Elisa Steele's Trek from Sales Rep to Silicon Valley CMO and CEO | Connections Ep 10 | Salesforce

When I first started in marketing, it was about creating stories and glossies and things that look perfect. And then I realized that all needed to just be blown up. It was actually about human to human connection. Storytelling wasn't about making stuff up. It was about telling the truth.

Hey, I'm Sarah Franklin and welcome to Connections, where we hear from some of the most innovative leaders in marketing. And Alisa Steel certainly fits the bill. Alisa has spent her career at some of the most iconic companies in Silicon Valley. And what better place to connect with her than here in San Francisco, home to so many of the companies she's helped build and shape. What are some of your favorite memories and moments that you've made here in the city?

Oh, my gosh. Your show isn't long enough for my favorite moments in San Francisco. This place is amazing. I grew up on the east coast and love what I experienced experience there as a young person. But coming to San Francisco changed everything. It's where I got my first job. It's where I created my own financial independence from being reliant on my family or anybody. It's where kind of the heartbeat of everything I learned as a professional is. So thank you for sitting here today because this is where really I grew up as an adult.

I want to start going way, way back to when you worked in an ice cream shop. Like scooping ice cream.

Oh, boy. Yeah, that's way back.

How did that start your love connecting with customers?

I didn't think about it as connecting with customers when I was scooping ice cream. It was more about, wow. Like, I really like working with people and helping figure out what they need and what they want. And sales seemed like a good idea. Cause I figured I liked people. I had all these different service jobs growing up, and those service jobs taught me I like solving problems and working with people. And so I just loved figuring out how can I be independent.

You have been a CMO at so many companies. I think in 2009 is when you got the big job at Yahoo.

Yeah, 2009 seems like a long time ago, but I was lucky to be able to get this role at Yahoo. In marketing, not only do you help sales, you help the company at a level I never really understood. When I was in sales, it was about my zip code or my Geo or my vertical. When I went into marketing, I realized, oh, it's really about creating a platform to help all of sales and the company grow. And so that platform is really strategic and it's global. And then I got hooked along the way. I learned so much about people and organizations and how to work together as a team to collaborate. And it's probably my biggest passion as a leader. But I think the biggest thing I learned about the function of marketing was that product and the design of the product was really your biggest tool to drive adoption and brand love. I sort of spent a lot of time starting at Yahoo and then a couple other companies after that, just sort of hanging out with the product folks, with the engineers, with the product managers. I figured that was the way to actually figure out how to get everyone to come back to the product experience. And to me, marketing and product at that point merged together. Right. It was just a total customer experience. Experience didn't matter what department you worked for.

What are some actionable techniques that people can use to walk in the shoes of their customers?

Oh, well, that's easy. Use the product, use it all the time. Figure out what's wrong with it, figure out why it's great, and then be able to talk about it, work with it, and then work with your colleagues on how to constantly make it better.

So how do you, as a marketer, build that brand love?

What I learned was that brand love was about the truth. It was about authenticity. When I first started in marketing, it was about creating stories and glossies and things that look perfect that would make you attracted to want to do business with that company. And then I realized that all needed to just be blown up. It was actually about human to human connection. And when I started working at Skype, I really, really deeply got into this. We just felt so connected with the product and how it helped people be together even when they were apart. And it was magical and it was creating human connection. And so what we really sought to do was to tell the truth in our stories, like with all the flaws and all the blemishes and all the hiccups that happen when you try to use technology to do something so amazing. And so I really learned that storytelling wasn't about making stuff up. It was about telling the truth.

And how do you think that also works as being a marketing leader? You feel like you need to be prepared on it.

Perfect. I had a kind of big aha on this somewhere around, I don't know, middle of my career where I realized that showing up perfect every day was gonna create every day feeling like a failure. Cause it's not perfect. And you do have kids at home and you do have elderly parents, and you do have all of these other people in your life. Things just don't go According to plan. So I kind of gave up trying to be perfect. And that was a really big deal for me. I was in the dump somewhere around, like my second CMO job where I was trying to be perfect, and I had these two screaming kids behind the curtain, right? Paying no attention to them, Paying no attention to them. But I did need to pay attention to them. And I remember I was doing an all hands and I looked at my watch and thought, oh my gosh, I was supposed to pick up Brownie troupe 15 minutes ago. The one time all year that it was my job and I was late, so I forgot about all the appearances and I said, oh my gosh, guys, I gotta go. And I ran out and I was off email the next few hours. Thank God I took care of the kids and did my duties. I got back on email that night and Sarah, I had messages from all over the globe from my team that said, thank you for being real. It was kind of my big aha day where I realized, hold on a second. We all just need to be human and real. And when we share what our potential vulnerabilities are, we're all better for it and the company's better for it because we get more done.

You have such a strong track record. Do you find that people are intimidated and they might not tell you the truth sometimes?

Well, I don't know if they're intimidated. I hope not. I guess I'll tell a story to answer that question. When I was working at one of my companies and there was something going on that wasn't right. And one of the things I realized is that there was a pretty big gap between management and the rest of the team and the organization. And that gap was created by just sort of differences in age and generation. And so we went about this, like, crazy idea of having reverse mentors for the C suite and that your mentor wasn't someone on the board and it wasn't your peer at a bigger company and it was actually an employee in another department. And it was an absolute huge epiphany for all of us. And information started to flow because we said, hey, like, we know there's something that's not right and we don't know what it is. We're going to create a way that we could talk about it and then talk creates action.

You mentioned culture. How do you build the culture within your teams as a marketing leader?

That's a great question too, because I think culture is more purposeful now. When I was growing up as a manager, I didn't know what that meant. All I knew is I wanted to have a great team. I wanted to win. And so to do that, you have to get to know each other. So I just found in my career, it was about building trusted relationships and then creating loyalty in the team to get focused on on your team and being together and making something great happen.

You really live the brand at all of your jobs. Why is living the brand so important for marketers?

It's important for CEOs, it's important for people working in the customer success organization. It's important for the people building the product. Because if you live the brand, then you can really understand what needs to get better, but also be really proud of what experience you're creating. So. So I think if you're working somewhere or working on something that you don't believe in, you can't live it, then it's not worth it.

So how has your time as a CEO shifted the way that you look at CMOs now?

That was a big shift for me. When I first became a CEO, I thought, oh, I don't even really want a cmo. I'm just gonna keep doing that. Which was completely wrong. Two jobs in the Another completely wrong mistake. But what I learned about myself in looking for a CMO is that I didn't want someone just like me. I wanted someone different, someone who was aligned with my values and aligned with how I thought strategically. But I wanted someone with a different skill set, someone who understood new things in marketing that maybe I didn't know anymore. So that's what I really, you know, sought for is let's find someone that can support the company and be my partner who thinks differently than me.

What's the biggest mistake you've made that you could help others avoid?

Ah, well, I think the key to understanding marketing is understanding all of your mistakes. Nothing you do is ever quite right. So you have to listen and hear from your consumers, your customers, and feedback. Because it only works if you understand your customers. What problems are they trying to solve? How are you set up to help them solve it? We talk a lot about the power of our voice, and it's very, very important. But there's also the power of listening. But probably the biggest mistake or the biggest thing I learned was what we talked about earlier, which is be authentic to what it is and then aspire to what it wants to be. I think that is the truth of what marketing should be. It's about, what are you trying to provide? How are you? What's your vision of getting there and where are you in that journey?

So what's not in the job description for a cmo?

That's a great question because the CMO job is so unique and I think it's viewed as something that people understand but really if you're doing it right, it's very different than the other C suite jobs. You're the only one besides the CEO who is looking across everything that's happening at the company because you care about the brand experience and the brand experience is everything the market feels from you and everything employees feel from you. So as a cmo, what's not in the job description is that you need to be the unifier. It means more collaboration, it means more sharing. It means more teamwork. And if you don't do that as a cmo, you don't reach the heights that the brand or the company really needs to reach. Foreign.

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