Jake Sorofman
Washington, District of Columbia, United States
13K followers
500+ connections
Articles by Jake
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Finding a Workforce AI Edge Will Become Every CEO’s Existential Imperative
Finding a Workforce AI Edge Will Become Every CEO’s Existential Imperative
<<Note: Visier, my employer, today announced a bold vision for the world of work at a time when organizations face the…
8 Comments -
Visier Launches the First People-Focused PaaS
Visier Launches the First People-Focused PaaS
Today, it’s probably a bit hard to imagine that the earliest days of Amazon Web Services (AWS) were actually met with…
15 Comments -
The People Cloud is Here! Wait, What’s a People Cloud?
The People Cloud is Here! Wait, What’s a People Cloud?
In most industries, the last 25 years has been marked by an almost breathless obsession with the customer–how to…
7 Comments -
A Workforce Awakening Drives the Next Act for Leadership in Business
A Workforce Awakening Drives the Next Act for Leadership in Business
Why do we work? On the most fundamental level, the answer is pretty simple: Most of us work to earn the income…
16 Comments -
The Next Revolution Is Happening Inside Your Company
The Next Revolution Is Happening Inside Your Company
The first 25 years of my career were spent riding the wave of an industry-wide obsession with customers--acquiring…
29 Comments -
When Prioritizing Digital Transformation, Start with People
When Prioritizing Digital Transformation, Start with People
Few ideas ring as true and hollow as digital transformation. It’s at once both a perfect capture of our collective…
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Employee Experience is the New Battlefield
Employee Experience is the New Battlefield
When I was a Gartner analyst, I co-authored a special report that called customer experience the new battlefield for…
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It’s the Questions, Stupid. Why Our Data Obsession May Blind Us to What Really Matters
It’s the Questions, Stupid. Why Our Data Obsession May Blind Us to What Really Matters
There are a lot of good reasons I joined Visier, but perhaps the most significant among them is this company’s…
10 Comments -
Is the HR the Next “It” Role in the C-Suite?
Is the HR the Next “It” Role in the C-Suite?
Executive roles come in and out of fashion like hemlines and haircuts, but unlike these expressions of personal style…
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Today I Joined Visier as CMO. Here’s Why.
Today I Joined Visier as CMO. Here’s Why.
Today is a big day for me ..
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Activity
13K followers
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Jake Sorofman posted thisA hundred years ago, as a fresh-faced college intern at a fancy very much of-the-moment PR agency, one of the senior executives decided that I would henceforth be known as “Wordboy.” Fortunately the goofy nickname didn’t live beyond that summer (and let’s not get any ideas). But the truth that I was a word nerd was much longer lasting. As a product marketer and a CMO, messaging has always been my thing. I love the structure of language and how it brings clarity and conveys meaning where little exists. I get a real thrill from shaping a narrative that threads disparate ideas, carves ownable space in a competitive market, and creates meaning and belief with customers, prospects and employees. I’ve seen it change a company’s culture and growth trajectory in unmistakable ways. It’s been a lot of fun reconnecting with my messaging roots in my recent collaborations with fellow word nerd Jennifer Sikora. Jen and I have been quietly helping founders and executive teams find their narrative as facilitators of messaging workshops. Now we’re excited to take on some more projects. If you’re struggling to articulate differentiation in a sea of sameness … if you’re finding your story losing power and impact as competitor claims converge … if you’re feeling defenseless in the build-vs-buy defensibility debate … Hit us up! Jen and I would love to help.
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Jake Sorofman reposted thisJake Sorofman reposted thisI say this all the time but it hit me again this week. The CMO Whisperer Advisory was not built by me or my partners. It was built by thousands of conversations with CMOs over twenty five years. Everything we create comes straight from what real leaders tell me when the room is quiet and the guard comes down. And this week’s gem came from Jake Sorofman, former CMO of Pendo.io and VP and Chief of Research at Gartner. Jake dropped a line that landed with the kind of thud only truth makes: “You cannot innovate while you operate.” He walked me through why he believes leaders keep tripping over this. Operating pulls you into the gravity of the urgent. It traps you inside the noise, the dashboards, the back-to-back meetings, the machinery that keeps the business alive but steals the oxygen required for anything new. Innovation needs altitude. It needs breathing room. It needs the freedom to challenge what everyone has quietly accepted as immovable. Jake said something else that stuck with me. Innovation survives only when leaders create intentional separation between what must run and what must evolve. When they protect the mental space required to imagine something better. When they acknowledge that focus is finite, and trying to run the entire machine while rebuilding it is the fastest way to stall momentum. Brands forget this. CMOs tell me they feel trapped inside the engine room. Teams confuse activity with progress. Everyone wonders why transformation never shows up the way the deck promised it would. The simple truth is the one Jake voiced. Operating keeps you alive. Innovation keeps you relevant. And every time a CMO trusts me enough to say these things out loud, it reinforces why we built this platform in the first place. “You cannot innovate while you operate.” I hear it from CMOs everywhere. Jake just happened to say it out loud. #CMOWhisperer #MarketingLeadership #InnovationInMotion #CMOInsights #GrowthMindset Lou Bruce DeLu Jason Jeff Nataly Billee Lana
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Jake Sorofman reposted thisJake Sorofman reposted thisWe are looking for interns for 24 and Up. Looking for people that can come into the office in downtown Raleigh, a day or two a week. Hours are flexible. Not all work needs to be in the office. Design -- Looking for someone to help with web design, presentation and collateral design work and possibly some light product UX work (with figma, claude, v0). If interested connect and DM me a portfolio. Engineering -- Help us protoype and build new products (lots of AI work and lots of AI use expected). Past coding experience a must. Grad or undergrad. If interested connect and DM me. "Business" -- Think venture capital analyst, but for a venture studio. You will have to work with me a good bit. A little Ops work thrown in. Ideally, looking for a CS or engineering undergrad that is now getting their MBA, but open for the right person. If interested connect and DM me.
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Jake Sorofman reposted thisJake Sorofman reposted thisToday, I am going to put on my Invest Clearly hat through the lens of a capital raiser. I work with a lot of GPs and capital raises. The market we are emerging from is difficult. Investors are hesitant. Converting leads to committed capital takes longer. Investor trust is burnt. And that is the real hurdle. GPs need to earn the trust of LPs. That job is people-intensive. It takes time (60-90 days per lead). If you want to raise more capital with the same resources, you need to figure out how to scale trust – I’d give this advice even if I wasn’t affiliated with Invest Clearly. Trust is the single largest barrier between your pipeline and your fund close. And you can’t scale trust alone. You can’t do it with testimonials on your website. You can’t do it with influencer marketing. And you certainly can’t do it with automation or a glossy deck. Defined, transparent validation builds trust. If you want to scale trust and lower your capital raising overhead, the next step is simple: start asking your LPs for reviews on Invest Clearly.
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Jake Sorofman posted thisIn a LinkedIn post last week, I asserted that most organizations struggle to measure product marketing effectiveness. I called PMM a dark art. And, for most organizations, it very much is that. But I could’ve been clearer in saying that, while most organizations struggle to measure PMM effectiveness, that’s not to say it can't be done. Many companies focus on broad correlations between PMM outputs and shared revenue goals—demand, conversions, win rates, ARR, NRR. That’s a good start, but wholly insufficient. Why? It brings to mind the analogy of the pig and the hen. The hen is certainly involved in breakfast: she lays the egg. But the pig? Totally committed (for the sake of bacon). Many would say PMM is the hen in this story. Involved, yes, but the degree of commitment is a matter of interpretation. So in the absence of more direct PMM attribution, many companies default to true/false binaries—accomplishing project completion, launches, enablement, presentations and other assets and deliverables. But these are activities, not outcomes. If an organization is more mature, they’ll measure how PMM asset usage aligns to funnel stage progression. For example, sellers using a specific asset at a certain sales cycle stage saw an 10% lift in conversion rate. That’s better, but still imprecise. The most mature organizations are cracking open these assets and looking at the messages themselves. AI allows us to understand how specific language, value props, and communication patterns in prospect conversations, marketing channels and the like impact the outcomes we want to see. That’s the last mile of PMM measurement, shining light on the actual messages and how they move buyers to take action. This creates a learning loop that helps an entire GTM organization home in on what’s working and what’s not. And, mercifully, it transforms PMM from dark art into data-driven science.
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Jake Sorofman posted thisProduct marketing is the hardest job in the B2B marketing stack. Why? Because no one knows how to measure its effectiveness. This is why PMM leaders often end up in the hot seat when revenue targets are missed. I think of it as an interrogation chain. First, the CEO interrogates sales and sales leadership. That’s a binary. It either is or isn’t working. And it’s measurable. Next, the CEO moves onto demand gen. That’s also a measurable binary. Satisfied with those first two conclusions, the CEO moves on to PMM. Here, in the absence of data, they enter a world of dark arts. It becomes a confidence game, a willingness to believe in the sorcery of the person in that role. I don’t say that to disparage the PMM leader as some sort of charlatan. They're often anything but. It just feels that way in the absence of data. The PMM leader is only armed with logic and wit to defend themselves in the face of scrutiny. It’s the PMM’s voice against the CEO’s. Guess who wins?
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Jake Sorofman posted thisI’ve seen so many companies struggle to make their story stick. They awkwardly try on and throw away narratives like ill-fitting suits. They fumble to find a story that’s widely adopted and reinforced across the executive ranks and every customer-facing function. In my experience, there are two primary causes of this dysfunction, which can be characterized as top-down and bottom-up. Top-down dysfunction starts with the CEO, who is really the chief storytelling officer. The story that sticks is the one that the CEO wakes up most excited to tell. But that’s only part of the battle because the CEO’s enthusiasm is necessary, but insufficient. In order to make a story stick, everyone needs to get onboard. The CEO has the unique opportunity to put their thumb on the scale, but ultimately everyone has to believe it deep in their bones. Too often, the CEO shows up with a story that’s theirs alone. Sometimes it came from the last high-octane conversation they had, or something they read that really spun them up. That becomes the thing they wake up most excited to talk about. But others might not get it. And when they don’t, the story dies a slow death. Slow, because few will speak truth to power. Bottom up dysfunction is quite the opposite: It’s the story offering made to the CEO. Sometimes it hits, but it’s often summarily rejected like a foreign body in the bloodstream. Fast, because … well, because they’re the CEO. While this is hardly what you want, it’s actually the better scenario because misalignment over time is the undoing of many organizations. The solution is a meeting in the middle that comes from an inclusive approach to story creation, informed by real data, and facilitated by a third-party without a dog in the fight. Only then can you arrive at a story the entire company is excited to tell.
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Jake Sorofman reposted thisJake Sorofman reposted thisAnnouncing our new video series SAID DIFFERENTLY, where we dive into B2B storytelling and messaging. In our first episode, we welcome guest Jake Sorofman - former CMO of Visier Inc. and Pendo.io - to talk about the C-suite's stake and role in messaging prioritization. In our 2-minute clip here, Jake explains to our host Jennifer Sikora his belief that great messaging ("rocket fuel") is second only to great products for predicting revenue success. See comments for link to the full 20-minute interview. https://lnkd.in/e44Xy5aF
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Jake Sorofman posted thisMarketers tend to overload messaging to capture every possible dimension of value, differentiation, and category context. What’s so clear in our heads, to our audiences becomes a chaotic assemblage of hyphenated grandiosity or a befuddling word salad served cold. Sometimes this is driven by a desire to leave nothing on the floor. Other times it’s driven by an instinct to inflate the importance of our story. Neither works. I use the three Cs as a framework to enforce discipline in the distillation of messages. Borrowing from the logic of the iron triangle used by project managers to force a trade-off between speed quality and cost, the three Cs applies the same reduction to messaging: Clear Compelling Complete Pick two. Much like the iron triangle, the whole enterprise collapses upon itself when you add the third. Clear and complete gives you perfectly good descriptive messaging. ✅ Clear and compelling grabs attention and holds it tight. 🎯 Truthfully, complete and compelling can also grab attention, but it’s the weakest option of the three. It grabs attention with a looser grip. 👌 Less is, indeed, more. Much like strategy in general, messaging is an exercise in sacrifice. What you leave behind makes all the difference. When you distill messaging to its most reduced form, you get the clarity, richness and depth of a chef’s sauce. When you hoard and protect and defend every last element of your messaging you end up with something like a dog’s breakfast.
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Jake Sorofman liked thisJake Sorofman liked thisAsking my fellow marketers, if you could ask a former CMO anything, what would it be? Career advice? Whose the biggest obstacle in the C-suite? What’s the real value of an MBA today? How can a very technical person get ahead in the corporate game? Does anyone know HubSpot except me? My question: Why am I still talking about opens and clicks in 2026? DC Marketing Tech Talks is hosting an upcoming ask-me-anything panel discussion featuring 3x veteran Chief Marketing Officers Jake Sorofman, Bill Cronin, and Tracey Moon Inside the Mind of a CMO: Ask-Me-Anything When: Tuesday, May 19 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM ET Where: SalesIntel 8614 Westwood Center Dr Vienna, VA 22182 Register: https://lnkd.in/dPS_-jvZ Let me know what is on your mind fellow marketers! Moni Oloyede, Natalie Robb, Stephen A. Hart, Tara L. Finney, Alex Lindley, Joy Levin, Janet Sifers, Chris Rodriguez, Timothy Wiles, William Eichhorn, Geoff Livingston, Michele Nieberding 🚀, Brent Kostak, Michael Rejmaniak, Robin Izsak-Tseng, Phil Gamache, Darrell Alfonso, Jacqueline Freedman 🦋, Sahil Patel, Yizhu S., Shiv Panchagiri, Beth Tadele, Uwa Oduwa Fields, Meredith Jenkins, Robert Brzowsky, Phillip Gallof, Catey Jednorski, Juliette Ferraro, Emma Chainani, Michael Hayes, Brittany Henneberry, Brooklyn Kiosow, Dave Lieberman, Nancy C., Gloria C. Fazio, Elizabeth (Libby) O'Brien #marketing #marketingcareer #chiefmarketingofficer #careeradvice
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Education
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Licenses & Certifications
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Merchant Mariner
USCG Merchant Marine Captain
Issued
Publications
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Gartner Blog Network
Gartner, Inc.
See publication100+ blog posts on digital marketing and customer experience topics. Published weekly.
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Published Research
Gartner, Inc.
See publication100+ published research notes on digital marketing and customer experience topics, including:
Content marketing
Brand storytelling
Marketing strategy
Innovation
Customer insight
Experience design
Mobile marketing
Honors & Awards
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Best Marketing Leaders 2019
Comparably
One of the top 25 marketing leaders in the US according to employee-based surveys: https://www.comparably.com/blog/best-marketing-leaders-2019/
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Margaret J. Downes Award for Excellence in the Capstone Project
University of North Carolina at Asheville
Awarded for thesis: "Becalmed: Essays from a New England Childhood"
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2014 Golden Quill Award
Gartner, Inc.
The Golden Quill Award recognizes writing excellence in published research.
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2015 Inquiry Excellence Award
Gartner, Inc.
The Inquiry Excellence Award recognizes outstanding performance in fulfilling Gartner client inquiries.
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George Hay Brown Marketing Scholar Nominee
American Marketing Association
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💫Marie Angselius Schönbeck
CAI can be a game-changer—if done right. Join this exclusive, no-fluff session with two industry leaders: 👩💼 Donna Fluss – President, DMG Consulting LLC 🧠 Anne Jenkins – VP, Solutions Architecture, Teneo.ai They’ll unpack the real-world lessons that separate transformational CX success stories from CAI projects that fall short. This isn’t another hype session—it’s a conversation grounded in results. You’ll walk away with: 🔧 Practical implementation tactics that actually work ⚡ Speed-to-value strategies that don’t compromise compliance 🧭 Proven playbooks from high-performing enterprise deployments Webinar: CAI Implementation Best Practices That Deliver September 3 | 🕛 12:00 EDT / 18:00 CEST https://lnkd.in/dqTP3wwN The future of CX is already here. Make sure you’re doing it smarter. #ConversationalAI #CustomerExperience #CXStrategy #CAI #TeneoAI #DMGConsulting #ContactCenter #DigitalTransformation Spencer Noble Kristen McFadden Gandhi Patrik Rosenberg Anne Jenkins Howard Leary II Benjamin Kolz, PhD Tim Bartz Yoleidy Carvajal Ramazan Gurbuz Andrea Flores Miralles Iman Gozal M. Molly Poole John Perrin Chris McManus Graziella Gioia Michael Kenney Lee A. Kayne Jon Cedercreutz Henry Danser Jeff Mazur Per Ottosson Fredrik Törgren
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Ashley Hart
I am looking forward to today's discussion with Heather Preu, Allison Kuhn and James Wells on the chaos that is happening in #manufacturing and what #qualityteams and #operations leaders should be doing now to achieve operational excellence through 2026! #operationalexcellence #industry40 #lifesciences #compliance #qms #qualitymanagement #frontlineoperations #connectedfrontlineworker
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Eric Herzog
If you missed enterprise cyber and AI storage leader Infinidat at Gartner IOCS last week, join us THIS Thurs (Dec 18) as we discuss the critical trends in enterprise storage at the 7th Annual Insight Jam Conference in our keynote address: "Key Enterprise Storage Topics For Machine Age Market Architecture". Tune in at 8am PT/11am/4pm GMT/5pm CET to explore how 2026 will unfold for enterprise storage: • Cyber storage resilience and its critical importance to an overall corporate cyber security strategy • AI - both enterprise storage for AI applications and workloads and also the use of AI inside of storage systems for ease of management and to cut costs • The impact of enterprise storage on power budgets and power efficiency • How enterprise storage can dramatically reduce IT CAPEX, IT OPEX, and IT resource needs https://bit.ly/48T0osy #infinidat #enterprisestorage #enterprisearchitecture #enterprisesecurity #storagesystems #storagesecurity #cyberstorage #storagearchitecture #SAN #NAS #NVME #allflashstorage #allflash #allflasharray #flashstorage #flash #flasharray #cyberresilience #cyberrecovery #cyberdection #malware #malwarerecovery #malwareprotection #malwaredectection #ransomware #ransomwarerecovery #ransomwaredetection #ransomwareprotection
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Sandeep Sharma
Agentic AI is set to disrupt the global 650+ billion dollars (US$) accounting services market*. 🚨 Big move from Thomson Reuters: they've launched CoCounsel, an agentic AI system purpose-built for tax, audit, and accounting professionals. 🧠 A few standout takeaways from the launch: - Solid business function/domain pillar: CoCounsel is trained on trusted content (Checkpoint, Westlaw, Practical Law) and vetted by an army of in-house domain experts. This is super critical for any AI solution to be effective and performant (results oriented). - Goal-driven orchestration: The AI doesn’t just generate responses—it completes full tasks like compliance reviews, client memo drafting, and diagnostics resolution. This is embedded into accounting workflows, making it an inseparable and valuable. - Built-in accountability: Every action is governed by explainability, traceability, and human-in-the-loop oversight. Why should this matter to #professionalservices/ #accountingservices firms? They're reeling under: - Margin Squeeze: Rising costs and pricing pressure are eroding profitability, especially in compliance-heavy work. - Talent Shortages: Skilled professionals are hard to find, harder to retain — and often overburdened with repetitive tasks. - Low Productivity: A significant portion of staff time is spent on manual reviews, documentation, and back-office processes. - Client Expectations Are Shifting: Clients now demand faster turnaround, strategic insights, and transparent value — not just billable hours. - Growing Regulatory Complexity: Constantly evolving tax codes, audit standards, and industry regulations make compliance riskier and more time-consuming. - Inconsistent Quality: Human-dependent processes lead to variation in output and higher error rates across teams and geographies. Does Agentic AI create real impact? The answer is a YES. - Real-world impact: Firms report cutting week-long review tasks down to under an hour with reusable agentic templates. Good to see customers adopting this already. Excited to see how this evolves across legal, risk, and compliance in the months ahead. My sense is that the industry will catch up real fast- at least in this segment! #AgenticAI #EnterpriseAI #ThomsonReuters #AccountingTech #TaxTech #AuditInnovation #CognitiveAutomation #FutureOfWork #LegalTech Jiten Thaker SUKHENDU R. Dr. Debasree Kundu Sandiip Kothaari, Ph.D. Sandeep Bansal Brian Wood Chandana Gopal Konsulteer * Source: The Business Research Company https://lnkd.in/gGdfG9_4
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Suresh Madhuvarsu
Bigger vendor isn’t always better for Sales Teams. 📉 The Highspot + Seismic merger is official. While the headlines talk about "Market Leadership," many sales leaders are asking a different question: "How long will it take for my support ticket to get answered during this multi-year integration?" "Where is my roadmap feature that was promised?" History shows that massive tech mergers often lead to: ❌ Slower innovation cycles. ❌ Integration headaches for the customer. ❌ A "feature bloat" that makes simple tasks complex. AND esepcially in 2026, sales teams can't afford that slow response and ambiguity affecting their core function ⇉ revenue generation. In the sales enablement space, we are hitting an inflection point. The market is splitting into two: ↳ The Giants: Massive, end-to-end "Revenue Clouds" that are powerful but complex. ↳ The Specialized: Nimble, AI-native platforms like SalesTable AI that focus on simple and AI first; making your reps Ready to Sell on Day 1. Congrats to the teams at Highspot and Seismic, but for those of you looking for speed and agility in 2026... the game just changed and we are here to collaborate. Gerhard Gschwandtner - this is the exact topic we discussed during our interview :) Now, it's happening. https://lnkd.in/gtF3R-Zc #SalesTech #StartupLife #SalesReadiness #SalesEnablement #Consolidation #SalesTable
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Josh Newman
Most enterprises still think collateral = “one master deck.” ❌ That deck ends up bloated, confusing, and irrelevant in 80% of buyer conversations. The real move is to build collateral for situations: 💡 Quick one-pagers for busy execs 💡 ROI snapshots for CFOs 💡 Deep dives for evaluators Generic content kills momentum. Tailored content moves deals forward. So...are you giving your sales reps the right collateral?
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Emily He
I’m thrilled to welcome Docusign to the Gong family 💜 DocuSign has selected the Gong Revenue AI Operating System to accelerate sales productivity and strengthen go-to-market execution. With Revenue AI, their team will be able to: ✅ Turn customer signals into actionable insights ✅ Coach and scale best practices in real time ✅ Drive more consistent, predictable growth As Paula Hansen, President & CRO at DocuSign, put it: "The Gong Revenue AI OS provides the actionable insights and visibility we need to elevate our customer engagement, increase our sales productivity, and ultimately fuel our growth in key areas of our business. Gong’s technology allows us to coach at scale, drive repeatable best practices, and empower our teams with the data they need to succeed." Thrilled to partner with an iconic company shaping the future of intelligent agreements – and now, powering their next chapter with Revenue AI.
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Scott Gordon
The evolving B2B tech landscape makes competitive displacement the default path for GTM teams. Simultaneously, it adds new layers of organizational risk, internal scrutiny, and emotional complexity for buyers. We created The Definitive Guide for Competitive Displacement to give GTM teams a smarter way forward—rooted in precise intelligence, not spray-and-pray ABM. Inside, you’ll discover: ▪️ Why traditional competitive intelligence leaves Sales, Marketing, CS, and Product flying blind ▪️ The exact data signals that show which accounts are truly ready to switch — and which never will ▪️ A step-by-step campaign framework for turning competitor intelligence into pipeline ▪️ GTM best practices from strategy to execution ▪️ How to fuse data, content, and activation into a single displacement play The switching window opens for buyers when the cost of staying exceeds the risk of moving. This guide helps you locate that window and act before it closes:
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