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
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
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
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.”
What Clients Say
The Connective Good Blog
Building an AI Value Prop Without the AI Washing
How can a CMO build an AI value prop WITHOUT AI washing? Doug Straton, CMO of Bazaarvoice, joined me for this robust conversation. You'll hear about: What makes an AI value prop actually defensible Moving from a 'selfish' AI approach, where individuals automate their...
The Anatomy Of An AI Center Of Excellence In GTM
It's one thing for a small marketing team of a few people to play around with AI and fuel marketing initiatives. But it's quite another to build an AI capability at scale in GTM, across a large global team. I talked with Audrea Madey for The Get podcast about her...
The AI-First CMO’s Guide: What to Break, What to Build, What to Bolster
With all the FOMO and shiny objects out there around AI, how can CMOs maintain their balance and their impact? I invited Suresh Balasubramanian, CMO of Qualio, to join me to discuss this -- and more -- on The Get podcast. Lots to learn here - it's a very unique...
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:
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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