I recently went one on one with Sonita Lontoh. Sonita is the Global Head of Marketing (CMO) for Personalization, 3D Printing & Digital Manufacturing at HP and a board member at Sunrun, the largest residential solar-and-battery company in the US.

Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks, or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?

Sonita: Thank you for the opportunity to have a conversation. Currently, I’m the Division CMO for HP’s new Personalization & 3D Printing business and am an independent board director at two public companies: Sunrun, who’s the largest consumer solar-and-battery company in the US and TrueBlue, a workforce solutions company who has connected approximately 2 million people to work in the past three years. 

Over the past 25 years, I have had the honor and privilege to lead and advise at the intersection of innovation, disruptive technologies, and digital transformation and lead programs that have contributed multi-billion-dollar benefits and positive impacts to businesses, consumers, and society.

And how I got to this point is more of a journey, not always clear what career path or industry I wanted to go into, however over the years have leveraged a few guiding principles to guide me throughout my journey. Those guiding principles include 1) realizing that I love the intersection of new technology, new business models and even a little bit of policy, 2) realizing I want to work in an areas that are contributing something more to society instead of just selling a product, and 3) realizing that working in these new areas of technology have really helped me find the intersection of my passion (which is what I love), with my skills (which is what I’m good at) and most importantly with my purpose (which is working in an area such as digital energy or digital manufacturing that is contributing something more to society).

Adam: What is the most important attribute of an effective CMO?

Sonita: I think there are two important attributes to be an effective CMO. First, you must be customer-centric, you must advocate for the customers and always be that voice of the customer. My experiences have been with companies that create new disruptive technologies and at times, the brilliant technologies can focus too much on the technology itself but not enough on the customers. As a CMO, you should always encourage everyone to truly take the time to understand the customers’ pain points and can clearly articulate how technology solutions are solving customers’ problems. Second, CMO should be business-centric, clearly understand that the role of Marketing is to support business growth and success. These days, CMOs are also expected to be more analytical and creative, you must be able to straddle both worlds and use both your left brain and right brain. 

Adam: What are three things everyone should understand about marketing?

Sonita: The way I think about marketing in this rapidly-changing world is not just about marketing with the small “m”, but more importantly, Marketing with the big “M”. What I meant with the latter is that Marketing should be viewed as a function that helps create new categories, support new go-to-market, acts as the voice of the customer, influence new technology-enabled services business models, and drive new growth opportunities. Given my background in engineering and business, and being involved with new disruptive technologies, I view marketing not only as a function that drive creative campaigns, but also as a function that advocates for the customers and supports new business models to drive growth. 

Adam: What are three things people who work in marketing should understand?

Sonita: I will answer this from the perspective of marketing a new disruptive technology that transforms industries. This requires the marketers to think outside the box to create a new category. In essence, the marketing approach for this situation focuses on influencing a new market transition through strategies that put customers at the center, which can be summarized in 3 main pillars:

1) The first pillar is about Leading the Market & Creating awareness. 

This is basically about leading the narrative for the future of the new technology, to drive awareness & acceptance of the new technology, and proactive campaigns that position your company as that trusted solutions partner who helps customers succeed in their transformation journey

2) The second pillar is about Showcasing Customers Successes. 

This is one of my most important pillars as I believe nothing speaks louder than a customer success. This is about creating a platform that enables customer advocacy. I truly believe that you succeed when your customers succeed. We showcase our customers successes through our customer videos, through creating a platform for your customers to shine and share their best practices, lessons learned and successes through speaking engagements, presentations, webinars, articles, and industry awards. 

3) The third and last pillar is about Creating Demand & Drive Growth

You achieve this through targeted campaigns that focuses on educating the market of the value and outcome that the new technology solutions can deliver to their businesses. At the end of the day, Marketing must be the engine of growth.

Adam: What is your best advice for those working at big organizations on how to best climb the corporate ladder?

Sonita: I would like to share a few guiding principles that can be applied throughout your career and leadership journey, no matter whether you’re with a big corporation, a nimble start-up, or your own entrepreneurial endeavors. 

I’d say, for me personally, those guiding principles are:

1) Have a growth mindset, embrace change.

There’s always a delicate balance between the status quo and change. A good business leader balances   them and can make sound decisions when faced with change. If you’re lucky enough to foresee the change, initiate and control it. Your colleagues and teams are more likely to respect and trust you when you establish a track record of effective decision making.

2) Learn from your mistakes.

As I say often, fail and fail fast. Perfection is overrated. It’s okay to make a mistake as long as you learn from it. I certainly have made plenty of mistakes, but I always did my best to admit and own up to it.  We make mistakes but we learn from it to improve the next round. People need to feel comfortable taking a different route sometimes. If we aren’t making mistakes, we aren’t reaching outside of our comfort zones, and that is the biggest mistake of all. 

3) Celebrate small victories.

With everything moving so fast, it can be easy to gloss over small victories. Instead, make a conscious effort to celebrate those. One of my team members recently achieved a small milestone with his projects.  It wasn’t much but it was encouraging that he was on the right track.  So, we celebrated!  Whether it’s things like this or your team reaching a monthly goal, stay mindful so that you can notice and celebrate all victories along the way. As business leaders, we have a responsibility to create a nurturing and healthy environment for our team members.

4) Find good mentors and sponsors, both men and women. 

Most people understand the concept of mentorship, but not so much of sponsorship. A mentor is someone you exchange and bounce ideas from. A sponsor is someone, usually more experienced and quite powerful in the organization, who is willing to put his/her reputation on the line to advocate for you to help advance your career. A good mentor gives advice.  A good sponsor advocates for you to earn the opportunity to get ahead. Another thing I’d advise is to become a mentor. I understand this may not feel natural to someone who’s just starting out in his/her career, but in the long run, it helps build your leadership skills tremendously.

Adam: What is your best advice for entrepreneurs and those working at small businesses on how to cultivate relationships and sell to large companies?

Sonita: Show it, don’t just say it. Convince a champion inside the big corporation whose vision you can help realize with your solutions, do a pilot project to prove benefits, then if successful, share the customer success stories with other corporations.

Adam: In your experience, what are the defining qualities of an effective leader? How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?

Sonita: I would like to share a few defining qualities that I believe are necessary to be a strong leader. My own leadership principles have evolved over time, but in general can be summarized as follows:

1) Leaders are customer-focused. 

They take the time to understand the customer’s pain points and can articulate how the company’s solutions are helping to solve the customers’ problems. Leaders encourage other leaders and their team members to be customer-centric.

2) Leaders act like owners. 

They think long term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team. 

3) And as I mentioned previously, leaders develop other leaders, not other followers. 

To be a true leader, you must build trust, credibility, influence and most importantly, be willing and able to intentionally develop others to be leaders themselves. When there’re more leaders, more of the organization’s goals can be accomplished. The more you raise up new leaders, the more you will change the lives of all members of the team. And if you continue to invest in both growing yourself and developing others who are willing and able to develop yet other leaders, then you may reach the pinnacle of leadership.

Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives, and civic leaders?

Sonita:

1. Think of how you can be of service to others, to your customers, your employees, your constituents. Practice servant leadership.

2. Talk less, listen more.

3. Don’t just focus on yourself and your passion, but instead, combine your passion (what you love), with your skills (what you’re good at) and most importantly, with your purpose (what the world needs).

Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?

Sonita: Just be yourself, be authentic, be comfortable in your own skin.

Adam: What is one thing everyone should be doing to pay it forward?

Sonita: Be kind, as kindness makes the world better. 

Adam: Is there anything else you would like to share?

Sonita: Yes, it’s about the importance of finding your purpose. As I became more established in my career, I started mentoring and sponsoring many young people, be formally through my own nonprofit or other programs I’m involved in, or informally. One thing I notice with young people these days is that many of them mistakenly believe that to be happy, they must pursue their passion and as a result, focus too much on the passion part. Don’t get me wrong, I think passion is important and in fact, it’s best if you can work in an area that you’re passionate about. However, passion in itself is not enough. Over time I have found that true happiness and success come from doing the intersection of what you love (passion), what you’re good at (skills) and what the world needs (purpose). When you focus on passion alone, you are only focusing on yourself. But when you start thinking about how you can combine that passion with your skills and purpose, you shift the frame of reference from you to how you can be a valuable contributor to society and help the world solve its problems. This paradigm shift in thinking is powerful b/c it makes you less self-absorbed and ironically, more likely to be genuinely happy. I’ve found that people who are working hard to solve the biggest problems are oftentimes also compensated in the biggest ways, not just in financial terms, but also, in human satisfaction terms. The good news is that there are a lot of big problems in this world to solve, you can pick your choice. So, as we all think through our own journey, I always encourage people to always think of ways of how we can combine our passion, our skills, and most importantly, our purpose.


Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.

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