Medtronic is a global leader in medical technology, services and solutions. The $29 billion organization operates from more than 370 locations in approximately 160 countries.
Jeff Rummer, Medtronic’s Director of Global Marketing Operations, has been instrumental in helping Medtronic transform from a primarily sales driven culture to a modern marketing and sales driven business. His team’s responsibilities include planning, executing and measuring of all integrated marketing campaigns and digital experiences, along with managing and optimizing the company’s marketing technology stack.
David Lewis recently talked to Jeff about what it takes to initiate and accomplish the transformation to a digital marketing organization, and what it means to be a marketing hero.
David: Medtronic has been through a huge transformation. Up until about seven years ago, all of your business growth was generated through your sales team — more of the traditional way of generating revenue.
Jeff: That’s true. Since I arrived, we’ve deployed Salesforce and Eloqua – with help from DemandGen. And our content is more lead generation focused.
David: You’ve been an active listener of DemandGen Radio. What were some of your favorite episodes?
Jeff: Your show has covered a variety of topics and featured some great thought leaders from tech startups, as well as technology partners and practitioners. One of my favorite was Mintigo’s John Barra, when he talked about how today’s CMOs are tomorrow’s CEOs. I also enjoyed the one with Randy Frisch, co-founder and COO at Uberflip. After that episode, our team was able to implement some new strategies with the tool immediately. All of them are engaging and entertaining – you have some real gold in there.
David: When I started DemandGen, our mission was to make marketing heros. Marketers often feel underappreciated or misunderstood. Do you feel like a hero at your organization? And when you do, why is that?
Jeff: One piece of feeling like a hero involves internal recognition. Are we making marketing matter more? We feel that way when we have a clear sense of the impact we’re making – which doesn’t always mean leads. Proof of our impact can be increased upsell/cross sell business, as well. At Medtronic, my team has worked alongside sales, partnering cross-functionally to deliver an integrated experience and the metrics to prove our impact. That’s when leadership began to see the value. With our shift to ABM, you really need to have the metrics dialed in. And you have to let go of what didn’t work, and focus on what did, in order to put the right stories forward and prove your success is heroic.
David: Medtronic is a large company, and changing and pivoting takes strong leadership. You’ve taken your team through a huge transformation, and it didn’t happen overnight. It was a journey – adopting a CRM and various marketing tools, and shifting your focus to marketing operations. When you look back over the last couple years, what advice would you have for your former self in terms of bringing about change in the organization?
Jeff: Anyone in a change roll requires patience. And you must focus on building relationships. So many people are involved in the success of Marketing Operations, and cross-functional relationships are critical to change. Medtronics is a huge organization – our team supports hundreds of marketers. You have to build strong relationships, because you’re not going to get things done on your own.
David: A big challenge associated with adopting ABM is rebranding marketing – the tools themselves are big and expensive, and you need to hire people into new roles, which requires a larger budget. It’s important to be confident and patient, and enlist the support of upper management. How will you accomplish this?
Jeff: We’ve already evolved a lot from the traditional waterfall model. There’s not a hospital that doesn’t do business with us in some shape or form, so our approach has to be ABM-focused. We’re aware of the pain points and needs of every account from both the clinical and economical perspective. We have complex account segmentation in place, and we’re currently changing how our team goes about selling into our accounts. Specifically, product-specific campaign messaging has to become ABM-focused.
David: You pilot a lot of new technologies. What’s in your stack these days?
Jeff: We have a lot of technologies in our stack. We recently completed the SiriusDecisions audit, and we are filling in a few pieces around marketing attribution and some other enhancements. One piece of advice: Never say something will always work, and never say something will never work. Neither assumption is true. Your internal systems change frequently, and if you put your stakes too deep in the ground in one solution, you may end up stuck with something that doesn’t work down the line.
And you have to stay on top of new developments in current solutions, as well as new available solutions. Some of the solutions we’ve implemented offer many more capabilities now than they did when we adopted them, so you have to look out for duplication. You may not need that point solution anymore. If an existing solution can do the same things, you may be able to streamline and save money.
Our stack is robust now. I’m really excited about implementing multi-touch attribution, which will make a big difference in helping us show our value and impact on our business.
David: Any key initiatives you’re starting to think about for next year?
Jeff: We’re focusing on building a closer partnership with other teams across the Medtronic organization, such as IT. There’s strength in numbers and power in having counterparts across the company for collaboration and idea sharing.
About DemandGen Radio
DemandGen’s PodCast Series features interviews with top industry experts, thought leaders, authors, marketing technology firms and senior marketing leaders from around the world about their methods and technologies for high-performance marketing. A replay of the full podcast with Jeff Rummer can be found here.
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