President Eisenhower might not be the first person most marketing leaders think of for inspiration. However, a speech the former general made contains a powerful mantra for those trying to settle their strategy in the post-pandemic era. “Plans are worthless,” Eisenhower declared, “but planning is everything.” It’s a piece of apparently paradoxical advice that Juniper Networks CMO Mike Marcellin, pictured right, lives by. 
“What it basically means is that you won’t be able to come up with a plan that’s going to anticipate everything,” says Marcellin. “You’re probably going to have to zig and zag down the road – but going through the process of planning gets you all aligned on the key strategic outcomes you’re shooting for. It also gets you aligned on your priorities because strategic planning is as much about what you’re not going to do as what you’re going to do. It’s all about having a strong, strategic vision and sticking to that, but having a mindset that can be agile as new things pop up. Finding that balance is what being a successful company today is all about.”
Marcellin should know. Prior to taking on the CMO role, his career had focused on corporate strategy as much as on marketing – and that broader business perspective still informs his approach.
“CMOs are in the craft of marketing – that’s what we do,” he says. “But I think a key skill of a great marketer nowadays is being able to talk others’ languages. Understanding the perspectives of people sitting in a corporate strategy seat, a product development seat or a sales seat – that helps me to answer the question, ‘how do I facilitate what they’re trying to do through the discipline of marketing?’”
The power of internally applied empathy
For Marcellin, empathy isn’t just something that marketers need to deploy when crafting messaging for prospects and customers. It’s a superpower that does much of its most valuable work when applied internally. That’s been particularly true of the way that marketing has pivoted to support sales in responding to increasingly digital buyer journeys.
“The world of sales will probably never again look like it used to look,” he says. “Our sales organisation has many traditional face-to-face sellers who’ve become virtual sellers and never previously worked in that mode before. And so they’ve turned to marketing to figure out how we can engage with customers in the new world. It puts us in an even more strategic position. We’ve got the opportunity to build a flexible and agile engagement model, sharing our learnings for a complete picture of where the customer is and how we can best engage with them and serve them on their buying journey.”
In Marcellin’s view of the buying journey, marketing’s role doesn’t end with the generation of a lead or even the closing of a deal. It increasingly extends across all aspects of the customer experience.
“It’s not as if you make a purchase and move on,” says Marcellin. “You want to foster a lifelong relationship with the customer, and marketing has a huge role to play in that. Experience is the new product and if we can differentiate there, we’re going to be in a great place.”
Taking command of the customer experience
Differentiating the customer experience involves pushing marketing into a new role as a business connector – and it’s one that Marcellin clearly embraces. “I’m partnering with our head of global service and support on a company-wide customer experience initiative because we recognise that both of our teams have to play a big role,” he says. “I work with our heads of engineering, support and sales on the training requirements that we need to deliver that experience – and also on delivering training to customers and prospects so they understand how to adopt our solutions and get the most from them.”
It all makes Eisenhower-like planning, with the focus on strategic alignment rather than sticking to a fixed approach, all the more important. “It’s about being able to form those partnerships and understanding the key imperatives of the business, whether they’re marketing-led, marketing-partnered or marketing-supported,” says Marcellin. “I believe that a data-driven and creative CMO can add value to nearly every initiative that a company is pursuing.”
It all adds up to a license for marketing to step out of the silo of communications and promotion – and take a lead wherever it’s needed. That’s the kind of rapid response application of strategy that Eisenhower learned to appreciate – and it’s still the key to building a winning brand and business today.
For more insights from visionary Marketing Leaders check out LinkedIn’s CMO Corner.
