Ep 9: Joeri Billast - the Future CMO

Transcript

TRANSCRIPT

Matt Wilkinson and Jasmine Gruia-Gray sit down with Joeri Billast, author of The Future CMO, to discuss how marketing leaders can prove impact to CFOs while maintaining credibility with technical audiences. Joeri shares insights from interviewing 250+ executives and reveals the frameworks that help CMOs become Chief Value Officers who orchestrate—not control—distributed value creation across organizations.

Welcome and Book Launch Celebration

Matt Wilkinson [00:01]

Hello and welcome to a splice of life science marketing. I'm Matt Wilkinson and today I have with me Jasmine as always and Joeri Billast, the author of The Future CMO. If you've got tech and vision but zero visibility, this one's really for you. Joeri is the web three CMO. He's a fractional CMO and an AI powered content architect who turns fragmented messaging into systems that compound. He spends a lot of time advising Web3 and AI brands on strategy, structure and storytelling, builds thought leadership that converts and amplifies live form keynotes and panels and onsite content creation. He also runs the top 5% Web3 CMO stories podcast, featuring voices like Philip Kotler and execs from Ledger and Wallet Connect. So Joeri, let's start with a really exciting development. As you know, you're the author of the future of the environment. I'm trying to make sure that shows up on the screen.

Joeri Billast [01:04]

Absolutely. It just arrived today. So my big box, you know, every moment that an author loves, you know, when this box arrives with all the books, it happened just before the podcast episode recording.

Jasmine Gruia-Gray [01:19]

Congrats!

The One-Sentence Pitch

Matt Wilkinson [01:19]

Fantastic. Excellent. Congratulations. I know I had a front row seat at sort of looking at it just before it was launched and I really enjoyed it then. But if you had to describe this book to a life science tool CMO who just grabbed coffee between back to back meetings, what's the one sentence pitch that would make them want to keep reading?

Joeri Billast [01:38]

and that is always challenging, of course. But for me, I call it like a playbook for modern marketing leaders, as I put it here, modern CMOs, but who need to prove their impact to the CFO. They need to use CFO language. And also on the other side, they need to navigate AI communities in a world where technical competence is very important.

And what really differentiates leaders today is audacity and is trust. I'm talking a lot about this in the book. Credibility is really important. So it's not a tech book. It's a leadership book more for marketers who want to stay human while everything around them changes. It's based on real conversations. You mentioned my podcast. I had more than 250 leaders on my show. And so, yeah, this has been the inspiration.

for this book. So in one sentence, I would say it is the missing bridge between where marketing leaders, where they are today and where they are tomorrow.

Matt Wilkinson [02:44]

Brilliant, thank you.

Philip Kotler's Endorsement

Jasmine Gruia-Gray [02:44]

Yeah, I love that the missing bridge. I also love the fact that you talk about it in terms of conversations. And I was thrilled for you to see that your book was endorsed by Philip Kotler, the father of modern marketing. What did that mean for you personally? And how do you see his legacy connecting with your vision for the future CMO?

Joeri Billast [03:14]

That's a really interesting question. And of course, having the endorsement of Philip Kotler, that's really amazing because for me, even before I hit publish on the book, it's already a success because, you know, if Philip Kotler says it's good, well, you know, anyone can say anything. For me, it's already, you know, I already won, right? So yes, I had the pleasure.

of being, of seeing him a few times, one time in the Rise community of Mark Schaeffer, where Matt is also a member. I don't know, Jasmine, if you are in there. You are there too. So yeah, one time we had a Zoom meeting and Philip Kotler was there at Zoom meeting. At the later moment, I had the pleasure of giving a keynote about the theme of the future in Cairo at Marketing Plus. And Philip Kotler was the closing keynote after me, but he was online.

And I connected them with Christian Sarkar, who is working with him together. And then I said, okay, I would like to have him on the podcast. So he came on the podcast, but if you don't know Philip Kotler, he's already 93, 94 years old. So the fact for him to say yes, to come on the show as a brilliant was amazing. And then I said, you know, why not just ask if he wants to, you know, have a look at the book.

And then he actually read it and then he gave such a big endorsement. So for me, it was incredible. And for the book itself, of course, we all know Philip Kotler, if you are a marketer, you studied it for peace, all the systems, but the conversation on the podcast was about, about value, you know, how the CMO should be really occupied with value and, and avoid mistakes and so on. And yeah, that was one of the basis for the chapters of the book.

Jasmine Gruia-Gray [05:07]

Yeah, congratulations. And again, that's fantastic.

From Podcast to Book

Matt Wilkinson [05:11]

Yeah, congratulations. Not only have you spoken to Philip Kotler, but you've had an incredible front row seat interviewing, I think you said 250 plus executives from Web3 and crypto on your podcast. Now, what was that aha moment that made you think, I really need to turn this into a book?

Joeri Billast [05:31]

Well, actually, if maybe if you checked out my LinkedIn or my past, I already wrote one book, the 5K challenge for solo entrepreneurs was a few years ago, was for entrepreneurs, but you know, work independently and who are starting their new business. And I said, I want to write a new book, but what about? And then, so it's something that you have in your head, in your mind, but you really need like one push to start.

And so, because I was creating all these podcast episodes and the blog content, so that's, I repurposed it in articles. I got a lot of content. And then I had this opportunity to speak to Mark Schaefer, you know, when he said, when he sat in the community, I have some time for people who want to talk to me. I said, yes, Mark, I want to talk to you. And he said to me, Joeri, why don't you write a new book? You have everything. You have all these conversations. You have the keynotes that you have been doing. And I said,

Yes, why not? So in the beginning of July, I started to write and then in two, three months it was finished, whereas my previous book took three years to write. So that was actually the push. So I had the content, I felt like I need to share it in another way, but someone needs to say, yeah, just do this. And that's what happened.

Matt Wilkinson [06:48]

When you were writing the book, did anything surprise you about what these CMOs were saying and what they had in common?

Joeri Billast [06:56]

Well, yeah, the trust factor, of course, was something that came back every time. The fact of being understood by the audience or within the company is important. But the trust factor to the outside, if you are now in Web3, because of my activities, I talk a lot with Web3 leaders or AI leaders. Trust is really important, certainly in crypto.

But also in life sciences, trust is also important. Trust backed by data because you don't have trust, you go nowhere. So the trust factor was something that was really important. And then also what we just said about avoiding these mistakes, avoiding errors and the way how you communicate about that with your customers, which again builds trust. So yeah, that was one of the main outcomes.

Speaking CFO Language While Maintaining Scientific Credibility

Jasmine Gruia-Gray [07:56]

So one of your core arguments, especially at the beginning of the book, is that CMOs need to speak the CFO language, the language of finance, of margins, lifetime value, pipeline impact, and so on. In life science tools, we're in this interesting spot where on the one hand, our customers are scientists who care about data quality and reproducibility. And on the other hand, internally, we're still getting budget questions from finance. How do you recommend balancing both conversations, staying credible with scientists while proving ROI to the C-suite?

Joeri Billast [08:40]

Yeah, that's indeed the balancing act I talk about and it's a reality for all CMOs, but I think it's especially relevant in life sciences. And you're talking about data credibility to scientists and you're talking about pipeline impact for the CFO. So I believe that you need to be bilingual, actually. So on one side, when you speak to the scientists, you're focusing on what matters to them, which is precision, reproducibility, the clear methodology.

And that's how you earn trust. And on the other side, with the CFO, you translate this precision into business outcome. And so I'm talking about customer acquisition costs, win rates, pipeline velocity, or the retention. And so the smart CMOs build a unified language between these worlds. And I think the key here is actually to show how scientific rigor supports financial outcomes. Like if you're launching an instrumentation product...

And the scientific validation improves adoption rates and that reduces the churn. So the CFO cares about the churn. And so your challenge is not so much to choose where you speak, but to connect the two. And if you can show that the trust you build with the scientists, that translates into higher average deal sizes, faster conversions, stronger customer lifetime value, you've just nailed the balance.

Matt Wilkinson [10:28]

I really like that and I see it in perhaps when we're doing a value proposition work, there's often a really big temptation to say, well, what the scientists care about is X and finance cares about Y. But actually when you start to really understand what the drivers and motivations of those scientists are...

you start to understand that actually they're measured on certain lab efficiencies themselves. They might be worrying about grant budgets. And so actually there is that language that you can have that actually unifies and links back to the finance team. And that actually you're both talking to ROI. You're not talking to different things. ROI has just, or value is just measured slightly differently with the scientists.

Joeri Billast [11:13]

Exactly. And that's where I talk about the future CMO being actually a value translator. You need to listen in both directions and find the common ground. In the scientists, as you said, care about grant efficiency, reproducibility, and the CFO cares about payback periods, margin expansions. But if your marketing story can prove that your tool improves lab productivity by 30%, which helps labs get more data per grant dollar,

That's music to both years. And so the CMO sits in that middle and bridges the gap. And what often helps is to build internal dashboards that speak to both sides, which is scientific adoption milestones and financial metrics side by side. When the CFO sees that the strong clinical validation drives shorter sales cycles or more upsell, they start to see marketing as strategic and not as a cost center.

Trust as the Currency for Modern CMOs

Jasmine Gruia-Gray [12:24]

You just mentioned trust and you mentioned it at the beginning of our conversation as well. And it runs through the entire book, trust, credibility, transparency. In life science, we see trust showing up in peer citations. We see it in Reddit threads comparing products. We see it in informal networks that recommend or warn against vendors. How do you think CMOs can build trust that's authentic and scalable at the same time?

Joeri Billast [13:01]

That's a great question. Trust is not just important, it's the currency now for modern CMOs, especially in technical fields like life science. And it's not built through campaigns alone, as I write in the book, but it's through consistency, the transparency, and proof over time. And in your world, as you mentioned, scientists don't trust advertising anymore. They trust peer references, published data.

objective reviews, even these Reddit threads you mentioned where people are extremely honest. And so here are a few ways to build trust in a way that's authentic and that scales. First, be where the conversation happens. So platforms like Reddit, ResearchGate, biotech Slack groups. Your customers are comparing notes. If you ignore this, you lose visibility and trust by default. Monitor, but also participate meaningfully.

And so don't just defend your product, but contribute thoughtful answers. Second, make your data transparent. I'm talking about open access, application notes, real-world protocols, webinars with actual users, not just marketing speak. When scientists see that you're willing to share limitations, not just benefits, that builds credibility. Third, invest in long-term relationships. Think sponsorships, fellowships, open science initiatives.

and community education. Trust scales when you show that you're not just selling, but you're advancing the field. And fourth, use social listening. This is very important. You need to know what people say before they contact you, because by the time someone raises a concern directly, many others have already made up their mind. So today's CMO must be a trust architect. You don't just broadcast value, you prove it.

with every touchpoint.

AI in Marketing Leadership

Matt Wilkinson [15:14]

I think that there's a really important thing you said there about trust, and I've just been reading Rory Sutherland's book Transport for Humans. And one of the things that he looks at, he explains trust as really understanding that you're taking a risk on behalf of the other person. And I think that's a really powerful frame.

And, you know, when you start to think about it in that context, if, you know, if a scientist is trying to consider what product they want to use, what they're often worried about is they're going to put their reputation on the line about the data that they publish. And they really want to make sure that they can trust you because you're taking some of that risk away from them because you're putting your reputation on the line alongside their reputation. And I think that's really powerful.

Joeri Billast [16:10]

That's a beautiful way to frame it. And I love that quote from Rory Sutherland, Transport for Humans. Trust is risk. And when you put it that way, it's very personal. And in your case, if a scientist chooses your product, they're not just spending budget. They're putting their name, their credibility, their career on the line. If your instrument fails or your reagent gives inconsistent results, it doesn't just hurt your brand.

it damages theirs. And so as a CMO, when you understand that level of vulnerability, you start marketing differently. You don't just sell features, you de-risk their decision. And so that means offering trial data, peer testimonials, error reporting systems that actually work, responsive support teams. It means admitting limitations upfront and being transparent when something goes wrong.

That's trust. When you share the risk, you earn permission to grow with them. And that's why long-term thinking wins in life sciences. One-off campaigns don't build this kind of confidence. Consistency, integrity, and proof do.

Matt Wilkinson [17:29]

So many CMOs we talk to are also dealing with the pressure to adopt AI and you've obviously written quite a lot about it in the book. What's your take on where AI actually adds strategic value for CMOs versus where it's just noise or shiny object syndrome?

Joeri Billast [17:51]

That's the million dollar question that many CMOs struggle with. And yes, I talk about this in the book because AI is everywhere now. Some people use it strategically and others are just chasing hype. And so I think AI adds real strategic value when it enhances decision making, personalization at scale, and operational efficiency. And where it becomes noise is when it's used just to automate without insight.

or when it replaces the human judgment without improving outcomes. Let me break this down. So where AI wins, first, in predictive analytics. AI can help CMOs spot patterns in customer behavior, predict churn, identify high intent accounts before sales even reach out. And in a complex B2B environment like life sciences, that's gold. Second, in hyper personalization.

AI can tailor content at scale based on where a prospect is in the buyer journey, their role, their engagement history. It's not generic email blasts, it's relevant, timed, contextual messaging. Third, in social listening and sentiment analysis. Like we just talked about, understanding what scientists are saying in forums, Reddit, LinkedIn. AI can process volume and sentiment at scale that no human team can manually track.

And that gives you early signals and reputational insights. And fourth, in content creation workflows. AI helps draft, optimize, repurpose. It speeds up production so your team can focus on strategy and creativity, not just output. Where it's just noise is when you automate without strategy. If you're using AI to churn out generic content that has no point of view or no value, you're just adding to the noise.

When you use AI to replace human relationships, AI should augment your sales and marketing teams, not replace trust building conversations. Or when you adopt tools just because everyone else is, without a clear use case, if you can't tie the AI tool to a business outcome, it's a distraction. So I tell CMOs, don't chase AI for AI's sake. Ask, what decision do I need to make faster? What insight am I missing?

What repetitive task is draining my team's time? If AI solves one of these, invest. If not, it's probably hype.

Jasmine Gruia-Gray [20:29]

I love that you call those out because we often think about those hygiene factors, the things that AI can help us do better, the output, the operations. But thinking about it from a strategic angle around the social listening and sentiment analysis and the predictive analytics, looking at the data. These are the things that take a lot of time, as you said, and therefore it's really hard for marketing teams, especially small teams, to focus on those strategic outcomes and to be able to then present those in CFO language when you're so busy trying to output all that content and manage all those relationships and manage the data and everything else.

Joeri Billast [21:27]

Exactly. And that's why I say in the book, AI is a lever for the CMO, but it requires strategic intention. And you're right, especially in small teams, the temptation is to use AI for speed, cranking out more emails, more posts, more campaigns. But that just creates volume, not value. And the real opportunity is in what you mentioned, the strategic work, listening at scale, understanding patterns across thousands of conversations.

spotting which accounts are warming up, identifying friction points before they escalate. And these are things that AI can do in the background quietly, continuously, so your team doesn't need to manually sift through noise. And that frees up your people to focus on relationships, strategy, storytelling, which are the human parts that AI can't replace. So when I talk to CMOs, I encourage them to think AI as first for intelligence, not just automation.

What insights can AI surface that would take you weeks or months to find manually? What early warnings can it give you? What customer signals is it picking up that you're missing? When you use AI that way, it becomes a strategic asset, not just a productivity tool.

Matt Wilkinson [22:47]

think that one of the things we've seen as well is when we start to think about use cases for AI, one of the ones that I love in particular is we recently were delivering some AI literacy training to a large biotech and we started working with their customer success teams and started working with them on how AI could help them.

And one of the really interesting use cases that came out of it was that actually a lot of their interactions were phone based or video based. And what they hadn't really thought about was by recording call transcripts, it actually gives us a repository of data for which to actually to get those early signals that actually even before we get a complaint, might we be heading towards complaints in certain areas. So I think that there's really interesting things that we use cases for AI that are probably unexplored just yet in most organisations.

Joeri Billast [28:51]

Yeah, the political analysis is something I did with my former company. I had a business intelligence company before we talked about, you know, Gen. AI in a chat-shipping moment. AI is already there for a long time. But what you just mentioned also resonated because for my book, you asked me what are the trends that you are seeing when you talk to different CMOs. I'm not remembering every conversation I have with every CMO, but...

AI does, and my blog does. So I asked it also, what are the patterns that you see in all these different conversations that I had? And so the combination of what AI said with my feeling and my gut feeling, this together brought me to the book, actually.

Leading Transformation as an Early-Career Marketer

Jasmine Gruia-Gray [29:44]

So in chapter eight on leading transformation, you spoke about organizational change. And I've been very lucky to be part of many transformations, some around integrations of two companies or two product lines. And sometimes it's just part of the strategy to have transformation, which brings on all other kinds of organizational changes that are so hard. For the early career marketers that are listening to this podcast, maybe they're running digital campaigns or supporting product launches. What's the one one or two small things that they could do to start moving their team towards this future model and towards leading transformation.

Joeri Billast [30:47]

Well, the first thing I would say, because everyone needs to start somewhere. If you cannot lead a transformation, what you can do is you can be curious. You can look at data and you can take initiatives. And so all these things together can help you to measure success, maybe in another way than the traditional way. And maybe instead of saying, we got 500 webinar signups, you could say we got 85 signups.

But it's really our ideal customer profile and actually it's 2.3 billion in pipeline or something like that. So you're not changing what you do, but how you frame it actually. And so when you start connecting this creative work with the financial impact, that's how you can create or you can build credibility, I would say, with the leadership and then they will see you as someone who understands business outcome and not is just doing campaigns as I, that's how I call like the former CMO, the old CMO would do, do campaigns. The new one, the future ready CMO is actually connecting this to the financial impact. So, and if you do this for one quarter, then probably if you work in a big organization, your manager will notice.

And that's how you can evolve. So yeah, so don't, you don't need permission. I would say to, lead with, with curiosity, but give the evidence that what you do creates value.

Jasmine Gruia-Gray [32:25]

Yeah, I love the idea of looking at the data from a different angle. A lot of these marketers have the data if we use the example of webinars of who signed up for the webinar, how many have signed up for the webinar, but thinking about those data from a different angle of, as you said, the ICPs, the personas. Maybe looking at how many times an individual or a group of individuals from the same company have attended a webinar or have engaged with other parts of the buyer's journey and connecting that through to business outcomes.

CMOs as Chief Value Officers

Matt Wilkinson [33:16]

So, yeah, absolutely. I think that we've just sort of talked about value and I really want to end on something you say in the conclusion, Joeri, that CMOs need to become chief value officers. I find that really compelling and I've always believed that marketing's role was about accelerating growth and accelerating value creation and capture. One of the challenges I think we have in life sciences tools particularly is that value creation is often really distributed. You have field application scientists going out there doing demos, building really close relationships with the customers and the users. You've got other teams generating data from the R &D teams. You've then got customer success maybe owning retention. You've obviously got sales and sometimes marketing is a bit more considered, the colouring in department. The CMO isn't often coordinating this orchestra of instruments. How do you look at a chief value officer when they're orchestrating but not controlling all those pieces? How do you take control of that and make sure that you're able to break those silos down?

Joeri Billast [34:37]

I think you put it right, the CMO should orchestrate, should compose, it's not the conductor himself or herself. So yeah, if you look at the different roles in life sciences, you have maybe the field application scientists that create value because they do demos, the publication teams, they create value through the data, the customer success, they build retention.

The job as a CMO is to make sure that it all connects into a coherent story of value and the practical ways to build a simple value dashboard around three pillars of the value equation. So you have perception, trust, and outcome. Perception is how the market sees your scientific credibility. Trust is how consistently you deliver on promises. And outcome, of course, is the measurable customer impact, research success, I would say renewals, discoveries. And when all these functions align to this dimension I just mentioned, marketing becomes a bit of the threat that keeps everything together. And so the future CMO, like you said, doesn't control the orchestra, but can make sure that everyone's playing the same song, the same song of value.

Matt Wilkinson [36:01]

Brilliant, thank you so much. I've learned so much today and I know I'd already read the book, thank you for taking the time to dig even deeper into so many fascinating areas. Quick question, Joeri, if people want to learn more about you or get in contact with you after the show, where should they go?

Joeri Billast [36:20]

a couple of places. So I'm active on social media, very active on LinkedIn. So there is, I think there is only one person with my name. It's a difficult one. So just find me on LinkedIn and connect with me. I have my podcast, which is Web3 CMO Stories. You can Google it. It's on Spotify, on Apple. I also have my podcast website. There is my personal site, a blog linked to that, which is web3cmo.net, which is actually Dutch for web3cmo.net.

And then, yeah, Matt, you're already in my community. I'm building a community based on the book, on the future CMO, which will be the future CMO community. There will be the audio book for free for everyone that grabs the e-book or the paperback and comes into the community. And that you can find through yuri.link slash future hyphen CMO hyphen school, S-K-O-O-L.

Jasmine Gruia-Gray [37:19]

Well, thank you again, Joeri, and thank you for bringing the future CMO to us today and making it so present for us today. We really appreciate you.

Matt Wilkinson [37:32]

Yeah, thank you.

Joeri Billast [37:33]

Thanks so much.

Q&A

How can I start speaking "CFO language" when I'm still building my marketing fundamentals?

Start by reframing your current metrics. Instead of reporting "500 webinar signups," dig into the data and report "85 signups representing £2.3M in qualified pipeline." Connect every campaign to a business outcome: customer acquisition cost, pipeline velocity, or retention rate. You don't need permission to measure differently—just start tying your creative work to financial impact. After one quarter of reporting this way, leadership will notice you understand business outcomes, not just campaign execution.

What's one AI tool I should prioritize if I have limited budget and bandwidth?

Focus on social listening and sentiment analysis first. Tools that can monitor Reddit, ResearchGate, LinkedIn, and biotech forums at scale will surface early warning signals about your product, competitors, and market shifts that no human team can manually track. This gives you strategic intelligence to inform positioning, messaging, and product feedback—all critical for proving marketing's value to the C-suite. Start with one platform, prove the insight value, then expand.

How do I build trust with scientists when they're naturally skeptical of marketing?

Be where the conversations happen—Reddit, ResearchGate, Slack groups—and contribute meaningfully without selling. Share transparent data: application notes, real-world protocols, limitations alongside benefits. Invest in long-term relationships through sponsorships, fellowships, or open science initiatives. Remember, scientists are putting their reputation on the line when they choose your product. De-risk their decision with peer testimonials, trial data, and responsive support. Trust is built through consistency and proof over time, not campaigns.

I'm the only marketer at my startup. How can I become a "Chief Value Officer" when I'm doing everything?

Start with a simple three-pillar value dashboard: perception (how the market sees your credibility), trust (how consistently you deliver), and outcome (measurable customer impact). Even as a team of one, you can track these dimensions and show how your work connects to business value. Use AI to handle repetitive tasks so you can focus on strategic listening and relationship building. Frame your work around these pillars when reporting to leadership, and you'll shift from "marketing generalist" to "value orchestrator."

What's the fastest way to prove marketing ROI to a skeptical CEO or board?

Build a unified dashboard that speaks to both scientific and financial audiences. Show scientific adoption milestones alongside financial metrics: how strong clinical validation drives shorter sales cycles, how 30% improvement in lab productivity helps customers get more data per grant dollar. Tie every marketing initiative to pipeline contribution, cost per target account, or deal velocity. Present this quarterly with clear before/after comparisons. When the CEO sees marketing as a revenue driver—not a cost centre—your budget conversations change completely.