In this episode of Thought Leader Life, Michael and I share insights with #ThoughtLeader Glenn Gow, who imparts valuable lessons and knowledge from his position as the CEO of Crimson Marketing for over two decades. Glenn thinks a #ThoughtLeader is someone who believes it is possible to do things that people are not currently doing, someone who doesn’t focus on the difficulties between where they are today and where they want to be, and gets people excited about what is possible.

Glenn puts great weight on the role of CMOs in promoting #ThoughtLeadership within any organization. He believes that CMOs should strive to take the “CEO perspective” in terms of taking a wider view and making use of big data across the organization, and communicating more effectively with marketing down to the rest of the team. The beauty of this is that CMOs now have the capability to gain a much bigger seat at executive committee meetings through the availability of data and its systems. Glenn points out that data has enough value in it today that organizations need to have systems to make sense of it, whether through predictive analytics or website analytics. And the good thing is, both of these are available to the CMO, although they first need to have skill shift. Organizations should also consider having a larger data-focused marketing team than a creative-focused marketing team. Glenn stresses the need to raise data to a level of awareness, noting that that all questions can be answered if you bring it together in one place.

The interview also discusses why there is a need for CMOs to think about post-funnel, and why there should be an introduction, instead of a handout, of marketing to sales, given that marketing needs to stay connected to the prospect until they complete.

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Here are some “‘aha’ moments” from the episode. See more in the Aha Moments from Thought Leader Life books available in the Aha Amplifier and watch the interview below!

Data has enough value in it today that you need systems to make sense of it. @CrimsonCEO

CMOs need to integrate all the functionality in big data. @CrimsonCEO

Sometimes you fail because you can’t get over to the data that is available to you. @CrimsonCEO

Organizations need to change, or disappear. @happyabout

Follow Glenn on Twitter at @CrimsonCEO. Tune into Thought Leader Life every Saturday for more thought-leader goodness!