Rita I’m so excited to have you on the Brand Lab Series. We had a great lunch before we recorded. It’s funny how small our worlds are. We actually had never met, but I’ve known who you are for many years. You’re a good follow on social and LinkedIn.

But it’s nice to finally meet you in person, I’m excited to share your experience and your insight with our audience. So welcome to the Brand Lab Series.

RITA

Why thank you, I’m excited to be here.

BRIAN

So you have a really remarkable career, both in engineering and business. You’ve been at a number of big brands, big companies, you’re now at Showpad. Talk a little bit about your journey and how you got to where you are.

RITA

I started out as an engineer from Computer Science at University of Illinois, Yay! Go Illinois! And I’m a geek. I really like technology and I just fell into it, back in the day of programming, when computers were just starting to come out and I have followed the trend since then. So I started out at AT&T as a programmer, literally, programming on the 5ESS switch, got an MBA ’cause I realized really fast that sitting in front of a computer programming and debugging was not for me and I was a people person. So the job just kind of took me. I call my career, like a very windy road. And always following the next shiny object. Went from AT&T to Motorola quite frankly, to get the bag phone, flip phone at the time ’cause I wanted one and I couldn’t afford it, back that, so that’s what I did. From there, I went into two-way messaging at a startup company, and I really didn’t know what that was, but it was sounding like a cool thing to do, which was… I’m sending text messages via cellphone, which I know sounds like the norm right now. But back in the ’80s it was not. And that ended up leading me to a company called Platinum which is where I met you.

And that was a great experience. I think you and I can both agree that those companies like that don’t come along very often. And we were really trend setters back then, and that got me into the whole analytics and the AI journey that I’ve been living since then. Went off to IBM, worked for Watson, put AI onto medical devices with GE Healthcare, and now I’m here at Showpad putting AI back into a different industry.

BRIAN

You describe that as a winding road, but it’s certainly an impressive one. And I think what’s also interesting is women in tech is become such a buzz and unfortunately as a father of a daughter, who’s really interested in tech, it’s almost a bit of a cliche as well, and it shouldn’t be. What I think is interesting is you said you were a technologist and that’s where you got started, what was it at first that really got you thinking about technology? Do you remember back in the day? Like what was it that grabbed your attention?

RITA

I would have to say it was my father, he’s an engineer and I grew up dismantling things and taking things apart and just playing… It was just kind of what I did with my father besides playing with dolls. And I’m a bling. There was famous line from a startup woman that I love is that you can be a princess and build your castle too. And I believe that, I just actually had the opportunity to speak at University of Illinois, the women in technology, I think it was their 30-year anniversary. Now, I’m really dating myself. And as I spoke, I remember graduating and there were like maybe if I was lucky eight women in engineering, computer science back then, eight. And at one of the top two schools in the country with computer science. And I went to speak and I actually thought they we’re gonna put me into a classroom and I walk into this theater, and there are at least 500 people, women.

And I started to tear up, I was like, “Oh my gosh, look at this.” Just in that point in time, between where I was as struggling being the only female technology person, to where it is today, I think women in tech is a cliche, but I think it’s more technology has evolved, like it’s never done before and technology is part of life. So what got me started was I think my interest and my family and loving science, and math. So for your daughter, give her tinker toys, to play with, give her Legos, let her get dirty, and yeah, give her a doll and a tiara and tell her she can do it all because it’s okay, it’s the way it is, and there’s no right or wrong.

BRIAN

My daughter is definitely tinkering with a lot of different things and depending upon the day, and right now she’s at summer camp, she’s probably definitely dirty. It’s interesting you mentioned earlier, Platinum which is so fascinating to me, because I can’t think of a more interesting time in my career, especially having that opportunity early, just remarkable people, interesting technology. The internet was still just starting to really come around then, nobody had mobile phones as we know them today. Most people didn’t even have their own personal computers as we know of them today. But right now, as you just said, technology is changing so quick. Talk a little bit about how you’ve seen technology evolve. And do you think it was more exciting back in those Platinum days, or would you say it’s equally as exciting now?

RITA

Oh my gosh, it’s hard. Because I think when we were in the Platinum days where I think the www.platinum.com came out we were like, “What the heck is this www?” And just going back we used the internet in education, so as a programmer we used the internet to kind of research. Was back… If you were in the research side, you kind of went in and that’s how you shared files and things like that. And then all a sudden it became mainstream. So I think when we were living those days back in the ’90s, it was really awesome. But yet, it’s also incredibly exciting right now with artificial intelligence, with blockchain with all of the new technology that’s made possible because of the internet. I don’t think we could be where we are today if we weren’t excited about what happened in the 90s. Especially and then we all lived through the dot-com boom and then now we’re back here, again, startups are, they’re booming again. And so I think it’s… You’ve gotta embrace every change that happens. I love what’s happening right now. I love what’s happening with analytics, with AI, with the influence of data, and the possibility of what you can do with data and analytics, that we didn’t even think about back in the early 2000s. And so I think we just gotta embrace it all.

BRIAN

And as you talked about earlier, you described a little bit of your resume and your winding road career journey, which includes a number of impressive companies, from Platinum to IBM to AT&T to Motorola to GE Healthcare, and more, and now you find yourself at Showpad, which is a very fast moving sales-enablement technology company. Talk about the transition from a big brand, where everyone knows it, to a up-and-coming startup company, both through the brand lens as a marketer, but then also through the lens of what it’s like to work in this big company, with a lot of resources and more of a scrappy startup. What’s that been like?

RITA

Exciting, fun, exhilarating are just some of the words that come to mind. You are absolutely correct. Going from a big company, and I’ve worked at small companies, medium-sized companies and very large companies, with lots of resources at my fingertips. That being said, I think I was very fortunate throughout my IBM, and I’ll just go to the IBM and GE history since it’s the most recent, to be in startups within large corporations. So scrappy yes, because you’re always at the forefront of technology, and still have that brand name, to coming to Showpad. And what I love about it is that Showpad being based in Europe is an incredible opportunity as well. It’s not only international based, but they started there. And there’s very few companies that I know of right now, that what I call launch and land, start in Europe and then come into the United States. So we forget that being in United States, or being a startup in United States is a lot easier than being outside of the US, where you have to get out of your small country and land somewhere else.

And Showpad landed in North America, and our North America presence is basically in Chicago, we have over 150 people. And we’re creating a category around sales enablement, which is so fun. Just as a point of reference, there’s not a word for sales enablement in German. So that in itself is a challenge, but yet an opportunity. And the fact that I’m a marketer, and I’ve been marketer for most of my life, the opportunity to actually have and work and create a market around sales enablement, which brings together marketing and sales, and aligns us in a way that is not controversial, but more, we’re your partners in crime working towards the same goal of pleasing the clients, is an opportunity that I don’t think you have very often. Plus a base in Chicago. I live here and it’s a global company that’s a startup, I call it, it’s a rocket ship ready to take off. It’s got the same feel that I had back in the Platinum days where everybody’s got a lot of energy. We’re here. I wouldn’t say we’re scrappy anymore. We have, I think by bringing on some people such as myself at some senior levels that have some experience, we’re really scaling very very fast, and we have some great partnerships that we’re working on as well.

BRIAN

You talked a lot there that I wanna unpack in a couple of follow-up questions. One of them is, you talked a little bit about sales and marketing. And I know we both have backgrounds in B2B sales and marketing. And as we were talking a little bit before we started recording, it’s interesting how, in many cases, sales and marketing, although they’re all marching towards a similar goal, they can often be siloed and have competing goals and competing interests. So you’re a big champion on alignment, and you shared a couple of really great examples around that. Talk a little bit about why it’s so important for sales and marketing to really be aligned to actually ultimately help serve the buyer.

RITA

Going to the conversation we were having about sales and marketing alignment, the best organizations I’ve ever worked with is where the seller is our best friend. And partly the reason is is that, I think too many times, especially as a product marketer, you have to understand who your buyer is, and the buyer, their relationship is with the sales guys. And if you are working in a silo, you really don’t understand your buyer, much less how the sales person is interacting with that buyer. And so that instantly causes misalignment.

My relationships that I’ve had, especially when I was working at IBM in the industry side, I went on sales calls with them, and I understood how they were talking to their clients, so that I could then cater all of our material and our campaigns and everything, based on the buyer journey, and the seller journey, ’cause I think they’re both intertwined. You’ve got a seller’s journey and the process that they take in a sales cycle, and then you have a journey that the buyer takes. And that’s a conversation you and I had about the digitization that’s happening, and the transformation that’s really happening with the buyer themselves, between B2B and B2C, where I think they’re merging. This is the world according to Rita. I actually think that we should take a look and learn from our parallel industries that have really mastered how to talk to the consumer, ’cause we’re all consumers. So in a B2B world, learn from the consumer market and understand how their buyers are buying today, and I don’t think we’re very far off right now from B2B.

BRIAN

No, and we did talk about that before we recorded. And I think it’s very interesting that we’re both aligned. So it’s not just a world according to Rita.

RITA

I’m glad. Thank you.

BRIAN

It’s the world according to Brian and Rita, which is that I think there used to be this stigma that B2B marketing is so different than B2C marketing. And while there are certainly some nuances in certain ways, is, I always say anyone that’s making B2B decisions, he or she is also a consumer. So they have their own built-in experiences and expectations and habits when he or she is making purchases for their personal lives. And technology has totally changed the stakes, and it’s an educated and it’s an empowered buyer. And I think that’s where B2B sometimes make that mistake. So I agree with you that we need to be, as B2B organizations, thinking as consumer-centric and customer-centric as possible. We talked a little bit offline about retail being a great example of that.

RITA

I think retail is a perfect example.

BRIAN

Yeah.

RITA

We should learn from that industry and really capitalize on some of the things. I mean, we as consumers expect it, so why not expect it in our business world?

BRIAN

For sure. And then just coming back on the whole sales enablement which I know, again, I didn’t realize that there’s no word in German for it, but I do know it’s a little bit of a word where it’s like it’s a buzzword, it’s a newer term…

RITA

It is.

BRIAN

It’s a newer industry. But again, kind as we talked about, it’s something that other organizations and industries have been doing really well for years. They just kind of maybe called it something different, and they weren’t able to bring the technology to bear that Showpad can now to take it to a whole other level. So talk a little bit about where you see the evolution of sales training and sales enablement.

RITA

Oh, absolutely. Well, I’d love that. I could about Showpad forever. The journey that took me to Showpad was we were actually a user of Showpad. And as a marketer, the biggest pain you have is making sure that whatever you create as a content marketer is being used in the right way by the sales team. So the whole purpose of Showpad is really to enable, what we call, the modern seller to be aligned with the modern buyer. And it aligns, going back to our sales and marketing alignment, it helps align internally sales and marketing, ’cause you really have… As a marketer, you know how your sales team is actually using and leveraging your content. And as a sales person, you can actually take your content and create what we call experiences, and we’re all about creating an experience for your buyer.

And no matter who that is, because as we talked about at launch, when you go, especially to the enterprise and a B2B, there are multiple stakeholders. So the seller’s job is very complicated, and what we try to do is un-complicate that, ’cause their primary journey is really to be able to talk to the buyer in a way that they need to be communicated with. And a lot of that is through experiences, and speaking to the heart. I always like to make sure that the sales guys are able to communicate in a language that the buyer is familiar with. So even from an industry perspective, you have to make sure that the sales team understands the lingo when they go from one industry conversation to another. So what sales enablement enables you to do is it’s more than content management, it’s more than learning and development. I think we use those terms and think that they’re really sales enablement, but sales enablement is a lot more than that.

BRIAN

Rita, you talked a little bit about, obviously, sales alignment and sales enablement which you have a lot of expertise in, but you also bring to the table a really interesting product management mindset, and you have a deep expertise in product marketing, which is not always traditionally corporate marketing. Talk a little bit about some of the nuances and what should someone really focus on if they wanna do product marketing well?

RITA

Product marketing is one of my passions. If you are a good product marketer, you first understand who your audience is, and who your buyer is, what their needs are, where are their pain points, and you also understand the product. You have to really get deep into understanding what is the product, what is the solution, and how that translates into the buyer needs. And so, I think a lot of what our job is as a good product marketer is being that… I call it the decoder ring. Being able to decode what the product team built and what the buyer needs and being able to be that liaison and that linkage between the two.

BRIAN

It’s interesting that you say kind of understanding the product and being able to be buyer relevant. In certain ways, that seems relatively obvious, but a lot of product marketers, and a lot of brands don’t do that well. And I’ve been reminiscing a lot in my head since we connected this afternoon about Platinum, and I remember being in the DB2 side like you at Platinum. A couple of our big customers that I serviced, one of them was GEICO Insurance. And with DB2, it was the online reorg tool.

RITA

That was my tool. [chuckle]

BRIAN

And here, we could sit here, and we could talk about feature function.

RITA

Yeah.

BRIAN

But then, we were competing against feature function of BMC and everyone else, but really what it was all about was, and I always to this day, think about this as now as someone who’s in the marketing side, I think about GEICO, and I think about 15 minutes can save you money in your car insurance. And at the time, their call centers were running on DB2. So as data started to get complex and disorganized, it was creating wait times in the call centers, and our tool at that time was able to, online, quickly fix the data which meant less time that people would be on the phones. And that was interesting, because it was all about the buyer pain, not so much the future function and really being able to understand how the technology made the job and the business more efficient.

RITA

Right.

BRIAN

And again, it’s just right back to that product. So I didn’t realize that that was one of your tools…

RITA

That was one of my tools.

BRIAN

But I remember that was one of my highlight customers, and I still, to this day, kinda remember that. When you think about product marketing, is there a brand that you’ve kinda always said like you follow the path well and the shiny objects? Is there a brand that you always say they do such a great job with their product marketing from an aspirational or an inspirational standpoint?

RITA

Amazon, and I’ll tell you why. Amazon has… In a couple of ways, I think it’s Amazon, and then I also look at Apple. Those are two big names doing two different things, right? I’ll start with Apple, and I’ll tell you why I think Apple does a really good job. It bring it down to the consumer. I always use Apple as an example of simplification. The Apple, let’s just talk about the iPhone, is so complicated, but when you go to a store, what are you buying? An experience, right? You’re buying an iPhone, because you like the simplicity of it. Amazon on the other hand, when you think of Amazon, what do you think? Fast service? What else do you think?

BRIAN

I was gonna say free shipping 24 hours.

RITA

Right? Exactly. But behind that is a huge technology arm, right? Huge. But not once, unless you’re looking at the AWS cloud or something like that, are you looking at the technology behind it. And so, I think the product marketers both for Apple and for Amazon that have translated a very techy gorpy kind of thing to something that resonates with you and I as consumers, they’re doing a fantastic job, right? You’re not going into a store and actually understanding the processing power unless you’re a total geek on the phone.

BRIAN

Absolutely, and it is interesting as someone who is late to the game with the iPhone personally, because I was on an Android for so long, right?

RITA

Or a BlackBerry. Remember those days?

BRIAN

Oh, I do remember those days. But it’s so funny, because I was probably one of the only people. In fact, I even asked them this at Apple Store. I once had an iPhone 6 Plus after being on an android device for almost a decade.

RITA

Wow.

BRIAN

And I struggled with the iPhone 6 Plus, and I took it back on day 13, and I said, “Does anyone ever return these?” And they said, “Never.” They couldn’t have been nicer to me, they didn’t question anything. It was a great in store customer experience.

RITA

Exactly.

BRIAN

Two years later, I said, “It’s time for me to convert.” I got the iPhone X, and I’ve never looked back and now I look at it, and I say, “It’s so easy to use. Why was I so slow to adopt it the first time around?” But it gets back to I think another conversation that we were having which is, I know you joked earlier about it being Rita’s world. Well, this is certainly Brian’s world and my mantra is that I think brand is so much bigger than just the creative advertisements.

RITA

Absolutely.

BRIAN

In fact for years, Apple and certainly Amazon, did not spend a ton of money in the traditional sense of advertising the way a lot of big B2C brands might. They relied instead on the experience.

RITA

Right.

BRIAN

And I think that that’s super important. And how do you kind of think about when you think about these brands do you see those also as kind of an enterprise function?

RITA

So I’m gonna go back just a step. When you talk about the buyer experience it’s funny that we’re talking about that because one of the things that I love about Showpad is from the founders on down the phrase we use is the best buyer experience wins and so… And I believe that. I believe that if you’re gonna win in the market, no matter what your product is, whether it’s B2B or B2C it’s about the buying experience and if you focus on the buyer and the consumer, no matter what function you have from marketing to product, to tech support, you’re gonna win, right? That’s the experience you got with Apple. It’s why we continue to keep going back to Amazon. So I don’t know if that directly answers your question, but I think as you look into B2B it is all about the buyer experience and we have to keep remembering that as the North Star, and then whether or not… Like I’m working for a company now where Showpad, nine times out of 10 I have to explain what I do. Whereas when I worked for big companies you say you work for IBM they know what you do. You work for GE Healthcare you know what you do. Motorola.

But the experience in itself with Showpad is that it is about the buyer experience, that’s what we’re trying to do is give through sales enablement empower the seller to be able to give the buyer an experience that he’ll remember. And maybe it’ll be like an iPhone experience where, even though you return it after 13 days, you go back and they talk to you, they’re nice to you, you got a great experience, you go back.

BRIAN

Certainly. And I think it does build off of what we talked about earlier, which is that I think oftentimes consumer brands kind of lead the way…

RITA

Yes they do.

BRIAN

In terms of innovation and insight certainly from a marketing perspective. And I remember years ago, giving a talk on customer experience and this was before Amazon and I used Nordstrom as the example, and I said, “You know when you walk into a Nordstrom, they don’t care if you’re holding a Nordstrom bag, they don’t care how you’re dressed, they don’t care whether or not you carry a Nordstrom credit card, they treat you the same and they provide a good experience.” And obviously, that was way before online retail has kinda disrupted the category, but they were always kind of and still are, I’m sure, the gold standard at least of brick and mortar retail in terms of providing a good customer experience, and that’s how they’re able to build brand loyalty and I think that B2B brands that have figured out exactly what you said, that it’s about equipping your people to be able to provide a good buyer experience, which is your entry into the brand is so key.

And then as we also talked earlier I think if you can then continually train and empower your employees to do their jobs effectively they’ll continue to provide good customer experience. I joke all the time that word of mouth is a marketing agency. People always ask about word of mouth. And I said, “It’s the best kind of marketing ’cause it’s usually low cost the trick is you better be doing something right because people are more likely to share a bad experience than a good one.”

RITA

Exactly, especially in this digital age where everything… There’s a Yelp for every industry.

BRIAN

For sure.

RITA

And so I think if you have a bad experience someone’s gonna know about it but it’s up on Twitter within two seconds. It is all about the experience.

BRIAN

We talked a little bit about the experiential side of things, we talked a little bit about marketing and sales and obviously the buyer journey as well. I do wanna come back to something I think that is super interesting. We talked about this early in the conversation, but you really are a pioneer in the sense of coming up through true engineering technology product marketing. Obviously you’ve talked a little bit about the role of mentors in your life, talk about a little bit of you from a leadership style perspective. What’s leadership look like in Rita’s world?

RITA

Collaborative. I believe as a true leader you surround yourself with mini leaders, so everybody is a leader of their own environment. So I like to be the collaborator. If you’re a part of my team, and I think you can talk to anybody that’s ever been part of my team, I try to lead by example and it’s all about collaboration, and respect and accountability. I drive the team hard, but we like to have fun, so there’s a lot of laughing going on in our team. [laughter] You know you work hard and you play hard. I think that’s the motto that we always live by. But my leadership style is a very collaborative leadership style. I’m a continuous learner, so I love learning from my team, and hopefully they’re learning from me as well. And you’re only as good as who you surround yourself with.

BRIAN

Building on that. You talked a little bit about your daughter earlier.

RITA

Yes.

BRIAN

As a future marketer. What type of advice would you have for the next generation of people that are looking to explore a career in marketing?

RITA

Follow your dreams. I always tell my children that you have to do something that you’re passionate about. For me, it was technology. I like the next, new shiny object. But I also was gifted with a “sense of gab,” I guess, is the right word, and a sense of marketing, being able to bring things to the level of a consumer. So follow your passion, I think, no matter what that is, find what really drives you. And then the rest will come. I think if you try to plan the next 20 years, Brian, you’ll attest to this as well. It’s never what you plan it to be. But as long as you follow your passion, something will come up. It might not be the same thing that you have. So my advice to everybody is, find your passion and follow it, and follow that road.

BRIAN

Even if it’s a windy one.

RITA

It’s a very windy one. And you know what? The windy ones are the best ones.

BRIAN

I agree.

RITA

It will take you on multiple journeys and it’s all an adventure, otherwise it’d be boring.

BRIAN

Yeah, I agree. I always joke that people have these ideas in their heads of what a corporate ladder should look like, and that they’ve gotta go from one job to the next to the next, to the next. And it’s like… I always say be careful what you think you want because it may not be something that you’re passionate about.

RITA

Exactly.

BRIAN

You may or may not realize what that job requires, you may or may not have the right skills for that particular job and I always say, unfortunately it’s certainly in America that we probably work more than do anything in our lives but sleep.

RITA

Exactly.

BRIAN

So you’d certainly better have a passion for what you do. I was grinning when you talked about, back to those Platinum days, because if someone had told me someday I’d be running my own agency and hosting an award-winning technology business podcast. I’d say, “No way.” But here we are, 20 plus years later. Just as we start to wind down, I wanna bring it back to one more shiny object again. That’s Showpad.

RITA

Yeah.

BRIAN

You alluded to this, it’s been growing gangbusters globally, and then a huge growth here, just locally in Chicago. What’s next on the horizon or what’s exciting on deck for Showpad?

RITA

Well, we’re a rocketship taking off. I think what we need to keep in mind is that this space is relatively new. So keep an eye on it, there’s a lot of investments happening in this space alone, through the VC and private equity side. As well as through the customer acquisitions, I mean, there are some big players that are investing in this space. So keep an eye on it, it’s a great space.

BRIAN

I totally agree with you about the industry really on the move. I think sales enablement as a “category” is almost similar to social business and social media a decade back or even longer now, where you have a couple really interesting big players emerging. And in that case, it was changing, a lot of the way. People communicate. And in this case, I think your industry and category are certainly going to change the way the buying process and experience is for that end buyer.

RITA

Absolutely.

BRIAN

I think there’s a lot of really interesting opportunity and growth there. So I’m super excited that you could be on the show today. I’m glad that this worked out. It was also interesting to take a little bit of trip down memory lane.

RITA

It sure was.

BRIAN

And for all of those who don’t follow Rita on Linkedin, I’ll say she is a great follow. You’re also on Twitter.

RITA

I’m on Twitter. It’s @ripjay. R-I-P-J-A-Y. Follow me on Twitter or on LinkedIn.

BRIAN

Oh. That’s a cool handle.

RITA

It is.

There’s a story behind it, but that’s for another day.

BRIAN

Yeah. I do follow you on social and you share some really good, interesting content on, obviously, tech and leadership and a few other things in between. But I’m so pleased that you could be on the show.