CMO Insights: Tiffany Sieve, Marketing Demand Generation VP at Paycor

March 15, 2019  |  
By The Pedowitz Group (TPG)
March 15, 2019
By The Pedowitz Group (TPG)

YouTube video

This week’s guest on CMO Insights is Tiffany Sieve, Marketing Demand Generation VP, Paycor.

In this video, Tiffany talks about:

  • Integrating new technology to support Paycor’s marketing strategy.
  • Measuring the customer experience.
  • Paycor’s journey to becoming Revenue Marketers.

Tiffany Sieve leads the digital, lead generation, field marketing and channel marketing teams to develop revenue-generating campaigns that support Paycor’s growth plan. She specializes in developing high-impact integrated marketing campaigns that optimize the flow of qualified leads to sales and thrives on the metrics and processes of B2B marketing.

Working on 100% commission, Tiffany quickly learned that a multi-channel marketing plan was crucial for sales success. Her sales experience, passion to win and marketing education led her to pursue a marketing career focused on driving growth. Over the last 12 years, Tiffany has held various marketing roles at LexisNexis and Paycor in all aspects of marketing including lead generation, client upsell, event planning, digital, testing optimization, account based marketing, field marketing and channel marketing.

Learn more about Tiffany from her LinkedIn profile and follow Paycor on Twitter.

For more great interviews like this one, please check out our other CMO Insights Videos.

Related reading:

Full Transcript

Jeff Pedowitz:

Hi, welcome to Revenue Marketing Television, the CMO Insights Series. I’m your host, Jeff Pedowitz, President and CEO of The Pedowitz Group. Today as our guest, we have Tiffany Sieve, who is Vice President of Marketing Demand Generation at Paycor. So Tiffany, welcome to the show.

Tiffany Sieve:

Thank you so much. Excited to have to be a part of it today.

Jeff Pedowitz:

Absolute pleasure to have you. So you’ve been at Paycor for awhile, and you’ve seen a lot of changes over there. So if you could encapsulate it, what, what, what would you say the top two or three biggest changes event?

Tiffany Sieve:

Gosh, it’s been a lot of change. I’ve been at Paycor for about five years in a variety of different roles at marketing. And when I started there were about seven people in the marketing team. We didn’t have Salesforce, we didn’t have Marketo or any release CRM to help track back the marketing campaigns. Marketing was really known as you know, making things look pretty, creating logos, websites, a lot of great sales tools. There was value there, but we weren’t really able to show the true numbers and an actual revenue back to the company on all the different marketing initiatives that we had in place. And and at that time we actually brought forth the Pedowitz group who we found that our Chief Sales Officer came to Paycor and he brought the white paper that you guys actually wrote. I think back in 2012, called the Revenue Marketing Center of Excellence.

And it really helped restructure our whole marketing team. We created program manager role goals. We created product marketing, we called ourselves revenue marketing at the time. And we were able to bring on Marketo, able to bring on Salesforce. And, and over the past five, six years, we’ve been able to really show the value back to the company. And so now all of the different campaigns that we have, we’re able to track back everything from MQL to first-time appointments all the way through the sales funnel. What’s the average deal size, what’s the win rate, and what’s the overall contribution to the company. And I’m an excited to say that Paycor has been on a great journey of growth and the marketing team has really grown a lot because of the Pedowitz group and continuing to do so as well.

Jeff Pedowitz:

Well thank you. That’s, I appreciate the plug.

Tiffany Sieve:

You guys are, you guys are famous over at Paycor!

Jeff Pedowitz:

Well, at least we have one place, so that’s good. Probably it’s probably the billboards that we put right away focus the focus to advertising. So let’s, but let’s talk a little bit more about transformation because I know for a lot of marketing executives it’s, you want to do it, but then in actuality it’s a lot of work, right? I mean for change management and getting the tech writing, I think the people, right. So kind of walk us through some of the challenges you’ve had along the way.

Tiffany Sieve:

Yeah, so as I mentioned, we brought on Salesforce and Marketo and actually we stood that up at the same time. So literally in one week, about four, about five years ago, almost exactly. That started and it was really a whole cross-functional effort across the whole pay core team. So sales, operations, sales, leadership, marketing of course product and other areas. And and we’ve continued to evolve since then. And so we’ve brought on new technologies that that integrate in with Salesforce integrated with Marketo so that we can make sure that all the, the ins and outs of the marketing strategy are tracked throughout the way. And we’ve continued to need to add new technology, you know, to to our overall bench of services.

And so for example, we’ve added Evergage over the last six months, eight months to showcase personalization on our website. We’re doing a lot of great testing and optimization. Right now we’re looking into ABM technology. We’re looking into online chat from an AI perspective and and are continuing to evolve into learning about the best practices from a marketing perspective and, and understanding where pay Corp is going from a growth perspective as well.

Jeff Pedowitz:

A lot of change. So I’m curious from a customer focus perspective, meet you here. I guess it’s all the buzz and it become more customer focus, become more customer centric of course, which probably should’ve always been that right as businesses. I don’t know that it’s necessarily new, but that’s where we once focused on. So what does that mean to you? I pay core. How are you guys becoming more customer focused?

Tiffany Sieve:

Yeah, it’s a great question and really timely because right now we’re actually working on our whole life cycle customer journey. So thinking about how do we bring net new prospects into the funnel? What does their journey look like as they understand who Paycor is as they’re nurturing and engaging with all of our content and resources and as they’re actually ready to have that conversation with sales. And then through the sales funnel, you know, all the different stages that we’re tracking. How how are they interacting with our materials? What type of marketing initiatives work through that sales funnel, and then once they actually are ready to purchase, how does that process feel when implementation happens and as they become stronger advocates of Paycor and potentially purchase more in the future?

So we’ve actually done lots of different workshops where or literally sat in a room and around all four walls, we had printed out examples of six different clients and what their journey looked like and what they engage with from a marketing perspective.

Tiffany Sieve:

We literally printed out emails and webinar information and event invitations that they’ve engaged with white papers they’ve downloaded and we looked at the timeframe, we looked at their titles, we looked at the size of their company, the industry that they’re in to really uncover what is our current buyer journey look like. And that’s helped us at this point in time shape. How do we really want it to change moving forward? What’s that? What’s the ideal journey based on what we’re learning? We’ve also done a lot of interviews within our clients to, you know, ensure that the data tells us one thing, but how did they actually feel during that journey? And some focus and other surveys as well too, to really uncover what that looks like. We’ve hired people on the team as well to, to really uncover that overall journey from a client perspective.

Jeff Pedowitz:

You’ve gotten to the point where you’ve set up KPIs and dashboards in Salesforce and Marketo to measure the customer experience side of things. So in other words, you got the whole top of the funnel, everyone has the funnel. Are you measuring, I don’t know, onboarding, adoption and value delivery, loyalty, advocacy, things like that?

Tiffany Sieve:

We are not there just yet. From a Salesforce perspective, we are looking at NPS scores and retention rates, but there is a lot more that we plan to uncover. We’ve actually hired more people on the pay core team, completely focused on that customer experience and, and they’re literally today working on what those KPIs look like so that the whole company has you know, has eyes and ears all over what their customers are thinking, what type of advocacy programs should we be, you know, rolling out or implementing. And, and again, doing all of those focus groups and surveys to uncover what are they really, what do they really want from paper core and what are they missing today?

Jeff Pedowitz:

So what’s that 30% plus annualized growth. You mentioned earlier, how much of that comes from net new customers versus your existing customers?

Tiffany Sieve:

Yeah, I would say I’m from a marketing perspective, it’s about 75% net new maybe 80% and then 20, 25% of our client upsell opportunities. And so of course from a company perspective it’s, it’s a little bit more evenly split. But from a marketing perspective that net new businesses it’s definitely a larger portion.

Jeff Pedowitz:

Okay. And have you set up SLES with sales for that customer experience part? So you may have an SLA for lead management, but do you have SLA score handling customer issues?

Tiffany Sieve:

Yes, absolutely. And so there are specific roles within our client service departments that are all about how do we focus on all of the questions or any sort of concerns that may come up from a client perspective. From a day to day area. We also, from an upsell opportunity, have a dedicated client sales team that are focused on how we can help grow that acquisition type of area. And then how do they specifically engage with those clients? And uncover some of the needs that they might that we might be able to address for them today.

Jeff Pedowitz:

Okay. You did mention ABM earlier as one of the things that you’re taking on. What does that mean to you when you say them?

Tiffany Sieve:

Yeah, so maybe it was an exciting journey. You know, it’s, it’s kind of all the buzz. It’s at every single conference you go to every new white paper that’s out there, my inbox is flooded with it. And there’s a lot of players in the market from a technology perspective. What I’m excited about is just thinking about moving from the, you know, the MQL, the marketing qualified lead more to like an MQA. So the marketing qualified account. And historically Paycor has really been thinking more about the leads. So what’s that person engaging with? What do they care? But you know, the buyer journey, obviously it has proven that there’s multiple people in that buying process. You know, five or six different people at different points of time. You know, and from Paycor perspective, you know, we really target HR leaders, CFOs, small business owners.

Tiffany Sieve:

We also have a lot of influencers that are part of that process. And so the ABM model is really around how do we target all of those people at one account, but customize the messaging, customize the conversation based on who they are, the title that they have their care about so that they can come together and make a decision holistically about making the purchase of Paycor. And today we’ve, we’ve really focused on what’s the right technology to get us there, but we’re piloting it even without technology today to some of our key markets, those that are a little bit larger from our different accounts so that we can really see if we target two different people at one account, you know, with customized messaging, are we seeing incremental lift? And we’re really in that pilot process today.

Jeff Pedowitz:

Now, have you aligned marketing with sales on, on the account pursuits or you’re not yet at that point?

Tiffany Sieve:

We have, yeah. Paycor, we’re very connected with our sales team. Marketing and sales have a really great relationship and we have to make sure that sales has input into those accounts that we’re focusing on. So what we do is we’re prioritizing based on the quality of our data, the employee sizes, you know, which ones have the highest opportunity for average deal sizes so that we can see the ROI from an ABM perspective. And then we’d go to sales and we say, you know, here’s the overall audience, but help us narrow it down, you know, help us pick your a accounts that we can go after together. And so there’s a multiple touches, an overall cadence of both marketing and sales together from this ABM feel.

Jeff Pedowitz:

And are you, have you set up reports and dashboards within Salesforce to track that?

Tiffany Sieve:

Yeah, we have, I mean, everything that we do really lives within that Salesforce area. And so we, we’ve customized that. We have our meters with our goals connected to them. And, and as I mentioned, we’re really in this pilot phase over the last few months, but we’re rolling out in many different ABM plays over the next six months or so to be able to prove if we need to use that technology moving forward.

Jeff Pedowitz:

Nice. Well, it’s, it’s very exciting to see all the things that you’re doing over there. So let’s get introspective for a moment. As you reflect on your career so far, what are some of the biggest lessons that you’ve learned since you started?

Tiffany Sieve:

Yeah. I started my career actually in sales. I I was on a hundred percent commission for the first three years of my career. And gosh, you learn a lot with a a hundred percent commission. It’s either do or die. And  I learned that, you know, you really need marketing to help support the day to day you gotta drive traffic to, if it’s B2B, B to C, it doesn’t matter. And so that that passion to sales, but my education and marketing really wanted really guided me into this overall marketing career. And, and that starting out in sales has helped because I’ve been able to, you know, put my, my seller hat on as I’ve interacted across the different companies I’ve been at and, and connected with those sales organizations to understand, you know, what are they hearing when they’re out talking to our buyers or to our customers and, you know, what do they need to make them successful throughout that journey. And so, you know, my career has really has really come how we can connect marketing and sales together. And then I’m really, you know, teaching the overall team to make sure that they’re listening on the sales calls. They’re doing ride alongs every single day and they’re continuing to learn from that sales organization as well.

Jeff Pedowitz:

I love that. So you’re actually giving the team out in the field on Salesforce?

Tiffany Sieve:

Yeah, yeah. We have a quarterly goal. It’s part of our development plans that we literally, we call them ride alongs, you know, sit in the car next to them, go to actual appointments, listen in on demos for our tele telephonic sales team. We’ll literally put the headphones on. We’ll sit next to them and, and listen and then we’ll talk about it. And every single time everyone comes back with new and different ideas and say, gosh, you know, we had this kind of question. I think we can create some sort of campaign to, to help promote it. Or, you know, we’re hearing this new competitor in the marketplace, you know, what can we do in order to address some of those, you know, opportunities and it’s, it’s a great learning development opportunity. It helps them learn more about the business and the industry as well.

Jeff Pedowitz:

So as you hire your team and you’re bringing people on and kids are coming out of school or you’re hiring people mid season, what do you look for in people and then have you help them develop their career?

Tiffany Sieve:

Yeah. You know, we really look for for go getters. You know, I, I don’t necessarily need someone that has 20 years experience, you know, at some big name company. I would really love someone that that has worked from the ground up, you know, worn a lot of different hats in marketing, learned a lot along the way and our innovators, you know, with with how fast Paycore has been growing and continues to grow, you know, the, the way that we’ve grown the last five years is going to be completely different in how we’re going to grow the next five years. So I’m looking for someone that has proven that at other organizations they were able to bring new and different ideas. They were able to tie revenue or actual results back to those ideas and they were able to create change within the organization because that’s exactly what we need to pay core. And those go getters are definitely who I’ve hired and are very proud of the team.

Jeff Pedowitz:

Well that, so as we talk about the next five years, just what’s your prediction for marketing in general, not just take work?

Tiffany Sieve:

Yeah, good question. You know, we’ve talked about kind of the ABM model. What’s interesting about that is it’s a little bit like the old is new again. So something that we’re incorporating within our ABM plans are it’s actually direct mail. And so from a B2B perspective, know direct mail kind of died for some, for a few years. You know, no more postcards kind of thing, but we’re looking more at like, how do you grab someone, someone’s attention that is very busy, especially though the people that we’re targeting every day from a business perspective. And we found that, you know, email gets cluttered, they don’t have a lot of time to leave the office and go to events. You know, they can do online webinars sometimes as well, but but we’re actually doing a fair amount of what we call kind of 3d mailers. So literally mailing some sort of piece of content.

We write a lot of white papers, a lot of thought leadership and add some sort of potential, you know, attention get her a logoed item or something. We will mail that to our prospects. And then we have technology that connects back to Marketo. So as soon as that delivery is received, we’re able to notify the sales rep, they’re able to call and talk about the delivery that they just got. And it’s really kind of that door opener. So that’s something that, you know, we’re using today. But I think from an overall marketing perspective, I think that’s really going to evolve. You know, how do we get in front of the audience of our audiences outside of, of email and, and, and what are kind of those new and different ways to get their attention?

You know, online chat is another thing that we’re looking at today that I think will continue to evolve. What’s that? You know, literally that AI robot with them within certain our product pages on our website, how do we get their attention when they’re, they’re looking at our sites and bring them further in the funnel at a much faster pace. And so any way that we can create that velocity of speed to a sales conversation is, I think that next step from a marketing transformation perspective.

Jeff Pedowitz:

Awesome, great insights. Now, Tiffany is very easy to see. Why you and the team been so successful at Paycor. So thank you so much for being on the program today.

Tiffany Sieve:

Thank you so much. Excited to join you.

Jeff Pedowitz:

You bet. All right, we’ll talk soon.

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