Most marketing articles today focus on tactics (e.g., social media, Big Data, attribution modeling, etc.), all of which are very important. However, to better understand what it is like to sit in, and prepare for, a C-level marketing job, I’m interviewing top marketers across a variety of firm types and sizes as part of my “CMO Insight Series.” I recently interviewed Ajit Sivadasan, the head of Global e-Commerce, Sales, Marketing, and Technology for Lenovo. His insight into the job of a leading marketer in the dynamic and fast-paced nature of global consumer electronics is below.
Kimberly Whitler: What is the biggest “challenge” you’ve had as a CMO?
Ajit Sivadasan: While I’ve worked across a number of different divisions at Lenovo, going back and forth between Marketing (staff) and Sales P&L roles, my primary goal regardless of the position is to drive growth; customer acquisition and sales conversion. While driving growth in the PC e-com space is challenging, driving online growth for a company that has a leadership position in other routes to market, but not ours, can be even more challenging. Despite Lenovo.com operating in 80+ different countries, we are not the e-commerce leader in most of these countries, primarily by design. As a result, driving growth against dominant competitors, market-by-market is always a key challenge, especially when you might have potential conflicts and expenses that don’t scale well on the demand generation side.
However, there is another aspect to driving growth that is rarely discussed but equally important. That is the challenge with acquiring the right level of resources internally, and internal competition for resources is as important if not more important than external competition.Whether you compete against other functions, other countries, other divisions, or other channels, your job is to ensure that you have the resources to be successful today and yet, collaboratively drive the company’s overall well-being for tomorrow. And resources are usually allocated based on current market dynamics, not necessarily on the potential the division represents for the future. E-com at Lenovo is about 10-15% of the overall business across B2B and B2C routes, so we regularly have to make the case as to why the potential of online sales warrants disproportionate investment today. What this means for me is that to drive external growth, I have to be a constant evangelist internally, inspiring, collaborating and sometimes pushing others to see the potential of e-Commerce.
Whitler: What is your biggest worry – or something that “keeps you up at night”?
Sivadasan: My biggest worry centers on our ability, given the fast-paced and dynamic industry within which we operate, to build the company’s infrastructure and capabilities with enough flexibility so we stay ahead of competition and in-line with customer expectations,. As part of this, I’m always trying to figure out how to build the systems, processes, and talent to enable decision-making to occur closer to the outcome—real time decision making. As an example, think about the gap between a competitive action and the speed with which you are able to react. In today’s fast-paced marketplace, those companies that are able to reduce the information-decision making cycle will have a distinct advantage and leg up on the competition.
The second thing that keeps me up at night is acquiring top talent. Global access to talent is critical to winning tomorrow—digitally and data savvy skill sets are difficult to come by and on top of it finding the right people who have done enough to understand what’s effective and what is not is in short supply. These have to concern CMOs more than any other C-level leader at this moment.
Whitler: As CMO, what has been a key “instrumental mistake” (i.e., one that provided significant insight that enabled you to perform better) that you’ve made and what did you learn from it?
Sivadasan: Customer behavior has historically driven page design for websites. Conventional wisdom in designing websites is to focus on customer personas based on customer types—that is the demographic and psychographic make up of a customer. However, most web designs never really achieve the types of business results people expect when the start the journey. What often happens is that you end up with a severely compromised site that doesn’t address the needs of everyone, and in many cases, anyone fully.
With the advent of digital marketing and big data capabilities, you realize that you have a lot more granularity to work with around customer experience needs. The digital footprint coupled with the consumer’s actions on the site give marketers more information about their intent – and their actual behavior – which is much more important for good website design. My rule is: ‘Never ask a customer what they want. Observe them and they will typically say one thing and surprisingly do something quite different that you may not expect or that customer may not even know.’
I will share an example where we had incorrectly assumed that we could combine our business machines (Thinkpads) with our consumer line of products (Ideapads) together when driving sales activities. We had designed the website using the traditional demographic and psychographic information, rather than behavioral data. What happened was that the customers had a tough time distinguishing between the products and resorted to what they typically do when information is overwhelming, they compared specs and prices. The outcome was we sold the wrong type of machines to the wrong people from a features standpoint.
So like everyone in the industry, we have fallen for these types of classical mistakes and made significant site redesigns based on compromises; we asked customers what they wanted rather than observing them in large numbers (using large data sets) to make decisions that help solve problems. To make decisions in this way, however, requires advanced skill sets, an investment in resources, and a willingness to spend the time necessary.
Whitler: Research shows that 80% of CEOs are disappointed with their CMOs. Why do you think that is? What can CEOs and CMOs do to drive better alignment?
Sivadasan: Every CMO should already be a sales person, and if they aren’t, they should quickly become one. While CMOs are usually responsible for branding, marketing, PR and all the other classical functional expertise, they should be measured on sales and customer satisfaction. Often times, companies separate sales from marketing activities, making it harder for CMOs to convince sales leaders how marketing actions help their sales in the short term. When the two functions are combined, you actually ensure that marketing activities lead to sales, as one leader is held accountable for both areas.
The CEO is focused on the business and if the marketer is spending a lot of time reporting awareness and brand image metrics, there is a clear disconnect. The metrics have to ultimately and unequivocally show how one drives the other. Unfortunately, data sometimes becomes a trap and everyone gets focused on just the numbers without linking it to the end goal. If the CMO is also responsible for revenue, their actions will be more connected to business results rather than some esoteric measure (i.e., brand image). What we cannot accept at any point is the marketer saying that they delivered what they were tasked to do—drive the brand or awareness or some other marketing-centric metric, but in reality sales and other sales oriented metrics are declining. The two must be connected through accountability to one individual to help drive better ownership and decision-making.
Whitler: Many students today are interested in high tech and consumer electronics? What do you look for in marketers at Lenovo and what should students do to have a better chance of success in these areas?
Sivadasan:
1. Be comfortable managing numbers. You don’t have to be a math wiz from MIT, but you do have to think rationally and use data to make decisions. You have to demonstrate a pattern of using analysis to drive results, but having a comfort and passion for turning to data to create insight, rather than using your gut or an anecdote, will be fundamental.
2. Experience trumps title and money. Students forget that they have to navigate a 40+ year career. That means that early in your career, the right experiences are significantly more valuable than title or money. Yet, I often see students focusing on things that don’t matter – the “coolness” of the company’s product, who pays more this year, or which company offers a more prestigious title. They rarely are focused on the content of the experience and the learning they will get from it. You should be looking for companies and a boss who will be willing to allow experimentation and act as a mentor to help you hone your skills.
3. Success at the end of your career depends on Experience at the beginning of your career. All of these points are related, but I think the hungrier you are to learn and gain experience at the beginning is important. My formative career was in engineering (made me analytical) and then I spent some time in consulting, which gave me a quick shot-in-the-arm in terms of business lingo and a variety of real-world case studies that I could learn from. Both helped me transition to a completely new career, one that didn’t exist when I started school.
Interested in more CMO Insight? Check out the following: Deepak Advani (IBM); Duncan Aldred (Buick/GMC); Matthew Boyle (CMO, AAFCPAs); Bill Campbell (CMO, Chatham University); Steve Cook (former CMO, Samsung); Rishi Dave (CMO, Dun & Bradstreet); John Dillon (CMO, Denny’s); Kristin Hambelton (CMO, Evariant); Jeff Jones (CMO, Target); Michele Kessler (CEO, thinkThin), Antonio Lucio (CMO, HP); Tim Mahoney (Global CMO, Global Chevrolet and Global Marketing Operations Leader, GM); Jim McGinnis (Intuit); Jim Melvin (former CEO and current CMO in Tech); C. David Minifie (CMO/EVP Corporate Strategy, Centene Corp); Anne Pritz (CMO, Sbarro); Martine Reardon (CMO, Macy’s); David Roman (CMO, Lenovo); Robin Saitz (CMO, Brainshark); Ajit Sivadasan (Lenovo); Ron Stoupa (CMO, Sports Authority); Ken Thewes (CMO, Regal Entertainment Group); Scott Vaughan (CMO, Integrate); Brent Walker (CMO/Co-Founder, C2B Solutions); and Barry Westrum (EVP, International Dairy Queen).
Join the Discussion: @KimWhitler and @AjitSivadasan @Lenovo
