When you look at the CMO role across hundreds of B2B tech companies, what themes emerge these days? In this episode of The Get podcast, host Erica Seidel talks with Matt Selheimer, VP and Research Director for B2B Marketing Executives at Forrester.

You'll hear about the top themes that have emerged in The Get this season. And you'll get a sneak peek at new Forrester research dedicated to CMOs.

Learn about:

• How to classify marketing leadership roles: is the CEO looking for a supporter, a promoter, a partner, or a driver?
• How changes in tech and buying behavior can be a catalyst for marketing leaders to claim a broader role and bigger budget
• Advice to CEOs who have failed at hiring CMOs
• How CMOs who create a continuous learning organization are the ones who will be the most successful
• Why marketing leaders need to get beyond "polishing the pebbles on in-market intent signals" and instead invest to be the preferred vendor earlier on, to avoid being used as negotiating leverage against the preferred vendor
• How increasingly, "your understanding of your buyers, your customers, and the markets you're operating in is your competitive differentiator"
• Why so few CMOs are at the point of firing whole teams in favor of AI
• How to avoid 're-org fatigue' while still responding to changing buyer behaviors

Memorable Quote:

"What I tell our clients, and CMOs in transition, is: make sure there's a really good fit here for the purpose of marketing. That what you see as the purpose of marketing and what your CEO and the board see as the purpose of marketing is aligned. If you need to do education, that's the time to do the education… and expand the aperture of how they think about marketing. If you don't get the CEO resonating with that, then that may not be the place that you want to go join, as an example. But if you are already in a function, already in a company as a CMO, what we're telling all of our clients is, now's a great time to recalibrate the purpose of marketing."

00:00 Introduction to The Get Podcast

00:17 Guest Introduction: Matt Selheimer from Forrester

01:32 High-Level Themes in SaaS Marketing

01:46 AI's Role in B2B Buying

02:16 Disciplined Experimentation in Marketing

03:03 Resurgence of Brand and PR Roles

03:32 Matt Selheimer's Background and Fun Fact

06:33 In-Depth Discussion on AI and Generational Shifts

10:05 The Importance of Testing and Experimentation

13:25 The Role of Brand in Modern Marketing

17:22 Advice for CEOs on Hiring CMOs

27:29 Marketing Organizational Design

36:09 Favorite Interview Question

37:25 Conclusion and Closing Remarks

The Get is here to drive smart decisions around recruiting and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing. We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today’s top marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.

This season’s theme is how SaaS marketing organizations are changing — in both seismic and subtle ways.

The Get’s host is Erica Seidel, who runs The Connective Good, an executive search practice with a hyper-focus on recruiting CMOs and VPs of Marketing, especially in B2B SaaS.

If you are looking to hire a CMO or VP of Marketing of the ‘make money’ variety, rather than the ‘make it pretty’ variety, contact Erica at erica@theconnectivegood.com. You can also follow Erica on LinkedIn or

In this episode of The Get, host Erica Seidel explores how AI-native marketing orgs are shaping up with guest Kady Srinivasan. Kady is CMO of You.com, the enterprise AI productivity platform that powers agentic workflows that deliver measurable business results. She previously held top marketing leadership roles at Lightspeed Commerce, Klaviyo, and Dropbox. She has been part of three IPOs. From her vantage point, running marketing in an AI-native environment, Kady shares her experiences, observations, and hypotheses for how the marketing org is changing – and will change – to enable using AI at warp speed.

You'll hear about:

• How GTM leadership in an AI-native company is different from GTM leadership in a typical SaaS company
• The org structures that enable using AI at warp speed
• How the new marketing org has both humans and agents on the marketing team
• The rise of new roles on the marketing team, like prompt marketers and influence engineers, and AI agent builders
• Navigating the delicate CMO balance of "feeling you need to know it all" versus respecting your CEO's intuition
• Sussing out, when talking to candidates, whether a company was successful BECAUSE of a candidate's contributions versus DESPITE the candidate's contributions
• How to hire for "common sense"

Memorable Quotes:

• "In an AI-native company, at least the one that I'm at, we have a lot to do to educate the market about the potential solutions that they can unlock with a technology or a platform like ours. So I came up with this idea… of a forward-deployed marketer, which is similar to a forward-deployed engineer, where you're basically coming up with use cases, coming up with solutions, coming up with things that you can tell people, look, this is the art of the possible…I think that's very different from SaaS, in that SaaS is a defined set of features and platform things that you can take to market."

• "It used to be that we used to have these silos - product, marketing, demand, gen, and brand. Those were the big pillars in marketing. What I've found is that with AI, you don't actually need those silos anymore. What you need instead is people who are very outcome-focused. So I have a team that's only focused on inbound. I have a team that's focused on outbound. I have a team that's focused on storytelling, brand comms, that kind of stuff. The reason I've turned it that way is in this new world, every marketer needs to become like a T-shaped marketer, which is they have a spike, but they scaffold themselves with all the other functions, and that's easy to do because of agents, because you have AI."

00:00 Introduction to The Get Podcast

00:20 Meet Kady Srinivasan: CMO of You.com

00:43 The Unique Role of a CMO in an AI Native Company

02:36 Kady's Career Insights and Advice

04:22 Organizational Structure and AI Impact

12:03 Hiring the Right Marketers for the Future

25:57 Challenges and Strategies in Modern Marketing

34:56 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

The Get is here to drive smart decisions around recruiting and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing. We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today’s top marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.

This season’s theme is how SaaS marketing organizations are changing — in both seismic and subtle ways.

The Get’s host is Erica Seidel, who runs The Connective Good, an executive search practice with a hyper-focus on recruiting CMOs...

In this episode of The Get, host Erica Seidel talks with Monica Ho, CMO of SOCi, the leading AI-powered marketing platform for multi-location businesses. Monica reflects on her CMO journey as revenue has grown from ~$10MM to ~$100MM. She gets real about how she has built her adaptation muscles and her boardroom voice, and she shares how AI and efficiency have reshaped her org chart and choices.

Monica and Erica discuss:

• How "earning and re-earning" your seat at the table is imperative as the business evolves
• Rethinking the organization at every stage of growth, and pivoting towards "more strategists than doers"
• "Forcing" AI adoption by taking away tools that the team previously relied on
• The importance of reverse mentoring – interns and junior employees can bring in creativity and have better results, "because they are having more fun."
• Fueling experimentation, not just with tests and tech, but by collaborating in different ways
• Bringing specificity to the hiring process by asking a candidate for their current boss's name and that boss's perception of the candidate
• Making yourself uncomfortable in Board meetings by sharing "the bad stuff -- that way, you're not in defensive mode but rather in collaborative problem-solving mode

Notable quotes:

• "If I'm not in a changing environment, I produce that myself."
• "A successful life has to be earned and re-earned over and over again. Just because you're successful at something doesn't mean you're going to keep being successful….  I liken that to the CMO role. 'I had a great year. We crushed our goals.' Guess what? No one cares anymore. What am I doing next year? What am I doing this next quarter? And that earned and re-earned concept is just really instilled in me."
• "I have learned that you earn your seat at the table, yes, but then you have to make sure you have a voice, and you've got to keep earning that seat at the table. If I'm not coming with really good insight or an opinion or what we need next, I'm going to lose that seat."
• "So if I went back to my pre-CMO self, it would be to get out of my head, find my voice. One of the things I remember so clearly was it was a room full of very big personalities, and I'm also a big personality, but I'm a little bit more thoughtful. I like to listen before I speak. There was no time for me to speak. There wasn't a pause, and what I learned is that I had to interrupt people. That's not natural for me, but in order to get my thoughts out, that was just an uncomfortable place I had to put myself in, and I got a lot more comfortable with it as I held that board or held that seat."

00:00 Introduction to The Get

00:32 Meet Monica Ho, CMO of SOCI

01:13 Monica's Journey and Leadership Insights

14:49 The Impact of AI on Marketing

23:41 Hiring and Career Advice

30:05 Concluding Thoughts and Industry Changes

The Get is here to drive smart decisions around recruiting and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing. We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today’s top marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.

This season’s theme is how SaaS marketing organizations are changing — in both seismic and subtle ways.

The Get’s host is Erica Seidel, who runs The Connective Good, an executive search practice with a hyper-focus on recruiting CMOs and VPs of Marketing, especially in B2B SaaS.

If you are looking to hire a CMO or VP of Marketing of the ‘make money’ variety, rather than the ‘make it pretty’...

How do you not only keep up with seismic changes as a SaaS marketing leader but also proactively confront them?

In this episode of The Get, host Erica Seidel of The Connective Good talks with Wanda Cadigan, SVP of Marketing for Cloudinary.

Wanda shares how she delivers on the 'supply chain of revenue' in an environment where AI has joined the buying committee. From growing organic traffic when buyers arrive far more informed, to orchestrating smartly across PLG and enterprise motions, to building trust not just with humans but with AI-driven gatekeepers, Wanda offers valuable insights for leading SaaS marketing teams.

You will learn about:

• Treating the entire go-to-market as a revenue supply chain, not siloed teams
• Why experimentation can go off the rails if it’s “a mile wide and an inch deep,” and how to drive disciplined experimentation with rapid prototyping by micro experts
• Treating AI chat agents as a persona to market to, since AI is now part of the buying committee
• How PR teams will experience an opportunity to really prove their worth and connect to more commercial intent by leaning into citations, structured data, and micro-influencers, and optimizing for discoverability in both human- and machine-driven ecosystems.
• Designing an org with both Swiss army knives and scalpels: a mix of broad generalists and more narrow specialists to tackle specific experiments and channels
• Orchestrating across PLG and enterprise motions without siloed thinking
• Smarter interviewing: Defining not just questions, but also what good, average, and great answers look like to align interviewers across the org
• Protecting your time: Staying fiercely focused and resisting the “people pleaser” trap

Notable quotes:

• "Nobody just wakes up one morning and says, I'm going to submit a Contact Us form. Of course not. It's been pre-planted in your head. You've learned about a company or been educated about a problem that you may have been grappling with, and you could be exposed to press relations, analyst reports, events. You might have seen a vendor at an event. All of these great marketing programs do influence the final point of conversion of, Hey, I'm going to reach out and talk to these people. I think they can help me with my problem… so it's a supply chain."
• "Your time is your most valuable asset. Be ferociously protective of it and resist the common marketing challenge of being a people pleaser."

00:00 Introduction to The Get Podcast

00:29 Meet Wanda Cadigan: SVP of Marketing at Cloudinary

01:26 Wanda's Journey and Marketing Strategies

03:47 The Dual Funnel Approach at Cloudinary

08:31 Navigating the Tsunami of Change in SaaS Marketing

13:05 The Role of PR and Brand in the Age of AI

16:10 Experimentation and Micro Experts in Marketing

21:43 Hiring Strategies and AI in Recruitment

28:22 Final Thoughts and Advice for Marketing Leaders

31:59 Conclusion and Next Episode Teaser

The Get is here to drive smart decisions around recruiting and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing. We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today’s top marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.

This season’s theme is how SaaS marketing organizations are changing — in both seismic and subtle ways.

The Get’s host is Erica Seidel, who runs The Connective Good, an executive search practice with a hyper-focus on recruiting CMOs and VPs of Marketing, especially in B2B SaaS.

If you are looking to hire a CMO or VP of Marketing of the ‘make...

How are PE-backed environments unique for SaaS CMOs? And what's the difference between the CMOs who flourish in PE-backed companies and those who flounder? This episode is required listening for any current or prospective CMO in a PE-backed company.

This week on The Get, Erica Seidel dives into the nuances of marketing leadership in PE-backed B2B SaaS orgs with guest Julie Zadow, Growth Marketing Leader at The Riverside Company. They explore Julie's role in private equity as a marketing operating partner, insights into aligning marketing strategies with investment firm goals, and the impact of AI on marketing roles and operations.

You will learn about:

• What it's like to be a marketing operating partner in a PE shop: As Julie describes it, she offers "battle scars for hire" and brings a mix of empathy, speed, and practicality
• How to speak marketing in a way that aligns with the investor's lens
• How to talk about brand in a way that doesn't make your investors run screaming
• How the different phases of the hold period matter for marketing – and how conversations with investors should evolve as the end of the hold period approaches
• Coaching junior employees in an AI+ environment, and a shortcut for contextualizing things for your most junior employees so they don't just 'do' with AI but 'learn' as well: Julie asks her interns: "Where did you feel you were parroting AI without understanding what it was saying?" and "What do you recommend that AI didn't think of?"
• The role that is hardest to disintermediate with AI
• The line of questioning CEOs are likely to pose to CMO candidates about their AI fluency
• Advice to CEOs who have failed at hiring marketing leaders

00:00 Welcome to The Get: Introduction and Overview

00:58 Introducing Julie Zadow: A Marketing Leader's Journey

02:10 The Role of a Marketing Operating Partner in Private Equity

03:58 Aligning Marketing Strategies with Investor Expectations

14:30 The Impact of AI on SaaS Marketing Organizations

26:18 Advice for CMOs in Private Equity-Backed Companies

34:21 Final Thoughts and Conclusion

The Get is here to drive smart decisions around recruiting and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing. We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today’s top marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.

This season’s theme is how SaaS marketing organizations are changing — in both seismic and subtle ways.

The Get’s host is Erica Seidel, who runs The Connective Good, an executive search practice with a hyper-focus on recruiting CMOs and VPs of Marketing, especially in B2B SaaS.

If you are looking to hire a CMO or VP of Marketing of the ‘make money’ variety, rather than the ‘make it pretty’ variety, contact Erica at erica@theconnectivegood.com. You can also follow Erica on LinkedIn or sign up for her newsletter at TheConnectiveGood.com.

The Get is produced by the team at Simpler Media Productions.

In this episode of The Get, host Erica Seidel explores the changing landscape of SaaS marketing organizations with guest Jay Roxe, CMO at Inriver. You'll learn about:

• "Firing your tech stack" in order to re-imagine the marketing org and how marketing gets done
• Leveraging AI for everything from last-mile content customization to product marketing to building authority in situations where prospects say, 'ChatGPT told me I should talk to you"
• The evolving structure of marketing ops
• Why content is no longer king, but context is king: "Customers have done 80% of their research by the time they reach you. That number is actually going up. It's so easy for people to understand your organization."
• What a full-stack customer marketing org looks like
• Building a culture of gratitude on the marketing team
• Advice for rising CMOs: You have to love the process, not just want to HAVE DONE the CMO role. Intellectual curiosity about the job is not enough.
• Advice to CEOs on how to identify the CMOs who are the best problem solvers
• Hiring, and how to find people who are "curious, smart, and unexpected"

Quotes:

• "You're AI first or you're unemployed."
• "Adoption is the new MQL… As you put more stuff into the product, are people actually adopting and using it?"
• " From an org design point of view, you want to think of where you need person-to-person face-off. Your partners don't want to talk to your AI chatbot. They want to talk to a person who can help them, brainstorm with them, and give them context."
• "One of the things I like talking about with candidates: what have they changed over the past year? How have they changed how they work based on everything that's going on?"

00:00 Welcome to The Get

00:16 Introducing Jay Roxe

00:40 Jay's Marketing Journey

02:32 Inriver's Global Marketing Org

06:24 Future of SaaS Marketing Orgs

11:15 The Role of AI in Marketing

14:54 Hiring for the Future

19:30 Human-Centric Leadership

21:53 Customer Marketing Insights

24:32 Final Thoughts and Advice

29:21 Closing Remarks

The Get is here to drive smart decisions around recruiting and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing. We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today’s top marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.

This season’s theme is how SaaS marketing organizations are changing — in both seismic and subtle ways.

The Get’s host is Erica Seidel, who runs The Connective Good, an executive search practice with a hyper-focus on recruiting CMOs and VPs of Marketing, especially in B2B SaaS.

If you are looking to hire a CMO or VP of Marketing of the ‘make money’ variety, rather than the ‘make it pretty’ variety, contact Erica at erica@theconnectivegood.com. You can also follow Erica on LinkedIn or sign up for her newsletter at TheConnectiveGood.com.

The Get is produced by the team at Simpler Media Productions.

In this episode of The Get, host Erica Seidel and guest Ashley Deibert, CMO of Marigold, candidly discuss the realities of leading marketing in today's SaaS landscape.

Ashley shares how she's navigated seismic shifts in marketing org structures, budget realities, and the CMO role itself, all while keeping alignment at the center of her approach. You'll learn from her perspective on:

• How to build alignment, not on Day 1 in the job, but during the interview process
• Deciding what to stop, start, and continue when taking on a new role
• Handling drastic budget reductions by providing scenario-based options
• Hiring fast, hiring micro-experts, and spotting 'moldable' talent through situational questions
• How to be open to others' feedback without getting mired in it
• Advice to CEOs on avoiding CMO mis-hires
• Why 'touch more, do more, be exposed to more' should be every rising CMO's mantra
• Structuring product marketing and customer marketing together for impact
• How AI is augmenting marketing without replacing talent
• Why the best GTM teams blur the lines among sales, marketing, product, and customer success into one revenue team

If you're a marketing leader, a CEO hiring a CMO, or otherwise navigating the changing currents of SaaS go-to-market, you'll learn new insights and frameworks from this episode.

Some quotes of note:

• "I don't believe in doing more with less. I believe in focus…. When you're a CMO, it's about alignment because you're servicing the organization's growth."
• " Don't just be selfish in a hiring cycle. Also, think about, is this person going to get what they need from you? Because if they don't, guess what? They leave."
• "The CEO needs to really think about the relationship that the organization and the culture around marketing that they desire….  I've seen and lived through many situations where it's, "we gotta have marketing", but "gotta have" versus "we need to embrace and make this core to our go-to-market" are different. Marketing is part of go-to-market. It's literally in the title."

00:00 Welcome to The Get: Meet Your Host Erica Seidel

00:16 Introducing Ashley Deibert: CMO at Marigold

01:19 Ashley Deibert's Career Journey and Insights

03:51 Mentorship Moments: Lessons Learned

07:43 Marketing Org Structure at Marigold

14:58 Advice for Aspiring CMOs

20:13 Navigating Budget Cuts in Marketing

21:08 Presenting Scenarios and Aligning with Leadership

23:13 The Importance of Networking in Hiring

25:24 Evaluating Candidates for Culture Fit

29:18 Hiring Freelancers vs. Full-Time Employees

31:40 Advice for CEOs on Hiring CMOs

36:38 The Role of AI in Marketing

38:21 The Future of SaaS Marketing Teams

39:27 Conclusion and Podcast Information

The Get is here to drive smart decisions around recruiting and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing. We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today’s top marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.

This season’s theme is how SaaS marketing organizations are changing — in both seismic and subtle ways.

The Get’s host is Erica Seidel, who runs The Connective Good, an executive search practice with a hyper-focus on recruiting CMOs and VPs of Marketing, especially in B2B SaaS.

If you are looking to hire a CMO or VP of Marketing of the ‘make money’ variety, rather than the ‘make it pretty’ variety, contact Erica at erica@theconnectivegood.com. You can also follow Erica on LinkedIn or

This episode kicks off the 7th season of The Get podcast. Host Erica Seidel introduces this season's theme, which is about how SaaS marketing orgs are changing, in both seismic and subtle ways.

We share a deep dive with guest Claudia Lee. Claudia is a CMO with a unique background in both partner marketing and product marketing. She spoke at a rare moment of reflection while transitioning from a CMO role at CertifID to a new CMO role at Celigo.

You'll hear perspectives and practical advice about:

• How to use the theme of "enabling conversations" to frame marketing's contribution both internally and externally
• How to combine strategic intent with hyper-experimentation for smart execution
• Building a team from scratch, especially in a partner-led GTM model
• The critical soft skills that are making the difference today for SaaS marketing teams
• What a contextually aligned marketing team is, and how it provides the best results
• Navigating the tension between short-term results and long-term impact
• Approaching AI as a tool, not a threat
• Questions to anticipate from the CEO when exploring a new CMO role

00:00 Welcome to The Get: Season 7 Kickoff

00:16 Understanding Our Audience

01:17 Introducing Claudia Lee

02:14 Claudia's Marketing Journey

04:52 The Role of Marketing in Business Growth

08:07 Enabling Conversations: A Marketing Philosophy

12:30 The Evolution of SaaS Marketing

15:28 Partner Marketing Insights

22:22 The Impact of AI on Marketing

25:04 Hiring and Developing Marketing Leaders

31:05 Final Thoughts and Farewell

The Get is here to drive smart decisions around recruiting and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing. We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today’s top marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.

The Get’s host is Erica Seidel, who runs The Connective Good, the executive search practice with a hyper-focus on recruiting CMOs and VPs of Marketing, especially in B2B SaaS.

If you are looking to hire a CMO or VP of Marketing of the ‘make money’ variety, rather than the ‘make it pretty’ variety, contact Erica at erica@theconnectivegood.com. You can also follow Erica on LinkedIn or sign up for her newsletter at www.theconnectivegood.com.

The Get is produced by the team at Simpler Media Productions.