Recruiting the 'make money' marketing leaders, not the 'make it pretty' ones

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The Connective Good is a boutique retained executive search practice with a hyper-focus: recruiting CMOs and VPs of Marketing in B2B SaaS.

Chief Marketing Officer | VP Marketing | VP Revenue Marketing / Demand Generation / Growth | VP Digital | VP Product Marketing | VP Customer Marketing | VP Marketing Operations | VP Brand / Corporate Marketing

The CMO Hiring Market

CMO Recruiting In B2B SaaS: Insights — Read

Scale-ups

Your CMO candidate with the perfect scale-up experience could be a liability — More 

Podcast: The Get

How AI is reframing and reinventing the CMO role: the theme on The Get this season — Check it out

Representative Projects

Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer

for a B2B SaaS company in the public safety category

VP of Marketing and Sales

for a leading car-sharing company

Global VP of Marketing Data & Technology

for a large SaaS tech company

VP of Marketing Analytics

Evangelizing and explaining analytics to consumer marketers

VP of Marketing

for a cybersecurity company funded by Bain Capital

CMO

Martech/data management SaaS company backed by Vista

VP Marketing

Fintech SaaS company backed by Resurgens

SVP Global Demand Generation

Disaster recovery SaaS company backed by Vista

Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer

SaaS Public safety company backed by TCV

VP Digital Strategy

App dev SaaS company backed by KKR

Global VP, Marketing Data & Technology

Public company in travel management software

Chief Marketing & Experience Officer

Tech solutions brokerage backed by Columbia

SVP Marketing

Risk management SaaS company backed by Gryphon

CMO

Healthcare IT company backed by Bessemer

SVP Brand Experience

Low-code app dev company backed by Vista

SVP Marketing

Martech company backed by Clearhaven

SVP Marketing

Vertical-specific SaaS company backed by Serent

Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer

Cybersecurity company backed by Frontier

Contact

Why Clients Choose The Connective Good

Specialization

100% focused on marketing

Dedication

Focus on 3 searches at a time, max

Speed

Slate of 3-5 candidates within 2 weeks; 80% of clients hire from that initial slate

Diversity

Commitment to diverse slates of candidates

Agility

Pivots are easy when you don’t have a lot of cooks in the kitchen

Staying Power

The tenure of placed executives tends to be significantly longer than industry average

The Connective Good Process

A repeatable process that has led to delighted clients and sky-high retention rates.

Discovery

Your culture and needs are unique. First up: immersion in your culture, through detailed intake interviews with key stakeholders, and often spending time in your office. This helps in representing your particular culture to candidates and bringing you people who are additive to it.

Positioning

Most job specs are boring. They focus just on what the company needs. You’ll get a compelling job spec and other ways to pierce the attention barrier with candidates, like videos. Also, you’ll listen to and shape the elevator pitch that candidates will hear.

Scouting

The best candidates are not necessarily out there looking actively. They have to be wooed. You’ll get a diverse set of top candidates, even if it takes hundreds of conversations.

Evaluating

Marketing leaders can make a great first impression, but you don’t want the person who just interviews well. You want the person who will be the best at the job. Every candidate goes through 2 rounds of evaluation before you meet them, to rule out the ‘false positives.’ You’ll go beyond interviews and evaluate the actual work that candidates do.

Selling

A sky-high acceptance rate on job offers, as the process is so careful and robust. 

“Loved the speed, hustle, and communication! Erica quarterbacked a range of inputs into a clear and compelling story/spec quickly, then got profiles in front of the group to calibrate quickly. She did a great job communicating to ensure the right stakeholders had the right information at the right time, and/or that she had the proper guidance to move forward and make progress. There was no ‘well I was waiting to hear back from you’.”

“Selfishly, I’d prefer to keep Erica’s talents a secret, but I appreciate her and value our partnership too much to withhold a ringing endorsement. Erica brings energy, focus, creativity, expertise, levity, professionalism and drive to her engagements. You experience this from the onboarding process to candidate pipelining, vetting, closing, and the post-mortem. She loves the challenge of finding outstanding talent and it shows. If you can find a way into her client roster, you won’t be disappointed.”

blueconic
Allocadia
Analytic Partners
CapitolCanary
Castellan
Concur
N Contracts

What Clients Say

She loves the challenge of finding outstanding talent and it shows. If you can find a way into her client roster, you won't be disappointed.

You provided proper scoping, good market intel, active and creative 'product marketing' when thinking through our needs and what's in the market, and good hustle.

You're a force multiplier – you pulled us together well, and there was no wasting of my time.

Selfishly, I'd prefer to keep Erica's talents a secret, but I appreciate her and value our partnership too much to withhold a ringing endorsement.

It was a no-brainer for us to choose Erica because of her depth of experience hiring for this kind of role in our type of company. The search was a great experience, beginning to end.

She nailed just about every conversation she had on our behalf — whether or not the prospect turned out to be a perfect fit or not.

Some search people disappear. You drove the process and invited us into it. It elevates you above others.

In the end, we had two outstanding candidates that left us in the enviable position of being able to be picky about the final decision.

Erica brings energy, focus, creativity, expertise, levity, professionalism and drive to her engagements.

Other search processes are three to six months; this one took two months.

You were accessible, responsive, flexible, and had a sense of urgency.

Most recruiters are biased and just want to close the deal. You're the only search person I fully trusted to do good reference calls. And you provided balanced, insightful briefs on candidates.

Loved the speed, hustle, and communication! There was no 'well I was waiting to hear back from you'.

This was the best recruiting process I have been a part of. A nice mix of scrappiness, organization, professionalism, and creativity.

Erica Seidel is a masterful recruiter of relevant marketing talent with a strong network and a process to ensure a great fit with your organizational needs and culture.

You were intentional with keeping the process moving (nudging where necessary). You gave white glove service to candidates, and you gave us good counsel to close the candidate.

Erica's network and understanding of the niche marketing talent pool is second to none.

Contact

The Connective Good Blog

All Posts
The Get: Finding And Keeping The Best Marketing Leaders in B2B SaaS

Check out The Get podcast at thegetpodcast.com

Recent themes have included:

  • The CMO and Board Relationship in B2B SaaS: From Fraught to Functional to Fabulous
  • Solving for the Scale Journey in B2B SaaS
  • Diversity in Marketing Leadership & Hiring

Listen to the latest episode here:

Leading AI Transformation Without Losing Your Team The Global CMO’s Guide
byErica Seidel

In this episode of The Get, host Erica Seidel talks with Debbie Umbach, CMO of M-Files, about landing – and fulfilling – a CMO role in the age of AI. Debbie describes building AI capability inside a 50-person global team, from hiring to designing new roles to leading change.

You will learn about:

  • Differentiating yourself in a CMO job search, and the role of AI in that
  • Key things to share with boards about your AI journey: not just what you’re doing but what is working well, what isn’t, and how you are building AI fluency on your team
  • Scaling AI fluency and transformation across a 50+ person marketing team
  • Carving out a new role: The AI GTM Transformation Leader
  • The persistent importance of context and taste in the CMO role
  • A framework for speedily building trust as a new CMO (Hint: balance authenticity, data, and empathy)
  • Change management tips for leading AI transformations, whether your team is big or small

Some quotes:

  • “Marketing is an ing. We’re always doing things. But WHY are we doing them, and what are the outcomes we’re looking for? I always am trying to get the team to think about, ‘okay, we’ve got these things to do, but why?’”
  • “You can’t just change for change’s sake. You can’t just say, ‘We want to use AI to be more productive.’ Instead, it’s: ‘Why are we changing? How are we going to get better? How is this going to make your job better and more fun? How are you going to get to do the things that are more interesting?’”

00:00 Welcome and Season Theme

01:20 Debbie’s Origin Story

03:30 Confidence and Speaking Up

04:40 Systems Thinking for AI

06:07 Winning the CMO Search

08:27 Showing AI in Interviews

09:12 AI Training and Org Design

12:43 AI SDR Teammate Mia

14:11 GTM Transformation Lead

19:43 New Roles and Knowledge Ops

21:10 Avoiding AI Slop

24:17 Context and Positioning

29:04 Hiring Questions That Reveal

31:53 Change Management and Trust

37:00 Future of the CMO Role

38:34 Wrap Up and Credits

The Get is here to drive smart decisions around recruiting and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing. We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today’s top marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.

This season’s theme is focused on how AI is reshaping the CMO role: how you lead, how you hire, and how you get hired.”

The Get’s host is Erica Seidel, who runs The Connective Good, an executive search practice with a hyper-focus on recruiting CMOs and VPs of Marketing, especially in B2B SaaS.

If you are looking to hire a CMO or VP of Marketing of the ‘make money’ variety, rather than the ‘make it pretty’ variety, contact Erica at erica@theconnectivegood.com. You can also follow Erica on LinkedIn or sign up for her newsletter at TheConnectiveGood.com.

The Get is produced by the team at Simpler Media Productions.

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

OP3 – https://op3.dev/privacy

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About Erica Seidel, Founder

Erica Seidel is known for recruiting the ‘make money’ type of marketing leaders – not the ‘make it pretty’ ones. She founded The Connective Good, a boutique retained executive search practice, in 2011. The Connective Good is hyper-focused on placing CMOs and VPs of Marketing in high-growth B2B SaaS companies.

Previously, Erica ran Forrester Research’s global advisory businesses for CMOs and digital marketing leaders of Fortune 500 companies.

Erica has an MBA in Marketing from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in International Relations from Brown University. Her favorite job ever, aside from executive search, was being the Brown bear mascot in college.

“Erica Seidel is a masterful recruiter of relevant marketing talent with a strong network and a process to ensure a great fit with your organizational needs and culture.”

“Erica’s network and understanding of the niche marketing talent pool is second to none.”

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