How This VP Marketing Achieved High Standards by Targeting $1 Billion Cement Clients

Yeah, uh, at Petroum I actually had two roles. One was marketing, uh, head of marketing role, and then on the side, I was also taking on a, uh, uh, uh, um, sort of like a pseudo GM role of partnering up with the VP of machine learning. The two of us were 2 in a box leading a team of 20 machine learning engineers as well as, uh, we have our own product managers and, and DevOps team. So, so yes, it was, it was quite, it was quite varied, uh, in terms of my experience at Petron.

Yeah, uh, so I'll, I'll, I'll go with my marketing team, um. So the, so, so the key thing, the first thing is really to, to have a um a clarity in terms of what the company's uh ultimate goal is. So since we are a startup, we have a six-month goal on what we need to achieve. Um, in a 6 month basis, whether it is revenue or a number of customers. So in Petrum's case, we had a goal of a number of customers that we need to achieve, um, uh, uh, in the, you know, 1st 6 months. So most recently it's really with the new CEO where he wanted to go and focus on the cement customers. So his goal was being, being able to target all of the cement customers in North America, which was quite easy because they're not that many. Um, and then also being able to get in front of a lot of the, uh, cement, uh, customers in, um, in Europe. So we put together, uh, we, we, so with that goal in mind, being able to, uh, get, uh, uh, in the 1st 6 months, being able to get, get in front of them and maybe even close one or two of the cement customers. So our target was basically formulating a plan on how we, we would go get in front of these customers. So the first thing that we did was, um, uh, trying to have my team, so the team identify who the universe of cement clients are, uh, and we have a threshold of $1 billion and above being the cement cement production companies that we want to go after. And then we put together a demand gen plan where we source our contact information where we get in touch with the cement publications. Uh, we, we get in touch with, uh, a company called, uh, OSI soft where they have connections, uh, to cement customers, uh, and, and build a plan together to get, uh, to, to, to, to really being able to, uh, be in front of, uh, uh, cement customers and, and showcase the uh AI solutions that we have.

Yeah. So, uh, the, uh, so the, uh, the key metrics, uh, was really, uh, the company wanted to close at least to, um, uh, cement customers. So what we, so, so, so from there we were, we were goal to go find, um, uh, to reach out to the number of cement customers in the, in, in the US they are about 10. Uh, the goal was really to get in front of the 10 name customers as well as finding targets, uh, contacts in those, in those customers. So being so, so the 10, the 10 clients or 10 names. Where they were a target, and being able to have, uh, uh, um, uh, uh, like initial calls with them, like, not just sending emails but really being able to have a meeting set up with these 10 customers where the, uh, where the, uh, what, what the, um, um, uh, uh, was the ultimate goal. So, so being able to get in front of those customers. Uh, and then we had, uh, different metrics such as how can we actually uh go through from a, uh, SEO perspective and make sure that when people search for Cement AI Petrum show up as the number one company on, on page one of Google. Um, how can we get in front of, um, so, so that's, uh, so, so we break it down into SEO publications, uh, uh, uh, different medias. So on the, on the publication side, we work with them to, uh, put together, uh, uh, content that we can, um, have them publish, uh, that talks a little, talks about the uh the AI AI solutions that we were building and then from the, so, um, so I, I think I should probably should have classified it into different buckets. I think I feel like I'm a little bit all over the place in answering this question. Uh, so, uh, there's the customer's element and then there's also the, uh, a number of context elements, uh, from a demand gen side and then from a media, uh, uh, digital side, we have, uh, what we need to measure from a SEO measurements perspective being on, on first page of Google and from the media publications, these are the cement, uh, the cement, uh, related publications. We want to get them to be able to talk about us, and, uh, and so that's a, a, that's the communications and PR front where people can, can, can hear more about what we are able to do. And then from the, uh, analyst relationships front, um, that's another thing that we were doing. So basically having multiple, um, touch points, the goal was really to, um, Ultimately get to the one or two of cement customers and having these different elements that can support uh the goals of getting to the number of the 10 customers in, in North America and then when they, when, when these 10 customers were to do more research about us, they are able to find additional supporting elements.

Yeah. So, um, I have one guy, um, Who was overpromising a lot of things, and this is actually in my, uh, in my other role where I was partnering up with the VP of machine learning. Um, he was actually doing the engineering side, uh, for the products. Um, he would actually over overpromise in terms of what he was able to deliver. So Um, and when, uh, initially when we actually check up on him on what he promised to deliver, he would actually, uh, always change his story and say, well, that's because, uh, I don't have the resources or that's because this is a different, uh, a different problem. Uh, this is a machine learning problem, not a software engineering problem. So what I had to do, um, with, with that person was, uh, I initially I sat down with him and say what was going on? Is it really a resource problem? What is the, what is the, what, what is the, what is the issue that you are not able to deliver this, um, uh, uh, deliver based on the milestone that we set for the products, um, and, and really have a good understanding, uh, from him on what he is lacking. Um, and, uh, and once he shared that he needs a certain resources, I would try to provide him the resources that he needs so that he can move forward. Um, And, and, and, and we would actually set a goal in that meeting, um, on how we, how he would actually correct and achieve the next milestone. So that happens, uh, on a, on a weekly basis and it seems like, um, Unfortunately, this person is not the right person for us. So that, that conversation has continued on for about two months. Eventually, we realized that he actually didn't have the necessary expertise in building the product with us. So we had to, uh, we had to, uh, we had to let him go.

Uh, so I, um, I use the combinations of, uh, Trello as well as, um, an in-person meeting. So, uh, my team will have, uh, so on a weekly basis, we actually put work, work together to prioritize list of projects on Trello, uh, and what, and we will list out what those blocks are and who owns those different blocks. And once we agreed on, on those, uh, uh, every, every week that we meet, uh, we would check in, uh, on what the progress are and whether they are meeting the goals of each block. Uh, and, and also in my 1 to 1 meeting with, uh, uh, with my team, I would also ask them, work with them to understand how are they meeting, uh, uh, their goals? Are there things that are, uh, are stopping them.