SalesTechStar Interview with Fran Wilson, CMO at Boomi

Fran Wilson, CMO at Boomi chats about the importance of inter-team alignment while sharing a few perspectives on the changing martech-salestech niche in this catch-up:

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We’d love to dive into your previous marketing-sales journey and also hear more about your current role at Boomi – take us through a typical day at work…

After more than 20 years of leadership in SaaS and B2B enterprise software organizations, my typical work day is always shifting. I’ve navigated everything from building a marketing organization from the ground up, to supporting double digit revenue growth for a multibillion dollar software company.

I’m now seven weeks into leading marketing at Boomi, and my day-to-day work life is very dynamic. As Boomi grows rapidly with our worldwide network of more than 20,000 customers and 800 partners, driving continued improvement and agility across marketing and sales operations remains essential. That includes maximizing data and analytics. Data-driven organizations like Boomi can scale quickly and more easily navigate new challenges and growth opportunities.

Marketing teams in any organization have a lot to cover – from events, to branding, to communications, and more – but my role at Boomi is fascinating because being a data expert lies at the center. The intelligent connectivity of data lives at the core of both our marketing teams’ role in helping customers, as well as our role in supporting sales. Knowing what’s in the data forms the foundation of my job at Boomi, and Boomi’s job for the world’s top companies.

I’m also doing a lot of recruiting and interviewing so we can be fully resourced for the accelerated growth we’re experiencing. We have plans to hire several hundred new team members across functions and regions to accommodate this accelerated growth.

On this front, Inc. Magazine named Boomi to its list of Best Workplaces and Comparably honored us with the Best CEOs for Diversity and Best Company for Career Growth awards, where we ranked among the largest companies for our commitments to, and achievements in, diversity and career advancement. Positioned as Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for EiPaaS (Enterprise Integration Platform as Service) for eight consecutive years, our fast growth, product excellence, award-winning culture and global mission to make the world a better place by connecting everyone to everything, anywhere make it an exciting time to be a part of Boomi. As the pioneer and category leader of cloud-native integration platform as a service, we move at a rapid pace.

What do you feel are some of the core marketing-sales fundamentals that you don’t see enough of even in seasoned B2B teams today?

In my experience, the most successful teams have strong alignment and partnership across all go-to-market (GTM) functions. This includes marketing, sales, product management and customer success. One thing most organizations can do better is have a single view of go-to-market metrics, whether that’s starting with the global pipeline or looking at core business metrics such as retention and customer lifetime value.

These groups work best when looking at the same GTM performance metrics and data, using those analytics to inform shifts in GTM execution. In fact, the Boomi platform helps our customers create this critical single source of truth across their customer relationship management, sales force automation and other systems of record to build and streamline connection points across systems, while providing critical analytics for the business and ultimately helping our customers drive revenue.

By breaking down data and communication silos, leaders can create that strong alignment across teams. In my experience, this represents a best in class approach. Is everybody great at using data to see the truth? No. But winners really learn from data.

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What are a few ways in which you enable better alignment between marketing and sales initiatives closer home within your own teams? And can you dive into some of the salestech-martech that helps enable this?

It all starts with a shared plan. The disconnect between marketing and sales begins to happen when sales goes after one opportunity or use case, and teams or products lack alignment. That’s why it’s critical to have an aligned, coordinated go-to-market strategy.

For Boomi, there is so much opportunity for growth and expansion. We currently have over 20,000 customers globally, and growing. When growing this rapidly, it’s critical to be thoughtful about putting customers’ needs first in everything we do and deliver for them.

As a marketing leader, I’m very data driven, and rely on SalesTech and martech that can support and inform decisions based on insights and data gleaned from our customers and partners. We are implementing the industry leading tools for measuring return on marketing investments for every dollar we spend. Additional martech investments will provide deeper customer insights and propensity models that will improve targeting and customer experience.

Someone once told me that the team with a map finds the treasure first. Over the course of my career, I’ve realized that the team with the best data insights does, too. Advanced analytics and predictive capabilities are top of mind for me right now, given Boomi’s size, the phase of growth we’re in, and how quickly we are scaling.

As B2B teams prepare for the rest of 2022 amid concerns of a recession and slowdown, what top practices and strategies do you feel are most salient?

In recessionary times and other times of acute crises, it’s important for vendors to invest deeply in their current customers, helping them navigate through crisis and change, and ensure they feel supported by their business partners. Through the lens of a relentless focus on customer centricity, I want us to meet our customers where they are, and help address the most critical business challenges they are facing. These unprecedented times require us to be really thoughtful about what our customers need and how we can best support them.

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What core trends/evolutions in B2B sales and marketing do you feel will reshape the industry in the near-future: how/why?

Data analytics and machine learning have changed the game for marketing, creating more opportunities than ever to help us shape how we drive revenue growth and business value for customers. I see data as the foundation for best-in-class B2B marketing. It can take a number of different forms, like applying machine learning across your martech stack or using data science to predict customer needs. No matter what you implement, technology-centered marketing organizations are going to be positioned to succeed and win. Deploying new technologies and being experimental, while maintaining alignment with other parts of the GTM organization like customer success and sales, will be critical for success.

What are a few of your thoughts on the future of salestech/martech as segments and how you feel this space will shape up?

The future of martech will get more intelligent through machine learning. Access to AI-based platforms and real-time customer insights allows for more informed targeting and personalization at scale. This will make marketing better, leading to stronger returns, better pipeline results and improved customer experience.

We see this trend in action through our customers who use Boomi to support martech systems. We enable access to these real time insights by connecting systems of record faster, at scale.

Some last thoughts, takeaways, before we wrap up!

It’s a pivotal time in the technology sector as we continue to transform and evolve. The industry leading companies will need to be innovative, agile and stay centered on customer outcomes. I am thrilled to join the world-class leadership team at SaaS category-leader, Boomi, to help drive our company’s rapid growth.

Our platform and award-winning culture enables us to accelerate our mission to make the world a better place by connecting everyone to everything, anywhere.

As I mentioned before, we move fast – keep an eye on Boomi!

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