The Key to Working Your Way Up from the Bottom with Karen Hayward

Climbing to Success

Karen is a results-oriented marketing, sales and operations executive with a proven track record for building and executing strategic programs that accelerate revenue.

Key to her success is an innate ability to deliver breakthrough revenue by driving alignment between an organization’s sales and marketing functions. She is passionate about the need to follow the voice of the customer and is able to operationalize customer insights to effect product positioning, sales enablement and lead generation programs. Karen is a pioneer in the cloud computing industry, having worked with SaaS companies since re-locating to the US in 2000.

Karen wasn’t always a hugely successful CMO. She worked her way up to Vice President of Xerox from an entry-level position straight out of college. By focusing on moving forward, building a extensive network, and never being satisfied with her current skill set, Karen consistently moved her career upwards.

Listen in as we discuss climbing the professional ladder through building relationships, humility, and innovation.

In This Episode

• How the voice of the customer leads to breakthrough products that define your business
• Why moving forward means never thinking you’re skills are acceptable
• The power of the Emotional Freedom Technique
• How staying humble can keep you moving forward

Quotes From This Episode

“You gotta follow the voice of the customer, even if it slows you down.” —@HaywardKG

[Tweet ““If you’re not growing, you’re really moving backwards.” —@HaywardKG”]

“You should never get too big for your britches because that’s when the world will come crashing down.” —@HaywardKG

“Why not try to be the best that you can be? And if the best that I can be gets me to that goal and allows me to build this business, then I’m going to go for it.” —@HaywardKG

[Tweet “”Work on the stuff that’s really important but not urgent.” —@HaywardKG”]

Resources

• Karen Hayward on Twitter: @HaywardKG
• Chief Outsiders
• Vistage
• BlueJeans
• Dragon