This article is part of a series of interviews with top marketing executives who offer you insights to help further your career: You will learn what makes these executives successful and what they value most in those who work for them.
The following is a transcript of a conversation between William Arruda, MarketingProfs senior contributor, and Patricia Hume, global vice-president of small and medium business solutions (SMBS) for Avaya, a leading provider of business communications software, systems, and services. Hume is responsible for all marketing, sales, service, and operations for Avaya's small and medium business market segment.
Prior to joining Avaya, Hume was the senior vice-president of channel sales and general manager of the Asia-Pacific market for Critical Path Inc., a developer of messaging solutions for the telecommunications industry. Hume was also president and CEO of VerticalNet Inc., a provider of electronic marketplaces to vertical industries in the small and medium business market. Earlier in her career, she spent 20 years at IBM, where she held numerous management and senior management positions.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and readability. The interview is also available in audio for our Annual Premium members. Click here to play the podcast (click and choose Open). Or you can download it for your MP3 player (click and choose Save).
William Arruda: You've held a lot of senior-level marketing positions. Which was your favorite and why?
Patricia Hume: The job that I am in right now is clearly my favorite. We are in a unique position in Avaya in that we are a small business inside of a very large company. We run the SMBS division, of which I am the head, as a small special business unit inside Avaya. This gives us a tremendous opportunity to really be market-focused, customer-focused, to really be able to go and understand what it is.
For us to be successful in the marketplace, it means having the responsibility for R&D and product management and product marketing and marketing and sales, and operations...so we have complete control over our own success. That in itself is really quite exciting, because how market-driven you are and how good you are at execution is what determines whether you are going to be very successful or not. So far the team has done just a terrific job.
William Arruda: What would you say has been your key to success in senior-level marketing?
Patricia Hume: There are a couple of things. First, any good marketer has to be focused on the market. I know that may sound simple, but sometimes we lose sight of the fact that in order to be really good at serving your customer, you have to understand your customer. So one of the things that has been key is that we are a highly customer-focused organization.
It goes beyond [things like] what price is the customer willing to pay and what is the competition doing? It's also from whom does the customer want to buy, and does the customer budget or does the customer have a share-of-wallet approach to purchases? Is he sold to or does he buy his technology? There are a plethora of questions that need to be answered.
Beyond that, skilled people understand the art of marketing. There is a science to marketing, but I also think there is an art to it.
Another area has to do with brand (your area of expertise): an ability to be creative, an ability to be different, an ability to be compelling, catchy—and cognizant, if you are in the global marketing, of the nuances of each country.
William Arruda: How do you feel technology is most affecting the way marketers work?
Patricia Hume: One of the key things is access to data. I think the fact that today we can capture so much information vis-à-vis Web and direct marketing campaigns. The power of the Internet has been tremendously valuable to marketing organizations. Number one is access to data in understanding your own customers.
Here's an example: We had thousands and thousands of downloads of our latest software from the Web. I want to know who they are—are they end-users, are they partners, are they potentials, are they prospects? If they are not existing customers, let's make sure that we capture them. So access to information is a push and a pull. Technology has allowed us to reach more people much more affordably than we ever had in the past.
People are less apt to open the envelope that's on their desk than they are to open the email that's on their laptop or their personal hand-held device. It just is a simpler exercise for human beings, it's easier to open the email, read the title, skim the email and decide whether or not it's relevant versus you see the junk mail you throw it in the garbage. So reach, touch, responsiveness [of technology] has helped us tremendously.
From a standpoint of product management, competitive analysis, and access to information, the Web is phenomenal. We can find out what our competitors are doing by surfing the Web, looking at their Web sites, finding articles that are compelling about them.... I have 27 years of experience, but 27 years ago we did not have that.
William Arruda: One of the other changes is that there are more and more women in marketing. Why do you think that is?
Patricia Hume: As I said, marketing is an art and it's a science. There's an awful lot of creative emotion in marketing, and so there's a very emotional side to marketing. Women tend to be able to be more emotional, and that emotive, creative flair helps an awful lot to be successful in marketing.
Secondly, marketing is extremely important to any company and it crosses many areas within the business. There's a lot of balls you have to juggle at once in order to really be a successful marketer. It's a multitask type of job, and statistics prove that women multitask better than men. Whether that's true or not, that's what the statistics say.
William Arruda: What advice do you have for women who want to be the VP for marketing or the chief marketing officer someday?
Patricia Hume: Number one, you need to understand the business, so I would strongly advise any woman that learning more than just the discipline of marketing will allow them to be more effective. Marketing can make or break a business. [It's the] difference between a good company and a great company.
I don't think a marketing leader can be effective if all they've ever done in their career is marketing. Learning sales, actually doing sales, is an important step in a career. Understanding product management, and product marketing, is an important step in a career. CMOs have major budgets to manage, so they have to understand the financial aspects of the business and the financial aspects of budgeting and cost control and expense management.
You need to have those disciplines underneath you to provide you the platform for success. So my advice is cross-train, learn everything that you can, and be able to say, "Hey, I stood in those shoes once, I understand sales problems, I understand the challenges of product management, I understand because I have done it...." There is nothing more credible.
William Arruda: Once I saw you in a meeting at IBM, a relatively conservative company, and you came in and you hugged all the people in the room—a room full of senior people. How did you develop the confidence to be yourself within a larger ecosystem of a company?