The Client Experience - Fractional C-Suite Retreat - Episode # 019

Growing a business is hard, but it does not have to be.

Once a week, we take a break from the hustle and bustle in business to talk about innovations and what's new in the C-suite. This is the Fractional C-Suite Retreat, and I'm Joseph Frost. Pull up a seat at the fire, grab a drink, smoke a cigar, and just join me as we relax, learn, and get inspired. This retreat is sponsored by Your CMO, helping organizations grow with better marketing strategy.

Today's guest is an industry leader. She's A highly skilled strategist has helped more than 40 businesses grow their revenues as owner at Strategic Marketing Consultant LLC Consulting. Welcome, Sarah Ganahan. How are you?

Thank you so much. I'm doing great today. Lovely to be able to have a great conversation with you today.

Yeah, I'm really excited for this. We've had a chance to talk a couple times, so let's just get right into it. One of the first questions I like to ask is from your perspective, what are some of the opportunities that you see in the C-suite that maybe other C-suite members should know about?

You know, when I was thinking about that question, it made me kind of go back to some fundamentals that I think are really important and we don't really want CEOs in the C-suite to forget about sometimes. And it's relationship building. And while you may say, absolutely, I'm working on that, have it all set, I think it's important to think about relationship building in your organization. So not just your own relationships, but the relationships throughout your organization are incredibly important. And what they can do is help build that sense of trust, that sense that you are a trusted advisor for them, your client type of company or organization. If there's relationships throughout. I had a mentor early on in my career who was the CEO of the company I worked for. And I remember him telling me really early on, so when I was in school, he was a technical guy, went to grad school, you know, I had all these peers that I kept up with. Once I started my career, got jobs, they got jobs. As I moved up, they moved up. And by the time he became a CEO, he looks around and everybody he knows is either at a leadership level, and oftentimes in a client organization or a potential client organization. This company happened to do a lot of work in the public sector. So it happened to be, these were leaders of public sector groups, organizations, that type of thing. And he said, so it was really important that I had those relationships, but those relationships aren't the ones necessarily that are gonna get you the work. It will be a validator, absolutely, but unless your project managers, your account managers, you know, other people in your customer service, you know, organization all need to have relationships too, because that's where the strength lies, I think. Having the CEO come from on high and say, hire this, you know, particular consultant, you know, sometimes they'll, absolutely it will happen, but you may not have that buy-in from all the different levels of the organization. And that to me, that's the ideal, that you want everybody to be all in about a particular choice. And my experience happens to be a lot in professional services. And so there's a procurement department a lot of the time, there's, you know, different people that are involved in making a decision, sometimes a selection panel. And the more people you know who, you know, sort of understand and trust what you offer, the better it is for you. So that was what I thought of when you asked that question, that relationships, you just shouldn't forget about them. They're so important. And I'm just such a believer in relationship marketing. I think relationships are the way to go regardless of if you're a product or a service, because those relationships will hopefully last long amounts of time. People may come and go from different organizations, but you have opportunities then, right, that you might not have if they do move to a different organization. And my belief is we're not in this for a transaction. You know, I'm not personally, I've been marketing, so I'm not selling, you know, a widget that somebody is now gonna buy and I say, see you later. It's a relationship I wanna build over time. The more we know each other, the better I think my services can be and the more they're gonna trust what I have to offer as well. So what do you think, Joe? Do you find this in your work as well?

Yeah, I mean, I think, uh, in marketing, uh, it is— needs to be so aligned with sales. And I think of relationships typically more from a sales hat. You know, you've got to build that trusted relationship to, to get that project to the next stage, to eventually close, to turn the client. Then you got client services relationships, but marketer's perspective, it's, it's a little more removed. And so what's intriguing about this, this thought process is thinking from a marketing lens, like how do you, how do you build those virtual relationships, or those written relationships, or those visual relationships the same way you can do it one-on-one? Or is that even— should you be focusing on how to mimic it and just figure out how to create more of the one-on-one opportunities?

Right. You know, personally, I love the one-on-one because I feel like you get so much more out of it, but that's not always scalable, right? That doesn't always work in a larger sense. So, you know, the one of the things I work on with my clients a lot is sort of put yourself in the client's shoes and what's going to be interesting to them. The whole rah-rah, you know, I'm so great, it's not going to get you very far. It's just, you know, thinking about what problems the client has and how can you help solve it for them and what's, what's really at the root of it too. Because, you know, all of us, I think, have somebody who comes and says, I need a new website, you know, a better sales process, this or that. But getting to the root of it is often sort of helps you understand, actually, you need a change management process, right? Actually, you need, you know, X, Y, and Z. You really need to dive in a little bit more. And so while not always, you know, the scalable option, it really does, I think, pay off when you have the one-on-ones and the ability to listen to each other and really dive in there.

Yeah, for sure. I think the closest thing is video where you can get close to that one-on-one experience. At least people can see the other person on the other side, their mannerisms, can understand what it might be like to interact with that person by watching them. A video, an authentic video, not a, uh, you know, salesy scripted video, but a real conversational style video.

Yeah.

So when you think of relationship marketing, you mentioned that earlier, what does that mean to you?

So to me, that means, you know, keeping in touch. So you've got the network. I remember, you know, always seem to be hearkening back to the beginning of my career, but I was sort of the, you know, do your work keep your head down, get it done kind of person. And I realized after a number of years, huh, there's got to be other people in this too. And so, you know, pick your head up and really start to establish and develop your network. Really important thing, you know, in the business that most of us are in. But just sort of keeping in touch, I think, is really, really important. It doesn't have to be, oh, we have to set up a one-on-one and talk for an hour. You know, hey, how did it go with X, Y, or Z? How's your family? You know, there's just keeping in touch quick.

It sounds a lot like sales though, doesn't it?

It is. You know, you know what's interesting too is I'm a marketer, but running my own business, it really has given me a new perspective on the whole marketing and sales interaction. I have to sell my own business, right? And so you have to become a bit of a salesperson which I think helps marketing. I really do. The separation of marketing and sales into two separate units, you know, sort of acting all on their own, I don't think that really serves an organization well. That integration, I think, is really important. And I'm not even sure it matters what hat you put on it. It's that you're building relationships. And it is a part of marketing. And it's absolutely a part of sales too. So, you know, developing relationships, giving people content that might be very interesting to them because you understand them more, that's marketing, right? Helping you understand what the problem is and how your solution can meet them, that's ostensibly sales. So, you know, there's ways that it weaves itself together, I think. And I think just keeping in touch, understanding what they're facing, what keeps you up at night, all those kind of are really, I think, useful to either side.

Yeah, for sure. So how do you scale relationship marketing?

It's a great question. I think there are opportunities out here. You identify, okay, who's my target market? Do I have a good-sized target market? And then starting to drill into, okay, who is that? Let's identify some actual companies. Here we are, you know, tiptoeing into the sales side of things again. But, you know, identifying some companies, understanding what does their whole, you know, matrix organization look like? Who do we know there? And how can we keep those relationships going? Marketing side of things, you provide some content that might be interesting to them. You want to draw them in, right? You want to put out really interesting content that speaks to them to get them to come in and talk to your sales folks in many cases, so that means encouraging all your staff to reach out to folks they know at these ideal client companies. Now, is that scalable? Is that even feasible when we're talking large-scale? Sometimes that can definitely be very difficult, but when it depends on where you are in building that whole process, right? And sometimes you do need to start at the beginning. Who do we know? How can we reach out to them? Keep those relationships going. This advent of automated sort of appeals has some value, absolutely, but I don't think it's going to develop that relationship. I think that really does have to be a bit more personal. It does have to be, you know, you interacting interacting once there's some interest, because otherwise they're going to realize that it's automated, and you have some drip campaign going, it just may not really get you too far. At some point, you engaging, and you being, are you the C-suite or are you your folks, head of division, head of different groups, folks in the group, it's at some point that the engagement does need to happen at those levels. Sometimes, you can introduce people. You have a meeting starting up? Bring your team. Introduce them to each other so that they can start to develop those relationships, too, especially in that sales process as well, because everybody's new to this at that point, trying to figure out where do we land and who knows what, what expertise do people have. That's a great way to start to build that matrix organization I was talking about with relationships.

Yeah, I think there's a— I heard a lot of content marketing interwoven with relationship marketing there, which makes good sense. Because once you know your— you can understand your audience, you can relate to them. But I also think there's some, some opportunities that I see are because we're so virtual now, and it's acceptable. It used to be you know, weird to think about getting everybody in your organization involved. But now it's super easy to get an engineer on for 15 minutes, right? Or one of your frontline team members who's a subject matter expert about a very specific component of your service offering on a call for 15 minutes. Or the logistics didn't work, right? In the sales process, maybe you bring them with you, but in marketing, it certainly didn't work. Well, then you've got chats. You know, when people go to your website and they want to chat, you can give them a human chat or you give them auto chat. You can be either way. But if you give a human chat, it's a real person. That's relationship marketing, but it's scalable in some, some regards. That— there's a lot of opportunity. It's, it's a bit clunky and maybe, and maybe messy to think about it. But if you can— we've done such a great job as a marketing industry of creating very nice frameworks for content marketing and inbound marketing. I think you can take some of those concepts and say, all right, how do we now virtually make those more relationship-driven? So that as opposed to sending that weekly blog, send a weekly invite to have a 15-minute conversation with one of our SMEs. And there's different ways we could interact online virtually and scalably. Not everybody's going to take you up on that offer. So you could send it out, you get the content marketing bang, like, hey, we're doing a webinar, but let's do a one-on-one pre-webinar to see if you're interested in it. There's lots of different ways, right, that we can work together to create more of that, you know.

Yeah, one of the really— I've seen happen a number of times, uh, with my clients is partnering with your client to do a webinar, to do a podcast, you know, to just, you know, do when we can, you know, in-person sessions at a conference or have a panel, you know, where everybody can, you know, sort of talk about it. But just sort of you partnering with the client has some really nice cachet to it, right? They, again, you're sort of seen as that trusted advisor. You're seen as the expert. I always love those opportunities when you're the one speaking, you're already set yourself up as the expert. So I think there's opportunities like that, absolutely. And you know what it made me think I think of, as you were mentioning it, you know, it may be eking into the branding side of things, but it is a huge piece of the marketing. You know, your differentiators as a company are very important. Sometimes they only live with, you know, the people who thought them up or a very high level of the organization. And one of the things that I think could be really effective is short and sweet. I always think 3 is a— there's magic in the number 3, but your 3 top differentiators, making sure everybody in your organization knows what they are. And you may think, well, that's, you know, that's not going to do much. But if you think about it, sometimes, you know, many of us are prepared to give an elevator speech, right, about our organization. It rolls off your tongue. Not everybody is. In your organization. But if you seed that information with them and they see it and they hear it and it's on your website and it's on, you know, their working material, it's sitting on their desktop, they're gonna start to turn to that too. And everybody markets the organization. Everybody. It's every interaction that you have, pass it, you know, that is marketing your organization. It's developing your brand and who you are as a company and your personality. And so I think that's I think that's a very simple but effective tool that the C-suite can be using is making sure everybody gets why are we different? Why would our customers choose us?

Yeah, I think so. I think so for sure. The other thing, going back, stepping back before the secret number 3.

Yeah.

When you mentioned podcasting, that actually is an example of relationship marketing for sure. By the way, who you choose to bring on your show is potentially a target audience, marketing prospects in some cases, but it also, it gives you a chance to share who you are in those conversations as well, much like a video does in a, like on a website. So absolutely, a lot of interesting opportunities for weaving in that relationship marketing.

Absolutely. I think so too, and I, I don't know about you, but I definitely find people that I worked with previously, former clients that have moved on to a different place, come back and they want to talk to you, and so may or may not end up working together, but to me that's really interesting. I like to see where people go in their trajectory of their career and what they're working on, now? And are they doing something, you know, totally different? To me, that's exciting. I love hearing about what's happening because I love the relationship side of things, and I like keeping that going over time. And because maybe, you know, them from long ago, there's again that trust, you know, level that they sort of already— you've proven yourself. And so, you know, then if they can refer you to somebody else, we've already— we've got that trust, you know, carrying over to somebody else as well, and maybe a great prospect. For you.

Yeah, I like how you extended that to not just the C-suite individuals that need to think about their network and their relationships, but everybody in the organization has an opportunity to reach out, connect with people outside the organization, build trusted relationship. It extends your brand. If they know your differentiators, it helps position you and it can provide some opportunities.

Absolutely.

Well, that brings me to kind of the— as a leader in your organization, how do you do that? Like, how can you get everyone in the organization to follow through on a simple task like that?

I think if you encourage people, and this is dependent on their own time or on the company time, to join professional organizations, that's a huge, easy way for folks to start to interact with others in their sphere maybe doing something similar to them, but maybe it's an industry-specific kind of organization where you can meet potential clients or just others that may be in a client organization. A lot of times, some organizations— I don't know if you find this, Joe— but a lot of people know each other very well. New person coming in, "I don't know anybody. This can be a little scary. Nobody's talking to me." One of the things that can be really useful is join a committee. Become, do some work with a few other people, already you have some nice camaraderie going on. You have a shared goal, and that's a great way to just get to know people if you're finding it's tough to break in, so that's one way to do it. You can sit at your desk and try to mine LinkedIn, I'm sure, but I don't think that's going to be as effective. I think the more interactive-based stuff really is going to work better. Conferences, when and if you're able to go to some. It's a great way to do it. Go into— I happen to belong to a chamber. They offer huge numbers of people speaking, networking, in just topics of interest. Take advantage of it, small and medium-sized businesses networking sessions. There's all sorts of things like that that people may not right off the bat want to go to, but if you set the tone as the C-suite that this is expected, this is absolutely acceptable, and this is how we're going to build our company and grow, that I think can really go far from that relationship side of things.

For sure. Well, let's talk about C-suite a little bit and just leadership in general. One of the things I've been spending some time on is trying to, trying to describe what, what is the function of a leader? In an organization? How would you describe that?

I think the leader has the vision. So the leader understands we have some goals and we know where, what our time frame is associated with those goals. And I have some ideas about how we're going to get there, but I don't always have them all. I think leaders take interesting, you know, information. They take advice. From others about here's a new way to do this, or here's a great way to increase your customer service, or, you know, let's look at the buyer's journey, for example, and walk through, okay, when we have a prospect and we're bringing them in, how does that work? You know, what is it that is bringing them in? Client survey data, looking at that, understanding, okay, this is what our clients are saying. We often think we know exactly why a client chose us. It's not always the way, you know, that's not always the reason at all. See, sometimes you have to ask those questions. So the leader is the one asking those questions. The leader is the one, you know, ensuring that we really do, you know, reach out to our clients and check in with them periodically. And when the leader can check in with a really good client, that goes so far. To. And so maybe they can't do it with all the clients. Absolutely. But who are your top 10, top 20? You know, make a phone call to their project manager, their head, whatever. Just those kinds of things I think are really important. Empowering folks to be able to do their jobs. Don't get in the way as a leader. If you're saying, you know, your job is marketing strategy, I expect you to, you know, come and give me, you know, what you think the marketing strategy should be. Let them do their job. Same with CFOs, same with any element of your organization. You're setting the tone. You are providing that vision. A lot of times, you're the external face of the company, and so that's great, but make sure, as we're talking about, we're bringing a whole lot of other people along with us too, when appropriate and cost-effective, and thinking about How you as a leader, how can your organization add value to your clients? To me, those are the most important things. Ensuring the return on investment is there. Absolutely. We need to obviously look at the financial side of things as well. Do you have metrics that you're routinely measuring, that you're watching? What are the trends over time? How is that going? Those are, I think, really important things for leaders to be setting their sights on, but again, sort of letting others into the room so that they can give opinions too. In the end, you set the tone and you decide when you make the decisions, and you bring in other perspectives, absolutely, but make sure everybody understands when you bring in the perspective, it doesn't mean we're going to go that way. It just means I love gathering information And then we'll make the decision based on the available information. That's the best we can do.

So who can, who all can be a leader in an organization? Not just one, you know, leader at the top. Who else can be a leader and using that framework?

Yeah. I mean, I think there are many ways to be a leader in an organization. You can, lead on a project you're working on. You can lead a group of people. So many organizations are a bit more matrixed these days as opposed to purely hierarchical, so you can be a leader in diversity, equity, and inclusion, for example, and your role is in finance. There's some great ways to think about how people's interests You know, corporate social responsibility. There's a whole lot of terms, you know, these days, but if your company's really committed to it, maybe that's— you walk the walk with involving the people who are most outspoken about those types of issues or feel very strongly about something. You know, do you have a particular charity that somebody really feels strongly about? Well, you know what? Let's give them the leadership to drive, you know, a community, you know, kind of event of some kind that raises money for that organization. So that said, you know, I think almost anybody in an organization can be a leader. You know, I'm talking sometimes about the C-suite here in our conversation, but there's so many ways that others can, especially if that C-suite sort of gives them the opportunity to have some leadership in the organization.

And so what are some of the common characteristics of that leadership role? If anybody can be a leader in, in an area, what are some of the commonalities in what, what that function is as a leader generally? So you mentioned vision. So do you still see that being an important part of leadership at any level?

Absolutely. I think the vision is important. I think the listening piece of it is really important too, so that you, you know, bring in some useful information from others other people feel heard too. Most of the time, there are other people involved in leadership, so being able to do that communication, very, very important, and so leaders going off and doing things but not informing others probably isn't going to be very helpful for their leadership, so that one's really important too, and you need— I was actually talking to a I had a client the other day asking about how our marketing strategy was going and she said, "The strategy is great. It's the implementation I'm having a problem with. I didn't set it up in enough ways to have people to implement." Same is true here in this situation with leadership, ensuring people have the right roles and there are roles to actually accomplish what those goals are I think is really important too, and many times these these days, everybody is torn in many, many different directions. So being able to ensure people have the appropriate time to devote to something or changing the timeline of it would be really important too.

Yeah, very good. What do you think are some of the characteristics of the best leaders?

So I remember walking out of a meeting with the president of our company. This is a long time ago in my career., and I walked out and I was talking to somebody else and I said, God, I feel great about this. I have no idea what I just committed myself to, but I feel great about it. I think, you know, walking away and feeling like you're a part of something is really important, and that charisma, that sort of ability to bring people along, not knowing what you committed to, not so great. Probably not the characteristics of the greatest leaders that you want, but, you know, clear communication with folks, just having the ability to bring people along with your vision, I think is amazing. I think about, you know, conversations sometimes. So in, I live in the Boston area. There is a building that was the Charles Street Jail. It was turned into a luxury hotel. So I think to myself all the time— it's a fabulous place to go, the Liberty Hotel— I think to myself all the time, okay, so somebody had this idea once, and to say, okay, we're going to turn this really dirty and very dilapidated, you know, jail into a luxury hotel. Somebody had that, those leadership qualities to bring the others along. They might have had a lot of money too. I'm not sure. But, you know, to me, it's those changing, you know, people's perception, being able to bring the big ideas into the conversation, but bringing people along is incredibly valuable, I think, too. Sometimes negotiation skills are undervalued and really, really important because it, you know, you're able to deal with the give and the take and the, people having different perspectives, but bringing them together. To me, those are some of the best leaders. There may be folks who have incredibly good vision, but can't bring people along with that. I think that's really important that leaders have that. There's— I don't know if you ever read the book Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore.

I've heard of it.

I've not read it. I remember reading it a long time ago in grad school, and for some reason it really resonated with me, this whole concept that the person with the big idea isn't always the person to institutionalize the development of that big idea into a process and into a sales process or marketing or even just development process. The big idea people need to keep getting big ideas and keep feeding that, but don't try to take them and now make them a people manager or a process manager, sort of recognizing the different elements that are needed in a successful organization and letting people do those, as opposed to, "Oh, you're really good at this technical area. Now, you should manage the entire group." you know, without a lot of people skills. Sometimes that's not really a recipe for success either.

So, so when you think of leadership and fractional leadership, um, what are some of the differences between a full-time effective leader and a fractional effective leader?

So one of the things that is different about being a fractional leader is You're not an employee. You are a resource, and I think it's important to note, too, it's not a contract or a contractor. It's a fractional relationship, and there's something very important to that, sort of the idea that you are outsourcing. You are freelance folks who are doing a particular job, That to me just cognitively is a different role than a fractional leader. So you are asking a fractional leader to partner with you as opposed to complete a transaction to reach your goals. And so the fractional leader has a lot of experience typically in your area or similar areas. And that understands the big picture but also gets how to bring that down to an implementation level too, and they may not be the ones doing the implementation, typically not, but they understand how to get that implementation going and how to make that work, so to me, you get both 30,000-foot-level understanding but also a very practical, this is how we're going to make it happen now too. I get the goal, here's the strategy, and now we're going to hand off this implementation, but we also have a lot of check-ins, we have a lot of metrics that we check in on and figure out, is it working? I feel very strongly that many processes in the marketing arena, and this may be true in other fractional areas as well, But the marketing process is very iterative. You know, you try a lot of things. There's A/B testing. There's, you know, all sorts of things you may try. I think this is going to be attractive to my ideal client, but let me try it out and see if it is. And so I think fractional leaders can be thinking about those things, but without the sort of confines of what's my next promotion. Where's my next bonus coming? You know, it's, it's a little— there is a little element of it that's transactional because you're, you know, paying this person to be that resource, but it is with an objective perspective.

So I think you get a lot— full-time person as well. Like, what's the nuances that come with fractional that don't come with full-time?

So you have a perspective from outside your organization, and it may be, you know, from many years of experience with other organizations. So a fractional person can bring in, here's what some of my clients have, you know, tried, seen, here's what's happening in the market too, and could somebody inside have those kind of perspectives? Potentially, Absolutely, but I think you get a level of commitment at a very senior level that is different than an employee, and I do think that sort of organizational, where you fit in the organization, there's not as many concerns about interacting with others When I go into an organization, I'm going to tell you what I think. I'm not going to worry about how others are going to take it. Of course, I'm going to try to be diplomatic about it, but you're not as worried about long-term effects of relationships if you know this strategy may not be something that somebody else agrees with or you know this person doesn't like marketing or sales or something like that, so you take that element out of it, and I think there's some value there, too, so you get some really high-level advice and services without having to pay that full-time cost, right? Obviously, but they're also committed to you just as an employee would be and you get them for whatever you've figured out is the timing, the engagement, that type of thing that I think is really useful. I try to work my engagement so it's on a sort of a project basis. I think you do as well, Joe, so that there's no questions about, oh, I think about this when I have to call my lawyer, for example. It's going to be $500 every time I pick up the phone. I don't want my clients to ever think about that. I want them to be thinking about, oh, I'd like her advice. I trust her and I want, you know, just to pick up the phone and I know it's not going to be an extra cost, that kind of thing.

So, yep, no, that's good. I think I find that, uh, fractional provides a more accountable leader because they have to show up every month. Yeah, usually more accountable to metrics and, and, uh, measurables than a full-time person who's given some more time and leeway often. I find fractional is more productive because the time they are spending with you is on the high priority items, the more significant impact items, versus filling their day with, with other things to do. And I also feel like it's, it's— they're more valuable because they can give you that straightforward advice, as you mentioned, without concerns about their long-term employment, because then all their eggs are not in your basket. And so they can give you that unfiltered advice. And that's some things that you just can't get from a full-time employee sometimes, not all the time.

Right. Oh, those are great points. I think you're, you're exactly right. And you may feel like you're an employee sometimes, but you still know in the back of your mind that accountability is, is there. And it's really, really important. And you may have almost overcommunication, but that's not— I don't think that's ever bad. I think that gives you more information.

What would you say to a prospective employer, that C-suite member, CEO, owner that wanted to hire a fractional CMO or fractional CXO, whatever? What are the 2 or 3 criteria they should look for?

To find the best. Yeah, so when they're actually finding somebody, so I would say you really want to meet them because you're going to be engaged in some really important work together typically, and you need to make sure you can get along, you can trust each other. You don't have to be best friends, You just need to make sure your comfort level is there with handing off to them. How can you figure that out? Just like you would an employee. You're going to check references. You're going to ask questions, so definitely do those things, I think. I would want to make sure that the person had some experience in my area, and is that very finely tuned? Maybe, but maybe it's professional services in general. Maybe it's product, you know, marketing in general. Maybe it's your particular vertical, you know, it just depends on what you're doing, but you want to make sure they have some good experience so that you have that good feeling, and you want to feel like, you know, they are going to be accountable and going to communicate with you and, you know, going to be able to give you what you need. In the end, that's part of the job is to ensure that you have, as the CXO, the information you need to do your job, right? So whatever method that is, whatever reporting that is, whatever metrics you need, you have stakeholders too, right? You have others that you need to be worried about so ensure that you feel like this person can give you what they're looking for. Do they have a process? Everybody does, so it's going to be a surprise if they do not, and maybe don't hire them, but look at their process and make sure you're comfortable with it, too. It may be different than you're used to. Give them a little leeway there to say, "You know what? They've been doing this for quite some time, so I may need to trust that, but let's look at it. What kind of results do you see?" What, you know, when am I going to see particular results? What is this going to give me in the end? Are we working towards an increase in revenue? Are we working towards increase in profit, return on investment? Whatever it is, let's make sure we're very clear with what our expectations are from the CXO perspective so that your fractional CMO, in this case, our CXO, is, can meet that them. So if you can set those up very clearly, that's going to help everybody, I think.

I agree. I think the things to look out for are interim or part-time fractional people. They've got a full-time job or they're in between full-time jobs. That's, that's one of the things I tell my colleagues and peers to look out for with any fractional role. You want a full-time fractional person, someone who's doing this, it's their practice, they're committed. Anybody that's part-time or in between is, is not going to necessarily give you that longer-term partnering fit. They could be good for a project, but don't think of them as a fractional CXO. And then be aware of the imposters, people that have something else to sell. I see a lot of that in our business, agencies that will lead with, hey, we've got a fractional CMO that's going to sell you all of our HubSpot services. Or I see that in the IT world where we've got a fractional CTO that's going to come in and sell you all of our software. So I think companies just need to be aware of that and make sure they're finding an unbiased professional, someone that's got their best interest and not someone else's, when they're giving advice specifically.

I think that's a really important point because is, you know, the idea of being agnostic to a platform of some kind, CRM, whatever it is, is really important because you kind of are fitting a client into a structure. If you are already a, you know, HubSpot, you know, reseller, you know, a partner, I just don't think that's the right way to go about it. I think you want to look at all of the situational, you know, pieces and then determine are there certain products that can meet the needs, you know, of this company. So I, I couldn't agree more that you want that unbiased approach and no strings attached.

Yeah. Well, let's switch gears again. What do you do for fun, Sarah?

What do I do for fun? I have a dog who is, uh, 18 months old, and so We run almost every day because it's good for me and for her. It makes the rest of the day so much better. I would say.

How far of a run do you go with your dog?

Uh, it's about 4 miles.

Oh wow. So that's a decent size run with them.

Yeah. I tell you, I'm in the Northeast, in the Boston area, and it has been a challenge with, uh, some of the ice and snow. I often run, uh, with crampons on so that we do not end up with broken anything because I definitely don't want that.

And so on the dog's feet?

No, I do not. So she is part husky, and so she loves the, the outdoor— summer, not her favorite time, honestly.

She's loving it right now.

That's fun. Exactly. And I have, uh, two sons. One is a junior in college and one is a senior in high school. And so the junior in college is in, uh, Lisbon, Portugal right now for semester abroad. So we're actually going on a trip to visit him in the next month. So looking forward to that.

I was in Lisbon about 6 months ago on a trip, like it was an extended stay layover. So I spent 40 hours, 2 nights, and I enjoyed that city quite a bit. It's pretty, a lot of history. Food was terrific.

Yes, warm. What he has mentioned, and we noticed— I went there many years ago on my honeymoon, actually. And what we noticed is the people were very, very friendly. It was just a neat, very welcoming kind of just population. And he has definitely found that. He's been on a number of trips. He went to Barcelona, just got back from Paris, and said, you know, he was so happy to get back. He felt like already it felt like home. Oh, wow. We don't want him to feel like it's really home because we want him to come back.

But well, it wouldn't be a bad place to visit for a while.

Exactly. Yes, which is great. So what about you, Joe? Do you tell people what you do on your podcast?

Yes, I, uh, I also, um, have 4 children. Okay. So I try to spend as much time as I can around them. 3 of them are out of the house now, uh, 2 in college, 1 off the payroll in Philadelphia as a nurse. That was fun. And one's still at home, so she's pretty active. Spent a lot of time at show choirs and dive meets and things like that. I also love to travel when I can, so I work my way into travel as much as possible. I'll be going— I was just in Barcelona a couple, few, 4 weeks ago, and I'll be there in another month. Back-to-back lucky trips to Barcelona. Oh, great. And then, uh, I like to— I like to talk business. Yeah, I got a bunch of entrepreneur friends and we just, uh, hang out and ideate and create all these wild ideas and then go smoke a cigar and forget about them.

Hopefully you wrote some down.

Uh, some of them make it to the paper.

Yeah, yeah, that is great. Yes, it is fun, uh, when you can chat with others. And I love it too when it's not people in marketing sometimes. You know, I just love to hear about how people build their businesses and what made them want to build their business. What was the passion, you know, behind it? I just find it fascinating. I really do. Some people know off— right off the bat, they were 8 years old and they knew they were going to start a business. And then there are some people who worked for a company and then started their own thing, didn't actually think they were going to, but saw a need or saw something where they could fill it. And I just, I find that fascinating.

Yeah, it's interesting. I try to walk my dog. We don't run, but I have a 7-month-old. She's a Maltipoo, Maltese poodle. She looks like a teddy bear. I don't even know. It's— we— she's surreal. Like, this is not a real dog. Um, But she's wonderful. She's super hyper. I think she could run 4 or 5 miles. I'm thinking about taking her on a run. She's always pulling me, which most dogs do, I suppose, but she's got plenty of energy. Yeah. So maybe when the weather warms up— I'm not jumping on clamp-on, putting on clamp-ons and going anywhere. I'm waiting for t-shirts and shorts.

But yeah, I would say, you know, just— I'm sure you do and will, stick with it. You know, it doesn't happen overnight. That's the thing that it takes a little while to train them. And when they start, you know, they go right along and then do come to that screeching stop, but you haven't yet. I don't love that. And so just gotta stick with it and, you know, keep it, keep it going and show 'em the right thing to do and bring a lot of treats.

I think that So I've got a buddy who's been running with his dog for a while. He said the furthest he's gone with his dog is a half marathon.

Oh man, that's a long way.

It is a long way. I'm like, your dog went that far? Oh yeah, she could have kept going, he said. And then recently he had a baby.

Oh, he's running with his dog and his baby. That's very, very organized.

So he was telling me just, just yesterday, he was telling me that he was on a run over the weekend and the wheel fell off the stroller, or— oh no, whatever happened— and dead stop. And he, and he had two of his dogs, and the dogs are all like screeching, like falling over the, the whole push buggy, whatever he had, the stroller. And he looks in and the baby hasn't even woken. She's like 2 months old, didn't stir her at all.

She's gonna be a great kid. If you don't wake up in that, you are great.

Perfect.

That's a keeper. Exactly. Keep doing that vacuum, you know, all around them. I think that's great.

Really good.

Well, good. I had a lot of fun talking with you, Sarah.

Thank you. I had a great time too, Joe. Thank you so much. I love hearing your insights. It's, uh, I love talking business too, so it's a lot of, a lot of fun to be able to do this. I really appreciate you inviting me to be on.

Yeah, very good. And if people want to reach out to you, uh, directly, what's the best way to contact you?

So absolutely contact me on LinkedIn. And so my last name is G-I-N-A-N-D. So Sarah Ganand, you can find me right on LinkedIn. And I do have a website, much easier to go right to LinkedIn.

That would be great. And we'll have that information in the show notes. Everybody should be easily find you that way. But thanks again, Sarah. And for all you out there, reach out to Sarah. She's a great marketer. Highly recommend her. She has— she really knows her stuff, as you heard today.

All right, thanks a lot.

And that's a wrap.

There's another successful episode of the Fractional C-Suite Retreat. See our show notes and more episodes at fractionalcsuitretreat.com. This podcast is sponsored by Your CMO, helping organizations grow, save time and money with better marketing strategy and fractional execution. Visit them at yourcmo.com. Yourcmo.com, spelled wrong on purpose.