When you're making a pitch
to a prospective customer
you should always be talking about like the WIIFT,
what's in it for them, what does your audience care about?
What's important to them?
How are you speaking to them
in a way that really resonates with them?
And I think that's really just
like the recipe for great storytelling.
Hey, I'm Sarah Franklin and welcome to Connections.
Today I'm in New York to talk
with a marketer I really admire
for how she keeps a focus on progress over perfection.
That's Lauren Weinberg CMO of Square.
When you're looking at marketing right now
in this economic situation, why is it so important
for you and your teams to stay agile and to be flexible?
Square started during the last economic downturn
that's when the company actually was born.
And so we've never been in a time like this before
and so we don't actually know what will happen
with our business, but we need to be prepared to sort of
flex up and flex down and make sure that we're being really
agile in this time because it's another time of uncertainty.
that we are going to be having to do more with less?
I think we'll have to do more with less
about that that feels really refreshing for us.
So I would say for us at Square
there's just growth vectors and opportunities everywhere
and we struggle sometimes to figure out
which one should we focus on.
with less actually gives us a little bit
of clarity on, okay, we can only focus now
on some of the most important things
and the things that we think will move the needle
And it gives us a little bit more to license to say no
and to kind of keep that prioritization
in check throughout the year.
So it can be freeing a little bit.
And I think for us too, I'm excited for us to get scrappy
and to experiment and to not be taking huge risks
but to be taking a lot of little risks.
And we'll think about doing things
in like specific geos and doing more local approaches.
You know, we need to punch above our weight next year.
If we have less to work with, then we need to
be doing the things that are really going to break through.
We have a very competitive category
and so we're always innovating and trying new things
and thinking about what we're going to say
and how we're going to say it and where do we show
in a way that's really differentiated from our competition.
'cuz this is an exercise I do with my team a lot.
And it's hard because you have people that are creative
they're innovating, and then you say
what are you going to stop doing?
How hard is that exercise to do?
And we work and think a lot about this at Square
and we actually developed a tool for this last year
because one of the things that we realized is
that as leaders we can tell teams what to focus on
what not to focus on, but they actually need to
be able to make decisions on their own.
And so we started to just rank certain things and say
here's how you should think about the work.
And when somebody asks you to do something
you could actually run it
through this rubric and see where things rank
and it'll help you decide what you're going to work on.
So we're still kind of working out the kinks, but the fact
that we now have a tool that we can use to
help us and to help everybody feel empowered to
make their own prioritization decisions so
that they're not always like waiting
for direction from their manager.
I love how people are going to be empowered.
It's not a negative thing to say
that you're going to stop doing something.
I think it's going to be really important for us.
And so we've said, you know
you need to be empowered to say no.
And I think we started off this year being more clear
on what we're focusing on and really
really clear on what we're not going to do.
There's initiatives that we've done many years
in a row and we said this year we're not going to do it.
You've talked about how uncertain times can actually lead
What is it about uncertainty that leads to innovation?
I think whenever there's these times of uncertainty
people get a little bit more focused
in the same way that we do.
I think a lot of those same principles apply.
There's something that you've really wanted to do
maybe you're out of work for the first time
and you actually have time to put
into it and there's just a hunger
and a grit that comes out of those uncertain times
which leads to great ideas and people really going all in
on these things that have maybe been a side hustle
or something that they've thought
about doing for a long time.
So there is a lot that comes out of those times.
It's like creativity loves constraint, right?
And really great ideas are born
out of being a little bit more constrained.
about experimentation when you have these great ideas?
We're all for experimentation and we've talked a lot
about what that means for us this year.
So it doesn't mean taking gigantic really expensive risk.
of different stuff we need to break through, whether that's
on TikTok and channels that we haven't really figured out
exactly how we land yet we know business
owners are there, we need to be there.
What's the right way for us to be there?
We're going to have to keep experimenting.
And when you're experimenting like that
what happens when you fail?
You definitely want to fail fast and learn.
And I think that we're very lucky
at Square because this is this idea of inventing
and learning is just like core in the DNA of the company.
You can say, we tried this because we thought that
and it didn't work, and here's what we learned.
And the response you get almost every time is that's great
that's a really good learning.
What are you going to do next?
And generally I would say that type of inventing
and learning is really celebrated and appreciated.
How does that help you keep up with customers these days?
Like what are you seeing from your customer expectations?
So I think there's a lot happening from customers.
We are constantly kind of keeping our ear to the ground.
We really encourage everybody to go
out and spend time with our customers
or there's opportunities for them to shadow calls
with our customer success or our sales team.
So you can really hear what's top of mind for them.
You know, gen Z is the most entrepreneurial generation
and I think there's like a stat that's
over 50% of Gen Z either already has started a business
or will start a business.
And the other thing that's really interesting is
that they're not discovering products and brands
through search the way that people in our age group are.
They're discovering it through video
through TikTok and through YouTube.
And so there's a lot of opportunity for us.
So we think a lot about how are these new
like wave of entrepreneurs discovering tools
and it's going to be in a way that's different
than how we've marketed in the past.
And so how do we start to just experiment and learn
build content in those channels
and really start to attract an audience in those places.
I've heard this saying that you use
which is progress over perfection.
What does that mean for you?
We have a lot of amazing, talented, smart people
of the things that I realized when I got there was
that there was this tendency to want everything to
be completely buttoned up and perfect and it was too slow.
And one of the things that you realize when you work
in marketing is our whole space is constantly changing.
So even if you could figure
out the perfect thing for that moment in time
it's not going to be perfect in six months from now.
And so what we've learned to do is really just, I think
adopt more of a product mindset actually
which is they're putting out like minimum viable products,
And then they're learning as they go.
we're probably a little bit above that
but we were just holding ourself
to such a high perfection bar that it was really hard
and the problems that we're trying to solve problems
around marketing measurement are really hard to solve.
Nobody has them solved and nobody has it perfect.
And so I just keep saying to the team like
we have to sort of favor progress over perfection
and a bias towards action, otherwise, like we'll stagnate.
When we've talked about experimentation
you've mentioned that you're doing that on TikTok.
Why is that an area of focus for you?
That's a really engaging platform.
There's literally billions of business owners on there.
And one of the things that's really interesting about TikTok
for Square is that we have done some experimenting
in countries like Australia where we will help a business
create some TikTok content
and then we see that their business results go up.
Our goal there is to just get in, experiment and
just keep trying new things, new strategies, new tactics.
It doesn't have a lot of overhead expense associated
with it and figure out what works for us.
I think it's a beautiful thing actually, because
it's not an expensive place to do a lot of experimentation.
Finally, what are you most looking forward to in 2023?
I'm excited about experimenting with new channels
about being more focused on key audiences
for us and what that means we can deliver
for the business and for our customers
by like having that really high level of focus.
And I don't know what the year will bring
so I'm excited to see what this will mean for us.
Thanks for tuning in on Salesforce Plus, to learn more
check out the links below.
