When hiring a Demand Generation Manager with experience in tech for your startup, asking the right questions when interviewing candidates will help you narrow down the best fit for your current sales motion. Betts has compiled this list of key inquiries – along with other resources – to help guide your search for your unicorn marketer and make it easier to track down the qualified go-to-market (GTM) talent you need faster:
The Role & Responsibilities of a Demand Generation Manager
Hiring a Demand Gen Manager is a critical step in building out your tech marketing team, particularly when you are a startup looking to stand out in a crowded B2B tech market. The primary focus of their job is on boosting awareness, visibility and ultimately increasing interest in your product or service among your target markets. That fills in the “why,” but the “how” is where you need to evaluate what level of experience you need (and in “what”) to establish what your best match looks like.
Demand Generation marketing often crosses into many different channels and activities, making marketers jack-of-trades by necessity – but your right fit unicorn must be a master in the areas your startup needs to drive to scale your revenue up. Your interview process should focus on narrowing candidates down to those who have experience scaling lead generation efforts in your specific sector, whether in enterprise SaaS, FinTech, AI, or another B2B technology space.
Skills & Experience Questions
These key questions will help you better understand your Demand Gen Manager candidate’s background, including their experience as it relates to the position and the skill sets they have acquired that are relevant to the biggest responsibilities of the role:
- Lead Generation Strategy: Your first question should be focused on learning more about the candidate’s specific approach to developing demand generation strategies.Ask the candidate to walk you through their process for building and executing a marketing campaign, from developing the initial structure and goals to supporting each part of the funnel.
- Inbound vs. Outbound Tactics: Have the candidate describe their experience with both inbound and outbound GTM channel tactics, and how they approach either. Focus on the key areas you are looking to drive, whether email campaigns, content syndication, PPC, webinars, etc.
- Channel Selection and Management: Demand Gen Managers typically juggle multiple channels to get in front of prospects. Ask the candidate which channels they have found most effective in generating qualified leads and how they decide where to focus their resources.
- Sales and Marketing Alignment: Ask your candidate to describe how they have aligned their marketing efforts with sales enablement goals at previous companies. See what steps they took to collaborate between GTM teams and ensure that their lead gen strategies were supporting sales cycles.
- Analytics and Campaign Optimization: Have the candidate explain their process for tracking and analyzing metrics from their marketing campaigns. Ask what KPIs (key performance indicators) they prioritize for demand generation goals, and how they use this data to inform their lead gen strategy.
- Budget Allocation: Technology startups often have tight marketing budgets, especially in early stages. Ask the candidate how they prioritize budget allocation across different channels, including how – and when – they decide which to invest in and which to scale back.
- Tech Stack Proficiency: Inquire about the marketing technology tools the candidate has found most valuable for demand generation in the tech industry. Ask how they stay updated on new tools and decide when to incorporate them into their stack.
- Lead Scoring and Qualification: Ask your candidate about their experience with lead scoring models. Learn more about how they ensured that the leads they passed on to the sales team were qualified, and what specific criteria they used to determine their quality and readiness.
Situational Questions
Situational questions can provide insight into a candidate’s problem-solving abilities, creativity, and how they handle the unique challenges of demand generation in the tech industry. You will want to uncover how well they respond to complex problems and the pressure of the face-paced startup environment, and validate that they have the experience you are looking for by how familiar they are with these kinds of pain points.
- Early-Stage Marketing: Create a scenario where the candidate is joining your startup after you have just successfully raised Series A funding. Ask how they would build out their demand generation strategies and campaigns from scratch, and what their priorities would be in the first 90 days.
- Content Optimization: Present a situation where the candidate is working with a strong content generation team, but lead generation is lagging behind goal targets. Ask them to describe how they would address this challenge and what steps they would take to try to correct it.
- CRM Automation and Management: Describe a scenario where your company has just implemented a new CRM and want to ensure marketing is aligned with the new data insights. Ask the candidate to describe in detail how they would maximize its output for their workflows and what processes they would put in place to leverage the data and automation.
- Building on Momentum: Construct a scenario where your company has seen some initial success with marketing, but now needs to significantly increase both lead volume and quality. Ask the candidate what strategies would employ to scale up demand generation efforts without sacrificing lead quality.
- Market Differentiation: In the context of a crowded B2B tech market, ask the candidate how they would develop a unique demand gen strategy that makes your company stand out from your competitors for prospects. Have them describe their methods for cutting through the noise to reach your target audience effectively in detail.
- Longer Sales Cycles: Given the long sales cycles often seen in enterprise SaaS, see how the candidate would adapt their demand generation strategies to nurture leads over extended periods. Ask them about their tactics for keeping prospects engaged in the funnel and how they would ensure that warm leads are not lost over time.
- Goal Prioritization: Demand Gen Managers often face multiple competing priorities, especially in fast-paced tech startup environments. Walk the candidate through a situation where they are asked to reach certain goals with limited time and resources, and ask how they would prioritize their campaigns and activities.
- Later-Stage Marketing: Ask the candidate how they would adjust their demand generation approach as a startup moves from Series A to a later funding round. Inquire about how their tactics would evolve as the company scales, and what exact steps they would take to ensure marketing efforts are scaling for new goals and targets.
The Betts Recruiting Difference for Tech Marketing Hiring
Before you can interview a unicorn candidate for your open Demand Generation Manager position, you first have to find them – Recruitment as a Service (RaaS) with Betts makes that easier (and cheaper) to achieve. Leveraging our market-leading Betts Connect platform and expert team of recruiters, RaaS will help you track down your right fit marketer without blowing up your budget.
Contact Betts here and see for yourself how RaaS will help you find your unicorn Demand Gen Manager faster and without the traditional costs of agency recruiting.