MarTech Interview With Chen Guter, VP of Marketing at Lusha

How can product led growth oriented companies drive better customer conversions with the right value add content and events? Chen Guter, VP of Marketing at Lusha joins us for a chat to share a few thoughts:

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Hi Chen, welcome to MarTech Series! Tell us about your journey through the years…we’d love to hear about the Lusha platform…and how it’s evolved over the years…

I started my marketing career as a brand manager in Procter & Gamble. I was responsible for managing some of B2C’s most loved brands, like Pampers, Fairy and Tide and drove some of the ideas like “Smell like a man,” for Old Spice and “Run like a girl,” for Always. I originally came to Lusha because I wanted to shake up B2B SaaS marketing. B2B tech is a lot of things – it’s informative, useful and practical. But most people wouldn’t describe it as “fun” or “glamourous.” My goal is to turn Lusha into a “B2B love brand,” that’s memorable, fun and loveable and that makes customers feel something in addition to driving business, fueling business growth and word-of-mouth, of course.

In the beginning, Lusha was small and the idea was simple – helping B2B salespeople find the contact and company data for their prospect. From this idea alone we received incredible word of mouth and growth. We’ve evolved our platform over the last four years to be as easy, and simple-to-use as possible. We don’t hide the product or make you sit through demos to try Lusha. Anyone with a business email can sign up and start using Lusha for free. We’re constantly growing our B2B contact database, improving our accuracy and hit rates, turning Lusha into a B2B sales intelligence tool so that salespeople can learn everything they need to know before they reach out to their prospect.

Additionally, we created Lusha Community as the first ever crowdsourced data community.  The idea of Lusha Community is simple – members of the Lusha community succeeding together and sharing data to improve their sales outreach results. The community allows salespeople to share contact information, which validates Lusha’s data and ensures high accuracy. Because users submit their data to Lusha, there is a high level of accuracy and trust in the data – something which is extremely unique.

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Take us through your role at Lusha and how your marketing efforts have changed in 2021 as a result of the ongoing pandemic?

Salespeople are reporting the best sales months of their careers during the pandemic, thanks to Lusha. Something that we’ve repeatedly heard from our customers is how Lusha isn’t just a “nice to have,” it’s a “must have product” with more and more people working from home.

Now, more than ever, people are working from the office in hybrid mode or entirely from home. Which means it’s harder to reach people at the main office number. Lusha allows B2B salespeople to get accurate direct dials and email addresses for their prospects – and reach prospects wherever they are.

Throughout the pandemic, we’ve seen that the role of self-service products like Lusha is vital. Salespeople need the ability to come to Lusha, sign up and start using the product. Throughout the past year, we’ve done everything to simplify our funnels, our marketing messaging on our website and our product. At Lusha – simplicity is key. Whereas other competitors hide their product and abstract their marketing with heavy jargon – our website is short, clean, simple and in plain language. Because of this – our conversion rate is higher than it’s ever been. “Clear over clever,” couldn’t be truer for Lusha.

I am a strong advocate for the power of brand. Because our messaging is so straightforward, we work a lot on externalizing our brand character with vibrant, disruptive design that captures attention in this busy space. This is in sharp contrast to the grey “boring” world of B2B, and something that really makes Lusha stand out.

A few strategies and tools that have worked well for your marketing and sales processes and team?

As a Product-Led growth company, we leverage events in the product to constantly make the user journey as easy, intuitive and seamless as possible. We always think of what’s the logical next step in their journey, and present users with added-value content which will guide them to maximize the value they get from Lusha. It could be an educational email, a product tutorial or a call with an onboarding consultant to get the most out of their product experience – whatever a customer needs, our goal is to be there before they know they need it.

Additionally, our approach to marketing and sales is different. While most B2B companies are focusing on outbound  – Lusha is built on existing intent. We build off of SEO and word-of-mouth so that our users find us. We don’t “sell” our customers – they come to us when they’re ready to buy.

What are some of the top practices you feel leaders in marketing roles need to follow to ensure better output from their tools and teams?

• Know your customer
  

As a young brand manager I used to go on shop-alongs with customers to understand how they made shampoo purchases and even sat in their homes with them to understand how our products fit into their life. Understanding the pain points of our customers is the key for any good marketing.

At Lusha we try to always keep a direct line with our customers – not only by listening to demo calls, but conducting case study interviews and customer interviews with our product team. We have regular meetings with customer-facing teams like Sales and CS to ensure that we always understand what our customers are saying and speak their language. Additionally, we conduct social listening online, and read what our customers write about us on social media channels and review sites.

• Don’t be average – Focus on your strengths

The conventional wisdom is to focus on and improve your weaknesses. Because, let’s face it – everyone’s got them. But the gap to improve your weaknesses to “average level” is huge. I believe that instead,  we should focus on improving our strengths. Because that’s where our superpower lies. Finding the sweet spot between your strengths, your passion and the organizational need is what will eventually lead you to enjoying your day to day work and becoming a go to person for your team.

• The only constant is change – so embrace it

We’re seeing so much change in Marketing. As we’re all becoming increasingly tech-dependent, there always seems to be some new technology or “hot tool” we all need to go and master. This happens so often that it’s become a constant.

The company and team look nothing like they did three months ago, let alone a year ago. So being able to adapt super quickly, learn new things and even get excited by change – is more important than ever.

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Can you throw light on some of the top marketing and sales changes that you feel will shape the rest of 2021 for those in tech?

“Spray and pray” sales or marketing is largely becoming a thing of the past. Gone are the days of buying generic lists and blasting your pitch, in hopes of getting a prospect to bite back.

Something that we’re seeing more and more at Lusha is highly targeted sales. Sales and Marketing are getting incredibly clear about their ideal target customer. They know the industries, companies, personas and company sizes of their ideal target buyer – and they’re becoming more and more intentional about who they pitch.

What’s great about this approach is it’s so complementary to Lusha. Whether you know exactly who you want to reach out to, or a general idea of the type of customer you’re looking for – Lusha meets you where you are.

A few must-dos that every marketing leader in SaaS should follow through 2021?

Something that’s become increasingly clear to me in 2021 is the power of my network. When I first started at Lusha, I joined the G-CMO forum, a community of VPs and CMOs leading Israel’s largest global companies. In addition to meetups and regular updates, there are also monthly roundtable discussions which are an invaluable way to connect, crowdsource ideas and open your mind to what’s going on in the global Martech community. Networking is a crucial part of the job, and one I highly recommend for any Marketing leader to stay relevant in this field.

Another “must” I’d recommend to any Marketing leader – is to create a “Vivid Vision” for your company and team. When I first joined Lusha, this is one of the first activities I had my Marketing team undertake. What I’ve found is that over the last year – the vivid vision subconsciously guided the decisions we made, and the path became clear.  It’s the same thing with OKRs – create objectives that are big and inspiring – but unlike your vision, something measurable. Key results that are actionable are a must, and then, the specific path you need to take becomes clear.

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