This is the second episode in a series on having a thriving career. There is one specific subfield where this challenge is harder than usual – it’s marketing within paid and organic search. There are always new tools and techniques coming along, and In our guest’s opinion, to be a search marketing professional means upgrading yourself, to master them while the iron is still hot.
I’ll be talking with someone who has dealt with more than her fair share of change – but who feels she is better as a result. Originally from Peru, Giannina Fumagalli has lived in Montreal Canada for the last 18 years and who has been working in digital marketing that whole time, including both agency and client-side roles. She is currently the Growth Marketer at Vircom, a pioneer in B2B Email Security.
There’s a lot you need to deal with in a marketing career, such as:
What skills you should chase after when in an entry-level vs what’s needed at higher levels
How to manage both above and below your level
What continuous learning actually looks like
Knowing when a job isn’t panning out and you need to cut your losses
Balancing whether to join a company based on the brand’s cachet, the title, the salary and what you will get out of the experience
Advice when interviewing for marketing roles – what she looks food when hiring
How to cultivate your profile within your organization
When to stay a generalist, or when to gain a specific skill by joining a special project
This episode’s guest is eminently qualified to cover these topics. Marissa Homere is the VP of Marketing at Irwin, an investor relations and capital markets software company. She is a demand generation leader and for the last decade, she has built and scaled marketing teams in a wide range of industries. She also teaches in an online marketing program.
In this episode, Marissa shares her thoughts on the marketing industry as a whole, how young professionals can be best prepared for today’s rapidly changing environment, and what it takes to succeed in a fast-paced marketing role. Most importantly, she talks about how, as a wife and mother, how societal issues have muscled in on her life as a marketer. Like being a working parent, handling old oppressive tendencies in the workplace, struggling to balance career ladder-climbing with family responsibilities.
If you want to learn about sales and start Googling, you quickly run across self-professed gurus, who claim to know the secret to selling. If you faithfully follow this method (available today only for a low low price), you’ll have sales success. Despite feeling a twinge of skepticism about their pitch, you’re so deep into their slick, pressure-filled pitch at this point that you pay for their books and courses…which end up being disappointing.
Today’s guest says these gurus have put you in the Vortex of crazy.
He doesn’t try to apply the same advice to everyone – his response reminds me of what an ancient Buddhist guru said. Well, according to a novel written a century ago by Hermann Hesse.
There are a few men on a spiritual pilgrimage, and they reach a stage where the leader, Siddhartha, tells his followers that he must continue on alone. His right-hand man, Govinda asks him why, “Siddhartha…spoke quietly… “Always, oh Govinda, you’ve been my friend, you’ve always walked one step behind me. Often I have thought: Won’t Govinda for once also take a step by himself, without me? Behold, now…[you] are choosing your path for yourself.”
Our guest says there’s only one sales method that works – the one that comes naturally to you. That refreshing take ripples through his 2023 book Do It! Selling.
David Newman has been working since 1992 to help customers land better clients, bigger deals, and higher fees. From Fortune 500 corporations to sole-practitioners, his firm has helped over 1,800 clients with their marketing, sales, and professional services. David is also the host of the highly rated podcast, The Selling Show.
David is married to the #1 most amazing woman on the planet (his words, not mine), launched two great kids into the world disguised as small adults, and has enjoyed raising some of the world’s sweetest retrievers.
How come the companies you hear boasting about their growth rarely seem to rack up impressive growth numbers? For all those that talk the talk, very few can say they have doubled their revenue in the last 3 years. And yet, according to our guest today, by simply increasing new sales by 15%/yr and selling 15% more per year to existing clients, doubling revenue is totally achievable.
In the 27 years since he graduated with his MBA, Darrell Amy has worked heavily in the tech sector, mainly in sales and marketing. Wanting to help a larger number of companies, in 2004 he started his own business, speaking and acting as a fractional Chief Revenue Officer. In 2020, Darrell authored Revenue Growth Engine book How To Align Sales & Marketing To Accelerate Growth.
He is a member of the Forbes Business Council and co-chair of the Kingdom Missions Fund. Based in Arkansas, with a family that now includes a couple of grand-children, let’s go talk to Darrell Amy.
The relationship between those who generate creative work and the rest of us in revenue-related roles can be …strained. From those I’ve talked to in graphics or visual arts, being left to their lonesome makes it hard producing creative that’s exactly what the marketers and other stakeholders wanted.
That’s one reason why I hope you listen to today’s talk with a graphic designer who wrote a guide for other graphic designers. To help your interactions with your creative counterparts.
The other reason is this author’s healthy outlook…on everything. I was first exposed to how zen-like he was when I met him at an event in 2017. Reading LinkedIn updates over the next few years I marveled how he did everything at his design agency, his training business and his college lecturing. When we met again (virtually) in 2020 , he talked about everything he had going on, but in that same calm tone.
So by the time he came out with his second book this last year – “Stop Looking for Zebras”, I seized the chance to let you hear his unique viewpoint for yourself.
Let’s go hear from our guest Robert Smith who will explain the book’s title, and much much more.
