Author: Grant Duncan

Categories
b2bmarketing interviewing

Mastering Your Job Interview: 46 Essential Questions to Ask Your Interviewer

Save this post for when you’re interviewing: 46 questions to ask the people interviewing you.

Now you’ll never run out of things to ask when they say, “Do you have any questions for me?”

This has a Marketing focus, but it can be applicable to other jobs too.

1. Where do you go to learn more?
2. What does the reporting structure look like?
3. How big is the Marketing team today? What is the team makeup? Are there agencies, freelancers, or consultants in use too?
4. What % of pipeline & revenue is sourced by Marketing?
5. What is the company growth rate?
6. Why are they looking to hire this position now? Is it replacing someone or a net new hire?
7. What’s the culture like?
8. How is the podcast going?
9. What % of ad spend is spent on demand capture vs demand creation?
10. How much have they implemented demand creation?
11. What’s interesting or unique about [your potential new boss]?
12. What responsibilities or teams fall under them?
13. What kind of feedback have they given you?
14. How do you like to give feedback?
15. From what you know so far, what do you see as my biggest fit and biggest gap to overcome?
16. How do the company financials look? How has the economic slowdown affected [company]?
17. Are they profitable? If not, how much runway do they have?
18. What is the annual budget for Marketing? How does that compare to last year’s?
19. What % of the company is fully remote?
20. How many physical offices are there?
21. How large is the TAM?
22. What countries / regions are you in? What is the rev split btwn them?
23. How much [type of mktg] are you doing right now?
24. What % of revenue is from self-service vs sales assisted?
25. What % of revenue is from expansion vs net new?
26. What % of revenue is from outside the US [or replace main country]?
27. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the hiring manager?
28. What motivates you to wake up in the morning?
29. What makes you question if I’d be a good fit or are you still wondering about?
30. What is the vesting schedule for the equity?
31. Can I see a quick demo?
32. Why did the last person leave?
33. What is the sales cycle length?
34. What is the ACV?
35. What does the competitive landscape look like?
36. What does a potential future exit look like?
37. What do you see as the biggest risks to achieving the vision?
38. Can you tell me about how you review company metrics and marketing metrics and on what cadence?
39. How often do you talk to customers and prospects or listen to meetings with them?
40. What are the conversion rates from demo request to opportunity and opportunity to closed won?
41. How many Sales people are there?
42. What are the biggest company goals?
43. Where do you think marketing needs to improve the most?
44. What is the current lead quality?
45. What does lead follow up look like?
46. What are the most common reasons HST loses a deal?

What’s your fav?

Categories
hobbyprojects weekendactivities

Discover The Little Puzzle Library: A Unique Community Project by Aria Hamann Duncan

The latest creation from Aria Hamann Duncan and me: The Little Puzzle Library 🧩

Take a puzzle, leave a puzzle!

Take a puzzle. Try doing it. Bring it back. Repeat! 100% free.

Leave a puzzle. Share the love by donating your puzzles to the library 🙂

Each puzzle has a library slip attached to it that shows:
– The # of missing pieces
– A record of who has successfully completed the puzzle (first names or initials)
– The date they completed it
– Notes they leave

This was a fun project to work on! Thanks to the friends & family who also helped in building it.

Categories
b2bmarketing customerinsights productmarketing

Unlocking Marketing Success: How Actively Listening to Your ICP Can Boost Your Strategy

Listening to what your ICP says is 🧠 food.

One way we’re doing that: I got the whole Marketing team set up on Gong and Evan Patrick Shaffer is training us today on it. Next quarter, everyone will have a goal to listen to 10 Gong meetings and/or speak with 10 ICPs, customers, or prospects on their own.

Then we’ll be sharing insights we learned in our weekly team meeting with each other to cross-pollinate ideas.

How have you gotten Marketing regularly hearing insights from your ICP?

Categories
b2bmarketing productmarketing

Prompts to Create Unique Point of Views (POVs) for Improving Marketing Messaging & Differentiation

If you can swap your competitor’s name onto your web pages & nothing changes 😳, you probably don’t have unique POVs.

Here are 5 prompts to help create them & stand out: 💡

1. What do we believe that our competitors would disagree with?

2. What are things we believe are true but others would view as non-obvious, an interesting insight, or different from the norm?

3. What do we take a different angle on compared to our competitors?

4. If you were giving a talk, what would be new or unique concepts for the audience to hear?

5. For a certain product, what are our unique points of view on the market based on understanding 100s of customers?

How to take action on these:
1. Make a list of answers to questions like this
2. Brainstorm them further with others
3. Choose one to write up some notes about and explore it further
4. Turn it into an article or a video talk

>>> What are other questions you like for creating unique POVs?

Categories
marketing projectmanagement

How to use a RACI Matrix for Project Management & Alignment

Ever struggled to know who should handle what components on a project? 🤔 If yes, then try a RACI matrix 🙌

RACI = Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, & Informed

R – Responsible: the person responsible for completing a project & actually doing most of the work

A – Accountable: the person ultimately accountable for the success or failure of a task or project.
They make sure that everything is on track & that the project is completed within the allotted time, budget, & scope.

C – Consulted: the people consulted for their expertise or input. Think of them for feedback and guidance.

I – Informed: the people who should be informed about the progress or completion of the project

Using a RACI matrix can help your team avoid confusion & overlap in roles, improve communication and collaboration, & ultimately lead to more effective processes. 🚀

When I started at HST Pathways, I found RACIs especially helpful to get aligned with the team on our Quarterly Detailed Marketing Roadmap, hiring, etc.

Have you used a RACI matrix?
Have any similar responsibility frameworks you like to use?

Categories
b2bmarketing customermarketing emailmarketing

Email Newsletter Growth Hack: Reviews & Referrals at the Bottom of Emails

Want a quick win? Include these at the bottom of every email newsletter:

“Leave a G2 review & get a $50 gift card.
Email a screenshot to marketing@xyz.com & we’ll send the gift card.”

“Refer a customer and get $X [after they take a meeting with us / after they become a customer].
Refer them by [doing xyz].”

I’ve done this in the past, & we got new reviews & referrals for basically no additional work.

What are other things you like to put at the end of every email newsletter?

Categories
marketing pixels seo

Removing Unused Website Pixels for SEO Improvements

We recently found ~25 pixels on our website not in use 😮

Easy way to improve your SEO: check yours & delete these suckers!

As you likely know, each pixel slows down your website a little more, so removing these can speed up your site and improve your SEO & your user experience.

For sites that are old / have been through many Marketing teams, the pixels likely get left after someone tried an experiment but didn’t remove it.

Clean-up time! 🧹

Categories
leadership peoplemanagement

Skip-Level Meetings Template & Purpose

If you manage people who manage people, it’s valuable to have skip level meetings. This is where you meet 1:1 with the people who don’t report to you directly but are part of your team.

If you don’t do this with your boss’ boss, then send them this & ask if they’d be open to meeting with you monthly or quarterly.

Below is why & a template for topics to cover:

Why do it?

  • Builds culture & employee engagement
  • Opportunity for two-way feedback
  • Increases employee retention
  • Opportunity for you to see how well your direct reports are managing

Here’s a template of topics to cover:

  • Chance for them to share anything, personal or professional, with me
  • Check-in on how it’s going with their manager and any related feedback
  • Any feedback they have for me, the department, or the company
  • Any recent company changes/announcements they may have questions on

Depending on how many people are on your team, I’d suggest doing this monthly or quarterly.

What are other topics you like to cover?
Have you had any meaningful experiences during a skip level meeting?

Categories
b2bmarketing customerresearch productmarketing

Customer Interviews for Marketing: a Real Example

Soon after starting at HST Pathways, I asked a COO at a happy customer, “What else is part of your tech stack other than HST Pathways?”

COO: confused face 😯

I quickly clarified, “What other software tools are you using?” Then she named a couple of others.

What I learned:
1. Our ICP doesn’t use the same jargon as me!
2. Most of them are not as tech-focused as other industries.
3. Reiterated the power of customer interviews, especially when in a new job.

>>> Watch the body language in customer interviews as much as you listen to the words said.

What have been some aha moments for you when speaking with customers?

Categories
b2bmarketing careerdevelopment

30-Day Marketing Plan & Findings

I like to create a deck of my initial findings after one month of starting a new job. This helps others catch the vision for where we can go, creates a good opportunity for feedback & discussion, and helps others learn my thought process.

Here’s the format I most recently used at HST Pathways:

2 slides:
Marketing Findings
Non-Marketing Findings

Each slide had 4 boxes:
Observations – Highlights
Observations – Opportunities/Lowlights
Recommendations
Where You Can Help

In the past, I sometimes have deep dives on specific topics too.

If you have a team, many of the observations and recommendations will be a synthesis of what they have suggested to you and what you have seen yourself.

Have you done something similar before? What format do you like to use?
Think you might try this in your next job?