How to lead and optimize your marketing team in the “Everywhere Workplace” with Melissa Puls of Ivanti

– You’re listening to Three Minute Marketing where we interview the world’s top growth marketing leaders and distill their knowledge into actionable, bite-sized insights. Now, here’s your host, Chris Mechanic.

– [Chris Mechanic] Hey, what’s up Three Minute Marketing fam. Welcome to another episode. Today I’ve got on the show Melissa Puls. Melissa is Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Ivanti, which is an advanced IT automation firm that is on a mission to bring the everywhere work environment to life. Now what’s interesting about Melissa among many other things is that she has operated mostly remote throughout her career, including in leadership roles, even before the pandemic. And so she really has mastered this idea of building team remotely. And that’s exactly what we’re going to talk about today. So stay tuned.

– [Melissa Puls] Well, the workplace is everywhere, right, nowadays-

– [Chris Mechanic] Yeah.

– [Melissa Puls] Which at times, I think, can leave us without maybe a sense of belonging or purpose that aligns us all. So I think from, at least from a marketing perspective, I think if your brand is lacking a purpose in any way, I think it’s marketing’s objective and job in this everywhere workplace world to create one that helps unify employees, customers and investors in really a common purpose that allows us all to rally around sort of one sense of purpose. For us at Ivanti, it’s actually to make the everywhere workplace possible. And this is something that if you go around to when we’re on conference calls and working with people, everyone knows that we have a common purpose that allows, that’s all about making the everywhere workplace possible. So that’s really important, I think, it’s just to have that sense of purpose as a team. And the cool thing about marketing is that we have the ability to really drive that and fuel that purpose across the entire company. I think the second thing I think about from the everywhere workplace, if you will, is that marketers really need to provide a more humanized experience for our buyers. And I tend to believe that the concepts of B2B and personas are dead in a lot of ways. And nowadays people expect to really be marketed to as humans. And it’s really about, in my view, kind of B2H, right, business to humans. And we all have unique challenges that we’re facing in our jobs. And they’ve gotten more complex, especially in today’s world. And I think the cool thing about marketing today is that we can listen, we can understand, and we can help each person as a human move them through the buyer’s journey. And we have data and tools that allow that to happen. So I think marketing role has really evolved from being a B2B, right, we’re marketing to these massive businesses, to a much more humanized way, I think we can connect with people through marketing.

– [Chris Mechanic] Yeah.

– [Melissa Puls] And I think the third thing really is that, now look, marketing has earned the rights to have a profound impact on business success, right. The way people are buying today, there’s always that connection between the business and marketing. And to that end, I think marketers really shouldn’t claim victory until the company has met their revenue goals. And today where everyone’s working from everywhere, it gives marketing a sense of purpose that we’re here to really help the company achieve their goals. And I think we should certainly claim, have celebrate successes and be excited about accomplishments along the way, but don’t claim victory until you’re looking in the whites of the eyes of your CEO and the CFO, and you feel confident that you’ve done your part to be able to actually achieve the business’ goals. So I think, look, a lot has changed at marketers, a lot has changed for buyers. And I think in this world, it’s really about being clear on what your purpose is, that we’re aligning to a more humanized experience for our buyers and that we’re committed to really the end goal, which is the company’s business metrics and what they’re looking to achieve from a marketer’s perspective.

– [Chris Mechanic] Wow, that’s amazing, Melissa. I mean, I knew you were smart. I didn’t know you were that profound though because-

– [Melissa Puls] Yeah, I fool ya, I fool ya.

– [Chris Mechanic] Well, it’s interesting and we’ll keep this quick ’cause we’re all about brevity, but what’s interesting that I liked about that is managing and leading a team is a pretty tactical and micro-level thing on some levels, but your three things, basically are zooming out. So you’re zooming out and you’re establishing a higher-level purpose, the humanization element and aligning to those business goals. And I can totally see how it makes it less about necessarily an individual and it provides a context of just like we’re a team, let’s lock our arms and jump.

– [Melissa Puls] Yeah, yeah. And I think you need that. I think, look, everybody on, I’d like to think that everyone on my team wakes up every day knowing that what they’re doing is bigger than the task that’s sitting right in front of them.

– [Chris Mechanic] Yeah.

– [Melissa Puls] And it allows people to unite and connect, whether it’s your brand purpose, on making a humanized experience for your buyers, being accountable for the ultimate goals and the metrics of the company, it just gives the whole team a bigger purpose, right? And then that unifies us no matter where we’re sitting, whether we’re all sitting together around a conference table or we’re out in our home offices doing our thing, we’re united.

– [Chris Mechanic] Yeah.

– [Melissa Puls] And I think that’s really what makes a difference now with great teams working in this environment.

– [Chris Mechanic] I think you’re right. And I’m going to go right now and take a page out of that book.

– [Melissa Puls] Okay, good.

– [Chris Mechanic] Tell the listeners just a little bit about Ivanti, who it might be a good fit for and how they can learn more.

– [Melissa Puls] Sure, yeah. So Ivanti, as I said, we make the everywhere workplace possible. So we provide technologies that allows you to discover, service, manage and secure all your devices no matter where you are working in the world to give you a safe environment to do your best work. So that’s what Ivanti does. And look, I’m super passionate about marketing. I’m actually a second generation CMO. My mom was the CMO of a little company called Kronos, many, many years ago.

– [Chris Mechanic] Really?

– [Melissa Puls] So, look, marketing’s in my DNA and I love it and I enjoy every minute of it.

– [Chris Mechanic] I love that. I love that you love it, Melissa.

– [Melissa Puls] Yeah.

– [Chris Mechanic] Thank you very much for joining us. We really appreciate your time and we will see you around, come back sometime.

– [Melissa Puls] I might, thank you.

– [Chris Mechanic] All right.

– [Melissa Puls]Okay, bye-bye. Nice to see you again.

– [Chris Mechanic] Bye.