Caitlin La Honta (00:05)

All right, hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Science of Sales and Marketing. I'm Caitlin La Honta, co-founder of Sirona Marketing and I'm hosting today's session with Letitia Rodley, who's a growth marketing leader and Sirona marketing partner. And today we're joined by Jamie Gier who's a seasoned healthcare CMO and executive with over 25 years of experience in the health tech industry. Jamie, thank you so much for joining us today. So yeah, thank you. Excited for this conversation, it's gonna be a really good one.

 

Jamie Gier (00:27)

I'm glad to be here, thank you.

 

Caitlin La Honta (00:32)

So you've seen life sciences and healthcare tech marketing evolve a lot in the last decades. One trend that you've called attention to and that we've talked about is how much the role of the CMO is evolving, especially in recent years, with a lot of companies actually eliminating this role entirely. So can you talk a bit about what's driving this trend from your perspective?

 

Jamie Gier (00:49)

Sure, yeah, it's getting a lot of play right now as we're seeing that either the CMO role is being eliminated, oftentimes it's coming back. I think you can point to different industries. Good example, while not healthcare is Lowe's So a few years ago, they got rid of their CMO and then two years later brought CMO back. And so I think...

 

Caitlin La Honta (01:10)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jamie Gier (01:10)

in cases where that is happening, you do see like this resurgent of the role. I think the other driver of it though, frankly, is you're seeing a consolidation or a morphing of the role into various roles. And so in some cases, they're elevating the position to overseeing, govern lots of different areas of the business, whether it's customer success, product.

 

Caitlin La Honta (01:30)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jamie Gier (01:33)

your commercial team and marketing and consolidating all of that. Now I think that there are some inherently bad things that can happen when you consolidate too much. Something's gonna get compromised, even if you have strong leaders over those functions. So you're seeing that, it's getting a lot of play. I think if anything, the role is mostly being deconstructed and reborn in different ways. We figure out what is the role of the chief marketing officer.

 

Letitia Rodley (01:44)

Right. ⁓

 

Caitlin La Honta (01:54)

Mm.

 

Letitia Rodley (01:55)

Yeah.

 

Jamie Gier (01:59)

And so you're seeing a lot of that happening right now.

 

Caitlin La Honta (02:01)

interesting with the Lowe's example because, and I know this has happened in other industries. Maybe we're at that point in healthcare, health tech, life sciences, where it's being eliminated or restructured. then a couple of years from now, companies are going to be like, wait, we actually blew this up too much. We need to kind of reform. So maybe that will go in that route.

 

Letitia Rodley (02:15)

All

 

Right. I've also seen the trend where the CRO is taking over marketing. And I think that's really interesting because while

 

Jamie Gier (02:19)

Yeah.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Letitia Rodley (02:28)

As a marketing leader, our success is very intertwined with that of sales. Of course, they're like our go-to partner in all things, growth. But it's interesting, know, a sales leader is not necessarily a marketing leader. They're very different disciplines. And so I think it's going to be interesting. There's been a few organizations I'm familiar with who have decided to remove the CMO role, roll up the marketing team under the CRO.

 

Caitlin La Honta (02:51)

Mm-hmm.

 

Letitia Rodley (02:51)

Then you've kind of got these, you're still missing that leadership element that's really crafting the strategy and what those channels and that execution looks like from a marketing perspective. So I think it'll be interesting to see how this pans out.

 

Jamie Gier (03:03)

Yeah, and that

 

is I've had to think about this one a little bit because I fundamentally and I'm on the record time and time again saying this, I do not believe that marketing should report it to sales period for a lot of different reasons. I happen to have worked with some phenomenal sales leaders. We were partners. We were equals and we understood and respected the discipline of our functions and what they bring in terms of acquiring new business.

 

Caitlin La Honta (03:14)

Mm-hmm.

 

Letitia Rodley (03:21)

Yep.

 

Jamie Gier (03:28)

And I believe that marketing is out ahead of sales. We're defining the marketplace. We're helping to generate demand for the marketplace, not just capture and convert it. You got to create a marketplace, especially in healthcare where it's super crowded. ⁓ But in thinking about if I were not to be so stubborn on this topic, then maybe it becomes who plays the CRO? What role did they play prior to that? Because you are starting to see chief marketing officers being promoted into a CRO.

 

Caitlin La Honta (03:41)

Yep.

 

Letitia Rodley (03:52)

Right.

 

Yep.

 

Jamie Gier (03:56)

I

 

was at a dinner last week and I asked a very provocative question. It was a dinner for CMOs and marketing executives. And I actually brought this up and I said, I feel like our role is at risk. And I said, why is it always that marketing then gets moved and reported up to sales? Why do sales never get moved and report up to marketing? And it was like, it was almost like this silence in the room. And I don't think that we've ever thought about that. But it made me think a little bit of

 

Caitlin La Honta (04:07)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-mm.

 

Yeah.

 

Letitia Rodley (04:20)

Right.

 

Jamie Gier (04:23)

If I were to not be so rigid on my very emphatic marketing should not report into sales, then it becomes, maybe if you have the right leader as the CRO who grew up through the ranks of marketing, understands the discipline and the importance that it plays for the long game and not just the quarter, then perhaps it can work.

 

Caitlin La Honta (04:36)

Yeah.

 

Letitia Rodley (04:42)

Yeah, interesting. ⁓

 

Caitlin La Honta (04:43)

Yeah. Yeah, I've seen that. I've

 

seen that exact example work. And then you also get the CROs who have only ever really been in sales functions and they treat marketing like sales, which is everything should focus 100 % on things we can measure directly tied to revenue, which gets dangerous as you then reduce things like brand or these other areas that are really core to marketing, but a lot harder to measure immediately or short-term tied to revenue.

 

Letitia Rodley (05:08)

Right, right.

 

Jamie Gier (05:09)

Right.

 

Well, you pivot towards just the bottom of the funnel and you forget about everyone else. But there's you don't have a huge marketplace in the bottom of the funnel. mean, you're really at that point. It is a full court press on those accounts, especially in health care and enterprise sales, which many of us, you know, that that's what we do. We're in the enterprise in enterprise business. You forget about everybody else. And when it does come time for those those buyers to be in market.

 

Letitia Rodley (05:12)

Right, right, right, right.

 

Caitlin La Honta (05:12)

Yeah.

 

Letitia Rodley (05:31)

right?

 

Jamie Gier (05:36)

They don't know who you are because you just compromised building up your awareness among those accounts for when they're ready to purchase. And so that is one of the risks is exactly that. You get very short term focus. You're only pivoting towards the bottom of the funnel and you forget everything else.

 

Letitia Rodley (05:51)

Right, you're completely ignoring farming.

 

Jamie Gier (05:54)

Right.

 

Caitlin La Honta (05:54)

What do

 

you think is really driving this trend in this industry specifically, this consolidation or restructuring kind of, I keep using the word blowing up of the traditional marketing structure and organization.

 

Jamie Gier (06:06)

I think there's a couple of reasons why you're starting to see that is the accountability and the return of marketing. Oftentimes we're expected to return an investment very, very quickly. And so that's where I think we end up erring on the side of doing the things where you can show like hard, hard ROI on that, you know, like performance marketing and digital marketing and things like that. And so I think that there's the

 

Caitlin La Honta (06:13)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Jamie Gier (06:35)

in accountability, there is definitely showing ROI. I brought up where I think that as organizations are starting to look at roles from a multifunctional perspective, where they're thinking, how do we consolidate go-to-market functions into one role? I think that's driving it. When you consolidate roles into one, do you really need to have a CMO or traditionally a customer success officer or somebody else? So I think

 

the consolidation and trying to get more out of a single role is driving it. So I think those are largely the things. And so that puts even additional pressure on CMOs to validate the importance of the investments that we make for the long game. Marketing is a long game. That's the other piece of this. Everyone else seems to get a break on that. But when there's this expectation that we're going to be magicians, we're going to be able to just

 

Caitlin La Honta (07:10)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jamie Gier (07:28)

build pipeline overnight or in the quarter, I like to say today's brand is tomorrow's demand. And we don't operate just in the quarter. that's what the quarter is the easiest thing to measure. What's happening a year from now is not. And then we just have this additional pressure to show that. So we have a lot of work to do in continuing to help.

 

Letitia Rodley (07:40)

Mm-hmm. ⁓

 

Right, right.

 

Jamie Gier (07:51)

the executive team and the board understand the impact of things like brand performance. We talk about marketing performance, well there's brand performance as well.

 

Caitlin La Honta (08:00)

Yeah, it's really just interesting thinking about the consolidation too of, I guess, the full customer journey under a single role. Because on one hand, there's this criticism that marketing, sales, customer success are too disconnected. It became too fragmented where each team is trying to run their own thing. They're not really maybe engaging or there's not the kind of...

 

mutual goals that are shared across. So maybe we consolidate under something like a chief commercial officer. That's one that's used in healthcare sometimes, or a chief customer officer I've heard as well. And so it's just really interesting, but I think a lot of times what gets sacrificed, as you've already alluded to, is more of the marketing piece of it, because it's harder to measure and it's harder to see, especially like the brand awareness stuff. But one thing that we had talked about too,

 

Jamie Gier (08:28)

Thank

 

Caitlin La Honta (08:42)

is this concept of like a chief market officer and that's something that's emerging is this alternative to chief marketing officer. Would love to hear your perspective on that or where you've heard that and I haven't heard it a ton but it was something you brought up when we were initially chatting which I thought was interesting.

 

Jamie Gier (08:51)

Okay.

 

Yeah, so you're seeing a lot of chief marketing officers now rebrand themselves as chief market officers. ⁓

 

Letitia Rodley (09:03)

Hmm.

 

Jamie Gier (09:04)

It is a point of conversation in the communities that I belong. I have not moved that direction yet because I think it's it's trying to band-aid a bigger problem. And if you don't solve the bigger problem, simply changing a name is not sufficient. But I understand. I understand why they're doing it. The argument they make is, the chief financial officer is not the chief financing officer. So why are we the marketing and not market? Maybe if,

 

Caitlin La Honta (09:09)

Yeah.

 

Mm.

 

Jamie Gier (09:29)

words do matter in that sense. And so if it's chief market officer, I guess it probably conjures up more of an image of our role with market intelligence and how do we create a category and product requirements and the voice of customer. The things that a chief marketing officer already does, but perhaps marketing is more synonymous with demand generation and less about the strategic

 

Letitia Rodley (09:39)

Thank

 

Jamie Gier (09:53)

nature of our work, not to say demand gens not, but part of the strategic value of a CMO should be building the marketplace, partnering with your product team on what are the requirements, what are the customers saying. That's what I think is driving it is because of the perceptions of what marketing means versus the other elements that we bring that we should be always focused on.

 

Letitia Rodley (10:17)

Right. I feel like in our roles too, it's, it's so nuanced. And I read this as, know, especially every day on LinkedIn and in the kind of the forums in which we participate. But sales, I think you mentioned this earlier, sales is super definitive. Like we get it. We know exactly what they do. We know exactly what they're measured on period. It's easy to say this is what sales, finances, HR, customer support, but marketing is we really touch all of those.

 

Caitlin La Honta (10:35)

Mm-hmm.

 

Letitia Rodley (10:44)

teams, we have a nuanced role. A lot of it's measurable. I don't want to say a lot of it's not measurable, but it's more ambiguous. Branding is an area where it's super ambiguous. That whole on the other end of the spectrum, that customer delight and satisfaction marketing plays a really big role in that too. So I think that we get kind of pigeonholed sometimes into, I'm probably talking about a broader trend in regards to like just getting rid of the CMO because of an ignorance of exactly what that role touches.

 

Caitlin La Honta (10:52)

Mm-hmm.

 

Letitia Rodley (11:12)

in the areas in which it contributes. It's a big role. Marketing plays, you know, we touch every team within the organization, that full customer life cycle and beyond.

 

Jamie Gier (11:22)

We absolutely do. And it is a big role. That's why marketing needs to have the investment that it needs in order to get the full impact. That doesn't always... Yeah.

 

Letitia Rodley (11:30)

Right. Which is why we're

 

seeing, in my opinion, hanging on that, that no, it requires big investments is why we're being, you know,

 

Directed out if you will because it's such a big cost center sometimes and it's in it's difficult sometimes for the business They have so much pressure in regards to revenue to see that long game, right?

 

Jamie Gier (11:53)

Mm-hmm.

 

Letitia Rodley (11:54)

I mean, we work with clients all the time and we had one client say to us, let's not focus on the strategy because we presented a proposal that was very inclusive of you've got to have these strategic pillars in place before you can do X. Let's not worry about the strategy. Let's just do an email campaign. I was like, okay. Yeah, don't worry about messaging and don't worry about your ICP and don't worry about any of that. We're just going to do an email blast. It's my favorite word, blast.

 

Caitlin La Honta (12:10)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jamie Gier (12:12)

The campaign. Don't worry about any of that.

 

Yes,

 

the blast. Because we need more of those email blasts in health care, right? Those health system leaders really want one more email. just look, I believe this when the chief marketing officer is allowed to to really practice all disciplines of marketing, it really is the growth compass of the company and should it really should be.

 

Letitia Rodley (12:23)

It will blast. ⁓

 

Caitlin La Honta (12:25)

Yeah.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Jamie Gier (12:45)

That doesn't mean that product doesn't have a play in that or the CFO or any other participant. we really, when I mentioned we need to be defining the market, that is the growth compass. And if you pigeonhole them into just one discipline, you're just not going to get the full impact. And probably at that point, you don't need a CMO. Now, I think every company fundamentally does for the most part. especially in healthcare where, and I know we'll get to this topic eventually, but in healthcare where

 

Caitlin La Honta (12:55)

Mm-hmm.

 

Letitia Rodley (13:02)

right.

 

Jamie Gier (13:13)

The market hasn't necessarily grown in terms of the number of buyers. You think of consolidation, but surely the number of vendors, whether you're technology vendors or service vendors, it has. And now your reputation, your brand, your trust level has become increasingly more important. And who controls that and since they control it, but who oversees and governs that? The CMO.

 

Caitlin La Honta (13:35)

Yeah, we're going to jump to that topic actually just next, but two things I was going to say on that. One is, and it controls it, but also sees the forest through the trees on how important that is. We have another client who was going through a rebrand and they didn't have a marketing person in place. There was just some team changes. So they were just absent of a marketer. They were planning to hire a marketing leader, but it just happened such that this rebrand was happening as they also didn't have a marketing leader.

 

And the CEO was viewing this as, we're rebranding. We're just changing our name and we're changing our logo and our colors. And that's it. Great. We're ready to go. And so we sort of stepped in and we're like, whoa, this is a lot more than that. And yes, you do those tactics, but what this actually means and the opportunity that it provides, you're losing a bunch of brand equity you had with your previous name. You have an opportunity to relaunch and represent what you mean with this new name and color and things and all of that.

 

Letitia Rodley (14:10)

Mm-hmm.

 

Caitlin La Honta (14:27)

Just even seeing that as a larger initiative, but to this person, and it's not their fault by any means, they just thought, branding is colors and logos. They didn't think of it beyond that scope. And that's honestly what the perception is, is that these things, they're just spending a bunch of money getting a nice new cool logo and updating the website. And sometimes there are marketers who think of it that way, but the great marketers know that it's way more than that. Those are just some tactics in this larger thing. But it's also on the marketers to be...

 

educators of here's what we're actually trying to do, what this means, why it's important and all of those pieces. I know we're going to talk about that later as well in terms of how marketing leaders can be voices for their own role. And then the other thing I was going to say just related to this concept of a CMO needing to be this driver of new markets, market insights, customer voice, that sort of looking ahead that sales roles typically don't do.

 

I've seen at least in the B2B space, I know you've worked in B2C as well, Jamie, the product marketer is now absorbing a lot of that responsibility. That role's gotten really bloated where product marketing has become this very strategic role of like, expect you to be partnering upstream with product, understanding the market, where it's going, how to then present the product and the solution, relaying voice of customer, all these things which are super important and product marketing should do, but I think that's become the fill-in for like, wait, we need someone to do this.

 

product marketing, but to your point, that should also be a larger CMO level initiative as well.

 

Jamie Gier (15:53)

without a doubt. One of my first strategic hires at the last couple of companies was the director of product marketing, because I see that person as the bridge between translating the product, even the technical aspects of a product, how you position and package it and how to enable the sales team. I think that they're a very strategic part of the marketing discipline. Yeah, right.

 

Letitia Rodley (16:06)

Right.

 

Absolutely. They're always my number one hire. Always 100%.

 

Jamie Gier (16:19)

And especially in this

 

industry where again, you're trying to provide clarity around what you do because on paper we all sound the same. And so being able to provide clarity specifically on the value that you provide, a lot of that is driven out of product marketing. One additional thing I wanted to mention too, Letitia you were going there a bit on the role of the CMO and some of the investments. ⁓

 

Letitia Rodley (16:30)

Right.

 

right and see.

 

Caitlin La Honta (16:42)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jamie Gier (16:43)

The way that buyers buy has become so much more sophisticated and especially in the enterprise software SaaS kind of space where the sales cycles are very long. There is additional pressure on the CMO to know a lot of different things, whether it is your technical chops on your own tech stack and how we leverage that to move and engage buyers over 18 months sales cycle.

 

to understanding data, we've amassed so much data now through these digital channels that we're expected to really understand all of the insights and report that back. In addition to really understanding the psychology behind buyer purchasing and what motivates and influences somebody to prefer your brand over another, there's so many aspects to what we do that if you're not exercising all of those, think something gets...

 

Caitlin La Honta (17:11)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jamie Gier (17:32)

diminished and that's where it starts to become very difficult to show the value of a full funnel CMO. And so the expectations are just out of this, you know, out of this world on that. I did want to mention that because it is, how we would market 20 years ago is very different than today. Even five years ago, you're right.

 

Letitia Rodley (17:43)

All right.

 

Even five years ago, five years ago,

 

Caitlin La Honta (17:51)

Yeah.

 

Letitia Rodley (17:52)

it's very, very different. to your point, it's that omnipresence. It's, you know, because buyers, you know, I've done research projects where we're like, you know, evaluating closed won and what was their journey and blah, blah, blah. And the reality is there is no journey. They show up where they want to show up when they want to show up when they're ready. Right.

 

Jamie Gier (18:10)

It's like a

 

Caitlin La Honta (18:10)

I was just gonna do this too. Yeah, the

 

journey is like 30 different, yeah.

 

Jamie Gier (18:12)

chaotic mess of stuff.

 

Letitia Rodley (18:13)

Right, and the challenge for marketers

 

is to be there, wherever they show up, ready to serve them.

 

Caitlin La Honta (18:17)

Yep.

 

And I mean, cause to the point around the messaging, if everyone's sounding the same, we see this so much in this industry. I've probably said this before on podcasts, but it's like the two things. If you're a pre-commercial company, it's accelerate R and D. If you're a commercial or you're in more of the sales side, it's, you know, improve patient outcomes or better patient outcomes. And those are great. Those are awesome mission statements. I mean, so many companies in this industry, that's what they're doing. And that's like a great thing for us all to be.

 

excited about, but then you see 50 websites with the exact same language. It's so hard to distinguish. So then you have these like little slivers of opportunities to engage your audience and a bunch of slivers, this messy, you know, messy journey. And they might not even know because they're confused and overwhelmed by everything appearing the same too much, you know, shoved down their throat and it all sounds the same.

 

Letitia Rodley (18:50)

right here.

 

Right, right.

 

Jamie Gier (19:09)

Right, and so do know

 

where they go? They go to their communities to get recommendations, to get the clarity. So if your customers are in those communities, you better hope that they've got a good story to share about you. That's where they're gonna go.

 

Caitlin La Honta (19:12)

Yep, they ask their peer, see, yeah.

 

Letitia Rodley (19:12)

Totally 100%.

 

100 %

 

Caitlin La Honta (19:22)

Yep. Awesome. So I know we started talking about this route, but would love to go into here next is thinking about the broader industry. So we've talked about CMO role changing, why that's happening internally in organizations, but there's also a lot within the healthcare landscape that's changing, that's driving a lot of shifts and anxiety. There's obviously a lot of changes in investor funding, but then there's also this broader market consolidation, which you alluded to.

 

where there's slower growth, there's a lot of mergers and acquisitions happening. What is your perspective in terms of how this is sort of shaping and reshaping the healthcare technology landscape and then kind of downstream from that, how that's affecting the role of like a CMO or maybe investment in that function?

 

Jamie Gier (20:04)

Right. Well, this is where I think brand is important and your reputation, the trust that you build, your customer references are probably your greatest channel for getting people to want to at least consider you as a potential partner. Those recommendations and referrals are absolutely key.

 

For one pause, I did take five years and left healthcare, went into EdTech and went into Martech. And when I re-entered for my last role, even in that five years, and Letitia you had said this, even the last five years, a lot of things have changed, the number of vendors in this space. Now, I've only marketed and sold to health systems, hospitals, practice groups. I've not been in life sciences and, but.

 

Caitlin La Honta (20:27)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm.

 

Jamie Gier (20:46)

When I look at just that marketplace and all of the consolidation that has happened, these large health systems all coming together, consolidating under one umbrella, the market has not.

 

grown in the sense of you have more buyers. It's gotten more sophisticated because a lot of the times we're selling not departmental solutions, we're selling enterprise solutions and you got to make sure you've got all of these department heads on board and you got a message in the way that they understand the value you're going to provide.

 

to them, the value provided a chief clinical officer is going to be different than the value you provide to a CFO. that's not unique to health care. That's just the basics of selling enterprise. But the market hasn't grown from that standpoint. But the number of vendors has. And now with the emergence of things like AI and you've got these point solutions and very niche products, everyone does sound the same on paper.

 

Caitlin La Honta (21:21)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Jamie Gier (21:41)

So how do you differentiate when everyone's trying to solve or get health care to the exact same destination? It's just that they have a different pathway to take. The destination is the same and we're all trying to point to the destination. And so we all do end up sounding the same. And this is where I think reputation really does matter in terms of the trust that you build, the relationships that you have. Oftentimes, and I've seen this when I was in the EMR space,

 

CIOs are risking their careers when they do business with a large tech company. Things can go very bad if you don't get it right. And so they know that their own reputation in bringing on a partner vendor has severe consequences if it doesn't go right. And so that trust, the recommendations from other buyers that have used your technology is really, really important.

 

Caitlin La Honta (22:11)

Yeah.

 

Yeah.

 

Jamie Gier (22:29)

But you have to work harder to gain that trust and to build your reputation and provide clarity around the messaging and your product.

 

Caitlin La Honta (22:36)

Yeah.

 

Yeah. know it's also interesting as there's been more vendors. There's also new categories of vendors. So you hear things like, I mean, you might have developed a new, we talked a little bit, you mentioned AI solution, but then that doesn't fit neatly in the budget category that these health systems or companies have been scoping. And so then there's the exercise of like, how do I match what I'm selling to what they're ready to buy or what they know how to buy or what.

 

Letitia Rodley (22:36)

Yeah.

 

Caitlin La Honta (23:02)

budget falls and then that's added complexity to an already complex system and then also just the point around the- you mentioned just the staking your career on choosing something in general is already stressful let alone maybe a new solution that has hasn't been. you know validated for years in the market is just you know it makes sense why these. sales cycles are long and why there's hesitation even though it can be frustrating. As the vendor to send to know like my product will.

 

make this process if it's EMR, you know, a lot better, but understanding exactly what that means for that company buying it.

 

Jamie Gier (23:35)

Right. One, think of all the internal stakeholders that a buyer has.

 

You think about physicians and physician burnout. The last thing you want to do is introduce something else that's going to require more administrative work for them. If anything, you want to ease their workload and help them get back to what they want to do, which is simply taking care of patients. And so everyone's looking at things through that lens. Even then you need differentiation on what exactly are you going to do to lighten the load on these physicians, for example, when you've got 700 other vendors claiming to do the same thing.

 

Thank

 

Letitia Rodley (24:07)

Bye.

 

Caitlin La Honta (24:07)

Yeah.

 

So I mean, you've already alluded to some of the strategies in terms of what companies can do what I should say what technology companies with the vendors can do to sort of still be successful and competitive in this now consolidated environment. What have you seen work in terms of strategies in this new reality? You know, how should companies think about adapting their go to market to really remain competitive?

 

Letitia Rodley (24:12)

Thank you.

 

Jamie Gier (24:29)

I think it's got to start with product market fit. You need to make sure that your product actually does solve a problem. And the way to bring that to bear is through customers that have invested in it. think your greatest channel in healthcare specifically, again, any industry can say this, but I think it's particularly true in healthcare because patient lives are at stake. People's jobs are on the line and the operating margins of these health systems are very, very slim.

 

reference ability is super important to bringing on additional additional buyers. So if we just think of like the what is the adoption curve? OK, so you've got many of these new players in the space are getting their first early adopters. Those early adopters are going to get the early majority who tend to be the fast followers. And then you got the laggards, which is probably 80 percent of the rest of the buyer group.

 

those early adopters and the early majority are really critical to bringing others along. And so in my experience, what has been effective for me and why I get very close to the customers, I have wonderful relationships with health system leaders that go way back to 25 years ago when I was running advisory groups. Those customers, I've always doubled down on how much we do with our own customers. And it's not just asking them to do co-marketing.

 

It's making sure that they feel like they're a part of your decision making process for product, for business, for acquisitions, for partnerships. Because at the end of the day, is, and I was reminded of this by one health system leader who since retired, but he, I was doing some brand research and he said, the relationship that I have with your company is like a marriage.

 

Caitlin La Honta (25:47)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jamie Gier (26:09)

And you have to weather the ups and downs of that relationship. But you also have to bring us into decision making that is going on inside your organization, because it's going to ultimately impact me as a customer. So I'm always one to double down on how you leverage your customers and get them close to even business decisions that you have to make. So advisory boards are very, very effective. And by way of that, I think they're more inclined to advocate.

 

on behalf of your organization, naturally and authentically and in these dark social places where people have conversations. I would say the other, and this sounds so old school, but to get to that relationship building, you've got to be in person. You've got to look at each other in the eyes, sit around a table, break bread. I think sometimes we miss because we've gotten so accustomed to selling through Zoom.

 

and teams, we have missed the value of what it means when you simply bring people together and you sit down and you have a conversation because that's ultimately what brings trust. It's no, if we keep with the marriage analogy, it's the same thing. I mean, are you going to really marry somebody because you've met them over Zoom? No, you're going to sit down and go out to dinner. You're going to kind of see what it's like being in a relationship. You can't do that without having that in person and.

 

Letitia Rodley (27:11)

Right.

 

Right?

 

Jamie Gier (27:28)

It's extremely valuable here. I love, by the way, I know a lot of people complain about being on the road and it's expensive and I'm having this place. I love it. I love the energy of being on a trade show floor. I love the energy of hosting a dinner and simply bringing people together. To me, that's where the trust is actually built in addition to, you know, making sure that you actually deliver on your promise.

 

Letitia Rodley (27:50)

right? 100 % degree and we've seen that in

 

Caitlin La Honta (27:51)

Yep. Yeah.

 

Letitia Rodley (27:54)

in not only just execution, I look at some of the clients that I've worked with over the last few years and to each one of them, where we got our biggest ROI from a deal perspective was when we met them face to face at an event, at a trade show, at a round table, at something. And then to your point about that whole customer delight, maintaining that face to face engagement and having that thread all the way through to the customer, now they're in the

 

customer, not like, okay, well, I've courted you, so now we're 100 % Zoom. It's like you have to keep that ongoing face to face. And they become, to your point, they become your partners for life. It's not just about the relationship that they have with you and your product in that moment, but it's also those relationships that will carry through as you move through your career and they move through theirs and your solutions that you're trying to solve for are complementary throughout that journey.

 

Jamie Gier (28:45)

Absolutely. I love the fact, Letitia that I can actually come up, call a customer from 15 years ago, reach out and still have a relationship. And that pays dividends. That pays dividends.

 

Letitia Rodley (28:53)

Right. Yeah.

 

Caitlin La Honta (28:57)

Yeah, it's interesting because we've sort of gone in a full circle. mean, you said it sounds old school, but I actually don't think it sounds old school at all. I think it's just the way that we've sort of found our way back to in-person, human to human, everyone. Like all these more scaled marketing channels, especially in this industry, have just been low performing, you know, especially in the last year, but it's gone down in the last five years. You know, email campaigns, social media, and...

 

I mean Google ads or LinkedIn ads those just are not working anymore and so we have a lot of conversations with conversations with clients where we're like well, you know, I know it's expensive but you're gonna get your best ROI from just going to the right events and showing up having a booth if you can afford it speaking in a session going to the evening event and just networking that's gonna be your best bet even though it sounds like a lot on paper when you look at okay I have to spend $10,000 on this event, but you can spend you know

 

Jamie Gier (29:25)

Yeah. ⁓

 

Caitlin La Honta (29:48)

$5,000 a month on ads for six months and have zero return. So it's just like a higher spend maybe in the moment, but then you think about the tail, you know, off of that. And then you're developing more targeted marketing off of that. You can send emails to the people you met or whatever, followups, all of that. You have that huge lead list if you paid for it. So I think, yeah, it's interesting how we've sort of just gone in a complete circle and now we're back at where we were maybe like 20 years ago with what marketing tactics are working right now.

 

Letitia Rodley (29:52)

zero.

 

Jamie Gier (30:06)

Thank you.

 

Yeah, well, think about our own behavior. I'm going to guess that we all get inundated with emails from people wanting us as their as their customer. I only pay attention to the ones who already know their brand. And I'll open those, so there's already I've got some recognition of who they are as an organization.

 

Caitlin La Honta (30:33)

I think you're nicer than me. think I still ignore those unless I

 

have an urgent need in the moment of like, oh yeah, I was looking for a new tool to manage my business expenses. Oh, cool, this happened to pop in my inbox. I will still ignore a brand I know. So sorry, finish what you were saying, but I'm laughing because I'm like, you're nicer than I am because I just go straight to trash.

 

Letitia Rodley (30:39)

Right, and they hit you, right?

 

Jamie Gier (30:43)

Yeah.

 

Letitia Rodley (30:44)

Right, right.

 

Jamie Gier (30:48)

No, no, no, but here's... If I know their brand,

 

it's because I've actually paid attention. Like they have something of value to me at some point in time. Like I know what I should expect when I open up that email. And in some cases it's gonna be because I really like the content they generate. Like I learned something from them. I might not be ready to purchase and I may never purchase from them.

 

Caitlin La Honta (31:01)

Yeah.

 

Yeah.

 

Jamie Gier (31:10)

But I'll open it because I really like the way that they think about something or I'm to learn something new that I might not have known. But guess what? Even if I'm not going to buy from them, likely I will suggest or recommend them to somebody else who is. And so sometimes we forget about the network effect and not every person who's going to not every person is going to buy from you. But it doesn't mean that they're not going to influence somebody else purchasing from you. And I think we have to remember that.

 

Caitlin La Honta (31:24)

Mm-hmm.

 

Letitia Rodley (31:36)

right, especially in this industry.

 

Jamie Gier (31:37)

But that network effect is so important.

 

And I want to bring up one example of that too, before I lose this thought. And I do want to talk about digital because everyone listening might go, well, what about digital marketing? Is that not important? But I'll come full circle with something we mentioned earlier. We were at a trade show in the end of April. And I hosted, along with one of my customers, a very nice dinner. We brought in

 

customers and prospects. brought in a couple of thought leaders that were keynotes and well known and well respected. And there was no selling. There was no selling. It was just a nice evening to bring people together to celebrate the work and the shared purpose that we all have to just make this very complicated healthcare system better and to operate more efficiently for consumers. And we just had a very nice dinner. People had had preexisting relationships. And so you could see people.

 

coming back and bonding and just having a great time. And the next day, some of those guests were out on social media. They had taken photos. They were essentially promoting the dinner that I had just hosted I didn't ask them to do it. I didn't post about it. And they did. And it brought this natural brand recognition to my own company based off their own networks. That's the network effect. And it was all organic and all.

 

Caitlin La Honta (32:40)

Mm-hmm.

 

Letitia Rodley (32:42)

Go ahead. ⁓

 

Thanks

 

Jamie Gier (32:53)

authentic. And we have to remember that when we do things like that, this gets back to the recommendation and the referrals. If somebody is actually promoting your brand, they're doing it because they trust it or they believe in it. If you don't mind, I'd like to just address one thing on digital, because the things that I've mentioned so far of what works have largely been non-digital channels. Earlier, we talked about be where your buyers are.

 

even if they're not in market today. You do have to be visible. Now we can argue whether email is the right channel or not. There is this joke among buyers that if I get one more email from you, shutting you off. But people are searching and trying to discover. They're doing their own research on solutions and we're not always aware that they're doing that. Well, where do they go? They go to Google or they might go to their Slack channel or they might go somewhere else.

 

We have to remember that those channels still play an important role in terms of at least providing some air cover and visibility in making sure when somebody's searching. So I think that sometimes digital gets pigeonholed into this more of the performance marketing, but I think it has a brand play to, and it's important. It's just making sure you've got the right omni-channel approach to how you're going to be visible where your buyers are. I just happen to think that once you've got their attention,

 

Letitia Rodley (34:03)

Right.

 

Jamie Gier (34:07)

the most effective way to continue to engage and get them to want to consider you as a partner or more of the in person.

 

Letitia Rodley (34:14)

Right.

 

Caitlin La Honta (34:14)

Yep, yeah, it's just

 

table stakes to have a really, really clear website. And I see this a lot too, where companies will overcomplicate their website or try to message to too many audiences. And you're just doing yourself a disservice at that point. It's like, no, honestly, if you just make your website clear and boring, I would rather have that than trying to get too fancy and flowery with the language. Because people are using it primarily as that source of just research or double checking or whatever. And then...

 

As we had talked about, there's so many other touch points and channels and activities that influence that overall perception of the brand that, you know, are outside of that.

 

Letitia Rodley (34:48)

what Jamie was sharing brings us kind of full circle back to the role of a CMO or a marketing leader which is in that omni-channel approach, right? So the recognition and the understanding of what all those tools and levers are and the point in which you introduce them ensuring that you've got that full market coverage at any time. So, know, Jamie, you talked about digital and you talked about, you know, live events and you talked about customer marketing.

 

Caitlin La Honta (34:57)

Mm-hmm.

 

Letitia Rodley (35:13)

and you talked about email marketing to a degree. To your point...

 

They're all super important. They just play a different role at a different time. And so the orchestration of that is a lot of the value that that marketing leader brings to the team that, you know, having having the horns and the guitar and the piano and the drums all there and just amazing in their own right is great. But you need somebody that can pull together and create that symphony that's going to play to the customer's ear. And so I think maybe that may be some areas where organizations are missing out on the role of the CMO.

 

the role of

 

Jamie Gier (35:45)

That's a really good point, especially in enterprise, when you've got the long sell cycle and it's when you've got five to seven to 10 different channels that you're using.

 

to just move people throughout there. There's a high degree of orchestration that has to, that takes place and getting that right is really super important. And I think, again, this comes back to on the complexity of the role that we play and the things that we have to know as CMOs in order to be the conductor, as you bring on the subject matter experts who are going to help you with each of those different channels, but you can't have those channels working in isolation. The CMO becomes the conductor.

 

of making sure that they're all singing from the same hymnal, so to speak, on there. think that's a really, really important point to make on it.

 

Caitlin La Honta (36:29)

I like this metaphor as well because it also makes me think of like the, it's the orchestration and within that it's making sure that no instrument or voice is too loud or loud in the wrong way because a thing we see often too is just having that intuition and experience. You know, if you've been a CMO for many years or you've worked in marketing for a long time to know where and how to invest in a channel, you know, I see often, we see sometimes with clients, especially those who don't have any marketing folks, they see

 

something in their, know, we saw the super cool marketing campaign. Let's like copy what this company did because it just looks really cool. But they're not thinking about it from the perspective of like, does this matter for who you're selling to? Does it make sense to spend money on this right now? So I see a lot of the like, marketing is just a playbook because this company is super successful. Let's just copy what they did and apply it to what we do. And it does not work like that at all. Every company is so unique.

 

And the person, the CMO, or the marketing strategist who can know how to play those different instruments at what level, at what time, who comes in when, you know, it's for some company, web might be just making sure you have a really high quality website for another, digital might run their whole strategy, but the person who's gonna know all that is that CMO orchestrator. So it's like, you know how to hear the different pieces and when to play what and how to bring them in. ⁓ So I really like that analogy. Yeah.

 

Jamie Gier (37:38)

right?

 

Letitia Rodley (37:43)

Right.

 

Jamie Gier (37:45)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I do too.

 

And I think the other piece, and this gets now into kind of how do you report and track and measure the impact that we have? Because we're a growth multiplier. not a cost center. Yes, you make an investment.

 

Caitlin La Honta (37:49)

Yeah.

 

Letitia Rodley (37:59)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jamie Gier (37:59)

The challenge with all of those different channels is then how do you look at the performance of them and aggregate it to the impact that they're all having to a few simple things? One is your pipeline contribution and how much we're filling the pipeline. How many of those are close, you know, turning into close won deals? But not only that, sometimes I feel like CMOs miss the net retention rate. That is really important because that gets to the longevity of the business. In fact, that's what when you look at valuation of companies, they're

 

Caitlin La Honta (38:21)

Hmm.

 

Jamie Gier (38:28)

to look at your net retention rate, which is simply your customers are growing and expanding. If there's enough product market fit there that they want to continue to invest and buy more, which also means you got to make sure you're delivering more features and client delight and value to them.

 

Letitia Rodley (38:29)

Sure.

 

Caitlin La Honta (38:42)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jamie Gier (38:43)

But for marketers, specifically CMOs, it's how do you aggregate all of that data? This comes back to the conversation I was having before. And that is you amass a lot of information, not just on your buyers, but on the performance of these channels. How do you know which ones are having the greatest impact? But it also, you have to understand what they are intended to do in the first place, because you'll make very bad decisions if you don't understand what each channel is designed to do, what you can or cannot measure.

 

Some things can't be measured, you know instinctually and by your own experience that they do have an impact. All of those things have to yield to the greater purpose that we play, which is simply acquiring new business, retaining that business, expanding that business, and creating happy, loyal customers who are going to sell on your behalf.

 

Letitia Rodley (39:28)

Yeah.

 

Caitlin La Honta (39:28)

So, and you already started naturally going here, but this sort of last topic to touch on is knowing how complex the role of a marketing leader is. There's things you can easily measure, but then there's a bunch of stuff that's difficult to measure. There's this huge pot of things that you're responsible for. And then not only that, but you need to now manage up to your CEO and tell that person or convince that person or frame the value of marketing to that person. What would you say or...

 

What advice would you have for marketing leaders in terms of how they can communicate the value of marketing to their leadership team, especially where there might be more skepticism towards marketing investment and or a marketing, or excuse me, a CEO who views marketing as just another component to sales and not this larger initiative that we've talked about today.

 

Jamie Gier (40:13)

Yeah.

 

I have mentored and educated my teams that you have to take your marketing hat off at the door and understand the game of business, which means you need to know how to read financial statements.

 

Caitlin La Honta (40:22)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jamie Gier (40:26)

What is the balance sheet saying? What's the profit and loss like all of those statements? You have to have an understanding of what those numbers mean, because once you understand that, then you understand how marketing plugs into it and how marketing can impact those. You have to have good financial acumen when it comes to your own role. I don't care if you are an SEO expert. Maybe you're you're doing product marketing if you don't understand how to read these statements and what they mean to our own impact.

 

Caitlin La Honta (40:38)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jamie Gier (40:53)

then it's going to be much more challenging to convince a CEO, a CFO or anyone else as to the importance of what we do. So that it starts with just understanding the basics. You don't have to have an MBA. Go meet with your director of finance and sit down and just say, hey, I don't know this stuff. Will you share it? I've never had a head of finance or a CFO ever go, you know, scoff at it. They're like, oh my gosh, yeah, let me share with you what these numbers mean. I'm surprised if anything, it builds a lot of credibility between the marketing function.

 

Caitlin La Honta (41:17)

Yeah.

 

Jamie Gier (41:23)

and the finance function. So there's that. And then it is speaking the language of the CEO and it comes down to the numbers, especially whether you're publicly held, whether you're privately held, VC, PE backed. If you don't understand your impact and how you're contributing to the growth and the scale and the efficiency of the business, they're never going to understand marketing and its impact. And so that's why I bring in pipeline attribution. What are we contributing to it?

 

How are we converting that demand in collaboration with our commercial teams? And then the impact that we have long-term on the loyalty of our customers and retention. And if you basic metrics, it kind of removes also, you still have to understand again, getting into the channels, click through rates open rates whatever it might be to indicate if people are even paying attention to you. But you've got to roll and aggregate that all up into these bigger KPIs.

 

does require having a really solid tech stack that allows you to do that. And the technology infrastructure that you put in place is really paramount to aggregating that information and getting the insights that you need for that.

 

Caitlin La Honta (42:19)

Yeah.

 

Letitia Rodley (42:24)

Yeah. ⁓

 

I would propose it's the come, so 100 % in alignment with that. And then it's taking all that. And this is honestly something I've struggled with always. And it has to do with the partnership that you have with the CEO and the head of sales, that alignment and partnership and trust and credibility helps. But it's taking all that data and then putting it into big animal pictures so that you're telling a story and they understand that story because marketing is nothing if not numbers.

 

and definitely get lost in the minutiae and you walk in there with this big thought and you go, okay, this channel's performing really well, you can tell because look at our open rates and look at our click throughs and look at this and look at the digital data here and look at this, how many people participated in this event. What I'm trying to do is tell you a story of how we're moving the needle and how, and this is going to impact future business. And I think that's an art, it's an art that it,

 

Jamie Gier (43:15)

Right.

 

Letitia Rodley (43:21)

I wish I, you know, it's not something that you can say, I nailed it at this company and now I'm gonna take this formula here because it's different in every single organization.

 

Caitlin La Honta (43:30)

Yeah.

 

Jamie Gier (43:31)

It

 

is different and I think that in enterprise businesses specifically, you're trying to track that over 12, 18 months. And we may forget what happened in month two and month three, but month two and three of your engagement with those accounts were super instrumental in getting to month six and month seven. If you don't have the ability to surface up the insights across that entire journey to show,

 

Letitia Rodley (43:44)

Right.

 

Right.

 

Jamie Gier (43:57)

Hey, it began with they came to our booth, for example. That didn't happen. You would not have gotten to the next sequence or series of engagements that happened. You have to have the visibility to do that. When you are a largely transactional business where you're selling, you've got a three month sales cycle, it's a lot easier. We know that, right? It's transactional, it's high volume. But in the case of enterprise, you're working extra hard to show

 

Letitia Rodley (44:00)

right.

 

Right, right.

 

Jamie Gier (44:24)

the lifecycle. I've actually in board meetings, I have brought in when we when we've talked about what deal did we close. I like to come prepared. I have the data to show and I create a whole journey as to the engagement and who engaged and because we can even dial it in with our advertising, you know, digital advertising, what we did on LinkedIn, this event, they attended this webinar, they talked to this other customer. We can show that and it brings a level of appreciation.

 

for the complexity and all of the various touch points that are required to move somebody. I one, I won't name the vendor on here, but one ABM vendor did a study. They collected data across their own customers. And for enterprise sales and marketing, I think they calculated on average, it takes about 600 touch points across a buying committee before they even sign a contract. That's a lot.

 

Letitia Rodley (44:51)

you

 

Right.

 

Right.

 

Caitlin La Honta (45:16)

I've seen

 

numbers that are like dozens, you know, which still sounded like a lot. have 600 is like inconceivable. That's crazy. And I mean, the touch point, you know, can be probably as quick as like seeing a flash of an ad or a LinkedIn post, but still that's, that's. Yep.

 

Jamie Gier (45:22)

Yeah.

 

Letitia Rodley (45:23)

Right. Right.

 

Jamie Gier (45:24)

Yes.

 

Well, think about your SDRs, your

 

sales directors, you've got your executives, you got marketing. So think of all of those different touch points that help to move somebody across, especially in a high stakes, high price point kind of industry.

 

Letitia Rodley (45:39)

right.

 

Right.

 

Right.

 

Caitlin La Honta (45:48)

Yeah.

 

Letitia Rodley (45:48)

Yep.

 

Caitlin La Honta (45:49)

Well, I think we could probably keep talking for four more hours. I'm like looking at the recording like, we can just keep on going and I have even more questions. But I think this is a great place for us to wrap up at least this conversation. We may be having more because there's so much really interesting stuff we talked about today that we just touched on. But Jamie, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing all of your insights. It's really interesting to hear just how

 

Jamie Gier (45:51)

I know.

 

Caitlin La Honta (46:12)

how things are evolving and how, you know, it's on the one hand more complex and then on the other hand, sometimes we're going back to basics, not basics, but going back to maybe more tried and true tactics in terms of networking and showing up in person. Turns out that is actually still very effective. So thanks again for joining us today.

 

Jamie Gier (46:29)

Thank you, I really enjoyed this.