Marketing Team Metamorphosis through Company Growth with Amy Cook, CMO of Simplus — Marketing Trends

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I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Marketing Trends and the Leads Aren't Weak.

Welcome to Marketing Trends. I'm your host, Jeremy Bergeron, the Vice President of Media Strategy at Mission.org. And this is the show where twice a week you'll get VIP access into the hearts and minds of some of the most influential marketers in the world. On Marketing Trends, we'll do two things. We'll go deep on a human level, and we'll go even deeper on the nitty-gritty of what makes for the most successful marketers and strategies today. I'm glad you're here. Now let's get into it. Predicting exactly how much growth to expect or strive for in your business can be tricky to forecast. This week, we look to Amy Cook, the Chief Marketing Officer of Semplis. Amy has grown and scaled and been a part of many emerging teams throughout her career, and Semplis' growth has been rapid and expansive. This definitely required great leadership along the way.

At the time, Simplest was doing a few million and had just barely done a Series A. It was just an absolute skyrocket, and I attribute so much of that to our CEO, who really empowered each team member on the executive team to just run and just to do the very best that they could. And then he kept it all together with his vision and focus on culture. So an amazing opportunity. Since then, the past 18 months, We've been acquired by Infosys, and that has been another humongous learning curve to learn how to be part of a massive organization of 250,000 people, contribute and lead from the area that you're at.

Regardless of the size of the team or the title in your email signature, Amy is all about finding the best marketing solutions to her questions. Her success in marketing can be attributed to her openness and collaboration. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Amy dives into scaling and growing a marketing business to enterprise size. And as a part of that, keeping the marketing part of the business integrated with the whole organization. Prepare to benefit from Amy's optimistic and collaborative attitude about growth and best marketing team practices up next on Marketing Trends.

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Hey everybody, welcome to Marketing Trends. Super excited to have an incredible guest. Uh, we have Dr. Amy Cook, PhD, Chief Marketing Officer at Simplice, here today. It's true, she's here. Amy, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, Jeremy. What an introduction. That is much more than I deserve, but thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Wait a second. No, absolutely. I want to, I want to, I want to give people a little snippet of who I'm speaking with now, because what happens is inevitably people will Google you and check you out and they'll see the badassery that you are. But I want to talk a little bit about what you've done on paper, and we're going to get into some of that today because I feel like what you've done, I would need maybe several hours to talk with you about the amazing stuff you've accomplished, but folks, just, just listen in. So Amy, as I mentioned, is the Chief Marketing Officer at Semplis. She's been in the role over 4 years, right, Amy?

I know that I have like exceeded my time.

I mean, any CMO that's been in the role, you know this. I mean, it's like the quickest, it's the role that has like the quickest turnover. You've been in the role 4 years. So I know as a marketing leader in our business, like that says a lot. So everyone, she's been at the business over 4 years in the CMO role. She's led marketing efforts from Series A through acquisition, helping the company achieve a ridiculous 3-year growth rate of 1,578% and acquire not 1, not 2, not 3, 7 companies before being acquired by Infosys for a measly $250 million. Amy also somehow found— finds time to be the founder of a badass marketing company called Osman Marketing, which has been named one of the fastest growing businesses in Utah for 5 years in a row. She also has time to teach. She's an adjunct faculty member at BYU-Hawaii and has taught business and communication courses at BYU, University of Utah, and ASU intermittently for the past 25 years. Uh, she writes, she teaches, she's a badass marketing leader. She's also a mom of 5 kids, which me being a dad of 4, that might be the most impressive thing out of all of it is because how do you be a mom and all the things you do? So I personally am honored that you're here. I'm super interested in your, in your background, but thank you again for being here. I want to start at the beginning, Amy, please tell us and tell our audience, where did this start for you? Where did the, where did the spark of marketing like initiate for you? What, what was that like? What, where were you in your life? What brand was it? A brand? Was it a campaign? Was it a book? Did you have like someone in the family in marketing? Where was the genesis of marketing for Amy Cook?

Jeremy, thank you so much. That, that was seriously the nicest introduction I've ever had in my entire life. Yes.

Yes. Okay, good. We're moving in the right direction.

Okay. Well, so backgrounds, let's start at the very beginning. I grew up in an entertainment family. For those of you who are 50 and older, you may remember the Osmonds and Donny and Marie Osmond. And that is the family that I grew up in. It was a family of 9 children, and they were— my dad was one of the 4 OG members of the boy band, and they traveled all over the world. And so I grew up in a hotel room. I remember my mom trying to give me like baby, baby jars of fruit just to get my nutrients while we're traveling in the hotel. And coming out, I remember one time we were having this Osmond family holiday party and there were all these cameras everywhere because it was for a special. And it was one of my earliest memories. I was 3 years old and I was sitting in front of this delicious Thanksgiving meal and all of my cousins were around and my grandpa was at the end and he was saying, "Can someone pass the gravy, please?" And I thought it was time to eat. And so we started passing the gravy and I started eating and my mom slaps my hand and she's like, We have to do another take. And so that is how I grew up. And so I have grown up around PR and marketing and branding my entire life. And that's really just how I grew up thinking.

So you, was it like into high school, kind of like you were thinking marketing or was it college where you're like, okay, I'm going to study it. That is that where it, you started to kind of focus on the, on the actual trade.

Yeah. And originally I thought, well, you know, wouldn't it be great if I followed in the family business and became an entertainer? And so I was classically trained as a violinist, and so I began traveling with the family, and I was in the Osmond Family Theater in Branson, Missouri in high school and doing 2 shows a week, or 2 shows a day, 6 days a week. And I realized this is not the life for me. This is not where my passion is. And so I went back to college and I got an English degree, a couple of English degrees, Got married. I was putting my husband through school, through medical school. Sadly got divorced. We were medical school casualty and went back and got my PhD. And my dad again needed a book done. And so I had been trained as an editor in one of my full-time jobs. And I thought, I can do a book for you. We can do a book and sell it in the shows and do all of that. And so I did the book and it was great. But then I had to learn how to market. And this was about 15 years ago. And we started producing books and then marketing the books, and I found that my real passion lay in the marketing aspect of it. And my background in content and in PR from my family lent itself really well. So it was just this amazing convergence of many different phases of life helping to inform how we did marketing and how content was really at the forefront of that.

Hmm. What was the first time you, you started to kind of get into marketing at scale? Because I mean, now you've— we fast forward to today, well, you're a marketing leader of a really cool business that's blowing up. And but kind of when did you start to see the power of marketing at scale? And what was that like? Maybe there was a story or a campaign you were involved in where you were like, oh, wow, I see the potency of this.

I remember the way that we started our business was I was remarried. We had 4 kids, and my husband worked at Lehman Brothers, and he got a job at Lehman Brothers 1 month before they collapsed. Wow. And so all of a sudden, he doesn't have a job, and we have all these little kids, and we had a $10,000 tax return. And he says, Amy, let's split this tax return and let's see how much money we can make.

Wow.

You take $5,000 and I'll take $5,000. And he put his in a real estate deal and I started Osmond Marketing, which is now— has been renamed after the past couple of months, Stage Marketing. So I decided, okay, you know, necessity is the mother of invention, right? So we've got all these little kids, we have no way to support them, and I knew how to market. And so we just went for it and it was the most amazing opportunity that I've ever had. I probably worked 120 hours a week for the next 15 years. But I learned so, so much. So what was really exciting was, you know, we started with content and we started doing people's Forbes columns and ghostwriting and a lot of slide decks. And then, you know, people would say, okay, I can see, I see you can write, but can you design this for me as well? Oh, I see you can do this content. Can you also build a website? And so it just kind of snowballed over, you know, over and over again. And then I had this amazing opportunity with one of my clients, which was Ryan Westwood, who had just barely started a business called Simplest. And he and I had done some work together with a vendor relationship. And he said, Amy, will you come in-house? Will you leave your business behind and will you come in-house and work with me and grow Simplest? And I said, absolutely. It took, it took about 1 second for me to say, this is an absolutely amazing opportunity. I need to learn how to market at scale. Back to your point, Jeremy, and really learn how to do marketing, not just in my own little sphere, but how does it work with sales? How does it work with partnerships? How does it work with delivery? And how do you grow a brand? And how do you deal with the investment community? And, and all of these things that I had no idea how to do. And I was so grateful to be given that opportunity that, that I let the, the business, you know, I put some leadership in charge of the business that we started and I moved over to Simplest and, and have never looked back. It's been the most amazing opportunity.

So you jumped into Simplest as the marketing leader or just to kind of be like, join a marketing team that was already existing?

Originally, I joined a marketing team that was already—

Okay. Okay.

And then after about 6 months, I became the marketing lead.

Okay. Okay. So, wow. I mean, what a— what an adventure. I mean, it's like you're you're at this intersection of— I mean, for you, I see there's like a lot of intersections happening in your career, but I see this one of like, have your own business, saw some momentum, experienced success there, had a client, Simplest, which you certainly saw some opportunity. Then you choose to leap over there, join the marketing squad, and then take over that, that team 6 months later. And then now you're in this marketing leader role. What's it like for you? What's it like going from kind of this marketing tactician, if you will, someone that's maybe executing and supporting various parts of marketing campaigns and to now leading a team. What was that like? Did you feel like you stepped into that and it was like flow, like, wow, this is exactly where I want to be? Or did you step into that role and kind of like, oh, this is very different than being just a contributor in the marketing team. Now I'm leading the whole strategy. What was that like for you?

You know, it's, it's, as you can imagine, it has been like drinking from a fire hose, right? Because you're, you're an executor. And so you know how to do everything, but do you know why you're doing everything? And do you know how it works with, you know, with your overall revenue goals? So the strategy portion of it, luckily I had had a lot from just having a doctorate, and my doctorate overlapped quite well with marketing. But there was still like, so you never really know until you get into the business, and each business is different. So, you know, I've also had the opportunity to do some fractional CMO roles, and in each one of those It has been very different. So what's been amazing for me is to be able to take that strategy, build a plan around it, and build it from top down. So I would be able to step in and help my team execute, but then also understand the strategy behind it. But that is actually one of the things that I think is really, really important for CMOs to understand, is that you will get more respect from your team if you know how to execute yourself. And many CMOs do. And the ones who are really successful are the ones who are willing to be the servant leaders, get down, help support their team, and help lift them up because they know how to do it as well.

Hmm. Let's talk about when you became the marketing leader. How much revenue was Simplest doing? How big was the team at that point when you became leader?

At the time, Simplest was doing a few million and had just barely done a Series A. Wow.

Okay.

And so there was just like unbelievable growth for the next about 3 Well, let's see, for about the next 3 years, it was a growth rate of over 300% year over year. So wow, it was just an absolute skyrocket. And I attribute so much of that to our CEO, who really empowered each team member on the executive team to just run and just to do the very best that they could. And then he kept it all together with, you know, with his vision and focus on culture. Wow. So It was, it was a really an amazing opportunity. Since then, the past 18 months, we've been acquired by Infosys. And that has been another humongous learning curve and really exciting ride as well to learn how to be part of a massive organization of 250,000 people, find your spot, contribute, and lead from the area that you're at.

Yeah, I mean, I definitely want to get into Infosys because that's an amazing brand. On another show that I host, I interviewed Ravi Kumar, who is an exceptional human. We talked about this, uh, about a month ago when we connected. And Infosys, I'm just, I'm bullish on the brand. I love what they're up to. And, and they're, and they're massive. They're really, really big. Like to your point, over 200,000 employees and that scale, it's incredible. So since you jumped into that part, what was that like? The acquisition, now being a leader, now kind of being under the umbrella of Infosys, which is a pretty big brand.

Mm-hmm.

What was that like for you? What were some of the challenges that kind of arose going through that type of acquisition?

You know, it was hard to be acquired during COVID That part was challenging. We couldn't get together in person. We had to do everything remote. You know, everyone's getting sick and having to take time off. And, and so there really were a lot of challenges with COVID But my personal experience with Infosys has been absolutely incredible. So right at the very beginning when we were acquired, I went, I took a trip to New York and I met Harini, who was Harini Babu, who runs the brand portion.

I met Harini. Yes, we met Harini.

Yes, we met Harini.

Yeah, yeah.

She's one of my all-time favorite people.

Yeah, yeah.

And then Ravi has also been very open, and I would not expect a president of the company to be that accessible, but You know, he and Ryan Westwood and I were on a meeting 2 days ago and we've been texting this week. And so he is really, really amazing. And then I also had the opportunity to start hosting some of the Infosys leadership forums, which gave me a pretty unique opportunity to get to know Salil and Praveen and some of the other executives at the company. And so for me, the opportunity has been very, it has really been great in my experience. Wow. Super positive.

Yeah. So it sounds like, which doesn't always happen in acquisition, it sounds like you really stepped into a lot of support, you know, probably unlimited support with the size of Infosys. Like you can really, you know, there, there's no doubt they can support you. And I mean, I know certainly Ravi, then Harini, we connected with, and I'm like, and so it's cool to hear that you, they welcomed you in and they're supporting you. And even still now they are. What is your thoughts on agent hiring an agency versus kind of in-house. I'm always curious about marketing leaders who, some of them are so staunchly opposed to agencies and they just, they wanna hire the smartest and they wanna build it in-house.

Mm-hmm.

Versus outsource to an agency. How have you navigated that and how is it today? Like, do you, are you bullish on one or the other? Do you like a healthy mix?

I like a healthy mix. Okay. I think that you have to have your core team in-house because you have to have the strategy so aligned with your marketing. And I think if you can get really strong generalists in-house, then you can hire specialists in the agency roles. I think that's a really strong support system to really lift your marketing. The other area that it works really well is if you're having trouble retaining people, then an agency can give you that unlimited support. You can fire your agency at any time if they're not performing well for you with no consequences. And you know, you can get 100— we go at the agency, we go by the hour. And so there's 100% utilization out of your team. So if the price is low enough, and the utilization is 100%, there's a really good case to fill in some of those gaps, especially left by the Great Recession, not Great Recession, the Great Resignation.

Right.

And so I think that this— I'm bullish on agency, agency support as well to fill in some of those gaps.

Wow. So, you know, for me, the marketing leader is, you know, this The role, especially today, and especially in a company like Simplice, now a part of Infosys, it's all about collaboration. It's, and it's not, I'm not just saying that like you, you as the CMO, Amy, you're sitting at this intersection of the functions like product and finance and sales and opera. Like there's, you know, you, you literally connect to every core function of the business and it's really important that you're staying aligned to all of those things. By the way, you're moving really quickly and moving fast. Growth is there, but you have to be kind of moving towards this common goal. How are you doing this today?

I love this question because I really appreciate how you're positioning marketing as a central function in the business. And I think that it absolutely is in any healthy company. Marketing has to be at the center point for connection. When marketing is taken as like more of an ancillary role, then you lose a lot of the positivity that you can have from marketing. So with me, you know, I have finance meetings with the team each week. The finance team is luckily super cool to work with. Shout out to Ryan Larson. And they— the product team, also very cool. Love our delivery people. It's awesome to work also on the alliances and partners. I work with that group. More closely than some of the others because in real ways, alliances and marketing are very similar with the same goals. So not only do you have to connect internally very well, but you also need to connect with your partners, with your customers, and do joint co-marketing with your partners to reach the same customers. So it's a whole lot of relationship building, even more than I would have expected when I just started. Doing marketing deliverables all those years ago. Wow.

What about, you know, the stage-old thing we always talk about, but I'm, I always love to hear marketing leaders like yourself respond to this, and that is marketing and sales alignment and how you navigate that space. It's so important, certainly now today in this world we're in now. You know, I've been in organizations, big ones, little ones, where there's that tension and it, it's, it exists. And I've been on the sales side, I've been on the marketing side. And it seems like there's been an evolution of that alignment with technology. And of course, there's how you relate— the relationship between you and the head of sales is important and things like that. But how do you, again, navigate that sales and marketing alignment? Because clearly, you have done it and are doing it well. We are. What's been your experience in that? And what are some of the maybe the key things you think you have in place as to why you have that alignment? Because it seems like it's there.

It is there, but it wasn't always there. So So to just be a little vulnerable, a few years ago, we were having some problems with that as many companies do. So it seemed like, you know, it's so easy for a salesperson to say, hey, if marketing would just give me what I need, then, you know, I would make my quota.

Yep, yep.

Marketing says, sales, like, why don't you just sell the stuff that we produce? Yeah.

Yep, yep, yep.

And so it's very easy to cast blame. So a few years ago, we all got together as the go-to-market team got together and we had a consultant, a third-party consultant come in and help us with best practices because one of the things that we were really struggling with was we want to work together, but we don't know how. What is the best way to go to market together and to have that alignment? So hiring this third-party consultant that would give us best practices in a non-political, non-threatening environment was really helpful for us. So we could help. We would have a safe— it was almost like a therapist. We had a safe space to say, well, these are my pain points and these are my pain points. And then they would be able to say, okay, well, these all make sense. I understand. Here is your flowchart for working well together with sales. It also really helps when you have a sales leader who appreciates the value of marketing and a marketing leader who appreciates the value of sales. And luckily, Pete Shelton and I have that. With each other and really support each other well. I know that I'm only going to get event ROI if I empower his sales leaders to lead the event. And he knows that he's only going to get marketing support if he makes those salespeople accountable for the event. And so there is, there's a really great understanding of each other, but you know, it wasn't always that way.

How much do you communicate with the head of sales? Like, is this a— you've had probably had an opportunity to engage with different types of sales leaders over your career. Like, how do you like to flow with the head of sales?

You know, every sales leader is a little bit different and you have to be adaptable. That's the first thing that I have noticed. I have worked with many different sales leaders over the years. And one of the things that I know that is common about all sales leaders is they are very definitive. No matter if you're going to be successful in sales, you have to be very confident that you know what you're doing and you're going the right direction. And so in a, in a real way, marketing has to take a support role and align behind the sales leader and say, okay, I'll, I'll use your playbook. I'm happy. I'm happy to do that. What does your playbook look like? So understanding kind of what their thought processes are. Another thing that just, I'm stereotyping, but another thing that sales leaders tend to not want to do is document things. And that's where marketing can really come in and be a great support as well and say, okay, let me just help you with some of these things where we can calculate our ROI and track what we're doing and build the materials and build the sales collateral for your enablement. So I think if you position it that way with, with marketing as a sales enablement function as well, I think that's something else that can really help generate your alignment because all of a sudden they see see the value.

I love that. I want to get your insight and experience on going through that many acquisitions. I mean, you were a part of— it was Simplest acquiring 7 companies, right?

That's right.

Okay. So I mean, I don't think I've ever met a CMO that's done that before. And I've met with a lot of CMOs across the Fortune 1000. And that's really interesting. What's it like, you know, going through that many? How What's your role look like going through an acquisition and that many acquisitions? And what's some of the things you've learned and what are the takeaways from doing that many?

You know, it's really— I have learned so, so many things from doing these acquisitions. We've done them in different geos, we've done them in different industries, we've done them in different market sizes. And so having an understanding of how each company may look different between the geo, the industry, the market size, the product, and the leaders is really something that, again, adaptability is name of the game. One of the things that was really helpful for me was to have such a strong COO. Isaac Westwood was our COO and led all of the integration efforts from the acquisition. And so he has been very, very helpful in helping block out, this is marketing's role. And he like gave me a big fat checklist of about 350 items saying, wow, saying, These are all your things that you need to do. But it was so helpful because then it took a lot of the guesswork out of it. And he organized it in a really great way. And so then I could just focus on the execution piece of it.

Hmm. So when you're acquiring these businesses in different geos and industries, when it comes to what they're doing on the marketing side of things, do you see that opportunity as like, okay, I get to take a peek at what they're doing? Like, are you learning things about the way they're marketing that you're like, ooh, that's good, I'll take that. Are you kind of cleaning house? And like, what's it like from just the perspective of you, the marketing leader, looking at another company that has their own marketing arm? Like, what's that?

Well, for the most part, we acquired smaller companies that didn't have a very strong marketing function.

Okay.

For the most part, they were just absorbed into our org.

Okay.

That was not the case with the Australia acquisition, Squarepeg. They had their own marketing function with a strong marketing leader. So luckily, Dee and I have become very good friends and we collaborate more as colleagues than as subsidiary organization. But I think it, it really is a little bit of a negotiation each time you do that. There have been strong leaders that we've brought into the marketing team from some of these acquisitions. And I think that one of the, besides being adaptable, I would say the next important quality for a CMO to have is enough humility to be able to say, you know what, you're doing this better than I am. Let's use your playbook. I think that that is, I think some people see that as a weakness and it's actually a strength. In fact, I got some criticism early on from using a model, like an academic model, and I brought it up on the screen and I showed them, I said, this model is a really good model. And one of the people reached out afterwards and they were like, hey, it makes you look kind of stupid when you use other people's models. You should make your own. And I could not disagree more because from my perspective, you know, I came at it from an academic perspective where as an academician, you are a drop of water in a river of knowledge, and your job is to contribute your drop of water to the entire body of knowledge. So I approach marketing the same way where everybody's got good ideas. The delivery team's got amazing ideas. Our legal department gives us great marketing ideas, and then we can go all flow together and collect our marketing knowledge. Hmm.

So you said something interesting there. I want to, I want to get into that a little bit. You said the legal department is giving you good marketing ideas. Can you, can you unpack that a little bit?

Oh yeah, he's my buddy. His name is Adam. Our legal department is a department of one. And so he and I will oftentimes collaborate. This is back to your point about collaboration. We'll collaborate on contracts quite frequently because I send him all of my contracts to look at. He sends me any things to watch out for, and he's very business friendly. So whenever I have an issue, Or maybe I want to do a marketing program and there's like some kind of a legal thing to call out. He and I will talk through it, and sometimes that leads to great conversations about marketing.

Hmm, that's interesting. What does the marketing mix look like now at AdSemplis?

Yeah, so right before the acquisition, I broke down the marketing mix. It ended up being very interesting. So I, I even broke out all the labor and everything we were doing, and so we were at about 75% of our cost was events. And then about 10% of our cost was content. We had some in design, we had some in paid promotions, we had some in campaign management, we had some in premium content development, we had some in social, we had some in, you know, all of the rest of the channels and paid, earned, and owned media, right?

Any direct mail?

We didn't do a lot of direct mail. We did try some ABM. With limited success. But I think with, I think at Infosys, we will have a better result with ABM because the accounts, there are current accounts that we can drive into. Infosys has about, oh, they have so many amazing longstanding accounts where, you know, they have a lot of revenue in these accounts and they have great relationships for 20 years. So when you have that kind, when you're trying to drive Salesforce into a large account like that, ABM will be very effective in that area. It's not as effective when you're just trying to do like net new.

Okay. So heavy, heavy on the events, on the events, which I mean, as we all know, events took a, took an interesting hit this past, these past couple of years. How did you navigate that? What does it look like now, the event? Like, how have you, is it kind of a hybrid virtual thing? Are you doing stuff in kind of cultivating in-person stuff. Yeah, it's cool to hear that so much of it was on events and obviously it was working. So what can you tell us about the events?

Yeah, so a lot of the event budget went to Dreamforce, which is understandable. So we went big with Dreamforce. We rented our own section of the hotel, we had ancillary parties, and we just really went all out. Since COVID obviously in-person events have taken a massive hit. And they're only starting to come back now. We did a lot of, you know, initially when COVID first happened, there was a lot of support for the virtual webinar type forum, and then people got tired of that pretty quickly. And so we saw a decreasing return on our investment on the webinar front. However, the executive roundtables, the virtual executive roundtables, actually performed very, very well for us. Because it was an intimate conversation, just like you and I are having now. Mm-hmm. You don't miss that much when it's a one-to-one conversation, whether it's virtual or in person. So as long as we kept our roundtables at like 10 people or less, we got really great pipeline out of it.

Mm. So let's talk about how Semplis helps brands. Like what, what do you, I know there's a, there's a Salesforce connection, but for other CMOs that listen in, cuz we'll have marketing leaders across the spectrum. And folks kind of coming up in the ranks listen, but how does Simplus help brands?

Simplus is, we are the geek squad for Salesforce.

I love that. I love that.

We are the best advisory implementation and managed services partner you'll ever find.

Wow.

And now with our amazing bench of thousands and thousands of full-time professionals on the Salesforce platform with Infosys, The opportunities are virtually limitless. Wow. So we can work with a small business and we can work with a large enterprise and we do. So at Simplice, we really specialize in an advisory-first industry-led approach. So whenever we approach someone, um, or they approach us and we start looking at the program that they want to do with Salesforce, we take a look and say, all right, what do we need to do on a strategic level first before we just start going in and implementation. And then on the, on the back end, now that you have all of this set up correctly, we've done the program, how do we keep it going? And how do we make incremental gains to make sure that you don't lose all the investment that you've had? So, you know, between, you know, we've got it with advisory, implementation, managed services, change management, and data and integration. Those are our 5 main things that we do.

Wow. Who's the buyer? Who's buying Simplus?

The buyers, buyers are any type of business that want to implement Salesforce. So really, it's, it's any and all buyers, but we really specialize in a few different industries. We specialize in healthcare and life sciences, in manufacturing, in high tech, in communication and media, in financial services, and in consumer and product goods.

Is there a size, a size company that fits the sweet spot within those industries?

Um, yes, for us, we really like to work with companies that have about 1,000 employees and larger.

Okay. Wow. Very cool. Um, I'd like you to reflect on, you know, the past, you know, 4, 4 years and change at Semplis. I'm sure there's been some amazing things happen and there's been some amazing challenges. I'd like you to just reflect on two things. One, what's been like your best day, like your one, one of the best days there and what's that about? And then two, what's been your favorite failure?

Oh my gosh. This, I'm going to have to sit and think about this for a minute. I was not expecting this question, but it's a really, really great question.

Yeah.

I think that one of my very best days at Simplest was During the acquisition, when we announced the acquisition, it was so exciting to see two companies coming together that saw the value in each other, that were ready to make amazing things happen. And so to me, that was one of my very favorite dates.

I love it. Yeah, that's a good one. That's, that's, that's definitely one that I would say is up there as a favorite.

Okay, definitely a highlight. All right.

Okay.

All right. My favorite failure. My favorite failure was when I pushed really, really hard for an inside salesperson to have to be a single point of contact rather than have it distributed the way that the inside sales team wanted to do it. I really pushed for it. And they finally were like, okay, we'll try it for 3 months. And it didn't end up working out. And so that was totally my bad. And I went back to the data and I was like, OK, guys, I was wrong. It was the way you were doing it worked way better than what I suggested. Well, you know, we'll go back to it. And what I loved about that particular failure was there was no I told you so. There was no blame. There was no like, I can't believe you even suggested this in the first place. It was just like, all right, we tried it and now we're moving on. And to me, that kind of working relationship is really important. And it's something that I value a lot and really appreciate that we, we can fail at Simplus and we can pivot and we can do things that will help us learn for the next time.

What sort of things do you use for demand gen? Like what kind of intelligence or tools that you, or that maybe in the past or now, that you really like?

Well, I think that intent data is really interesting to me. It is so exciting to see when you get a signal that somebody's looking on your website from this particular website or this particular company. That's something that I think has tons of value. And there is really a big range in how we make that actionable. I think that industry is still pretty nascent. And we still have to do a lot better on making that actionable. For example, it's even harder now that everyone's working at home, because they get their intent data based on the IPs of the company headquarters, right?

Right.

So it'll be interesting to see how that works out. But any company who can, who can effectively get intent data to work for them, they're going to be really far ahead.

Yeah, we're looking at this now in our, in our business. And, you know, we've spoken to folks like Sixth Sense and Clearbut and some of these really interesting technologies. I know when I was in sales, I would have loved this sort of data, you know, to understand who's checking you out, you know, and you can get a lot of really good information about their geo, or, you know, even title, or, you know, it's just really interesting that information you can get really allows us to serve them in the best way at the top of the funnel. And it's fascinating. So I would agree with you there. When you think about the, the kind of customer experience, and, you know, and I've seen a lot of brands really doubled down on this in the past couple years, especially because of the way the world is. What would you tell other CMOs and marketing leaders about how they can really start on this journey of creating this kind of seamless, better end-to-end customer experience?

Well, the first thing I would say is you need to take— you need to reframe your sales cycle from just the funnel into the flywheel. That type of framework shift makes a huge difference in how you view the customer. Because no longer are you focusing only on the front end, but you're taking that, you know, the purchases at the top of the flywheel, and you've got this whole entire customer experience side that we hope ends in evangelists that will help you sell the next time around, right? So when you do that, it makes it a lot easier to invest in some of those programs that helps you upsell your current customers and create evangelists for your new customers. So I think that's, um, reframing that perspective is kind of the first thing that leads to a lot of great action items following, and it just kind of flows down the hill from there.

Hmm. I like that reframing from funnel to flywheel. That's cool. When it comes to just like predicting growth, you know, and you know, look, we, we said earlier that, you know, you had some things in place that allowed you to achieve this 3-year growth rate of again, pay attention, 1,578%, which is insane. You know, now here we are in 2021, we're about to be in the 2022 era. And there are these really interesting things around like predicting growth, like how fast can you get to the next level? And how do you kind of view that now with the tools available, with your experience growing businesses in this way? You know, is there a really tight alignment with like, can you actually predict where, where you're going to be in 6 months, 12 months now based on the things that have happened in the business? And how do you like look at predictable growth now as a CMO?

No, I think that's a really great question. And I think that that is the, the magic 8-ball that everybody wants to have, right? Yes. What is it going to be? And so I think that we, you know, you can base it on historicals and you can base it on some goals and achievements, but You know, I think that as you get more into the enterprise, you can see what other lines of business are doing. And so for us, a 30% growth rate is now what we're achieving, you know, what, or what we're desiring to achieve because the account sizes are so much larger. So when you have, you know, when you're a little company, you can expect an insane growth rate. And then when you're in an enterprise and your, your growth rates are going to be more like the 30%. So I would just say when you're, when you're planning out your forecasting, doing some underwriting on what other companies like you are doing, and setting your goal maybe 10% higher so you can crush your competition.

I love that. Okay, cool. Let's shift to one of my favorite parts of the interview, which is the lightning round.

Okay.

And this has been awesome, Amy. Thank you for making time. Seriously.

So much fun. I absolutely love it.

I knew when we spoke to you in the car that day, I'm like, we gotta get this woman on our show. And you did not disappoint today. So we appreciate you.

Oh, thank you.

You ready for the lightning round?

I'm ready.

Okay, let's do it. Marketing Trends Podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. First question, we have Amy Cook, PhD. Chief Marketing Officer slash mom slash badass slash amazing human in the show. Amy, first question. What do you enjoy doing with your family?

I love going to movies with my family.

Love it. I love it. That's a good one too. Second question. Um, what is your favorite social media channel?

I like Facebook the best. You can get more content in there.

Okay. Okay. What is your least favorite marketing buzzword?

Transformation. Digital transformation. What does it even mean?

That's great. I love it. Okay. And then what's your best advice for a first-time VP of marketing?

Best advice is get in there, roll up your sleeves, get your hands dirty, and learn everything from the ground up.

Hmm. Okay. Finish this sentence. Few people know that I like to blank.

Play the violin.

Awesome. Finish this sentence. I would bless the whole world with—

kindness.

Love that one. Love that one. Finish this sentence. A good idea I had recently was—

a waterproof mesh that goes over your skin when it rains.

Oh, I love that. Sign me up. Finish this sentence. A time when you made a powerful choice was—

When I took the risk to leave my business and go to Simplus.

That's a big one. If you had unlimited creativity and support, you would—

I would do a user conference for Simplus. Hmm.

Finish this sentence. I'm secretly curious about—

why people don't like self-help books.

You're good at this. You're good at this. Finish this sentence. A challenge I overcame was—

Getting divorced, living in my basement or in my parents' basement with 2 kids and building a life from there.

That's good. Please finish this sentence. What I love and appreciate about myself is—

I will never quit.

I get that from you. I picked that up. I pick up many things from you, but there ain't no stopping Amy Cook, that's for sure. When I want to feel more joy, I—

Go for a walk with my friends. Hmm.

Something I keep learning again and again.

You can't control people. You can only empower them.

Last question. I feel at home when—

my family is around me. We've got takeout and we're playing a game.

I love it. Amy Cook, thank you for being on the show. This has been epic. Highlight of my day, for sure.

The highlight of my week.

Seriously, let the record reflect October 28th, 2021. We did it. Amy Cook, Jeremy Bee, thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Jeremy Bee. Such a pleasure.

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