Presenting in-person at your first board meeting

✍️ What was going through my head

Presentations don’t really stress me out like they used to.

But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t feeling the nerves leading up to our board meeting last March.

Q1 was my first real “building mode” quarter at UserEvidence with a substantial budget. I had the board’s praise and buy-in from our previous meetings, but I was nervous.

I spent 83% more in Q1 than I did in Q4.

I bet heavily on content and events (two channels that take time to get going) without a strong ROI story to tell yet.

Spending 83% more without short-term ROI is a hard narrative to sell to anyone. 

I didn’t want the board to think, “Here’s another Marketing leader spending recklessly again.”

Reaching out for help

If there’s one thing I’ve learned as a first-time VP, you shouldn’t be too proud to ask for help. No one has all the answers.

I’m incredibly fortunate to have two amazing mentors – Kyle Lacy, CMO at Jellyfish, and Brad O’Neill, founder/CEO at TechValidate (and board advisor at UserEvidence).

Their advice, help, and tough love have been huge for me. Especially when it came to framing my Q1 narrative for this meeting:

We’re in build mode. We're making strategic marketing bets today that will pay off in future quarters.

We also have our eyes on the future. We have the right ops foundation in place to track Marketing's impact on pipeline efficiency.I told them as much when we’d catch up every month or so.

My board update

I started my update with a marketing highlight reel. I called out our major Q1 accomplishments and planned Q4 initiatives we delivered on.

Kyle reminded me of how many meetings board members attend. Including a brief recap from the last meeting was a great way to show the board that we did what we said we would.

From there, I went deep on my primary focus for Q1: get our content engine going.

It's difficult to connect content to pipeline and revenue—especially right away—so I hit them with social proof.

I screenshotted positive feedback from our ICP in the form of LinkedIn comments, DMs, and email replies.

But I couldn’t completely shy away from hard numbers to show Marketing’s impact on pipeline and revenue. If I took this route, I wouldn’t get the invite back to the next board meeting.

I showed the pipeline model we had built to track pacing relative to monthly and quarterly forecasts.

It helped reinforce that I'm not only thinking about what Marketing is doing, but what all of our channels are doing to generate pipeline and revenue.

Our marketing roadmap of to-dos and execution timelines came next, followed by a simple scorecard with our main KPIs.

My board meeting scorecard

I used this to help the board visualize the metrics we’re tracking, improvements over time, and how we’re pacing toward our goals every quarter.

We also plan to report on efficiency metrics. We'll look at the impact of marketing spend vs. pipeline and bookings — across our four main pipeline sources (Outbound, Inbound, Events, and Referrals).

Overall, I’m happy with what I brought to the table and how the Marketing update went. It felt great to get a small board win under my belt.

The most stressful part of the meeting

Mountains are a big part of our company culture at UserEvidence. 

The actual board meeting went down at our HQ in Jackson, Wyoming. One of the board members even showed up in his snow pants. IYKYK. 

After the meeting, we decided to break away from the formal setting and embrace our company culture by skiing together at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.

Skiing Jackson Hole (well known for notoriously hard terrain) has been on my bucket list for a long time. JHMR is very different from the Midwestern bunny hills I grew up going to.

The afternoon skiing was super fun until we got to the Headwall.

“Oh yeah, we should hike up and ski the Headwall. It’s super chill,” said my boss and CEO Evan.

Staring up the route to the peak, I knew then that Evan and I defined chill very differently. I’m a pretty decent skier — just not that kind of skier. It was scary.

I looked at Evan, up at the peak again, back at Evan and said, “Nah, I’m good. Maybe at the board meeting next spring.”

Evan - if you’re reading this, I will NOT be skiing down the Headwall with you next spring either.

🤓 Stuff I’m learning (and digging) right now

• UserEvidence's new content hub — we shipped this last Friday and couldn't be more excited. All of our best content in one spot. Blogs, podcasts, videos, and more new content types are coming soon.

• The Kellblog — one of the most insightful blogs in B2B marketing. Dave Kellogg is the best and his posts always find me at the exact right moment. I've read this blog since 2017 when my old boss voluntold me to read it.

• Liam Moroney on legacy LinkedIn creators  — Liam posted this take over the weekend, and it was so refreshing to hear. Instead of complaining about LinkedIn's algorithm and reach being down, the best know how to evolve.

💰Opinions are cheap and proof is gold

In episode 8 of The Proof Point, April Dunford, Kyle Lacy, and Marcus Andrews got real about how to write stories Sales will actually want to use.

No “poo polishing” allowed. The last sentence will make more sense if you listen to this episode.

My biggest takeaways:

• You can’t give a solid pitch without knowing your value proposition and what makes it unique. Saying you help companies “save time” or “increase revenue” doesn’t cut it.

• Positioning should be reviewed regularly—at least once every quarter — to account for market changes, competitors, and customer feedback.

• Marketing should get Product, Sales, and CS feedback before rolling out new positioning. Don’t expect everyone to review and sign off on everything afterward.

Listen on Spotify, Apple, or head over to YouTube watch the show.

UserEvidence, who?

UserEvidence is a customer evidence platform that helps B2B marketing teams generate verified proof points that credibly prove the value of your product.

Using custom surveys at key moments throughout the customer journey, you can capture case studies and testimonials, as well as competitive intelligence, product stats, and ROI data.

Turn happy customers into your best sellers with UserEvidence.