internally within the organization but also recognized up through the board? That’s not always an easy thing to do. But before we get into that how you do it, and what your brand of that is, maybe you could give us just a little bit more on your background before we get started.

[00:01:21] Manoj Jasra: Thank you for having me, Steve. I’m really looking forward to our discussion. You’re right; I have played in a lot of sectors. I started as a software developer in the early 2000s, changed over to digital marketing, and have just followed my path of trying to stay as uncomfortable as possible and being challenged as much as possible. That’s what you see with the sector changes because I pride myself on really learning a lot of different areas and applying those interesting things to new ways of doing things and new businesses.

[00:01:46] Manoj Jasra: For the most part of my career, I would say the first 12 to 15 years were in B2C, but the last four or five have focused on B2B growth, demand generation, and working with scale-ups, including mergers and acquisitions with PE groups. So, it’s been really interesting.

[00:02:02] Steve MacDonald: What I love about your background in both B2C and B2B is that in today’s environment, B2B customer experience expectations are exactly on par with the level that we expect in the B2C world.

[00:02:18] Steve MacDonald:  The Amazon effect means we can order something, and sometimes it arrives that afternoon. The immediacy and the quality of customer experience that B2C has traditionally been known for equally translate to the expectations that our B2B buyers have with us as B2B organizations. There are just a lot of similarities in your background that I think we want to dig deeper into.

[00:02:41] Manoj Jasra: You’re absolutely right. I was just going to add to that. The immediacy, the experience, the elevation, and the quality—whereas B2B used to be seen as a space where we could expect less quality. One thing I’ve really understood in going from B2C to B2B is that I can quickly identify a B2C marketing strategy being applied incorrectly to a B2B business. It’s interesting because both flavors, although experience-wise, have customers wanting speed and capabilities. In the B2B world, it is a much longer buying cycle, but you can quickly see a potential B2C marketer trying to apply a lot of Instagram and social media-style B2C content to a B2B play without understanding the long-term nurture required in a B2B business.

[00:03:29] Steve MacDonald: It’s interesting; we’re kind of on an interesting topic here before the subject matter. From Gartner to McKinsey in the B2B world, the number one competitive advantage for businesses today, B2C or B2B, isn’t product. It’s not price; it’s not traditional things that we’ve held on to. It’s that customer experience. McKinsey talks about how it’s the number one factor that influences long-term value for a company. So, it plays a big role in our go-to-market strategies these days. But with that, I want to come back here a little bit and get right to the topic, which is how to create value quickly.

[00:04:09] Steve MacDonald: I’d just love to open it up to you in any way you want to start it out and how you think about that. What your point of view is coming in, especially as a new B2B CMO in this last month?

[00:04:19] Manoj Jasra: Yeah, it’s interesting looking at it from a private equity perspective versus a traditional corporation that might be publicly traded or just larger in general. I think there’s a lot of interest when a CMO or even a chief growth officer joins a company to see results fairly quickly. Building momentum is something that I find myself on, and it’s something that is, to me, critical for a CMO.

[00:04:44] Manoj Jasra: You said the tenure of CMOs doesn’t last that long, and to me, the key thing is you have to do things in parallel and maybe even three or four things in parallel at the same time. When you’re launching into a new organization, especially when I’ve switched sectors—right? We went from technology services to a bunch of different sectors to healthcare. Trying to learn the business is important because you want to be relevant in the space. So, when you’re marketing, you want to be able to contextually talk about your services and your value propositions, things like that. But you don’t have the realm of trying to wait 90 days before your first campaign goes into the market or having a perspective of a strategy.

[00:05:20] Manoj Jasra: That whole model of trying to build the plane and fly it at the same time is critical in this space, so you have to learn just enough. This means learning the business, creating relationships with the key product leaders, the sales leadership, the board, the executive leadership team, and the CFO, and then in parallel, building a team structure and evaluating your team to say, can they do the job effectively and support the strategy?

[00:05:45] Manoj Jasra: What I like to say is maybe the fourth parallel would be how do you get something in the market, which shows value and credibility that there is pipeline growth or even interest? A colleague of mine calls it green shoots. Are there some green shoots that can show? There’s a service often that we get to market; it’s tied to your customer profiles, and it’s showing interest already. So, these are like three or four things, and it’s easily said that four things can happen in parallel, but imagine trying to learn the business, build great relationships, evaluate and structure your team, and also launch something into the market. Because at the end of the day, number four is what you’re going to be graded on. Number three is expectations; the first three are expectations.

[00:06:27] Steve MacDonald: I was thinking the exact same thing. The only thing that matters is we’re all supposed to be pipeline-focused, right? CMOs have to be pipeline-driven and pipeline-focused, and that was the one measure of the four that aligned with that. I had a podcast about a year ago, and the gentleman wrote a book on this. He did a massive study and showed that it can take up to 18 months for most CMOs to do the four steps that you just talked about: learn the business, get the team together, get the go-to-market strategy together, implement, get something into the market, and have it be in the market long enough to make some kind of impact where there are attainable results, which you could then take to the board and say, look, this is what we’ve done. That’s a lot longer time than how you show something in growth quickly, right?

[00:07:17] Manoj Jasra: Exactly right. The gentleman has written probably a wonderful topic on the book and things like that. Eighteen months may feel right in a much more mature organization, whether it’s time to onboard effectively and do the right things in terms of structured strategy, buy-in, and budget cycles. But when you’re talking about P.E. or scale-up to startup, it’s scale-ups going to their next level. I think we’re in, like, the six months or less, and then show me what you’ve done. I think you’re in that realm. Once you’ve proven that, you get the reins to go longer, but I don’t think there is an 18-month wait time in this space.

[00:07:53] Steve MacDonald: Yeah, especially when that’s about 20 months, which is when the average CMO is like, “Oh.” But I think his point was that demonstrable impact, measurable impact—the expectation should be that it takes longer. Obviously, this is something that you’re trying to do right now, so this is a very relevant topic as you’re just taking on a new role. So, what is your recommendation?

[00:08:16] Steve MacDonald: I mean, we’ve got CMOs, CROs, CEOs, and heads of sales and marketing listening. What’s your number one priority? You’re coming in; what’s the number one thing that’s going to help make that difference in the short term?

[00:08:28] Manoj Jasra: A few things that I think are relevant would be, and I’m feeling this now as I felt it at my last firm as well, is really understanding why the company exists in the first place. Like, why do you have the ability to earn the business of your customers, and why do you have the right to compete? That really underlines what’s the service offerings, what’s the value proposition, and what are the differentiators in your competitor set as well?

[00:08:52] Manoj Jasra: I think once you can understand that—and like I said, you might not get the full realm of every single capability that the firm offers in full, because in some cases, like in our world today, we probably have over 50 or 60 things we do across six practices and four verticals—that’s very complex. But if you can start to shape that overall narrative and understand that, to me, it’s the biggest unlock along with alignment that this proposition resonates with your executive team, your sales team, and your product teams. What that does is provide the foundation for everything you’re going to do: your strategy, your marketing campaign roadmap, the strategy of your structure, and the strategy of which investments you’re going to make.

[00:09:34] Manoj Jasra: So, I believe getting to that is one of the most important pieces. Personally, I’ve always thought it helps you understand the business as well. If you can articulate and narrate very clearly what the value proposition of the business is, why it exists, what capabilities it offers, and what the differentiators are, all of a sudden you can take that to market. The rest of it, obviously, involves a lot of content that needs to be built behind it, but that, to me, is one of the biggest unlocks that I’ve seen.

[00:10:00] Steve MacDonald: What I love about that is, and you clearly articulated this, your first audience that you have to convince of that reformation of the selling proposition for the company—how you’re positioned—is internally, right? Because if you think this is the way to go, but sales aren’t on board, customer success isn’t on board, and your CEO isn’t on board, all of a sudden, that’s where you’re siloed. This is a stat that I know you’re going to be like, “Oh yeah, I believe that.” But do you know what the actual average alignment between marketing and sales is regarding the ICP? Like the definition of the ICP, it’s 16%. I’ve told that to a lot of CMOs and CROs, and nobody is surprised.

[00:10:46] Manoj Jasra:I wasn’t surprised to hear it, but I didn’t expect it to be that far off, like 16%. I was going to say something like 25 to 35 percent, somewhere in that neighborhood, but it’s not set at 16%.

[00:10:56] Steve MacDonald: But even at 35%, that’s two-thirds of the companies that don’t have alignment on your ICP any way you slice it. What I loved is that your focus was on how we align internally. How do we all have the same basic go-to-market plan? That’s what I was taking away from what you said. Because if you don’t have that, it doesn’t matter.

[00:11:15] Steve MacDonald: Any other idea, any other go-to-market strategy, if you’re a silo on the side that’s trying to execute against that, then you’re not going to show short-term rewards.

[00:11:27] Manoj Jasra: It’s a real quick way to exit if you’re marketing to an ICP that the company is not aligned upon, right? That 18-month number again probably becomes like three or four real quick if that’s what you’re up to.

[00:11:38] Steve MacDonald: If we take now into account that we have to have that internal line, talk to me a little bit about just executing the plan. Transitioning from strategy to execution and how you think about that.

[00:11:52] Manoj Jasra: Yeah. I think this transition is important because we’ve assumed in the transitioning strategy that we’ve also got the biggest thing that we all forget about budget, right? So, we got the strategy, but did you connect with the CFO, the executive team, and the board? Did you secure the budget?

[00:12:07] Manoj Jasra: Let’s assume that’s happened. One of the first things that I always try to do is make sure that my strategy has a budget attached to it. It’s very easily said, but if you don’t, then you’re setting yourself up for failure because you’re not able to achieve the metrics and the KPIs that you’re after without a sufficient budget to execute it.

[00:12:26] Manoj Jasra: Or you’re signing up for a very different strategy, which includes a different level of advertising, different levels of levers, and a different level of technology stacks in the middle of it without the budget. So, if we assume that the budget is now approved and we’ve got the right strategy, I think execution is also an area where faltering happens.

[00:12:44] Manoj Jasra: One of the things that I’ve learned is, it’s another very simple thing, but communication is so critical. You communicated the strategy earlier, right? You’ve got your board alignment and things like that, and you’ve got your executive team alignment, and your sales team is aligned with your strategy.

[00:12:58] Manoj Jasra: The next big communication piece is building that roadmap, which is the overall progress, the momentum, the roadblocks, the KPIs, the successes, and the CMO owning that week to week, month to month, and sharing that information to show how we’re progressing. Because that is clearly what the CFO, the CEO, and the board are watching: is my budget now being executed?

[00:13:22] Manoj Jasra: And is it having traction? I think that’s a major one. To me, having clear actions on who’s accountable for the various parts of the roadmap is crucial because, if you can imagine a multi-stakeholder situation, you have marketing in the mix, you have a product, you have customer success, you have SDRs, and you have the sales team, right?

[00:13:40] Manoj Jasra: Each one plays a critical role. Ensuring that roles are well-defined, metrics are well-defined, and there’s good communication across these multi-member teams is critical for success to happen for execution to exist appropriately. Those are the first things that come to mind.

[00:14:00] Steve MacDonald: One thing I wanted to ask you a little bit more about is you talked about identifying the roadblocks. Not having the right budget is a roadblock to an execution plan. Just in your experience, what are the top roadblocks to getting that plan executed?

[00:14:16] Manoj Jasra: We already talked about budget. The second would be content, which is a big one. For us to execute a strategy, especially in B2B, all the way from the top of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel, having appropriate content to support that is one of the biggest pitfalls that exists out there. Going to market without enough collateral and then expecting a single piece of collateral to be the hook to land a million-dollar deal.

[00:14:41] Manoj Jasra: I think that’s like smoke. When I talked about really understanding the priorities of the business, I always thought there were only a few key things that anyone should be doing in the market at the same time. I always say the number can run three to five campaigns in the market at the same time that’s tied to the key service offerings or the key priorities of the business.

[00:15:01] Manoj Jasra: If you do not have enough content associated with all of that and tied to the right budget, you can have a budget, advertise it, and go after the ICP. You can actually just run dry, and then the nurture basically stops, and you’ve essentially stopped in your tracks along the way. So that’s one gap.

[00:15:18] Manoj Jasra:  I think we’ve talked about ICP a few times, and I think having alignment on that—not just that the ICP exists—is important. Further to that, who are the buying teams that exist within the ICP? If you’re looking at buying teams at a specific organization, what are the behaviors, attributes, and pain points that exist per buying team member?

[00:15:41] Manoj Jasra: So, while ICP is important, getting down to the detailed ICP is critical as well. Having that not well-defined also means that when you launch your campaigns, you might not have the right content. And if you do have the right content but don’t understand the right pain points, how are you going to mix that at the same time?

[00:15:57] Manoj Jasra: It’s all correlated when you think about it. That’s why I believe B2B marketing has to be so sophisticated, tactical, and strategic for it to be effective.

[00:16:07] Steve MacDonald: I have so much to ask in these areas of content and ICP. Starting with the ICP: customers are the highest authority in the business.

[00:16:14] Steve MacDonald: Amazon has this idea of the empty chair at every meeting. If you’ve heard about this, the empty chair represents the customer. The idea is that if the customer were here in the meeting with us today, how would that influence the decisions we’re making? Because the customer is the highest authority. So, getting that ICP right and aligned is important, but there’s a third level to that too, which is how do you understand your ICP?

[00:16:43] Steve MacDonald: There are a lot of companies I’ve talked to that agree: we have a very high degree of familiarity with our ICP. We talk about them every day, we plan for them every day, we track them every day, and we listen to their Gong calls. Sales teams and SDRs are talking to them every day. But do we understand our ICP? What do you do to get to the point where you believe, “I understand my ICP”? I understand at a critical level their deepest challenges, concerns, and risks—more so even than what’s associated with our product offering or our tech.

[00:17:17] Steve MacDonald: You’re selling into an ICP that has this many problems, and you might be a significant part of that solution, but we have to be trusted advisors to our ICP consultants, which means we have to understand them at a much broader level. How do you get to that understanding? How do you know when you’ve gotten there?

[00:17:38] Manoj Jasra: I just don’t think we ever know that we’ve gotten there. I don’t think it’s ever a hundred percent, but I hear a few ways that we look at it, and it’s a multi-pronged strategy. It’s interesting because your competition is doing this, so you are doing it at the same time. Whoever has that extra piece of understanding of the motivations of the customer ends up winning if all service offerings and pricing are the same.

[00:17:58] Manoj Jasra: A few ways that we look at it typically include, as you referenced a few times, having endless reports. So, in our case, whether it’s McKinsey, Everest, or Zinov, those areas truly understand what’s happening broadly in the market.

[00:18:14] Manoj Jasra: Secondly, your client partners or customer success teams are critical in this as well because they can start to feed you information about what’s happening with your existing customers. We can begin to make assumptions that some of the pain points they’re feeling are also similar motivations that exist in their competitors. So, when we go after another customer or someone in the same sector, those insights resonate as similar opportunities for us to gain intelligence.

[00:18:43] Manoj Jasra: Thirdly, there’s a lot of good technology available, and I’m sure you’ve used a variety of them as well. The technologies we start to use, in addition to the typical LinkedIn and ZoomInfo, provide more robust information about the company and the person. Tools like Drop and Cognizant, especially in the United States and into EMEA, start to give you much more insight into specific technologies being used, organizational structures, and ways that our people are motivated. I think these tools help you get to that deeper understanding.

[00:19:17] Manoj Jasra: One of the tools that we’re using and trying out is called Inventurist, an AI-based tool. We’re piloting that right now, and it’s quite interesting. What it does is look at a specific company and examine all the things happening in the news cycle and the market around it. Through their AI technology, they gather insights, and then analysts prepare that information appropriately. I haven’t seen that before; usually, the information is something you calibrate yourself, but it’s nice to have an AI aggregator. They also have special analysts who tie everything together.

[00:19:54] Manoj Jasra: I would say the fourth one, especially in the startup and scale-up space, is that we typically have advisory boards and boards of directors. If you pick the right advisory board members, they’re usually very well connected because they’re ex-CIOs or ex-executives at different organizations. I think they provide a wealth of knowledge as well because they’ve been in the roles of your ICP often. They are great influencers of decisions and can tell you how the person in the seat that you’re targeting feels and what their motivations are. These are kind of like three or four ways that we try to get closer to 100 percent, and this might even get you, Steve, only to about 50 percent.

[00:20:30] Manoj Jasra: As you know, in the space of B2B marketing, it’s all about triggers and nuances. As we get closer, we get better. It is a moving target, but these are four or five ways that we look at RACP to get the details.

[00:20:43] Steve MacDonald: Yeah, I love that, and the idea that you never really get there. I had a CRO tell me that RACP is complex and always changing. There are always influencing factors. It’s not like we’re simply redefining our ICP; it’s changing. The ICP, what they need, their challenges, and their problems are always evolving, and they’re complex because you brought it up, right?

[00:21:04] Steve MacDonald: There’s a buying committee, and that buying committee is three to four times larger than it was 10 or 15 years ago. You have a very complex, sprawling ICP these days, and one of the biggest takeaways is that it’s the biggest competitive advantage. Those who are more curious and motivated to understand their ICP—if everything else is equal—have an advantage. On average, most companies in the AI space have between 20 to 30 competitors.

[00:21:32] Manoj Jasra: Yeah, I believe it. One other thing that people might find interesting is especially when you have a range of companies that you’re targeting. We go after companies that are, say, half a billion to those well over 150 billion. The ICP for a half-a-billion-dollar company is very different, and maybe even smaller when we look at health tech, in some cases, less than 500 million.

[00:21:55] Manoj Jasra: That means you’re targeting the CIO and likely three or four buyers because the CIO is the ultimate decision-maker in those types of companies. But imagine going into a multi-billion-dollar Fortune 1000 company, where they have not just one organization—the CIO—they have like 20 different CIOs of different business units, each with buying teams of 20 or 30.

[00:22:16] Manoj Jasra: Now you’re dealing with 100-plus people in different parts of the business, and you have to be sophisticated enough to understand that this person in the ICP bucket over here has a different problem set than this person over here in a different part of the business. They don’t know each other because the company has 100,000 people.

[00:22:32] Manoj Jasra: These nuances can’t be applied generically across your ICP because your ICP could be quite vast, and you need to be able to segment that appropriately too.

[00:22:41] Steve MacDonald: The complexity continues. I want to go back a little bit. After the roadblocks, you put out a budget content ICP. So, I’m going to ask you a question: on a scale of one to ten—where one has no impact on the growth and overall success and vitality of the business, and ten is vital to that growth—where would you put it on that scale?

[00:23:12] Manoj Jasra: Yeah, I’d have to put it in the realm of like an eight-plus for sure. I’ll tell you why. Many may say ten for sure, right? But in the world of networking and relationships, which a lot of scale-ups have to do, advisory board relationships, and executives have a lot of relationships, you can win business just through that. But to truly get the tech and continue to grow, I think that’s where the content starts to move into the eight to ten range, especially when you want consistent growth that’s not based on networking black books. It’s based on a demand generation engine. That’s why I would put it higher if you want consistent growth.

[00:23:49] Steve MacDonald: You know, there was a Forbes magazine article that had a quote saying that content marketing solves problems, and thought leadership sparks conversations. What I took away from that was, especially in this world where there’s a huge trend in the B2B self-marketing service journey, they’re waiting longer and longer to even want to talk to us. This isn’t a small group; this is over 80 percent of B2B buyers. What they’re doing is consuming more content to make their decisions in the same amount of time. They don’t have more time in their day.

[00:24:25] Steve MacDonald: So, the idea is how do we spark conversations earlier in the buyer’s journey, where we’re being relegated to later and later? That’s why I brought up that quote: content marketing solves problems, thought leadership sparks conversations. I just wanted to get your opinion on that and what you thought.

[00:24:46] Manoj Jasra: Yeah, I align with you. What I’m finding is that people don’t realize the number of touches it takes to get to a place where that MQL or even a lead turns into a sales-qualified lead. The scoring tells you that because you require a decent content journey to get there.

[00:25:02] Manoj Jasra: So, building the right set of assets that resonate with your ICP and getting them in front of them early enough in the right areas allows them to self-guide into a decision. I think you’ve probably read in your research how many decision-makers are now self-guiding; they’re doing their research. If you’re not in front of them where they’re doing the research, with the right collateral, when they’re early—obviously, it could be eBooks or white papers as you kind of move into the middle. It could be more relevant podcasts, sales scripts, and later on, it could be the service offering itself. I think understanding this, and how each one gets something closer and closer to an actual person in the pipeline, is highly critical.

[00:25:43] Manoj Jasra: On the PR side, one of the things that I just don’t think people understand is how important PR is. I think it’s a very important brand tool and can be used for demand generation as well if done correctly. The way I’ve done PR is by using good agencies that understand the value of putting someone’s top seven to ten thought leaders into the market and getting them into relevant publications, webinars, third-party articles, podcasts, and social media so they’re present.

[00:26:13] Manoj Jasra: Elevating them elevates the company and is a great way to show brand engagement. You can even correlate that to the top of the funnel content, even though it feels like PR is just about launching a press release. If you do this correctly by getting into the right publication and the news story of what’s happening, rather than trying to make your news—because good luck getting a press release.

[00:26:37] Manoj Jasra: Elon Musk has launched some interesting products; he’s making news. So, now you should jump on that news that is relevant, catch that story, and be part of it, getting your right thought leaders to give their perspective. The right agencies can help you be in the right moments because they have the relationships to get you there. But I think people often view PR as just launching a press release and paying a couple of thousand dollars to distribute it in the U.S. and Canada or EMEA for impressions.

[00:27:06] Manoj Jasra: You know, we’ve done PR, but I think if you do it correctly, it can yield not just impressions but good demand, elevate your thought leadership in a branded way, and lift all boats with seven or ten credible people in the organization, rather than just the brand itself.

[00:27:22] Steve MacDonald: And yet, what a lot of people don’t realize is that we put terms like brand and thought leadership into the long-term bucket, right? I had another three-time B2B CMO, and she said that today’s brand is tomorrow’s demand. So, without that brand, we aren’t going to have the short-term demand that we’re looking at. All kinds of studies talk about how thought leadership, especially in a spaghetti-like buyer’s journey, might be a thought leadership piece at the very end of the buyer’s journey that helps give trust and credibility and push it over the edge.

[00:28:04] Steve MacDonald: That thought has a significant impact throughout the buyer’s journey. So, I love that PR that promotes the brand and thought leadership can also promote demand generation. It makes perfect sense to me.

[00:28:17] Manoj Jasra: Yeah. I think the key thing here is to correlate the two together; the CMO that you mentioned is perfectly accurate. One generates the ability to compete. Suddenly, doing brand and PR properly earns you the right to compete because now people know who you are. The content, as it gets closer and closer, earns the right to win that business. Oftentimes, if you’re a scale-up and you’re competing against a giant like Delight or somebody massive, everyone knows who that is. So, when you launch a piece of content, they can’t place it. You know, “I’ve never heard of you.” Therefore, the branded component of doing PR effectively or other brand campaigns is critical. Sometimes even the best content might not resonate because they don’t have the trust that they’ve heard of you before. That’s why these kinds of components work together.

[00:29:06] Steve MacDonald: I love it, and I’ve got to tell you, I’ve been having such a good time. I didn’t even look at the time. We’ve talked about so much. What I want to do is ask you two more questions. When we talk about creating value, what haven’t we touched on here that you wanted to mention?

[00:29:22] Manoj Jasra: I think that it’s one of the biggest topics right now, which is the expectation of the CMO and the expectation of the marketing team is faster because the board and the CEO all know that AI exists in terms of the capabilities to get to market faster as well. Now, with those assets available to create content, variations, test use cases, lead scoring, and understand customer engagement, everything has to be done in a fraction of the time. This isn’t a secret anymore.

[00:29:54] Manoj Jasra: I think that marketers who aren’t leveraging this capability are actually behind the eight ball because their CEO and their board know that they have that capability in hand. So, that time to value becomes even crunched because of the capability of building assets to get to market to begin with. Anything that we didn’t talk about, I would be remiss to mention, because that is on everyone’s minds right now too.

[00:30:16] Steve MacDonald: Yeah, and you talk about the expectations for creating value quickly, which is far accelerated from what it was a year or two ago. If there was one thought, a single takeaway that you wanted people to have from listening to this episode, what would that be?

[00:30:32] Manoj Jasra: I’ll reiterate the word communication. Not everyone is a good communicator; I was there, and I’m probably still learning as well. But being able to communicate the strategy, which talks about getting alignment, and then communicating why you need the investment, and what the roadmap is doing, including results, roadblocks, and momentum, is so critical to being successful. You can build an amazing marketing strategy, an amazing roadmap, or an amazing budget or marketing calendar, but if you don’t have alignment because you didn’t communicate properly, missed the wrong stakeholders, or didn’t articulate in a way that resonates with the CEO, it’s game over. The core of that is communication.

[00:31:22] Steve MacDonald: I love that you just outlined three different levels of communication, all internally within the organization. Hey Manoj, if people had additional questions for you, would it be appropriate for us to give out a link to your LinkedIn profile so they could reach out to you?

[00:31:37] Manoj Jasra: Yeah, absolutely. I’m very active on LinkedIn and check it often so please do. Thank you.

[00:31:42] Steve MacDonald: Well, thanks for coming on and sharing and giving us perspectives on the levels of communication and alignment that we need to show value quickly. I appreciate you coming on and sharing.

[00:31:56] Manoj Jasra: Yeah, thanks for having me. I had a lot of fun, and I hope it was super valuable to your listeners out there. We went through 44 minutes real quick, and it was such an interesting conversation. I hope you found it valuable too. I had a good time actually.

[00:32:08] Steve MacDonald: Well, good. Thank you. I learned a lot!