Econsultancy: Please describe your job: What do you do?

Jamie Anderson: My role at Marketo consists of overseeing all business operations in the EMEA region. That includes everything from hiring decisions, supporting the sales teams, financial planning and working with our many great customers across EMEA to ensure their success.

E: Who do you report to?

JA: I have a dual reporting line into the Chief Sales Officer, Eric Johnson, and our CEO, Steve Lucas. I joined the business last year at an exciting time, with Steve twelve months into the role. He’s an experienced leader pursuing a clear vision for the company – a platform strategy. He’s already overseen reorganisation and additions to Marketo’s platform, such as the recent acquisition of Bizible.

E: What kind of skills do you need to be effective in your role?

JA: You have to be authentic and human in your leadership role to set a clear vision for your team. Humility is such an important quality, especially in senior management. It’s less about your individual success and more about your team. How you can support and celebrate their successes in a positive way. As leaders we should lead, but that doesn’t mean telling other people what to do and expecting them to follow blindly. Instead, it means getting the best from your people. To do that you should actively listen to your team and understand what actually motivates them.

I also find it useful to have a support network around me. I have a close network of friends that are spread across various companies around the world and we speak weekly, in order to provide support and mentor each other.

E: Tell us about a typical working day…

JA: Every morning I wake up refreshed and ready for the challenge ahead, as I do not know what each day will bring. In my current role, I’ve had to be more adaptive and more flexible than I was, even in my previous job, because the functional boundaries are much wider. I can go from a day of constantly travelling between customer meetings, to the next, where I’m in the office catching up with members of the senior leadership team and going through marketing plans, financial planning, forecasting and recruitment.

jamie anderson

E: What do you love about your job?

JA: Firstly I love the people I work with at Marketo. They are smart and driven and work tirelessly to ensure our customers success. I also love the fact that each day this job brings new challenges and opportunities. I was a musician for 10 years and in the six months I’ve been at Marketo, I’ve once again experienced the type of highs and lows I was faced with in the music industry. I love being back on that type of rollercoaster, it fires me up every day.

E: What are your goals? What are the most useful metrics and KPIs for measuring success?

JA: I am a firm believer that in order to become and remain number one in your industry or sector you should always act as if you are number two. Never get complacent when you are successful, keep challenging yourself and acting like you want to be the leader.

I have two main priorities for Marketo in EMEA. Firstly, to firmly establish Marketo as the primary customer engagement platform in Europe. Key to this is collaborating closely with our partners and customers to drive their success. Without your customers, your success is meaningless.

Secondly, I want to promote a diverse, healthy and collaborative culture as we scale and expand in to new territories. In one of my first meetings at Marketo I told the team that I want us to lead on diversity. If you foster an environment where people feel comfortable challenging the status quo, it helps them remain sharp, and the more diverse a working environment, the more people there are to challenge and bring different perspectives.

E: What are your favourite tools to help you to get the job done?

JA: Marketo! We want to put innovation in the hands of marketers by providing easy-to-use, AI-powered technologies that will enhance marketing programs. AI is essential to understanding such large data sets, which are almost impossible to manually interrogate. Using Google Cloud’s machine learning technology, we can enable marketers to tap into even more of their own data and interpret insights faster. They can improve the speed, scale and effectiveness of their campaigns by better personalising and segmenting their audiences.

I also couldn’t do my job without a phone. It was invented by a Scottish person, so I don’t think there is any big surprise there in its importance for me (I’m Scottish myself) but I also don’t think there is any better tool.

E: How did you end up in your role, and where might you go from here?

JA: I haven’t had the traditional career path, I never mapped out a plan for myself. When I was kid I wanted to be an astronaut, then a footballer and then a musician which is a dream I was lucky enough to live for 10 years. I then made a decision to go into something that was considered more ‘normal’ and took my first job as a programmer which led me to the exciting role I hold today.

I believe the most important thing about life is experiences – perhaps that’s evident through all my childhood goals, and the path I’ve taken up until now. What I have consistently lived by throughout my career is the same attitude, desire and will to win in everything I do.

E: Who is your role model?

JA: I’d have to say Sir Alex Ferguson is a role model for me. He always looks at how each individual plays a part in the wider team and has a philosophy that no one individual is bigger than the team.

For me, it’s always been about the success of the team as a whole. To be a successful leader you have to build a functioning team. Everyone needs to feel like a superstar, even if they perhaps are not at times, but your superstars also need to operate as part of the team. It’s a very careful balance.

E: What do you look for when recruiting for your team?

JA: When recruiting, you really shouldn’t see another image of yourself in potential prospects, because you won’t learn anything.

Every time you recruit a new employee you have to ask yourself what this person adds to the team. You shouldn’t be afraid if you feel the person could potentially have a different point of view or challenge the current way of thinking within the company. Winning teams are diverse teams so having team members with different cultural or political perspectives, for example, is key to being successful.

E: Do you have any advice for people who want to start in Sales/Marketing?

JA: Be fearless. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, learn fast and move forward.