Demand Gen Interview Questions
What You Need to Know When Interviewing Demand Generation Executive & Leadership Candidates
By Ash Wendt, President Cowen Partners Executive Search
Demand generation is all about creating targeted marketing strategies to increase brand awareness and drive interest in your company’s products or services. With the right demand generation strategy, your company can:
- Engage an audience
- Reach new markets
- Create a successful lead generation pipeline to grow your business
What Is a Demand Generation Manager?
The role of the demand generation manager fills a critical need in companies that realize the value of demand generation while facing the challenge of assigning this task to a specific team. Because demand gen strategies are intricately involved with the sales funnel, as well as marketing campaigns, the overlap of these two functions makes it difficult to task any one team the responsibility of demand generation.
That is where demand generation managers come in.
Demand generation managers are integral to creating, implementing, and fine-tuning demand generation strategies that will:
- Grow brand visibility
- Engage target customers
- Maximize awareness of a company’s products and/or services
What Does a Demand Generation Manager Do?
A demand generation manager oversees all aspects of the company’s demand generation strategy. A few of the responsibilities that fall under this manager’s authority include:
- Executing long- and short-term marketing campaigns to drive leads.
- Collaborating with sales and marketing to enhance lead generation strategies.
- Identifying new markets to reach.
- Analyzing campaign success and measuring results.
These are just a few of the many responsibilities of the demand generation manager. Overall, however, the position is responsible for driving interest in the company.
Intro to an Interview for a Demand Generation Manager
Thank you for coming, you have seen the job description and I assume visited our website, what questions do you have for me? The best marketers have questions about your business, client profile, and current marketing function. Be open and honest with them.
14 Demand Generation Manager Interview Questions to Ask
Your company has the potential to see a lot of growth if you hire the right demand generation manager. Identifying the right person for the role is never easy, but the 14 questions below will help you find the right candidate for the job.
Cowen Partners, a national sales and marketing executive search firm, outlines some of the best interview questions for your next demand generation marketing leader. We have put this in script form for ultimate convenience (and we also have a demand generation job description, created by top-rated executive recruiters).
- If we hired you, what would your first 30, 60, 90 days look like.
- Based on what you know about what we do, what would you do to generate leads, and why?
- What would you do to find out if our content marketing strategy is working?
- Provide them with a current client acquisition problem you have and ask them how they would address it.
- How did you drive revenue in your last role?
- What marketing channels do you have experience with, and can you rate yourself in those areas?
- How do you measure lead quality?
- Tell me about your B2B/ B2C experience, how much of each and what company?
- Tell me who you reported to in your previous roles and how did you interface with the sales team?
- Please go over your career progress and explain your reason for joining/ leaving your previous employers.
- Tell me about how you work with creative people? How do you work with sales?
- Tell me about something new you have learned?
- What are you an expert in?
- Thank you for your time and for answering my questions. Is there anything else I should have asked or I can tell you?
Take a Deeper Dive into Demand Gen, Sales & Marketing Topics
- Demand Gen Job Description
- Demand Generation: Why It Matters & How to Make It Work for You
- How to Build a Successful Demand Gen Team
- Chief Marketing Officer | Ultimate Hiring Guide
You can also get answers and information right now from the nation’s top sales and marketing executive recruiters.
Demand Generation vs Lead Generation
A lot of companies actually mistake demand gen for lead generation. These two terms, while related, are not the same thing. Specifically:
- Demand generation can include a variety of communication channels from blog posts and social media messaging to targeted promotions and list creation. When all is said and done, demand gen is typically involved in every aspect of a business’s sales funnel. Every marketing strategy should include some sort of demand generation process for attracting people to the brand and pushing them through the sales funnel.
- Lead generation refers to a specific subset of demand gen. Demand gen attracts people to business and piques interest in the overall brand, product, or service. Lead gen then comes in and turns the interested parties into more concrete sales leads by collecting contact information.
Every company needs some form of lead generation if they want to continue growing and to see success. Without lead generation, targeted marketing efforts are much more difficult. Once the lead generation is complete, demand gen takes back over to continue pushing people down the sales cycle with more targeted content and value.
The problem with demand gen is that it takes a lot more work and manpower to accomplish successfully than businesses realize. This is not a process that can be managed by a single employee. To properly run a demand gen strategy, you need a demand generation executive, as well as a strong demand gen team or department working on the process.
In marketing, lead generation is the initiation of consumer interest or enquiry into products or services of a business. Leads can be created for purposes such as list building, e-newsletter list acquisition or for sales leads.
How to Scale Your SaaS Company to $100 Million ARR
The $100 million annual recurring revenue mark is a significant milestone for SaaS companies that signifies sustainable company growth. While every startup wants to hit this number as soon as possible, it’s a process that takes time. According to Kimchi Hill, on average it takes 4.5 years to hit the $10 million ARR mark and at least 50 percent of companies take between 5 and 10 years to finally hit $100 million ARR.
Successfully scaling your SaaS business takes time, dedication, and the right business strategy. To scale your business and achieve startup growth, it is essential to:
- Recognize when you’re ready to scale
- Avoid common mistakes
- Build your employee base
Below is a closer look at each of these scaling strategies for SaaS startups.
1. Recognize when you’re ready to scale
The path to the first $1 million ARR is when most SaaS startups go through a strong learning phase. As you work toward $1 million ARR, you should be learning what works for your company and what doesn’t.
For example, by the time you hit $1 million ARR, you should have determined the right product for your market, identified new customer leads, secured long-term business contracts, and have repeat customers, just to name a few.
If you’ve seen consistent growth for a least two years in addition to ironing out your business strategy, you should be ready to scale your business.
2. Avoid common mistakes
Scaling a SaaS company takes skill and not all startups follow best practices. There are a number of common mistakes seen in the SaaS startup realm, but below are the top four you should avoid as you work to scale your business.
- Offering too many discounts
Startups are eager to attract customers, and a common strategy they’ll use to gain customers is discounts. People love discount deals, so it can be tempting to offer big discounts to bring more people to your service. The problem, however, is that SaaS companies start offering excessive discounts which can lead to attracting the wrong audience for the product and undervaluing the service. Instead of focusing on discounts, create a plan that includes customer incentives instead. This way customers are still encouraged to purchase the product, but you’re not giving away too much.
- Ignoring current customers
A common fallacy among startups is that new customers are more valuable than current customers. This is simply not true. Customer retention is a huge aspect of business success. Your current customers can bring you repeat business, and they’re also a valuable source of referral business. Too often startups become overly focused on acquiring new clients or leads and forget to give their current customers the best experience possible.
- Hiring the wrong people
Hiring decisions are always difficult, but startups seem to have an especially hard time finding the right people. The main problem is that startups tend to focus too much on technical skills and not enough on candidate qualities and culture fit. SaaS startups have unique cultures and expectations that employees need to understand and accept before being hired. If you’re adding new positions to your team, make sure you review candidate characteristics in addition to their overall experience and background.
- Avoid growth hacking
Growth hacking has become such a buzzword in the startup scene. Startup leaders are trying to figure out the fastest way to achieve rapid growth, but don’t be fooled by growth hacking strategies. There are several problems that startups run into when attempting to growth-hack their business. First, growth hacking often involves a number of shortcuts which leads to missed learning opportunities. Second, by scaling too rapidly, startups can’t keep up internally with growth and the management of the company falls apart. Finally, growth hacking often leaves customers feeling unheard and undervalued. All this to say, shortcuts will have a negative impact on your SaaS company long-term if you try to growth hack your startup.
3. Build your employee base
A major aspect of scaling is effectively growing various teams. In particular, the $10 million ARR mark is typically when startups begin to hire middle managers to oversee more of the business process and separate C-suite leaders from the general business process.
Adding another layer of sales management is also done at this time and can be especially difficult. Startup CEOs are accustomed to being involved in the sales process, but now the crucial role of managing sales falls on the VP of sales and department managers. The sales department needs particular attention as the startup scales and becomes larger, too. By the time you hit $10 million in ARR your company should have a dedicated sales team with a reliable sales pipeline in place for acquiring and driving business. As your startup grows, make sure you’re not neglecting this vital growth department.
Discover More About Demand Generation & Marketing Recruitment
- Top Marketing Recruitment Trends & Articles
- Marketing Salary Guide: How Much to Pay Your Marketing Executive & Leaders
- Enterprise Sales Leadership Recruitment
You can also talk to one of the nation’s top marketing and sales executive recruiters.
How to Build a Successful Demand Generation Team | B2B Marketing
Demand generation marketing strategies are tactics used to generate interest and demand for a company’s products or services.
What Is Demand Generation?
Demand generation can include a variety of communication channels from blog posts and social media messaging to targeted promotions and list creation. When all is said and done, demand gen is typically involved in every aspect of a business’s sales funnel. Every marketing strategy should include some sort of demand generation process for attracting people to the brand and pushing them through the sales funnel.
Demand generation is the focus of targeted marketing programs to drive awareness and interest in a company’s products and/or services.
Looking for a Demand Generation Job Description? Click here
What a Demand Generation Department Does
One main role of the demand gen team or department is to bridge the gap between marketing and sales. The overall demand gen campaign process includes multiple components that require a lot of work. A few of aspects of demand gen covered by the demand team are listed below:
Strategy
The demand gen team is constantly reviewing customer insights to ensure the sales funnel is working appropriately. By monitoring what works and what doesn’t, the team can tweak the marketing strategy as necessary to continue generating growth and sales.
Analytics
The sales funnel encompasses many key metrics, all of which should be tracked by your company. Detailing customer experiences, engagements, and decisions can lead to more efficient and accurate campaigns in the future.
Content
The demand generation team knows not only what to say to potential customers but also how to say it. Value and customer-relevant information are conveyed through a variety of content delivery systems. Each message must be carefully constructed and targeted to convey the most important information to customers.
Delivery
In today’s tech-heavy world, companies have a number of delivery systems they can use for reaching customers. Email, social media, blog content, and advertisements are all content delivery options available to your company. A demand gen team knows which delivery system is best for your content and goals.
Revenue generation is one of the most important activities any business can engage in. It is defined as a process by which a company plans how to market and sell its products or services, in order to generate income.
How to Build a Demand Gen Team
There are two positions in the C-suite that facilitate the overall success of the demand generation team. These two positions are the:
- Chief growth officer (CGO): The CGO monitors all aspects of the business that help drive growth.
- Chief revenue officer (CRO): The CRO is responsible for ensuring the company is leveraging all marketing opportunities to generate the most sales.
Together, these two leadership roles help shape and drive the overall marketing strategy involved in demand generation. Under these two important positions, you’ll often find the:
- VP sales
- VP marketing
The vice presidents of these two departments are responsible for overseeing the demand generation process, from strategy to revenue goals. These two positions help create the overall demand gen campaign funnel and monitor the progress to ensure metrics are being hit.
Finally, you have marketing managers and sales development representatives. These team members are responsible for executing the overall demand gen strategy and nurturing potential customers throughout the sales cycle.
A demand generation team is a must for the future success of your business. Determine which essential demand gen positions are missing from your company and fill those roles as soon as possible so you can see an improvement in company growth.
Demand Generation Team Roles
- VP Sales & Marketing – $200,000 average salary
- VP of Demand Generation – $175,000 average salary
- Director of Demand Generation – $125,000 average salary
- Demand Generation Marketing Manager – $85,000 average salary
- Demand Generation Specialist – $55,000 average salary
Leading Sales, Marketing & Demand Generation Recruiters
The experienced marketing and demand gen recruiters at Cowen Partners have a long-standing reputation for excellence when it comes to connecting companies with the brightest marketing minds in their industry. We are up to date on the latest marketing trends, strategies, best practices, and technologies, and we take great care while applying deep expertise to identify the best candidates for our clients’ needs.
That is why the executive headhunters at Cowen Partners are the partners who leaders trust and rely on for their marketing and demand generation recruitment needs. It is also why Cowen Partners is one of the top marketing recruitment agencies in the U.S.
Clients span every industry, are typically $10 million plus in revenue, and successful placements include SaaS Chief Marketing officer CMO, Product Marketing, Demand Generation, and include VP Marketing, and Director Demand Generation leadership roles.
Check out our industry-leading sales and marketing resources, created by 5-star demand generation recruiters and executive search consultants, to see why Cowen Partners is a top sales and marketing executive search firm in Anchorage, Boston, New York City, Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Dallas, Los Angeles, and beyond:
- Chief Revenue Officer | The Ultimate Hiring Guide
- Sales Executive Recruitment | Building A Winning Sales Team
- The 3 Best Sales Recruiters & Marketing Recruitment Agencies in the U.S.
- Recruiting and Hiring in the Age of Covid-19
- Moving From Theory to Practice When Recruiting for Executive Diversity
Cowen Partners Executive Search provides sales and marketing executive recruitment services to all major and minor industries including:
Accounting, Advertising, Aerospace & Defense, Biotechnology, Banking, Credit Unions, Board and CEO Services, Computer Hardware, Construction, Consulting, Consumer Products, Computer Software and Hardware, Education, Energy & Utilities, Entertainment & Sports, Finance, Financial Services, Food Products, Government, Human Resources, Health Care, Hospitality & Tourism, Insurance, Industrial, Internet & New Media, Legal, Tax, Crypto, Bitcoin, Private Equity, Journalism & Publishing, Marketing, Manufacturing, Medical Device, Non-Profit, Pharmaceutical, Private Equity, Real Estate, Retail & Apparel, Sales, Technology, Telecommunications and Transportation.
Get in Touch.
Fill out the email request form to learn more about our approach.