In a competitive digital world where attention spans are short and businesses are looking to build relationships with their customers, high-touch strategies have been shown to increase loyalty and lifetime value. In this episode, we talk with the CTO & VP of Product Marketing at Pegasystems—an organization that has built relationships with the world’s most leading brands—so that you can learn tips from the experts and apply it to your strategy too. Plus, you’ll hear insights into digital marketing strategies that activate vs. generate excess content, and much more.
In a competitive digital world where attention spans are short and businesses are looking to build relationships with their customers, high-touch strategies have been shown to increase loyalty and lifetime value. In this episode, we talk with Don Schuerman, the CTO & VP of Product Marketing at Pegasystems—an organization that has built relationships with the world’s leading brands—so that you can learn tips from the experts and apply it to your strategy too. Plus, you’ll hear insights into digital marketing strategies that activate vs. generate excess content, and much more.
Key Takeaways
Quotes:
“That [high] level of customer intimacy and understanding is essential, especially from marketers in technology and enterprise technology where it's not enough to have a strong message and vision. You also have to continuously make that relevant to your customer and audience.”
“Measuring engagement across a holistic lens helps me as a marketer remind our broader team that it's not just our job to get a bunch of people clicking on the website—it's actually getting that website to convert.”
“Most organizations generate plenty of content—probably too much content. Really, what you really have is an activation problem. Can you effectively activate the content?”
Episode Timestamps:
* (01:41) - Don’s unique role as CTO & VP of Product Marketing at Pegasystems
* (06:50) - Segment: The Trust Tree
* (12:09) - Looking at engagement holistically
* (19:40) - Segment: The Playbook
* (28:24) - Segment: The Dust Up
* (31:23) - Segment: Quick Hits
Sponsor:
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Links
[00:01:41] Ian: I am Ian Faison, CEO of Caspian Studios, and today we are joined by a special guest. Don, how are you?
[00:01:46] Don: I am great. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.
[00:01:51] Ian: Excited to get into Pega. Y'all are really, really cool. For, for people who don't know about Pega Systems and all the cool, uh, marketing that y'all are doing, so let's get into it. How did you very first get started in marketing?
[00:02:03] Don: My first job in marketing was running product marketing. , although I think I had been doing marketing prior to that, maybe I just didn't know what it, that what I was doing was marketing. So prior to that I was working in our pre-sales organization and as a part of our pre-sales organization, you know, started building some of my own content in some cases, you know, explainer videos.
[00:02:29] In some cases how two documents in some cases. I was actually working with people on our brand side to, to. Build almost kind of like humorous videos that explain different aspects of our technology. And, and so it kind of became clear that I really had an interest in doing that and got an opportunity to, to move into the marketing organization full-time to, to do product marketing.
[00:02:53] And, and over time that expanded into both a strategy role inside the, the broader sort of company function, but but also taking on more aspects of the, the marketing organization. Brand and corporate communications, pr, digital, et cetera. We do not often get a lot
[00:03:12] Ian: of CTO
[00:03:13] Don: slash VPs of marketing.
[00:03:15] Ian: I will say that it is not a common thing, but really cool.
[00:03:19] And, and it seems like with marketers at the forefront of technology more than ever before, perhaps a trend, I don't know. You tell me.
[00:03:27] Don: Yeah, I mean, I, I, I think so. I mean, I, I, I, I think, you know, obviously it's a, it's a bit of. Of an interesting sort of weird animal combination of titles and functionality.
[00:03:40] But I think for Pega it works. You know, as a company and as a brand, we are, you know, really pretty fiercely committed to the power of our technology, some of the unique aspects of the architecture of our technology and how that capability uniquely delivers value. Our clients, who are some of the largest organizations in the.
[00:04:01] And you know, as such, being able to combine a little bit of the, the marketing brain. You know, how do you construct a message? How do you understand your buyer? How do you actually, you know, put something compelling in front of that buyer that's gonna get them to engage. With more of the technology understanding of like, well, what does this stuff really do and how does it really work?
[00:04:19] And what's really the experience with a buyer implementing it and purchasing it? And I think my ability to kind of bring those two together, I think is, is what has allowed me to, to succeed in, in the job to, to the extent that I have. Yeah. So
[00:04:33] Ian: zooming in on Pega and, and the company, can you share a little bit more about the type of company it is, the size and all.
[00:04:40] Don: Yeah, so we'll be over just a little over a billion dollars in revenue. And we're, uh, an enterprise software company. We've actually been in the space for, for quite a long time, but over the, the reaping years have really kind of grown and doubled down on some of our investments. And what we provide is a software that we call low-code platform for AI powered decisioning and workflow automat.
[00:05:03] So we work with some of the largest brands in the world. Think places like Citibank, the US Treasury, H M R C, which is the, the UK equivalent of B I R S or Vodafone, large tele communication provider in Europe. And we work with these clients to take our platform, which is really about how do I use AI to optimize decisions and how do I use automation technology like workflow and robotics to automate the work that gets done inside that organiz.
[00:05:31] and we're really focused on the types of work in that organization that surround their customers. So things like how do they make decisions about how they engage their customers and put the right offers and actions in front of customers on all channels. How do they onboard and acquire new customers and suppliers?
[00:05:48] How do they operationalize and automate their servicing processes? How do they streamline some of the core operations that actually build the products and put together the products? And then how do they resolve exceptions? How do they fix things, you know, when things go wrong over the course of a, a, a customer engagement.
[00:06:06] So using our technology across those areas, you know, and, you know, the best way to kind of look at what we do is to think through a couple of examples of like, what clients use us for. So, you know, you look at, you look at the, the, the example of an organization like Vodafone, and they use us to drive next best actions every time they're talking with a.
[00:06:25] our realtime AI engine is figuring out, based on that customer's profile, what is the right offer, or it could be the right action, like a, a customer service action to present to that customer independent of the channel, that customers, and that's constantly learning and evolving in real time. And for organizations like Vodafone that drives hundreds of millions of dollars of additional profit each year.
[00:06:49] Let's get
[00:06:50] Ian: to our first segment, the trust Tree. With the knowledge you've been given,
[00:06:54] Don: you are now on the inside of what I like to call the circle of trust. What I thought we were in the trust tree within the nest. Are we not? Tell us a little bit more about
[00:07:04] Ian: your buyers. I know you mentioned a few of 'em.
[00:07:07] What does that ideal customer profile look like for y'all and the people
[00:07:10] Don: who signed the dotted? We engage, to be quite honest with a, a relatively small number of very large organizations. So there are about a couple hundred organizations that are really inside of our target audience. And because we're doing pretty core processing for them.
[00:07:27] Right. You know, again, another example of the kind of stuff we do is the 2020 US census was run on Pega software. We, every response to the US census was processed by Pega. Oh, wow. So these are pretty core mission critical things that we. So our buyers very much sit at the upper levels of these organizations, you know, in the, in the CIO or global cio or in the departmental c o office or the presidents of very specific lines of business.
[00:07:54] So that the payments area of a bank or the customer servicing area of, of a health plan or a telecommunications company. And, you know, the most important thing right to, to, for us in those buyers and for, for those buyers when they look at us. One, fundamentally, do we understand their business? Do we really know, really understand what they're trying to achieve as an organization, what their current technology landscape looks like?
[00:08:21] And have we done the work to really match and map up what our technology can do to the needs that they have? And that's why marketing techniques like account-based marketing, where we really invest in getting to know that customer, you know, almost as a, as a, as a market of one in and of themselves. Are really essential to how we've been able to grow and succeed with our clients.
[00:08:43] Y'all made a
[00:08:43] Ian: big shift to, to ABM as as a core part of your marketing strategy. Tell me
[00:08:47] Don: about what that was like. As we really realized that a lot of our growth was coming from engaging with a core set of clients, really understanding them and then consistently delivering value back to them. You know, the best marketing strategy that we could see was one that was really tightly aligned with those.
[00:09:06] So, you know, that led us to look, you know, pretty deeply into account-based marketing to think about both the best practices, right. That are, that are needed for that. But I also think that, you know, in order for account-based marketing to succeed, it's not just something that marketing can do, it has to be done in lockstep, for example, with the sales rep because you, in a, in an effective account based marketing, The sales organization treats the account based marketer is, is almost just a member of their account team, a member of their core sales and strategy team around that org.
[00:09:40] So really working through to make sure that not only were we putting the right programs in place from an ABM perspective, but also busting through the silos that sometimes separate sales and marketing, um, which I'm sure many people have kind of struggled with one way or another in the past. And for ABM to work, you really have to cut through a lot of the.
[00:09:59] Yeah. That's great. I love
[00:10:00] Ian: that. And how's
[00:10:01] Don: it, how's it going? I think it's going well, right? I think, you know, we've been able to, you know, for example, working with a, a large financial services firm in Asia, you know, we've been able to work through our account team, identify both champions inside that organization, and then use our account based marketing arm to promote and drive new opportunities, both for us inside that organization, but also for our champions to grow.
[00:10:27] And expand, you know, their impact, the values that they deliver. And some of that is through, you know, driving very specific account messaging and account content into the organization. Some of it is through driving account specific events, org specific events, Pega Days, education days, and some of that is helping the account promote their own success within the organization.
[00:10:50] So making sure that when we do bring new applications and new programs, , our champions and our stakeholders have good tools to amplify that to their counterparts in other divisions or other areas of the organization. Yeah. Is that,
[00:11:04] Ian: so is that like a cross-sell upsell thing? Like why do you want to do
[00:11:07] Don: that?
[00:11:08] Yeah, I, it definitely is sort of a cross-sell upsell or a growth and expansion thing. You know, the, the, the way, the way that, you know, we look at a lot of these organizations. They are massive markets in and of themselves, and totally, even though we may have been able to deliver some success in one area of the organization, we pretty much every organization that we work with, there are other departments, other divisions, other use cases where our technology that again, because it's a platform and because it focuses on automating process.
[00:11:41] there are always going to be other processes in that organization that we can help 'em automate that we can help 'em optimize. So it's all about making sure that we're successful in what we, what we deliver, and then using that success and that value to grow into other areas of the organization. We know how
[00:11:58] Ian: important customer marketing is.
[00:12:00] We know it's critical, but if you don't look at it as more of a holistic piece of your ABM strategy, it's, it's never gonna be as success.
[00:12:09] Don: True customer intimacy is hugely important. And, you know, being able to, one of the things that I get to do in, in my role as CTO is, you know, not only do I work with our marketing teams, but I spend a lot of times with our customers and with CTOs and CIOs at our customers, talking about their architecture, talking about their challenges, helping them design how they might wanna deploy Pega or how they might wanna deploy.
[00:12:37] In conjunction with other solutions and other technologies, and that level of customer intimacy and customer understanding, I think is really essential, especially for marketers in technology and enterprise technology where, you know, it's, it's not enough to have a strong message and a strong vision. You have to have that, but you also have to have the ability to continuously make that relevant to your customer and your audience.
[00:13:04] and you know, I think one of the best ways that you can do that is by engaging with them on a relatively frequent basis.
[00:13:11] Ian: Hmm. When you say engaging with them on a frequent basis, like what are the types of engagements that you, that
[00:13:16] Don: you would do? I think a couple of things. One is I think that there is a real appetite, again, as we're coming back, back to do things in person for clients to engage with the partners that they work.
[00:13:32] But, but any way that drives value in a way that is really sort of pragmatic and tactical and detail driven. And I think, you know, I, I think, you know, one of the things that I, that I believe is where I'm seeing a little bit of a shift away from, from events that, that are more kind of touchy feely experiences, uhhuh back towards things that actually bring some pragmatic.
[00:14:00] where can I really dig in and workshop and, and learn about new technology? How can I sit down and network and talk to other clients who have solved similar problems and walk away because I walk away with something new? Because I think, I think all of our clients are being asked in demanding, like all of us, to justify the value of their time that they're spending and the money that they're.
[00:14:23] So they, they wanna really make sure that they're investing their time, they're investing their travel budgets, they're investing their, ultimately their, you know, for us ultimately their software and technology spend on things that drive real value into their organization. Any other
[00:14:39] Ian: things that you wanted to talk about regarding like different, just different ways that you're, you're driving engagement or that you track engagement or thinking about engagement or things that are working for engage?
[00:14:51] Don: I mean, one of the things that we think is important is sort of looking at engagement holistically, right? And so what I mean by that is there are lots of things that are, that are engagement with our customers, some of which are marketing group. So they visit our website, they watch a video, they download an asset.
[00:15:10] They we're, we're about to run our big, we're bringing our user event, you know, which is, uh, you know, usually close to five to 6,000 person user. It's coming back in person for the first time in four years. Right. So, awesome. Obviously coming and attending that event is a great bit of engagement, but so is replying to an email from a salesperson.
[00:15:30] So is taking a meeting with one of our salespeople and to me the, the way that I get to pipeline is ultimately I need to get my client to a meeting with one of our salespeople. That's ultimately what I need to get them to. And so, measuring, measuring, engage. Across that holistic lens helps me as a marketer think about it reminds, you know, our broader team.
[00:15:55] Like it's not just our job to get a bunch of people clicking on the website, it's actually getting that website to convert to, can I get you to sit down with the salesperson? Can I get you to have a conversation? Cuz that's the point at which we're really gonna be able to engage and we're really gonna be able to drive a conversation.
[00:16:11] Ian: Any other thoughts on innovating ABM strategy? I know you've put a lot of thoughts into abm.
[00:16:16] Don: I mean, one of the other things that we've been spending a lot of time is how do we best align all the other functions inside of marketing to support, right. So, you know, it is really one of the things that's been really rewarding over the last couple months is watching what happens when we take our creative teams and we've got some just awesome people in our creative team and point them for a couple of days at a single client.
[00:16:45] and have them work with the team on that account to come up with, whether it's a new video or a marketing message or a story in which we can engage. And it leads to a couple, it leads to really cool things. It leads to one just really great marketing material if it is so tightly aligned around what the account wants.
[00:17:04] But the other thing is those that creative team now leaves that inspired with ideas that they can then go apply to other places. , but they've learned it really in the crucible of like, how do I engage and how do I go directly into this account? And it again, helps break down some of those traditional marketing sales silos.
[00:17:24] Cuz once you're, once you're operating, once you make the client the center of gravity, now everybody's operating around that same goal. How do we support this client? And that just becomes a really, really powerful teaming and collaboration structure. So
[00:17:39] Ian: in theory, you need to have them calendared.
[00:17:42] Don: You don't know where
[00:17:45] Ian: you need the space, right?
[00:17:47] Like, is it this account that needs it? Is it this account? And then triage it. So just curious how you schedule and,
[00:17:52] Don: and do that stuff. Yeah. And, and that's, you know, I, I will say that that's one of the things that I think we're still trying to figure out, right? Because there is this mix in ESP and it's, especially in the ABM world, between the things that you can plan.
[00:18:04] Like we're gonna try to build this cadence conversation with the calendar. And the things that you can't plan. Like, Hey, we got a meeting with this senior executive and we want all hands on deck to make sure that that thing is impressive as hell. Right? So, so like, and you wanna support that. You wanna be a part of that.
[00:18:20] Right? So, so finding that balance so that we actually have the capacity in the system and the flex in the system to support that, I think is something that we're, we're continuing to, to work through. You know, one of the, one of the other things that I, I, I do frankly believe and. This may be just unique to Pega, but I, but I sense that this is true across marketing in general.
[00:18:41] I generally think in most cases marketing doesn't have a lack of content problem. Most, most organizations, people I talk to, they generate plenty of content. They probably generate too much content. And really the question is, the, what you really have is an activation problem. Can you effectively activate the content that you.
[00:19:04] And you know, one of the things we're trying to focus on, you know, as we go into this year is, you know, maybe actually building less content, but spending a little bit more of the time on the activation question of how do we make it relevant to this client? How do we make sure that we've actually had the time to engage with our salespeople so that they can truly understand some of the stuff that we're putting on our website so they can know how to use that website to drive engagement with their, their clients.
[00:19:28] Right. And I think you get that time to activate if you. Shrink and reduce maybe of the amount of content that you're actually, all right, let's get to our next segment,
[00:19:40] Ian: the playbook. This is what's great
[00:19:42] Don: about sports. This is what the greatest thing about sports is. You play to win the game. Hello, you play
[00:19:49] Ian: to win the game.
[00:19:51] This is where you open up your playbook and talk about the tactics that help you win, which you've been doing honestly a ton of. But what are your three channels or tactics that are your uncut budget?
[00:20:02] Don: So, I mean, obviously I think ABM, we, we've, we've talked a lot about that. You know, I actually would say, especially now that we're getting back to in-person, our annual user conference is a massive generator value generator for us.
[00:20:17] I think it's also something that's just really important to our clients. We, we work really hard to make sure that not only is that event fun and engaging, but it actually creates an opportunity for people to. With a better understanding to network and meet with other clients. I mean, I think one of the best things I can do as a marketer is connect one client with another client so that they can inform each other and they can learn from each other.
[00:20:41] And I think the best at, and I think that's, some of that can only happen at a, a big in-person event where we can all kind of sit down in a tech pavilion or a, you know, a, an expo and see the technology, but also talk to each other about how it. So that, that's another, that's another big one. And then, you know, I think, I think digital still is essential, you know, to how we, how we do, and how we drive things.
[00:21:08] You know, doesn't matter who you look at, whether you ask Gartner or Forrester or whoever, right? You know, large majorities of the buying journey are happening on digital channels. And I think as marketers, especially again in technology, We have to provide the capability for our customer to self-educate for our, for our customer to actually find the answers that they want along that buying journey, and especially for enterprise sales, where you're not selling to an individual, you're selling to a team, you're selling to like the business owner, but you're also selling to somebody who represents the end users, and you're selling to a technology person or you're selling to a chief architect, or you're selling.
[00:21:51] Uh, security officer who wants to make sure that everything is gonna be compliant from a data perspective. You need that set of digital sort of question answering to make sure that all of those stakeholders feel comfortable and confident about the buying decisions that they're making. What
[00:22:08] Ian: about some of the paid channels and the paid avenues?
[00:22:12] How are you approaching that in 2023?
[00:22:15] Don: You know, paid social for us continues from a, from. Especially from an ABM perspective, it'd be interesting because it, it, we get a degree of the targeting, right? That we, we weren't, you don't necessarily get through others. We also get a big impact through paid search.
[00:22:30] Right? So, and we've done a lot of work over the last couple of years to really align and get our paid and organic search working together. Because if I can, if I need a force multiplier right out of what I'm doing in search engine optimiz, and then hit that also with the the paid side on key topic areas and key search terms, especially search terms that we see are important to, again, our target client community.
[00:23:03] right. If I can, if I can actually jointly optimize organic and paid search, I almost kinda get a one plus one equals three multiplier in my ability to attract Untack from our client base that are looking for solutions or looking to learn about the kinds of things that we can help them do. What's one thing that you
[00:23:22] Ian: might not be investing in this year might, you might spend or might not be working or fa
[00:23:27] Don: We actually aren't gonna be doing a lot of what I would call.
[00:23:32] General, just big brand awareness or brand marketing. Right. You know, at, at the way our business is set up, I don't necessarily care about broad market brand awareness. I care that like a hundred critical buyers at the three to 400 critical accounts that I care about know who we are. Like that, that, that's my audience.
[00:23:55] That's my, that's my market. Big sort of wide net coverage brand stuff actually dilutes my message. It costs a lot of money. Yep. And it doesn't actually get me to the people that I want to get to. And I think I can be much more targeted and surgical about where I put my spend to make sure that the eyeballs I'm getting are actually the eyeballs that I want.
[00:24:23] Let's talk about
[00:24:24] Ian: pega.com and the website. How do you think about the.
[00:24:28] Don: So, so you know that we talked about that term earlier, buyer enablement, right? Yeah, I, I think about that website as, as being buyer enablement. And I think, you know, I think that website needs to, to do three big things. One is it needs to just quickly and succinctly explain who we are, what we do at how we're different.
[00:24:49] Like, I, I want, I, I, I, I want someone who comes to our website. Be able to very quickly get an understanding of how Pega could potentially help them and what's unique about Pega that they might not be able to get from, from other vendors. The second thing I think that website needs to to do somewhat is sim, and this is tricky, but it needs to be simultaneously provocative and pragmatic, right?
[00:25:14] I need to be provocative enough that I get your attention right. So, but at the same time, you know, as we talked earlier, . I don't think buyers right now are, will satisfy with just being provoked or inspired. They want to be able to turn to something, you know, that they can do right now. So like one of the big messages or themes we're talking about this year is this idea of this shift towards autonomous, right?
[00:25:43] And how ai, whether it's chat, G P T, whether it's the stuff that's inside our cars, Isn't going to increasingly become self-learning, self optimizing. And the businesses, the clients that we serve are gonna actually have to build high degrees of autonomy in their business if they wanna stay competitive.
[00:26:00] Right? And that's sort of like a big bold futur estate. You know, self-driving cars are coming kind of vision. But I need to be very quickly be able to turn that to something pragmatic and say like, if you like that, if that's exciting to you, what's a project you could start next week that would put you on the path to.
[00:26:18] What's another organization like you doing right now today that's helping them build for that future? So connecting the provocative to the pragmatic becomes really important. And then the third thing that I look for our website to do is take the buyer on their buying journey. I know that I have to engage with a number of different personas across that buying journey, and I know that at every stage of the journey, there are a series of questions that they're gonna need to answer.
[00:26:46] What's this technology actually do? Will it integrate with my existing systems? Does it meet my security standards? You know, where have you done this before? All those questions. I wanna make it easy for the buyer to answer because I know increasingly the buyer is expecting to go to find those answers to
[00:27:03] Ian: don.
[00:27:03] Any other plans for, for 2023 or, or things that you're excited about or testing or wanna explore or
[00:27:11] Don: anything like that? I'm excited to. To continue to, to get back to doing some in-person events and in-person communication with our clients. I still think that that's like a, I think that's incredible engagement.
[00:27:24] I also think that's the kind of engagement where we as a company and our clients, we can learn from each other best cuz it's truly a two-way conversation in a lot of those, those events. I'm excited for that and, and I'm, I'm really excited to continue to find ways to break down what may. Traditionally silos between marketing, right?
[00:27:47] How do we get product marketing and ABM teams working together so that you know the product marketers are partnering with the ABM team to build product content, like even the crucible of a client, and really test it and validate it with a true client? And then bring that back to be used in other places in the organization.
[00:28:09] And I think, and I think the ability to find those, whether it's like with product marketing or creative or how our video teams support A B M I, I think finding those, those cross sort of marketing channel ways of collaboration I think are are really exciting.
[00:28:24] Ian: All right, let's get to our next segment. The dust up
[00:28:27] Don: Uhoh.
[00:28:28] Here comes treble. You may have heard that there was a dust up involving yours truly, and now we've got a wild scrum with fights breaking out all over the place and it's getting really ugly cause we've
[00:28:40] Ian: got punches and kicks. We talking about healthy tension, whether that's with your board or sales teams, your competitor, or someone else.
[00:28:45] If you had a memorable
[00:28:46] Don: dust up, Don, this is, I think before I was in marketing. When I was working with members of the marketing team to, to create some content, we had, we, we had for many years built some really strong content and every year at S K O we would showcase these new videos that were kind of fun, but also educational and creative.
[00:29:05] And because of that, a couple of us working on those had kind of gotten a degree of sort of free reign to do what we want. And one year we produced a series of videos. Kind of pushed the envelope a little bit. They were really pushing into trying being edgy and funny and, you know, frankly, we kind of pushed the envelope too far and we maybe landed in the edgy, funny to us, but not necessarily achieving the educational goals that we had had.
[00:29:36] And you know what, what, what I appreciated about that, right? The fact that one, there was a recognition of the failure, right? You know, our, our CEO actually pulled a couple of us aside and said, those didn't work, and we should probably stop them and shut them down. And like, I know you were planning on showing some other ones the next day.
[00:29:58] We shouldn't show 'em. They, we should just can. Right? But what, but what, what I appreciated also out of that was the message that followed on, which is, but don't stop trying new. , like, don't, don't stop trying to push the envelope. Don't stop trying to come up with, you know, better ways of explaining and better understanding.
[00:30:20] I think that that, you know, creating a, we talk a lot, you know, in, in Agile right, about being able to fail fast and, and, and move forward. But I do think there is something about creating some space where there's, there's room to try new things. , there's the, there's the self-awareness when you can recognize that something isn't working and not holding onto it just because it was a passion project or something that you felt really strong about.
[00:30:47] But also being able to do that without blame and without recrimination and operating. You know, I think, I think so much of working in life and in business is around assuming good intentions. Right? And operate in a mode where you like, yeah, I'm like, like you did that cuz we wanted to try something new.
[00:31:03] It didn't work. That's. Let's learn from that lesson and let's move on to something. Let's, let's, let's move on and do something, you know, that's more effective in the future.
[00:31:11] Ian: Alright, let's get to our final segment. Quick hits. These are quick questions and quick answers. Just like how qualified.com helps companies generate pipeline faster.
[00:31:23] Tap in your greatest asset, your website to identify your most valuable visitors, and instantly start sales conversations quick and. Just like these questions, don, go to qualified.com to learn more quick hits. Don,
[00:31:38] Don: are you ready? I am number one. What
[00:31:41] Ian: hidden talent or skill is not
[00:31:42] Don: on your resume? I have 20 years as a semi-professional improv comic and have written eight pieces of musical theater.
[00:31:52] Oh,
[00:31:53] Ian: that's cool. Who knew it wasn't on your resume? Would you have a favorite book, podcast or TV show that you've been checking out recently?
[00:31:58] Don: I am a huge fan and regular listener to the WTF podcast by Mark Merrin and Oh yeah, I love that. I love it cuz it's authentic and it's consistent. Every, every Tuesday or every Monday, every Thursday there's gonna be a new episode.
[00:32:13] Do you have
[00:32:13] Ian: favorite non-marketing hobby that maybe sorta indirectly makes you a
[00:32:17] Don: better. I mean, I would, I would say, you know, prior to kids improv was that hobby. Yeah. Post kids. I really like to cook and, and I think being able to quickly sort of survey a set of ingredients, figure out a plan and put something together of how do you make the most of that is a lot of what we have to do as marketers as well.
[00:32:41] What.
[00:32:43] Ian: Would you give to a first time VP of marketing that was trying to figure out their marketing
[00:32:49] Don: strategy? Spend time with your clients, spend time with your clients, and spend time with your product teams. You know, ultimately marketing's job is translation. Marketing's job is, can I take what our product can do and can I make it relevant to the needs of our clients?
[00:33:05] And you can't do that as a marketer if you don't really understand your products and you don't really understand your. If you weren't
[00:33:14] Ian: in marketing at all or business even, what do you think you'd be doing?
[00:33:18] Don: Either teaching philosophy at like a university somewhere or maybe like working as a dramaturg, helping, helping a theater, produce plays, and.
[00:33:30] Debating the ideas contained inside those place. That's awesome.
[00:33:33] Ian: Don. Thanks so much for joining. For our listeners, you can go to pega.com, check out the website, check out all the cool stuff that they got going on. Donna, anything, anything that we missed? Any final thoughts, anything
[00:33:43] Don: to plug? I I, I just wanna throw a big shout out to what, to all the people in the marketing team at Pega.
[00:33:50] World cross-functional team across abm, product marketing, core corporate marketing, and I get to work with just a, a, a great bunch of professionals who are not only really good at what they do, but just really great people and, and that's. You know, that's something that I, I consider myself very lucky to have in new life, so.
[00:34:07] Awesome. Thanks ya. Take care. Big thanks. Mangen Visionaries is brought to you by our friends@qualified.com, a conversational marketing company that's on a mission to transform the way B2B companies sell. Go to qualified.com to learn more.