Full Throttle Leaders Podcast- Tami Cannizzaro

All right, everybody, another episode of Full Throttle Leaders. I got Tammy Carzaro, who is a fractional CMO who was just at Thrive and who has joined us on our podcast today. How you doing, Tammy?

Thank you, Michael. I'm great.

So tell us your journey of kind of starting your own fractional approach, and then also like your background at Thrive and all these other great companies like CA.

Yeah, sure. Well, I am, you know, I've worked at a bunch of larger companies like IBM and Oracle and eBay, and then, and then more startup companies like Forcepoint and Komodo and Thrive who have growing SaaS businesses. And, but my, you know, the kind of, you know, thread that's tied all of these positions has been really driving revenue growth and innovating on go-to-market models. So, uh, you know, at Thrive, we had a PLG program, a channel program, and a direct sales program. And now we're really turning to AI to, to really understand how AI is going to change the game for marketing. And so I've been working, uh, with, with growth stage companies to help build programs. And, you know, what might have taken a team of, you know, 10, 5 years ago, you can really sort of start to create these AI agents and work with a much smaller, you know, even, you know, 1 or 2 person team to, to really develop a full, full-stack marketing plan, which is pretty amazing.

What, what strategy have you taken on in the last year that you're like, wow, that was an incredible idea and it worked really well, or something that just completely failed and your failure is a learning point for you but also for us?

I think what's pretty interesting is campaigns, building campaigns. And you can, you know, you can actually build out pretty, pretty cool campaigns using, you know, using some of some even open source or free, free tools that will help you to build really creative campaigns that will help you You know, first of all, to find a differentiated value prop, a really good story that's, that's differentiated from the marketplace, and then even build you creative and ads that, that, you know, that can be pretty impactful. There's a, there's a Google tool called Pomoly that you can actually try out and put your brand into your website, and it would actually build you ads and come up with campaign ideas, which is—

What's it called?

Pretty amazing. It's called Pomoly. Pomeli, and that's a Google Labs free tool. P-O-M-E-L-L-I. Definitely worth checking out.

Huh, I've never heard that. See, that's why I love doing these podcasts and roundtables that I do. It's— you always learn something new. What other, what other tools have you seen that you really like? I've been kind of getting into Claude and Notebook from Google.

Yeah, I love Claude, and Claude is great, I think, for ideating and coming up with your kind kind of more of your strategic work. And then another tool that I've really liked is Clay that can really help to kind of augment your ABM program. So ABM is getting much more sophisticated as a tool, as an approach. We've been talking about ABM for, I don't know, 15 years, but—

Yeah.

It's really finally gotten very sophisticated where you can kind of automate all the workflows And really have a pretty powerful, you know, outbound marketing approach that, you know, takes data signals and is able to really, you know, figure out who's in your, you know, who's kind of your best chance to convert into buyers. And Clay is a really nice tool for that. Another tool I like is Profound, which is, you know, kind of helps you to understand how you're showing up in the LLMs. That's really important these days, right? As people, and I'm sure as a, you know, as consumer consumers, people start to realize this, that you're really starting to almost use AI 100% of the time, right? Versus the traditional Google.

Yeah.

Even if you're using Google in AI mode. And so making sure you're found up in the, found in those LLMs is super, super important. And what's kind of interesting is, you know, as a marketing CMO, PR and organic social media to me were sort of You know, they were sort of losing their luster in terms of impact. And now the LLMs are actually starting to cite Instagram, your organic posts, and they're starting to cite, you know, Reddit comments. And, you know, they're, they're really going to start to cite your, your press releases and your, or, you know, in your organic content, your analysts, you know, publications and proprietary research. And so that becomes really, really important.

What, um, what, what's your, what's your plan over the next 5 years for you? I mean, what do you, what are you looking to do? Are you, uh, building your own brand, working at another company? Like, what gets you excited to kind of wake up in the morning at this point?

Well, right now I'm, I'm really trying to deep dive in AI. I want to become one of the leading marketing experts in AI and really You know, there hasn't been a ton of innovation in marketing and the way you structure a marketing team since I've been a marketer. Honestly, it's, you know, you pretty much set it up the same and there really hasn't been a ton of innovation. The technology, there's been an innovation, but the actual marketing team and how you set up a marketing team really hasn't changed that dramatically. I think this, you know, this will really, AI will really revolutionize the, how we run a marketing team, the stack that we use, the approaches that we use. And so I really, I'm hell-bent on becoming one of the foremost kind of CMOs around AI and how you use AI to drive revenue growth. And so I've, you know, I'm actually taking a bunch of courses. I've gone back to school for a few months and I'm working as a consultant because when you work as a consultant, you know, when you work at a large brand, especially when you're at a big public company, it is really hard to take the time to educate yourself and learn and get out there and go to conferences and, you know, really go deep. And so, you know, I'm kind of taking a little bit of a year of sabbatical to just go really deep and learn as much as I can and just become a student of AI. I'm trying to work— like, it's nice being here in New York because a lot of these thought leaders I find and people on the ground are like Webflow and Profound. They're here based in New York and a bunch of, you know, a bunch of kind of innovative AI people. And so I'm really trying to Trying to understand and learn and just become a student.

Yeah. What conferences are you going to that you like, that you figure that's good for your background or just overall for maybe my audience who's probably the CMOs and CROs and the demand gen folks that listen to this?

Well, I went to the Webflow conference a few months ago. That was great. It was a really, you know, a really good worthwhile conference. Like, I think some of these, if you look up some of the tools, the leading tools in AI, they'll all have their little conferences or webinars. And so I think that's a good place to start, even if you don't buy the tool to see like, okay, what kind of webinars, what kind of conferences do they, you know, do they have? I just went to one last week that was actually, it was, Oh gosh, it was called the, the Agentic, um, the Agentic Conference. I've got to get the name because it's actually on— oh, you know what, I should look that up. I should hold on. Can you, can you pause me for a second? Because it was a really good one. It's got available— it's available.

We'll put it in the, um, in the, in the description.

It was a, it was a full week conference on how search is evolving, and it's going to be available online. It was available for free.

Yeah.

And You know, the search, as you can imagine, is going to change pretty dramatically. And so, you know, I would definitely— Search Atlas, that's the conference, Search Atlas Conference. And that's— I would say that's worthwhile. No, online. 5 days of online coursework with really good, powerful experts. I would highly recommend it. It was excellent, excellent coursework.

What's going to happen with the Googles of the world that are The search engines, right? I mean, obviously they have Gemini and they have AI and so forth, but I'm kind of wondering like what's going to happen to the search engines when you have— because I don't use them as much anymore.

Well, I asked Claude. I said, well, you know, I was asking Claude, well, why is traditional search coming up with different answers than You know, than AI search. And it said, you know, at some point in the near future, the two will converge and there will be no, you know, traditional search and AI search. The two will converge, which makes sense, right? Because it is— it's funny, now Google has AI mode, but eventually the world will be in AI mode.

Yeah, I noticed when you go to Google, it has the AI description on top and then the normal listings on the bottom, but I think people— I think the whole pay-per-listing model on, on, uh, like a search engine has to, has to change a lot.

Yeah, I would agree. I would agree. You know, it's funny, I, I actually personally think that people got a little tired of Google, and, you know, you couldn't get a decent answer on Google because it was all paid. You know, I, I sort of kiddingly blame marketers, right? Like, you know, you try to— at one point it had gotten so bad, I tried to find an urgent care in my area, and Some urgent care had done the paid, you know, the paid search, like, you know, 100 miles away. And I thought, my God, I can't even find an urgent care using Google because some, some idiot has done the paid search 100 miles away.

Yeah, I, I, on that stuff, I try to use Google Maps, you know, like, yeah, because at least it knows where I'm at because I love Google Maps. But yeah, I, I, I'm, I'm also interested, like, I heard a commercial for, for, like, a CarMax or AutoNation where You could say, I'm looking for a car like this, this, and that, and not have to do all those dropdowns and what size engine. And I'm like, why aren't we doing this for everything? Because we're like asking the sales guy, what does this car have? Why do we need a person for that? Because no matter what, they're not going to have that intelligence or they're going to be ignorant to that. Not because they're stupid, because it's too much information.

That's right.

Exactly. I wonder what other products or solutions or experiences Can we do that as a kind of a companion when I'm shopping or doing something else? Have you come across that thought process?

You know, it's interesting. I do think that AI is really going to help small businesses and entrepreneurs to be more competitive because it does, you know, it does kind of really provide almost like a, you know, an assistant, a marketing assistant, almost like another human being. You know, they say the machine are kind of taking over for the human beings. And I think, you know, so many of these small business owners that I work with are entrepreneurs, or even as a fractional CMO, these smaller, you know, smaller companies that are driving growth, they don't have the ability to hire, you know, hire tens or hundreds of people to drive their business. And so I think, you know, where AI is going is, you know, it's interesting kind of the research mode, but where it's going is actually replacing humans in terms of you know, driving different positions like, you know, like legal or, or marketing or, you know, operations or your data analytics, right? And so there's going to be a mix in these companies of, of man and machines, which is just really fascinating.

Who do you— who would be your ideal client for your fractional approach? Like, if someone that's listening to this going like, I'd really love to get to know Tammy and see if she's a good fit, Who do you want to work with? What types of companies?

Uh, you know, I love, I love working with people that, you know, are excited about revenue growth. And, you know, really, you know, their problem is I need more pipeline, I need to scale. And, you know, I, I really love kind of that, that problem. And, and every, you know, every company is like a snowflake, right? It's never there's one answer. Sometimes people say like, what's the exact answer? Well, it depends on your product, it depends on your You know, you're the size of your, you know, average deal size, right, is a big factor, right, in how you go to market. Can you afford a big sales force? Can you afford ABM? Or, you know, do you need, you know, do you need a different approach? That's, you know, do you have a trial for your product or a demo? Or, you know, you know, what is your, what is your product and how can people put their hands on it? You know, and so there are a lot of different factors that go into the right go-to-market approach and how you can scale and drive revenue. But I, I just love working with different brands and figuring that out and kind of setting up the go-to-market model.

What would you say your biggest learning is if you can go back 10 years and say, Tammy, don't do this, do this. Do you have like a lesson learned?

That's a good one. Well, one lesson hard learned is you can't set up an ABM program if sales isn't going to do— it's not If, if, if sales thinks that marketing is going to just hand them leads with an ABM program, it is really a collaboration. So, you know, basically what happens with an ABM program is you're not necessarily handed just a meeting. You're handed, you know, a person who's in the buying, you know, in a buying behavior for your products and researching your product and in, in a sales cycle. But it doesn't necessarily mean you know, that you don't have to do the outreach and LinkedIn and kind of try to meet up with that person and get the meeting. And, and you really need to coordinate that handoff between marketing and sales. And so if sales— sometimes sales can be focused on existing clients, or maybe you don't have the strength of your sales department, and then you could spend a lot of money on an ABM program. And then, you know, if you don't— if you're not like, you know, in sync with your head of sales, You're going to be disappointed. And so I've had ABM programs that have crushed it, crushed it with the right sales partners. And then I've had ABM programs that sort of went a little bit unanswered because they were sort of one-sided. And so that's, that's a big, that's a big important piece, like making sure you're in alignment with both your, you know, your, your business manager or your CEO and your head of sales in terms of the approach and what they're expecting. Because if they're just expecting leads, ABM isn't the right approach, then you should, then you should move more of the traditional demand gen and have marketing drive leads and set meetings. So, you know, you really need to be in alignment in order to make these go to market.

I've seen those always out of alignment. You know, I've worked in a lot of enterprise sales teams. It's like the marketing and the VP of sales are never on the same page and They're like, where's our leads? And then why aren't you closing? It's like, yeah, yeah, it's a constant battle. It's like, and I always thought the SDRs, in my opinion, if they still have them, they should be— they're doing appointments, so they should be more on the sales side where thought generation and white papers and branding should be on the marketing side. What's your thoughts on that?

I've seen them back and forth and I've had CMO roles where they report to me and CMO roles where they report to sales. But at the end of the day, I actually do like having the, having the SDRs because that way you're, you know, there's never any he said, she said, you know, it's, it's, it— we're the ones that need to drive the leads and develop, you know, develop them. Um, but as long as, as long as you have a great sales partner, you know, I don't mind them reporting into sales either because, uh, you know, their, their sales really has a great, uh, proficiency at optimizing and training them as salespeople? Because it's very powerful if you have the SDRs, if they're in the sales function, you know, that carrot of, hey, if you're successful as an SDR, we'll put you out in the field and we'll turn you into, you know, a full seller and we have a career for you, can be very powerful, powerful motivator.

Yeah, I always thought like, you know, the whole— the reason why I kind of started my whole top of funnel thing is like You're going to have an SDR that sucks, you're going to have to get rid of them, or they're going to be great, you're going to have to promote them. So you're always going to have a situation where you're always training or firing, and it's not always the best thing to basically have to go through that churn. So you should have a steady pace of someone like myself and then develop your team.

Absolutely. And I mean, it's terrible to say, but you almost do have to have sort of some brutal guidelines around like, this is what success looks like. And if you're not meeting bar, listen, this just isn't the career or the job for you. Oracle was brutal with this. They would hire— they called it the class of— they would hire 500 kids right out of college. And, you know, they would— only the top cream of the crop would make it, you know. And when those sellers moved up the line, you know, these guys are making $1 million a year when they're really good, right? And so there's a big carrot there. And that's how they become— have become so successful with their, you know, with their in-person sales force.

Yeah. How long were you with Oracle?

I was with Oracle about a year. My sales leader actually got promoted into a services division, and then I left after she, you know, she moved on. But it was a great— it was an interesting year working for Oracle.

How do people get a hold of you so they can reach out to you and possibly use you as a fractional CMO?

Oh, that'd be great. Just find me right on LinkedIn. There are only 2 Tammy Cannizzaro, so— and we look very different.

What's up? You want to give your email out or anything like that so people can—

Yeah, sure. It's tamycann@gmail.com.

Well, thanks for being on today, and I look forward to continuing to work with you. Hopefully we can start a roundtable together.

That sounds great. Thanks so much, Michael.

Thanks, Tammy.