We’ve got some good news (and some bad news).

• We have a large and incredibly diverse customer base (the addressable market is massive)
• We are aggressively rolling out new product capabilities (our product is getting better & better)
• We have great teams in business development and customer success (and they’re hungry to do better)

All of the above are obviously good but have created some unique product marketing challenges for us.

Let’s talk through those:

• We have a large and incredibly diverse customer base (the addressable market is massive)
• 20% of the S&P 500 are clients

This includes everyone from financial services giants to Asian tobacco behemoths to the world’s biggest tech companies. CB Insights has clients in every major sector and geography. In addition, we sell into multiple groups within those organizations. Everyone from corporate strategy to IT to corporate M&A to market insights to competitive intelligence to innovation to digital transformation.

Each of these industries and functions has different needs and even a different language they use and so speaking to them in a way that resonates with them is key.

We have a massive opportunity if we can build product marketing capabilities, systems and assets that create awareness, interest and desire in CB Insights’ products and services in the right way.

The right VP of Product Marketing will help us figure out a plan to educate these clients and prospective clients on the amazing things CBI technology can do for them.

We are aggressively rolling out new product capabilities (our product is getting better & better)

At the same time, we are aggressively investing in the development of the CB Insights platform. It is critical that we educate the market on the product so they know what it can do for them and how it is evolving to help them do even more.

Who is the market?

• Customer success and business development teams. Helping them understand the product and new capabilities better will help them have better conversations with clients and prospective clients. This means more sales, higher average subscription rates, lower churn and more upsells. All these are good.
• Prospective clients. These are the folks who we need to educate on how CBI can help them grow faster, better, smarter than ever before using a unique combination of data, visualizations and data-driven storytelling.
• Existing clients. These are the folks who’ve already made the investment in CBI. We need to reaffirm for them that they made the right choice by making them look good, making them more productive and helping them achieve their goals.

The right VP of Product Marketing will ensure the market is always aware of the power of CB Insights and will weave together a coherent, tight narrative and actionable guides that these different groups can use to become or help clients become more successful with CB Insights.

We have great teams in business development and customer success (and they’re hungry to do better)

Product marketing and enablement are a classic partnership and we expect the VP to not only own creation of sales and customer playbooks, but to also own the enablement function that ensures our sales and customer success teams are educated, certified and recertified as the product grows. This will require the development of online training programs as well as a physical training team comprised of experienced professionals.

Key Responsibilities

We are looking for someone to lead Product Marketing at CB Insights. This person will be working directly for the company’s co-founder / CEO, Anand Sanwal.

Responsibilities include:

• Leading a team of professionals to successfully develop a comprehensive, full-funnel product marketing strategy and execution plan
• Building repeatable product marketing playbooks and systems that can be measured, constantly iterated and scaled
• Own all components of product marketing and enablement execution, from internal and external collateral creation to training and certification programs by vertical
• Develop collaborative partnerships across the organization, including with product, engineering, IU (intelligence unit, aka research) sales, customer success and marketing
• Communicate constantly and intelligently with customers; be the voice of the customer for the CB Insights organization
• Create certification programs for internal sales and customer success teams and eventually customers
• Launch and oversee a Customer Advisory Board
• Define smart goals for you and your team and manage against measurable KPIs; CB Insights is data-driven
• Being a magnet for talent that can attract, hire and develop exceptional talent as we build a world-class product marketing capability
• As an executive, set a tone of high standards, customer obsession, disciplined decision making and as someone who just gets stuff done

Professional qualifications

As a leader

• 10+ years of formal product marketing / strategy / marketing leadership leadership experience at a fast-growing technology, market research or advisory firm
• Deep familiarity with the needs and goals of the corporate functions CBI customers are in
• Clear, fast and hard earned career progression
• Track record leading and developing high performance teams of 10+ professionals
• Experience building incentive and career progression programs that drive career advancement and retention of great talent
• Impeccable ability to recruit top tier talent via traditional channels as well as creative ones. Be a magnet for talent.
• Strength in balancing desires of the product marketing department with the needs of the overall company

As a product marketer

• Product marketing strategy & execution
• Brand activation / rebrand skills
• Experience building customer communication channels, such as advisory boards as well as training and certification programs
• Working knowledge of multi-stage demand gen funnels and related technologies including marketing automation (e.g. Hubspot) and CRM (e.g. Salesforce)
• Experience working with sales and CS teams to tangibly improve mid-funnel and retention metrics
• Understanding and experience selling SaaS products with moderate to high price tags into enterprises ($50-$250k per annum)
• Impeccable copywriting and presentation building skills
• Be data-driven and be willing to nerd out on data to get to the right ideas and answers
• Bonuses: experience undergoing a successful rebrand at a company with real traction (i.e. not a seed company searching for a business model)
• Knowledge that ranges from good to great in:
• Product marketing
• Customer engagement marketing
• Event marketing
• Demand generation

Keys to success

• Move fast - We are a challenger brand. Speed is a weapon. We believe in testing hypotheses quickly, getting data to prove/disprove the hypothesis and then scaling up the winning ideas. Being tenacious and relentlessly resourceful is key.
• Magnet for talent - You must have managerial experience including building amazing teams and leading and developing teams with diverse skill sets
• Humble - We have developed strong antibodies to arrogance or hints of arrogance
• Helpful - This role will require building strong partnerships throughout CBI and with clients. Being a helpful colleague is important.
• High IQ - You will be developing and analyzing a number of demand generation strategies and tactics. You should be able to deal with ambiguity, understand ideas and data quickly and prioritize effectively. We are swimming in ideas, but they are not all created equally or worth pursuing and so knowing how to separate the good from the bad is critical so we are focused on the best strategies.
• Great communicator - Clarity of thought and disciplined, deliberate decision making are critical. You should be able to synthesize information quickly and cogently present via the appropriate medium (presentation, phone, blog post, etc).
• Systems thinking - Should think about building and refining systems and processes that make goal attainment a byproduct of the system.
• Sweat the details - Should be able to think strategically and put a plan together but also get in the weeds when necessary on day-to-day execution.
• Creative and competitive - Our goal is not to blindly follow best practices but to be the best practice. We should of course borrow good ideas from others, but blindly doing what every other technology company does is a recipe for mediocrity. We need someone who can take ideas and figure out how to customize them to our situation in a way that creates maximum value for CBI and helps us, them and their team win.
• High standards - This one doesn’t require much explanation.