Marketing Must Drive Revenue - Paul Rossetti

0:00Hey, welcome to the CMO Whisperer Show. I'm your host, Steve Olenski. Part marketing practitioner, part ad agency veteran, part journalist, I was a writer for Forbes for 10 years. I've had so many insightful conversations over the years with business leaders, to athletes, to celebrities, to of course, CMOs. The only difference now is instead of sharing those insights through written form, I'm doing it this way. Hey, welcome to another episode live from Possible, where the networking is nonstop, the sneakers are expensive, that's for damn sure, and everyone claims they have a future of marketing.

0:38Today, I'm joined by Paul Rossetti, Chief Sales Officer at Claritas, a company helping brands connect audience intelligence, engagement, measurement, and growth in a much smarter way. Paul operates where marketing ambition meets commercial reality. His focus is helping organizations find the right customers, reach them more effectively, reduce wasted spend, and turn strategy into measurable revenue outcomes. Paul Rossetti, welcome to the CMO Whisperer. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. It is my pleasure. So for those meeting you for the first time, give us the quick snapshot. What lane do you live in every day and what challenges are clients bringing to you most right now?

1:21You know, so we, a lot of our clients are coming to me to talk about how they can better acquire customers at a cheaper rate. And so they've, they know they need to use AI, but now they're trying to figure out how that can help. So anything in AI related, basically, right? I mean, we could go down so many different. A lot of these marketing executives have been tasked by their CEO, by their executive team, the executive team. I'm using AI and everyone's trying to figure out what does that mean? Right. So that's a challenge of, Hey, I hear AI. Help me. Is it, is it sometimes, yeah. Is it sometimes that like high level?

2:01Like. Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. We will do training sessions. Wow. And thinking about what that does throughout the marketing journey and also reinforcing it doesn't, this doesn't mean losing people. It means using the AI to be smarter and changing what people do every day. Interesting. All right. Now we've mentioned it's day three. Give us any kind of recap of the first two days from what your lens, from what your clients are telling you, what you're hearing in sessions and just what do you hear? I think in the sessions, it's interesting. Many of the same concepts over the last two to three years have been presented, similar concepts.

2:38But now it's taking it one step further. So when we were here three years ago, it was about introducing AI to optimize the creative part of the marketing journey. So now we're at day three. Right. The beginning of day three. So we've gone through two days for those either here or not here or listening to us whenever it doesn't matter when they listen to it. What's been on the agenda? What's been top of mind? What are clients saying to you? What are you hearing? Yeah. So we start with the sessions first. I think for the last two or three years, many of the same practices were introduced. We're now further along in the results.

3:12We heard Molly and Rex talk about using AI to optimize the creative journey and what impact that's had. and now it's actually taking it down to lower funnel. What does this mean for my business? So I feel like there's a lot more case studies. There's a lot more granularity. As you walk around the event and you talk to the marketers themselves, the agencies, they're ready for AI as an optimization drill now. When we were here last year, there was question marks. What do you mean? How does this work? Now people are going, we're ready. So we've seen a very, very clear shift in the marketplace over the last 90 days.

3:46And it's transpired to the moment. So to juxtapose over what we just said, maybe you're going to start seeing less clients go, AI, what does that mean? I'm a little more educated now. Now help me with optimization. Interesting. Okay. If you had to explain Claritas to a CEO or CRO in plain English, go, how do you do that? So it's a bit of a blessing and a curse here. Everyone, most marketers know Claritops and they know us as the prison people, which is our consumer segmentation. And now we've transitioned the company. There's a new narrative. We're this ad tech company and we help companies to acquire customers, incremental new customers.

4:28And we do this by three things. We understand, we have deep knowledge of who the consumer is. we can help optimize the journey by serving up the optimal creative, the right creative to the right person at the right time. And we can, we can do a full loop measurement and see what's working and what's not. That was pretty good. That was, that was pretty lame because I understood it. So I'm the lead is with half a cup of coffee. So well done. Okay. This is not a surprise, but I want you to talk about it. So a lot of companies still separate marketing performance from revenue performance. It's as age old as anything.

5:03Why is that a mistake to still separate that? Yeah, I think, I don't know if it's a mistake, but I would say this, it's the CMO's responsibilities now to prove that it shouldn't be set, right? And that is a challenge that we're helping them with, is making sure it's proven that marketing is a revenue generating function, not a cost function. And the beautiful thing is the optimization can help them. Optimizing again, who are you targeting? What message are you serving? and when they're serving that. And it has by showing that your marketing can actually impact that KPI. And the key is for these CMOs is what is that KPI?

5:42Is it more revenue? Is it more new customers? Naturally, they're tied together. Are they driving traffic to a store or a website? But ultimately, they have to show that they can prove that there's more revenue than they can be driving. It's one of the, you know, I talk to CMOs all the time, and it's one of the biggest, I don't know, lessons where I try to impart to CMOs saying, establish your KPIs first, and then your partners, the clarituses of the world, go, okay, this is how we'll help you hit them. Absolutely. But without that knowledge of like, I just, I need to generate revenue. That's too vague.

6:18It is. It is. And also making sure that we're given access to what we need to optimize on that. So we have clients that want to optimize based on customer, new customer conversions, but they're not able to provide data. So you can only optimize on the traffic before that conversion. So what are brands losing, literally and figuratively, when their growth systems, if you will, are disconnected? What are they losing? They're losing to the competition and losing customers. We experienced this at Nielsen. We were one of 27 different divisions. There was competitors coming in, innovating faster. As a separate company, we were able to innovate and do what we need to do, stay ahead of the marketplace.

7:01And same thing for these marketers, these CMOs, these brands, is how can you get to that customer faster and more efficient than your competitor? Someone is. You look at the fiber world, someone's going after that consumer once they've made the move. Are you getting there first? Okay. I might just ask you, I'd be better off asking you the mystery of life over this next question. And it's about the oldest misalignment in the world between sales and marketing. Right? Like I said, I might as well ask you to Mystery of Life instead of explaining why it's sales and marketing. Why? It's towards the middle of 2026.

7:37Two-part question. One, do you still believe that misalignment happens more often than not? And part two, why? Absolutely. The misalignment is there. Although in 2026, I've seen more clients who have the title chief marketing officer who are now chief customer officer or chief revenue officer in both functions. So I think there is now this understanding that there has to be alignment. And I've seen more in the first four months of this year than I have in the last 10 years. Interesting. And I'm too, I'm seeing the same thing with where CMOs are taking on the additional title of CRO. maybe they don't have sales in their title for whatever reason you know the optics whatever but you just you just raised a really interesting point i think a cmo can be a cro i don't mean to denigrate chief sales officers but i don't know if chief sales officers can be chief marketing right yeah and is that unfair or is that just the reality of uh you know i think like anything else there are people who can but me personally is one example yeah as a one how to train cmo that's so but it's also interesting that the cmos that are taking on that that sales leadership title as well uh some of the more traditional marketing channels are still working really really well so sale from a sales standpoint door-to-door sales and telco for the fiber companies works really really well it's still a large chunk of their revenue so there's plenty a precedent that this, that this can and does work.

9:10Absolutely. Right. And so we were with Rex yesterday, Rex Briggs. Rex Briggs. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things we talked about was this very thing, a CMO who's now CRO being in the sales channel. And how do you use AI to impact them? You're not going to impact it by going, okay, we're going to this one house versus this next house. You have a sales team that's in a geographic area. They're going house to house, door to door, but using AI to figure out what the script is when you talk to each household. It's fascinating. What does nirvana look like in your eyes when sales and marketing are truly aligned?

9:45Give me some examples like when things are really just working in total unison. Yeah. I mean, I think when things in general, when a marketer, when a brand can really understand who their target audience is and align all sales and marketing around that functions. right if there's a brand metro by t-mobile they have a very very clear definition of who their target customer is and who it isn't they don't stray from that every marketing every channel every sales the sales organization is all focused on that i want everybody listening to hear what he said it's not just who in their target but who they're not targeting it's so important to know wait a minute they may they look like they're interested no no don't chase the squirrel it's still one of my been here 24 years and it's one of the best case settings i've ever seen and obviously the proof is in the proverbial pudding so i want to i want to kind of segue into to media and waste in media right and outreach and it's still a huge issue why do so many companies still tolerate that like you know just is it look the other way is it like yeah it's it's a great question.

10:55I don't know the answer. But I do feel like at times it's like they feel like they have to do certain things, reach out to the customer in certain channels, spend money in certain ways. But at the end of the day, what drives the customers? You know, what's the best way to drive a customer to your website, to your store, to convert a consumer to your brand? What's the last time I checked is the, that's a KPI. And we're laughing because it's that simple. It is. I know. It is. You can't see me, but I'm looking around the room going, what am I missing? And Paul's looking at me like, you're not missing anything, Steve.

11:30You're not missing anything. So how can better audience intelligence improve both top-line growth and bottom-line efficiency? So let me pivot here. What should leaders be measuring right now that too many just kind of overlook or choose not to? Now, I think as a revenue leader myself, I think the number one metric has to be revenue. What incremental revenue and what incremental sales do you bring into an organization? To your point earlier, marketing and sales and bringing those two functions together. But ultimately, everybody's given a budget as a senior marketing leader. They're given a KPI of revenue or sale.

12:09You need to bring in X number of new customers, X number of revenue. And it's their job to then take the marketing budget, the sales budget, they have to get there. But at the end of the day, it all comes down to dollars. All right. I want to get a little deeper in AI, if you don't mind. I don't know if you were out yesterday, but AI is everywhere. I'm joking, of course. This just in, what are some examples either inside your company or just in general where it's genuinely operative work? Like really, it's not the hyperbole, the snake oil. Is it an optimization? Is that one of the biggest places you're seeing where it's really helping?

12:45Internally for us, we took AI seriously with Rex being our chief AI officer. Every employee was required to go through a belt, learn a training program, almost like you'd be in karate as a kid. At the very least, they'd hit their white belt, which meant that they went through 30 hours of training on AI, learning what it could do, how to make it the most effective and make you better at your job. So we, right from the start, knew we were going to put a foot in the ground and go, we need to invest and make our people faster, better, smarter with AI. And everybody's been grateful and greatly. As we look at AI in our products, Rex and the product team built solutions that truly used AI to optimize all the things that Claritas was great at.

13:30And it made it further differentiate us in the world. So where do you see the biggest opportunity for in the next two or three years when it comes to AI? I mean, I know I'm asking you to predict something that could happen in 30 seconds. But as we sit here right now on whatever date it is, April 29th, look into the future. You know, I think the it's a great question. I wish Rex were here, but I don't know the answer. Right. But but, you know, for me and my clients, as I said earlier, there's been a complete shift a year ago. we talked about using AI to optimize things like creative audiences. People are looking at us going, I'm not sure.

14:07And like you said, snake oil, like what is this doing? Now they're really understanding. Oh, wow. Okay. So if you think about creative optimization, there's no decision tree. There's no humans that have to figure out, well, if you're a male and you're 40 years old, you get this offer. There's like the AI tells you, right? The AI could pick up those signals and optimize in real time. So I think, you know, when you look at the marketing journey, people are going to be able to respond to things in the marketplace faster and get a campaign out the door in seven weeks in, as we heard yesterday, days or maybe hours.

14:40Right. Which is incredible. Attribution. That's another age old, right? I almost want to play word association with you, Indy. Attribution, go. What first comes to mind? Shake.

14:53he's not really young but no like it's the sales marketing thing right but it's also within marketing too there's channels like well social wants credit for that sale or you know well and i think the biggest thing so what comes to mind are certain channels where i mean when you think of attribution there are people in the market that want to believe that you can send a campaign to a consumer and they're going to open they're going to see that ad they're going to open it which is going to click to the, they're going to click to a website and make a purchase. And what we see a lot of times in the campaigns, especially when you look at channels like email, where all consumers are taught, don't click on links in an email.

15:30Open up the email, go to the marketer's website and start the journey there. So I think with attribution, one of the things that maybe is talked about a lot is, is what counts. The consumer saw all the different ads across channels, to your point, who gets credit for what? And if you send an email campaign, well, the consumer got the email, they opened it, they clicked through, but they didn't make the purchase. And understanding that that is part of the journey and helping them to understand the consumer who got the social ad, the email ad, and the direct mail has now converted to a customer.

16:06And all three of those channels are what led the consumer to make that purchase. So are you basically saying all those departments would get credit? Some sort of credit. Right. They should. I completely agree. And now with AI and optimization, there's no reason it can't end the productivity. There's really no reason. Okay, we know there's no shortage of data, even post the big data phenomenon of whatever it was five years ago. Very simple question. Are companies, in your opinion, on average, are they underusing in any way all this data they have, whether it's first party, third party, whatever?

16:40Absolutely. Like I said, a lot of data there. I think for a while, data was a bit commoditized. We have demographics. You know, if you're a brand, we have these demographics from ABC company, dozens of companies that sell it. Yep. The brokers, the data broker. Exactly. Exactly. And as you look at this, the one thing you can see consistently as we talk about AI with high level marketing executives is that AI is only as good as the data that gets put into there. And so I think there's a resurgence for data. They're like, OK, they're starting to understand that there's more that they need this, not just first party.

17:18They need third party data. So absolutely. And with the technology to do data transfers more secure, are more willing to share that data. Okay, I'll get you out on this last question. My audience is primarily CMOs, chief brand officers, chief digital officers. From your lane in your role, right, as chief sales officer at a big company, what advice would you give a CMO, a chief brand officer, chief digital officer, when it comes to working with their chief sales officers? is just a matter of extending that olive branch if they don't already have a good relationship. Help them understand from your lens, hey, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but as a chief, we're here.

18:03We want to work with you guys and women. What do you say to them? Yeah, no, I agree. I think you extend the olive branch and find a quick win together. You both have the same objectives as executives at whatever brand that is. so it is it's extending the olive branch it's it's finding a quick win like i gave the example of the door-to-door sales team reporting now to the chief what used to be the chief marketing officer now chief customer officer what can you do to make those sales reps that are out of feet in the street their jobs easier right to be more effective and in this case great example is giving them the script that's that's optimized for their household give them a chance to win And then we all went and we sing and dance in the street.

18:47Paul Rossetti, listen, chief sales officer at Claretas. Thank you so much. Thank you, Steve. Well, that wraps up another episode of the CMO Whisperer Show. I hope you shared this episode with your friends. And if you have not already, please subscribe to be kept up to date on all the latest episodes. And if you're so inclined, leave me a review on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you.