FINITE: B2B Marketing Podcast for Tech, Software & SaaS

#142 - What customer-centricity actually means with Simeon Lando, CMO at FORM3

• Jodi Norris / Simeon Lando • Season 1 • Episode 142

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We’ve all heard the term ‘customer-centricity’ amidst LinkedIn posts and the webinar invitations in our inboxes. But what does customer-centricity actually entail? And how can B2B marketers demonstrate this to both stakeholders and customers? 

Jodi was honoured to host Simeon Lando on this FINITE Podcast. Simeon is the CMO at FORM3, a next-level B2B fintech driving the future of the payments industry. He’s had a long and successful career in marketing, formerly at titans like PayPal and Barclaycard, to fast-paced fintechs like Refinitiv and Finastra. 

Learn how Simeon approaches his marketing with customer-centricity, and emphasises the importance of research and relationships, with the success stories to prove it. 


Speaker 1:

Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Finite podcast. You are in for a treat. Today I'm talking to Simeon Lando , CMO at Form three. He is deep in the FinTech marketing space with a career spanning industry titans, like PayPal and Barclay card to fintechs like Refinitiv and Finastra. Now at Form three , Simeon is once again taking a customer-centric approach to his marketing leadership. I know, I know we've all heard of customer-centricity before, from LinkedIn thought leaders and fluffy webinars. But what does it actually mean? Today's episode is set to shed light on this marketing fundamental, you'll gain inspiration for your own strategy and learn what it takes to encompass this necessary CMO mindset. Simeon also shares his well-informed opinions on a BM and measurement. So I hope you enjoy.

Speaker 2:

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Speaker 3:

Hi Simian , welcome to the Finite podcast. Hello.

Speaker 4:

Thank you for inviting me.

Speaker 3:

You are very welcome. We're excited to have you here today to

Speaker 1:

Talk about

Speaker 3:

Customer-centric marketing, but I know that you have a super interesting background in marketing and a career so far. So why don't we start by hearing a little bit more about that, how you got into marketing, how you've become CMO at Form three and everything in between.

Speaker 4:

Fantastic. Well, as I said, thank you very much Jody for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here. Really looking forward to the conversation. As far as how I got into marketing, I did a , an international business degree and I did a master's in marketing straight afterwards and loved it. Got into it as a result of that, always being in business to business marketing for the majority of my career in financial services, FinTech business information. So worked for the likes of , um, dun and Bradstreet. Worked for Thomson Reuters before I got bought by Blackstone and became Refinitiv. Worked for Finastra , worked for Barclaycard . And um , currently I'm at Form three , the backend payment technology company.

Speaker 3:

Cool. So I'm setting a lot of fintechs there. Would you say that's the case?

Speaker 4:

Yeah, financial services, FinTech, yeah. Most, most recently FinTech. Yeah, most definitely .

Speaker 3:

Awesome . What about form three ? What is form three and what do you do there?

Speaker 4:

So Form three is a backend payment technology company that enables banks to manage their , uh, payments transactions on behalf of consumers, their customers in a cloud environment. It's a multi-cloud environment. It's the first company to be able to achieve that, and it's something that , um, is very in as a result of that, banks are very, very keen to engage with us as part of their transformation, that digital transformation. So , uh, fantastic place to be and um, especially most recently since Visa's commercial partnership and investment in US as well. Mm-Hmm . So there's, there's huge amounts of opportunity. Uh , we started in the uk, we expanded into Europe, and now we've, we've launched in the US as well. So lots of exciting opportunities ahead. Yeah . And it's fantastic to have the, the customers that we do working with us. So yeah , very exciting times and , and a great place to be. Yeah,

Speaker 3:

It sounds really inspirational and , and really in , in the deeper FinTech Right , right . As a middleman. Okay, cool. So let's talk about customer-centric marketing. First of all, I think we've , uh, all heard this phrase lately. I think it's very top of mind for people. I think they might struggle with how do we actually achieve it and also what it actually means. So I thought we could set the scene by diving into what it actually means a little bit more. So what do you think customer-centric marketing is?

Speaker 4:

So I'm gonna take a step back. Okay. Just before I answer that . Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . And I think the thing that often surprises me is that people think, well, that's obvious, isn't it ? Customer-centric marketing? Well , actually you'd be surprised the number of firms that don't get the simple things right. It's all around building a solid foundation, setting you up for success. And in marketing, it's your duty to represent the customer within your organization. And too many times product organizations build products because they think it's the right thing to do, and then they always have a go at sales because they're saying , well, we just spent fortune a lot of time and effort building this product. It's sitting on the shelf gathering dust. Why aren't you selling it? And the sales guy's response is , well, we didn't ask you to build it. No customers asked us for you to build it, so why wouldn't you expect us to sit on the shelf gathering dust? And then at the same time, you've always got this other issue, which is many senior executives always want to hear how great their company is. They want you to go out there and say, you work for whatever company we are, amazing. Come and buy from us, or you should buy from us. Well, no customer is gonna buy from you because you are telling them they're amazing. Just because you've won an award in whatever, or a number of awards, doesn't mean that you have the automatic right for customers to suddenly think, right, I've gotta go and buy something for you. I think an ultimate ambition is, is what I call becoming a partner of choice for a customer. And in order to become a partner of choice for a customer, you need to engage in customer-centric strategies and a customer-centric strategy. Again, coming back to what I was just talking about is actually very simple. It's understanding the needs and the challenges of a customer. Understanding the route , the journey that the customer is on, and engaging them in a way that enables them to understand that you really do understand their needs and their challenges, and that you can show the solutions that you have meet those needs and challenges and the added value that you offer as well. So ultimately, you , you become that partner of choice moving forward, and you , they can see that you are gonna help set 'em up for future success and future growth. So in a nutshell, it's really about understanding the needs and the , and the challenges of customers getting out there and demonstrating that in how you engage with them across all the different channels that you've got available to them. And you know, there's a couple of things that I always find fascinating. One from a marketing perspective is you have many marketing organizations or functions are charged with engaging with customers, but how many marketeers actually go out and spend time with customers or with covid at least engage with them on webinars or engage with them in in virtual meetings? Very, very few. So the issues start right from the beginning that you've got marketeers that might know what an email campaign looks like. They might know what a video series looks like, they might know what a good website looks like, but actually when it comes to how to engage with them , with customers, that is with relevant content, the issue start right at the beginning because the marketeers aren't spending time with customers and understanding them and getting to know them. You then have the sales organizations in many instances that want understandably the quickest route to hit their commissions. So therefore it's not necessarily about spending as much time as they could or should to understand the customer. They just want to sell what they've got on the truck. But actually, the more time and effort they spend in getting to understand the customer's needs and challenges and solutions selling based off of those needs and challenges, the more successful they and the company will be. Mm-Hmm . So I'm , I'm super passionate about it. It seems so obvious. Mm-Hmm . And so simple, but of course we do it. Well actually show me. Well , you're just talking about yourself and, and again, another example of bringing it to life may be within emails. So in an email campaign, the number of companies that starts off with, hi , this is us, this is what we're selling you, as opposed to this is a new regulatory requirement that's coming that affects you as a bank. These we know are gonna be these , uh, significant needs and or challenges that you've got coming up. And then this is how we can help you. Mm-Hmm . As opposed to this is what we've got to sell you and you've already lost me. I'm not, I'm not interested. Mm-Hmm .

Speaker 3:

It sounds like it requires this mindset throughout the entire business journey. And you're talking to two people, you're talking to stakeholders and you're talking to the marketing team and trying to get them both aligned. I guess in your experience, what kind of stages of growth have you come into companies and seen this and how have you kind of fixed it in a way? Like how, how have you actually tactically melded the two together and got everyone more customer focused ?

Speaker 4:

So I've joined companies where I've been responsible for building out a marketing organization. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . And I've joined other companies that are multi-billion dollar organizations. And I've come in and it's at a much different stage of , of maturity. The easier opportunity is when you're coming in, you're building it out from scratch for a number of different reasons. You can bring in the people that really understand what it is that you're trying to achieve. Mm-Hmm . From a strategic perspective. And then they work with you to achieve that. The other thing is focusing on the relevance for the customer. If you can ensure that you are relevant, then the customer is much more likely to engage with you. Mm-Hmm . And it's really understanding that, so it's, it's understanding the simple things Mm-Hmm . Getting them right, which builds that foundation. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . And so therefore, in, in smaller organizations where I've built out marketing functions, it's much easier to achieve that when you've got larger organizations and I've joined larger organizations, it's really working alongside the different functions to help them understand what will make them more successful and what will make them, what will make the company more successful as a result. And you know, with sales teams in particular, if you can talk to them in a language that they understand ultimately, which is we can help you earn more commission, we can help you earn more money, therefore we can help the company be more successful. And this is how we can do it. Because we can create customer needs, led stories, we can create customer needs, led decks, a sales give you a sales toolkit that ultimately positions us in a much more engaging way than they typically would've engaged with customers previously. And give them much more insight as to exactly who it is that they're engaging with. Mm-Hmm . And encourage them to spend more time and effort understanding the customer and putting themselves in the position of the customer and how they would want to be sold to. Mm-Hmm . So, you know, and it's all about building long-term relationships as well. And I think, you know, that's something that's super important. It's about building that long-term relationship. It's not that initial sale. The initial sale is, is a good foot in the door, but it's that opportunity to keep that customer for many, many years and constantly understand the upsell and cross-sell opportunities as well that uncover more and more, you know, revenue , um, or you allow you to maximize revenue opportunities moving forward.

Speaker 3:

Awesome. That's really helpful.

Speaker 1:

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Speaker 3:

We're covering a lot here. I feel like we're covering cross-functionality, knowledge sharing between teams. We've talked tactically about how to understand customers. So getting salespeople, getting marketers on the ground, talking to them. From a strategic level, how do you understand customers? Is there segmentation involved or market research? How do you go about that?

Speaker 4:

So again, it depends the type of industry that you are in. The businesses that I've always worked in, we tend to recruit people from the industry. Mm-Hmm . So a four , three lots of us have worked in banks or in fintechs. So we already come to the company with a very good understanding as to the requirements and needs and challenges of the customer, which helps, I think there is also, from a strategic perspective, another barrier that needs to either be broken down or the barrier doesn't need to be put up in the first place. And that's between sales and marketing and also the relationship with product. Because in many instances, sales are off doing their own thing, product are off doing another thing, and marketing are off here. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> and marketing have a super important role to play in bringing together the sales and the product functions and ensuring that the product function understands what the relevant pipeline looks like and what they potentially could do to help overcome any, any obstacles. Certainly to short-term revenue close. And then for the sales function to understand from the product function, what their future roadmap looks like to ensure that it is commercially viable. And to understand the types of conversations that they can be having now with customers. Because if you're selling to banks and the average deal value is high, the sale cycle is long, can be 12 to 18 months at least. Therefore, the product doesn't need to actually be ready for you to start having those conversations with, with your customers. And that's something I think, again, that companies need to get their heads around. It's not just today that you're talking about, it's actually tomorrow and the day after that you can uncover opportunities that you can start to engage customers with that they can see that you're not only a , a partner of choice today, but you're also the partner of choice for

Speaker 3:

Tomorrow. Yeah. That's why I love B2B Tech is all these really kind of alternative and niche roadmaps , customer journeys that people have to kind of come into an organization and get to know and work to . Yeah. And it can be hard to kind of grasp that. It's not always one, two step, one step two, step three, step four. And so even listening to a podcast like this, you have to really pick apart what you, what the guest is saying and, and think how does this actually apply to me? Because we are , we're all different. So Yeah. Really, really interesting. You mentioned demonstrating to your customer that you understand 'em , I wanna lean into that a little bit more and talk about, okay, we are now at the stage where we do understand the customer. We're in their minds, we're in their , we've built a relationship with them. How do we actually build that trust, build that relationship and demonstrate that we are customer centric?

Speaker 4:

I think a very good way to, to do that is to discuss with the customer the impact that certain market events, for example, will have. So if there are regulatory requirements coming down the road, what does that actually mean for them? Have they thought about the regulatory requirement that's coming down the road? 'cause normally in many instances, they're fixed on the here and down . And by helping them understand what's coming down the road and by sharing with them how you can help them manage those regulatory requirements in a simple and easy way as possible, again, that's another way of demonstrating to a customer that not only do you have that subject matter expertise, but then you're talking about that trust piece. And that's really, really vital because if you can demonstrate that you've got significant knowledge and awareness of what's coming down the road, and you could explain to them the impact that they could have, in particular, if it's a negative impact, and how you can help them overcome that and actually potentially return it into an opportunity. Then again, it's comes back to this engagement, it comes back to this continuous dialogue about how you could continue to help them on an ongoing basis.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. And I guess that becomes more important when you've got these like big value deals when the relationships are much more one-to-one. But I know that you said when we just met earlier this morning, you said that form three was in 20 , was it 28 countries? Yes. How do you, regulation varies across all regions. How do you keep on top of everything? How big is your marketing team and how much research are you doing in , into all of these specific challenges?

Speaker 4:

So when I said we're in 28 countries, that's, that's true. We are based in 28 countries. The majority of the people that are based in those different countries are, are , um, engineering teams. Right. So we focus on the uk, we focus on Europe, and we focus in the us . Okay . And we have specialists in each one of those markets who, as I mentioned earlier, come from the banks, come from the financial services industry. So they are all subject matter experts , um, and recognized by the industry for the expertise that they have in those fields. So we have a very high level of awareness, right . As to what future scenarios look like. And that's why, you know, we think we have a , a , a duty to actually work with our customers to help them understand how we can solve those potential problems and challenges for them moving forward.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, awesome. So it's a , it's a partnership as we say. Yes. So this is some might call it one to few marketing, would you say if it's form three marketing to a few big customers and in recent times, I think it's kind of simmer down a bit in 2023, but about 2021 and 2022 A BM was the biggest thing ever, the best thing ever. I know that you have some thoughts on A BM and I think a lot of listeners would think, oh, he's describing a BM here. What are your thoughts on that? How do you think it , it differs?

Speaker 4:

So there's a couple of things there. I think I'll start with account-based marketing account-based marketing is nothing more than marketing done well, it's just got this buzz term that everyone seems to have picked up on. But it's incredibly difficult to measure the success of account-based marketing account-based marketing. I think in marketing in particular is a bit of a misnomer. It's a joined up sales and marketing partnership where you are focusing on probably the largest of your account plans and understanding do you have all the insight that you need? And as a result of that insight, are you able to uncover additional revenue opportunities and working together? Are you able to accelerate those , uh, revenue opportunities from a timeline perspective and potentially from a value perspective, but incredibly difficult to measure. And you know, you really only talk targeting three or four customers probably at most , um, with the amount of effort that needs to go into that. We're not doing one to few marketing at Form three because we target the largest of, of the banks. We have by it's very nature a small target addressable market. So it's not one to few, but we do need to ensure that we do have a clear segmentation. We do understand who our decision makers are, we do understand who our influences are. And as a result of that, going back to what I was talking about earlier, that we really do land the relevance of our messaging, the relevance of our positioning, and that we are able to help our customers understand why we are their partner of choice now and in the future and why we are the company that will help them with the next stage of their growth. Mm-Hmm . So account be marketing I think is a bit of a mis no , but I think the interesting thing as we move into 2024 and beyond is AI and the role that AI may play will play or won't be allowed to play. Interesting. Yesterday I saw that the Bank of England are very nervous about AI being used in banks from a security perspective. Any organization that is engaging in AI really needs to understand the security implications of it. And it certainly hasn't been proven yet in anger within a marketing environment. Yes, some's been used from a content generation perspective, but again, it's quite a vanilla flavor. When you are focused on specific customers, you still can't rely on AI to be able to do that. So I think the future is how marketing engages with ai . With ai, but outside of that A BMI think is, I wouldn't say it's dying of death <laugh> , but I think people are realizing that it is marketing done well and AI is is the new radio Yeah. That , that people are now focused on.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. Awesome. No, I like that a PM is just marketing done. Well I think I'll put that in the episode description. It's good. And it , it is true. Like it's just give , I guess it's giving marketers a roadmap of how to do it well, but if you've been in the industry for how as , as long as you have, then you just know, you probably saw it popping up like, oh, but we've been doing this thing . Yes . Why is this trending now? But yeah, really exciting to see the advancements in AI and , and how we can kind of get past generative AI and marketing and actually infuse it into our tools and our measurements. Which you did mention,

Speaker 4:

And it's interesting you talked about Ative ai. I think the real power is in predictive ai. Mm . Because that is something that is going to, I think, be a game changer for organizations that how that happens and what it actually looks like. Certainly from a marketing perspective I'm yet to see.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. And then forecasting, there's so much that goes into it as well. Data analytics so much before you can actually feed it to the AI and , and even make an inference from what the AI tells you. So yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. And I don't know if we'll have time in this episode, but we do have time for one more question. Measurement is always a big topic at finite. Everyone wants to know how to, to measure things, make sure that what they're doing is working and especially in B2B Tech proving the success of your marketing to the organization because it's so embedded in in the business structure and strategy. So coming back to customer centric marketing on topic of today, how is it anecdotal in its measurement? How do you actually know that customer centricity is the key and how do you measure its impact?

Speaker 4:

So a great question. Customer centricity is the foundation of marketing. Therefore, if you are able to demonstrate that marketing is making a business impact and being an integral part of the future of the company's growth, then the strategy of focusing on customer centricity is working by it . Sorry , nature. And interestingly, within FinTech, within technology organizations, a lot of the exec have got no idea and no understanding about marketing what they get up to. It's like this myth or this thing that's over here. They don't really know what they're doing, but they know it's costing them a lot of money. <laugh>. So it's imperative now and moving forward more than ever, especially with, with cost challenges that marketers and CMOs report to the executive team and talk their language and they understand numbers. And it's imperative that marketing teams produce monthly reports that talk to not marketing qualified leads. Because again, that's really immaterial. And also the number of people that say , oh yeah, but we produced hundreds or thousands of marketing qualified leads, it's quality of a quantity. That's key. You could create a thousand more , generate a thousand marketing qualified leads, but have no sales opportunities on the back of them, which means they're completely irrelevant. So it's really important to look at the number of sales opportunities and the conversion rates from those marketing qualified leads, putting indicative values against those sales opportunities, demonstrate how quickly you are able to accelerate them through a nurturing program and an automated nurturing program that as well through the different sales stages and based on a closed one rate , uh, look at the indicative revenue that you are able to generate as a direct result of your marketing spend. So if you are able to do that, that is what the execs will engage and recognize with and begin to understand the value of, of marketing as part of their organization. Um , and I know I've had that at form three I've had at your previous organizations where all of a sudden the CEO goes, okay, now I understand the benefit that marketing is bringing this organization as opposed to, my investors have told me that we really need to up our game from a marketing perspective because it will help drive the next stage of our company's success. And that's what we constantly focus on. It's working with the sales organization, working with a product organization, and being able to demonstrate the business impact that we're having because we're joined up and we're focused on ultimately hitting the key focus areas of, of the company and , and making sure we're reflecting their, their strategy.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, awesome. That's a very articulate and nicely simplified explanation and I think so many marketers can get hung up in the jargon and, and trying to prove their worth rather than actually reflecting the value, which I think stakeholders can see right through. So thank you so much, Samian . That was a great episode. You've given us so many good insights and a , and a really nice perspective as well.

Speaker 4:

Well, thank you very much, Chad . It's been a pleasure. And thank you once again for inviting me.

Speaker 5:

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