15 Susanne Ejsted Isaksson | From marketing to growth: turning market insight into strategic choices and revenue

15 Susanne Ejsted Isaksson | From marketing to growth: turning market insight into strategic choices and revenue

“Spend less time discussing the value of marketing. Spend more time understanding how you can impact strategy and help execute it.” This perspective defines the leadership philosophy of Susanne Ejsted Isaksson. With experience from global companies like IBM and HPE, as well as Universal Robots, Susanne has worked with growth in complex, high-paced environments where clarity, not activity, determines progress. She argues that if you constantly need to defend marketing’s value, you are not sitting where the most important decisions are made. In this episode, we explore growth as a leadership discipline – and what it takes to turn market insight into strategic choices and revenue. Listen to more about: * Alignment starts at the top: Why clarity between leadership, board and commercial teams is essential for growth * From function to leadership: Why your role is to be an executive first, and use marketing as a lever – not a boundary * Turning insight into action: How market, customer and competitor understanding shape strategic decisions * Focus over activity: Why growth comes from making a few clear choices and aligning the organization behind them Susanne’s work focuses on helping leadership teams translate market insight into strategic choices and align the organization so the company can move faster than the market. Contact and follow Susanne on LinkedIn. [https://dk.linkedin.com/in/susanneejsted] Find out more about the podcast: https://www.mavenfirst.com/morning-brew-for-marketing-executives This is a podcast where senior B2B marketing leaders from globally recognized brands in complex industries share their stories and experiences of what it’s like to be a marketing leader.

14 Katrin Marquardt from Kyndryl | How I lead my marketing function: How Kyndryl rebuilt its ABM engine to drive clarity, confidence, and commercial impact

How do you move a massive $19 billion company – the world’s largest IT service provider – to a customer-centric strategy in just a few years? Katrin Marquardt, who leads Account-Based Marketing (ABM) for Financial Services and Insurances at Kyndryl in Germany, joins us to share their journey.  Kyndryl, which spun off from IBM in 2021, instantly became a global enterprise with 75,000 employees and 4,000 IT service customers. Katrin is here to tell how they made ABM the main way to stabilize their market presence and build trust with their most important accounts. She also shares how to get full leadership commitment from the CEO and CMO to invest in ABM as a long-term strategy – and why that is crucial.  If you're a B2B marketing leader looking to get inspired and learn more about aligning with stakeholders, this episode is food for thought. You’ll hear more about: * How do you move marketing from a 'supporting function' to an equal partner at the account team table? * What happens when a B2B company chooses ABM as its main strategy for growing its most important accounts? * How a 60-person global ABM team uses AI tools like Account 360 and Stakeholder 360 to act as a "force multiplier"? * What is the most important first step you need to get right to successfully start or scale your ABM program?  Connect with Katrin on LinkedIn. [https://www.linkedin.com/in/katrin-marquardt]

13 Behind the scenes | One year of podcasting: the stats, the strategy, and the learnings from 15 episodes

In this special solo episode, host Jani Hovila takes the mic alone to wrap up the first full year of the Mavenfirst podcast. It has been a journey of 15 recorded episodes, 12 published conversations, and lots of learning.  Why did we decide to launch a podcast in the first place? What was the business case and the goals? Jani shares more about the strategic reasoning and filling a "white space" in the market for Northern European B2B leadership content and building brand familiarity in key Nordic markets. You also get to hear behind-the-scenes details about the operation. Jani shares data on subscriber counts and listening hours. Is 1 000 listens enough when your total addressable market is only 600 companies? And why do we think the results are good?  In this episode, you’ll hear more about:  * Why we committed to a podcast in the first place. * A transparent look at our subscribers and total listening times, and key numbers. * The reality of production time and other learnings. * How to measure success when attribution software shows zero leads, but anecdotal feedback is strong. Whether you are thinking of starting your own B2B podcast or are just curious about what it takes to run one, take a look at what happens behind the scenes. Thank you to all our guests and listeners for a fantastic year! We’ll get back next year.

12 Asbjørn Severin from Danelec | How I lead my marketing function towards commercial growth to unlock its full potential

Stop being the flyer factory: How do you transform a decades-old industrial B2B marketing team into a strategic, data-driven revenue engine? In this episode, you will hear more about leading marketing at traditional maritime technology company Danelec as it has shifted from hardware to software and data.  Our guest is Asbjørn Severin, SVP of Marketing and Communications at Danelec. Asbjørn joined Danelec in 2023 to help the company realize the full potential of its marketing and support ambitious growth goals. Asbjørn has significant experience in management consulting, branding, and communications. He has worked as a consultant and advisor, helping clients navigate organizational transformations, complex M&As, and develop strategic brands. In this episode, he highlights that getting stakeholder buy-in is super important to change the perception of marketing from a "PowerPoint bureau" to a modern marketing engine. The fastest way is to align marketing KPIs with the rest of the commercial organization to ensure the marketing function serves the commercial targets. He emphasizes that sales and marketing should operate as a single team with the same revenue goals. Listen now more about: * What does it take to build a modern marketing team from the ground up in a decades-old industrial business?  * How to successfully rebrand your marketing department internally by moving from a support role to a strategic commercial engine?  * What is the marketing executive's perspective during an M&A process? And how do you execute a rapid, strategic rebranding to unite three companies under a single, customer-focused story, transforming the company's perception in the market? * Why is cultural change harder and slower in-house than what you experience as an external advisor?  Get in touch with Asbjørn on LinkedIn.  [https://dk.linkedin.com/in/asbjornseverin]

11 Delfin Vassallo from Georg Fischer | How I lead my marketing department: where planning is important, plans less so, and where B2B doesn't mean boring 2 boring

How do you navigate the shift when your lean marketing team of nine integrates with a corporation that has a global marketing headcount of 85 professionals? What can you learn when getting buy-in from top management that you should produce up to 343 videos in-house? And how do you communicate marketing's business value when direct attribution is "delusional”? From using videos and humor to leadership philosophies and business impact, these topics were covered in a discussion with Delfin Vassallo, Global Head of Marketing Communications for the Infrastructure Division at George Fisher. Delfin has had a career in marketing for over 25 years, so he definitely has valuable experience to share! In this episode, you’ll hear more about the challenges Delfin faced in acquiring buy-in from top management, the importance of using humor in marketing campaigns, and the need to adopt an experimental mindset that supports ongoing improvement.  Listen to more about:  * The philosophy that "marketing is responsible for tomorrow's sale” * Why direct attribution is viewed as "delusional" and how the focus is shifted to generating a massive sales pipeline (e.g., $71M+) as the core metric of success * The agile methodology for a heavy B2B environment * The strategy of creating hundreds of in-house videos featuring "solution experts" leading to direct inbound calls from new clients * Scaling a small, agile team of 9 into a global marketing organization of 85+ following a major corporate acquisition Connect with Delfin on LinkedIn. [https://fi.linkedin.com/in/delfinvassallo]  A couple of videos discussed in the episode:  Stormwise - Solutions for rainwater management - Singing in the drain https://youtu.be/Eky0ptFyn9A?si=h60e4JHG7M4JmviZ  And the follow up, a bit toned down, using a 'Mad Scientist' https://youtu.be/bgbfz9Kot14?si=64lRFzYctgc7qFu8  FastGuard cable protection pipes with installer https://youtu.be/yPCYsjKPnNA?si=r-nVupAgKurIA563  Cleanwise - wastewater treatment solutions - Poo emojis https://youtu.be/ZVd0b1XdL70?si=oOR3SvWAlFA9MZXY