Marketers of Technology
00:01:10 · Ralf Paschen
[00:01:10] S0: Yeah. I'm one of the old geeks. So I started really as a technical person, age of 25, being in a data center. So totally nothing to do with marketing. I didn't care about marketing at that time, for sure not. I didn't listen. I get the flyers and all that kind of stuff around me, but I didn't care. So I was a data center guy, then I got a great offer from one of the certifications I did. This was a company called Novell, which was a YouTube based company. You wanna be part of our team in pre sales. I said, yep, why not? Starting in pre sales in Germany in pre sales role, started my career in the software industry, coming out from a data center into software industry, which is still since then my approach. So then I started as a presale, started then least because I said, I don't wanna chunk with the projectors and doing all the demo stuff. And I said, no, no, no. All the guys around me, they make money, so I wanna be on the sales side. So I can do my presales on my own. I do the sales part. And I did this for almost ten years being a global account director. The kind of people which had $1,520,000,000 dollar quota relief. Okay. So not being scared. Like, if you're doing this today, you would scare anybody out of the room if you have something like this. We're free for customers. So I deal with this kind of enterprise business, and I was dealing very well. And then I was very interesting approach over the years then that somebody at PE, a private equity company asked me for an advisor from this company. She liked me a lot. Don't ask me why, not because of revenue, because I had great ideas and wanna share that with everyone. And she said, hey, why are not coming to product marketing? I said, no, why should I do that? Okay. And she's still alive, so I have to be careful not pronouncing her name, but she was very powerful, French English lady, very powerful. And she said to me, because I want you to use the other side of your brain as well, the creative part. That's not a good excuse for giving up a sales club, right? She told me, you know what, the company needs you because you have the outside in understanding of a customer in the market. You understand your competition, you understand the arguments, I need you in product marketing.
00:03:17 · Ralf Paschen
And at this time, product marketing was not the typical product marketing people that just creating white bearers and data sheets and all that. I was really starting with messaging positioning. Who is my target persona? What's their pain? What are we solving? And what she faced is something everybody still faces in or faces exactly right now in all the startups out there is what is my messaging? What is my positioning? What are we solving? What's the pain? Why now? All these kinds of pieces happened years ago when I started this whole team. And we built a complete marketing team, brought a marketing team around this, and we made several times category leaders, being several times a Gartner force leaders because of that and so on and so forth. It was a start of career being a product marketer, being a VP product marketing, moved into roles at CMO then, next up CMO, which is not archival for product marketing person because he understands messaging positioning. The rest is you understand it over time and become CMO. Then I... The company grew bigger and bigger, got exit. We sold a company to... For $650,000,000, a start up out of Austria, to a company called CA, which was based in New York. And one and a half years later, we got acquired by Broadcom. So big company. So let's say this kind of whale eats small fish. Okay. Not small fish for $6.50, but eating a fish, it comes to whale and it comes to bigger whale. And then you get it in the end of the game and just get thinking of them out, I'm really born for a corporate because corporate means something different, okay? A corporate means you work with more and more and more people and get everybody aligned. It's like getting a supertanger 10 miles away from coast to the left. Okay. So it takes a while. This is a difference in startups. So I consider big on startups, started in startups again, London based, Israel based company, helped them from scratch, from zero, get the marketing up, get the messaging, positioning, everything back on track and then get into execution. So not only you typically doing the positioning messaging, like everybody else is calling it right now, the days is everybody calls themselves go to market, go to market engineer, go to market something, go to market whatever, pick and choose, go to market mouse, whatever. Everybody calls them go to market. The meaning of go to market strategy.
00:05:32 · Ralf Paschen, Andres Figuera
Define the strategy from the top and be able to execute it, not just waiting for ChatGPT tell you what to do. You need to understand how to execute. So this is the difference, and that is the foundation of GTM Consult. After all this corporate and after all these things, do this as a really a as a go to market adviser for CEOs or COO's, not for a VP of sales, not for anybody below, because you need to do this from a strategy perspective. Because my perspective, go to market is owned by the CEO, nobody else. And that's the point. And nowadays days, everybody calls a go to market, which is fine. I take it. So... But the point is about how do you execute. You can not... You can... Say it this way. You can build a plan on ChatGPT and Claude easy. I would say you can. If you have the right skills and get downloaded, all good. You can plan it, but you cannot execute it. And that's the difference, like plan a rooftop. You cannot execute a rooftop, right? You can plan it. Same thing. [00:06:27] S1: I get that. And Ralf, one question. How long ago did you found GTM Consult? [00:06:32] S0: So GTM Consult was a sidekick for a while, because I helped people when I was together with companies which I'm allowed to from a contract perspective. Four years ago, I started full time last year June, last year July, with full engagements, fractionals, everything. I do everything from left, right, top down, workshops, everything. But I also do fractional, I do project based, all of it.
00:06:32 · Ralf Paschen, Andres Figuera
[00:06:32] S0: So GTM Consult was a sidekick for a while, because I helped people when I was together with companies which I'm allowed to from a contract perspective. Four years ago, I started full time last year June, last year July, with full engagements, fractionals, everything. I do everything from left, right, top down, workshops, everything. But I also do fractional, I do project based, all of it. [00:06:55] S1: Oh okay, understood. And do you have like an industry that you specialize in or the customers that you work with or the companies that you work with, do they have a certain pattern or anything that I do. Makes them similar?
00:07:07 · Ralf Paschen
[00:07:07] S0: I do typically IT operations, IT automation, DevOps, workplace management, which is my sweet spot because I know the competition there. I know the whole market there. I know everything there. IT automation is really the case for it. But I do this for all others as well, because the messaging position is all the same. It's just the structure, get the structure in place, understand your target persona, what's the problem, solution. And that, for example, also in ServiceNow, I experienced a bill in two years as a CMO from scratch. They were a full marketing up, 6% public contribution to sales with an area I had no clue with... A clue about what ServiceNow, because I come from SAP. I build over ServiceNow, I build over ServiceNow, build the partnerships, build those partnerships with ServiceNow, build the engagements, the stores, everything. So the mechanics are always the same, but it takes a little bit more, one or two months to understand what is exactly what you're solving, because that's what I do first thirty days, understand really what are you trying to solve, guys? And there are different companies in different stages. That's the reason why I define 3,000,000 ARR to 75, not bigger, because then we are talking about corporate again. I can help corporate as well, sure, but they are slower. They're like a supertanker, takes time. And what I say is that if you're interested and hungry enough to build a go to market which scales, that's something which I'm interested in. Just see you say, just try it out, I'm not interested. You're hungry enough to change because when I come in, it's like a storm. Because I look at everything. I look at absolutely every piece because I understand execution and I understand excuses very, very well. I know where to look for. I know what to look looking for the sales of what I'm telling people. Can you look for that I can replace my head of marketing? That's not what I'm doing. I look for that I can help the head of marketing to be great. That's what I'm looking for. Okay. You people you have get better and greater because maybe they have a lack of getting dimensions behind them to get going. This is often the case because the... You know, marketing is a cost center. Just... You cost me money. So you get the most pressure. That's all it is. And that's what I typically approach in here.
00:09:17 · Ralf Paschen, Andres Figuera
Looking at the challenges, looking at the problems, and how much supportive a CEO really is to his team and to his company. [00:09:24] S1: That's amazing, man. And Ralf, do you have certain regions that you work with? Do you work globally with every single company that reaches out and looks for your assistance. How does that look like for you?