This episode features an interview with Christelle Flahaux, VP of Marketing at FortressIQ—a pioneer in the burgeoning field of process intelligence.

Christelle is a seasoned professional drawing on two decades of experience in marketing, including senior leadership roles at some of the tech industry’s most recognized and fastest-growing B2B companies. Prior to joining FortressIQ, she served as CMO of Planful (formerly known as Host Analytics).

On this episode, Christelle lays out her approach to category creation and how analyst relations plays a key role. She also discusses why the CMO’s job is to be a listener, the value of podcasting, and how to do ABM with food trucks.

• Category creation means spending time with analysts and making it seem like it was their idea.
• Use analyst relations as a demand gen engine and treat it like a budget item.
• Repurpose your content rather than creating from scratch.

“Growing up in demand gen, I never realized how important analysts were…But what I've realized is that the relationship that you have with the analysts, being on their radar, always being in front of them, being a customer of some sort–I think that to me is uncuttable now. Six or seven years ago I would not have even brought up analysts, but I think analysts are very important.”

“I'm a huge fan of repurposing content. Do one thing and create six or seven pieces of content…I think that's what a lot of marketing teams get wrong is they always start with a fresh piece of paper…But it's not always about creating something from scratch.”

“The website's the front door to any company. You think about someone's first interaction with you as a potential vendor, and it's the website…You've got five seconds to wow somebody.”

“80% of people have probably already done their homework…And if they want to talk to you, they're going to reach out, which is why conversational marketing and chat is so hot right now, because it is such a low barrier to entry for me [as a prospective customer] to have a conversation with somebody and set up a demo. I just want to see the product. Period, end of story. Don't pitch me, don't ask me what my problems are, I already know what my problems are.”

“[My advice to a first-time CMO is] just listen. Do what you can to listen to the salespeople and to your customers. Before you do anything, make sure you understand your current state, what is actually happening, where you need to focus. And the only way you can do that is to be a listener. I say my first 30 days are usually spent as resident therapist for a lot of people because they always want to tell the new person what's wrong and how they would fix it. It's your job to understand the lowest common denominator and work your way through that list.”