Paychex VP Jason Rose: Building Teams, Brands, and Revenue

Jason Rose (00:00)

And I gotta tell you, it's interesting. Like, even at, like, really large organizations, people go like, well, Jason, how do you measure marketing success? And I go, is my CEO happy, and is my head of sales happy? And they go like, they're expecting, like, oh, what's your Google ranking? And what's your CPL, and what's your ROI? Believe me, you gotta have all of those things in place to make your CEO and your head of sales happy. But at the end of the day, if you do it all and the person's like, Jason doesn't get the business. He's not a part of the team. He's not helping my sellers every day. It's not gonna matter because that salesperson, that CEO, is going to have the biggest impact on your performance and how you're working together as a team. So ultimately, you know, all the metrics in the world will be hollow if your CEO and your head of sales aren't happy.

Gene Marks (00:42)

Right.

Jason Rose (00:42)

And again, depending on your company set up, that could be you as the entrepreneur or whoever. But at the end of the day, you got to feel good about what you're doing, and you got to be driving the results for the business.

Announcer (00:52)

Welcome to THRIVE, a Paychex Business Podcast. Your blueprint for navigating everything from people to policies to profits. And now your host, Gene Marks.

Gene Marks (01:04)

Hey, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Paychex THRIVE Podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. I have a great guest, a very special guest this week. It's Jason Rose from Paychex. Jason is the senior vice president of digital sales and marketing, basically at the top of the marketing ladder at Paychex. And the whole point of this conversation is we want to learn from Jason about what he's learned from being in the marketing world for the past, I don't know, Jason, 80, 90 years? Is that what it seems like at this point?

Jason Rose (01:33)

It feels like that sometimes, Gene, but certainly from a change in marketing technology over the course of the last 20 years, there's probably 80 to 90 years of innovation in there, for sure.

Gene Marks (01:42)

Yeah, I totally believe. How has it changed? I mean, you tell me. Start at the beginning. How did you get into this field? And I'm curious to know, how has this world of marketing changed since you first started out after college?

Jason Rose (01:57)

Sure. So, in fairness, I started out as an accountant, believe it or not. So kind of an unusual route into the marketing world. But what I would say is this. You know, marketing tends to have the largest discretionary budget, whether you're a small startup or a large organization, you're probably parking dollars in marketing that you expect to put to work. So, having that financial background actually is a real strength for running marketing teams of almost any size. Right. You really need to manage it like a business, understand what you're investing, what your ROI is, and then be able to have the measurement to track how did that spend actually translate all the way through to revenue. Right. So, you know, I think having that impact on revenue in marketing is absolutely the most important. Now what I would say is this is, over the 20 years, measuring that impact of marketing on revenue has become more and more challenging as the world has gone obviously more digital. And now with AI, I think we're going to have another layer of abstraction in terms of the dollars you spend and the results you see on the revenue side. But I'm sure we'll get into that a little bit later. I actually started off on, you know, as a CPA, moved into consulting, from consulting into presales. So, actually being out demonstrating software to customers, selling, being able to read the room, really enjoyed those aspects. I was at a small company, we got acquired by a bigger company, and there's this role called product marketing, which I'd never heard of before. Seemed like kind of a weird role, but basically I was going to do the presentations, messaging for that product line for the entire company. So that was my opportunity to not only do a great job selling myself, but raise everybody's game in terms of how they talk about the product. And once you take that step, I moved from New York City, where I was living at the time, to the Bay Area. So, moved to the Bay Area in 2006 and was there until I joined Paychex in 2014 or 2024, I should say. And you know, really just took on more and more senior roles in marketing from that product marketing, which is more of a content positioning, messaging, working with sales teams role, to, you know, owning the entire brand. And you know, what does that mean. You know, taking on digital, the website, the earned media, the paid media, I can get into a little bit and unpack what those things mean in more detail for, for the non-marketers on the, on, on the podcast today. And then, you know, really that led to marketing leadership roles where I was leading small marketing teams for a couple of startups. And then from the startups I went to big publicly traded through acquisition. I was at SAP for a number of years in senior leadership roles there. And then I went off and did chief marketing officer of a publicly traded company called Pure Storage. And then from Pure Storage, I'm now here at Paychex, kind of continually going up that ladder in terms of size, scale, scope, impact, and in some ways complexity as well. Like how do you now, with multiple product lines and multiple audiences, really make sure that you're still connecting very strongly with the need of that customer? Right.

Gene Marks (05:00)

You know, I'm curious, you mentioned just at the onset of the conversation about how it's getting tougher and tougher, you know, with the data itself, and you're like a financial guy, at least a financial background. I thought it was getting easier. Like, I thought like, oh, we live in a data-driven world, so we're capturing data anywhere. I mean, you can't even, you know, you turn on your computer, you're automatically being tracked, and that data is going somewhere. And you know, and I'm just, I'm just kind of here, why do you think, you know, why do you say that it's now tougher? Is it just because there's just too much of it?

Jason Rose (05:31)

Well, I think, well, it's the diversity of systems, right? Like, it is so easy right now to spin up a Facebook/Meta, you know, Instagram campaign, Google, excuse me, advertising campaign, do a little event off to the side, and I could go on and on market through affiliates, do some display advertising, and guess what? All these things are different systems. They all have different definitions of is it a click through, is it marketing qualified lead, is it an opportunity? So, there's different languages around these things, there's different criteria for what qualifies. So really you could say, oh, I'll just dump it all in a big data lake and you know, maybe I'll use my favorite, you know, BI tool on top of it and I'll get the answers. Well, you will get an answer. But you know, when you're mixing together apples and oranges and pears and grapes and you go, well, how much fruit do I have? Just getting the aggregate count really isn't that useful. Right. You know, so you really kind of need to be able to understand the various pieces of information, what they mean, and then on top of that, the time horizon by which these things come to maturity. The way they grow, the way that relationship with the customer is built also is varied. So you can't just say, hey, one week, post this activity, how many clients did I get? And let's put a stake in the ground and call it a win. Right? Oftentimes, hey, they showed up to a webinar, we nurtured them through email, they visited the website, they watched a demo, then they filled out a form fill, and you go, okay, well, which one of those things should get credit? And how do I measure the success of my total program across all those tactics? And that's, Gene, where it gets a little more complicated and, you know, big shout out to my friends in something called marketing operations, who actually take all the apples and oranges and pears and grapefruits and grapes and go, all right, how do we, you know, create a common benchmark and a common flow for these things that then we can measure the success of the total program? So, you know, that's where some of the complexity comes in, Gene.

Gene Marks (07:33)

I'm curious. You know, you're also a student of the industry, as well. You know, without naming names, or maybe you can name names. What marketing, you know, efforts, what brands, what organizations have you come across that really impress you? Like, you're like, these guys got their act together when it comes to marketing. Like, I would love to be VP of marketing at that company, because that's the kind of company that's really got their act together. I'm kind of curious, you know, who's caught your attention and why?

Jason Rose (08:02)

Sure. Well, the interesting thing is, you know, a lot of people respect Apple in a lot of ways. I have a huge amount of respect for them. Obviously, one of the most valuable companies in the world. Here's the challenge, though. I think in good marketing today, the product and the marketing are completely intertwined, and I think Apple does a good job on that. But I would argue their product hasn't really innovated since the iPhone X. Right. If I look at my, you know, iPhone 16, which I've got on the desk next to me here, and I look at my iPhone X, same UI, same experience, same icon, same like, I mean, you know, maybe there's a little thing at the top. So I would say Apple is, you know, operating at huge scale, so it's harder for them to come and do new and innovative things. So, I'm actually having a lot of fun right now with a little financial services company called cred.ai. And what is absolutely blowing my mind about what they've done is the tightness of the product experience and the marketing experience. You almost can't distinguish the two of them. And the product looks spectacular. It's absolutely beautiful. They actually, in-house, have documentary filmmakers and everybody else. So when you get your little how-to video, it is super cool, very personal, and a part of the overall product experience. And Gene, I think that's where, you know, great marketing is right now. One of my favorite quotes is, the future's already here, it's just not evenly distributed. So, if you think about that, when I look at that company, I see the future. I see, like, hey, this is an integrated customer journey and experience where I can't tell where I went from the marketing to the product. And I think that, you know, that is really magical and something that I've been just insanely impressed with as I've gotten to know the team over there.

Gene Marks (09:46)

Yeah, that's really interesting. It's funny how they're, you know, the difference between the product itself and the marketing efforts are becoming so much more merged together, and then they create a brand. So, which brings me to my next question. Like, so our audience, as you know, I mean, they're business owners, you know, and whenever I talk to clients and they are looking to hire a marketing manager or VP of marketing, whatever, to them, it's always about leads, leads, leads. You know, and I'm just kind of curious, like, is that, do you think that's right? Is it? Should it always be about leads? Is it all, is it that way at Paychex? Is it that way at the other companies that you've been with? Or is there other things that we should be taking into consideration when we talk about marketing?

Jason Rose (10:27)

Well, of course, you know, I tied back, you know, kind of the need to put that marketing effort to work in order to drive revenue. Right. And I think for a lot of entrepreneurs, leads is that connection. Right. So, it's very common, you know, for salespeople to always look at their marketing team and go, where are my leads? I need more leads. Right? But the question really is, how do you do that? And I think there's a couple of different ways to get the leads. One is you can just pay for them. Okay. If you've got a ton of money and you want to go out into Google and you want to go on Instagram and Facebook and these other apps where people are, you can spend a ton of money to get your ad in front of them. Now the question is, how does the viewer actually feel about the ad? Are you showing up in the right places? You know, when I click on the ad, what is the experience? Do I feel good about the product or the service that I'm looking at? And if you have a lot of money, but don't make a great customer experience and really resonate with the need of the customer, guess what? Your click-through rate is going to be lower. You're going to spend more per opportunity. Your salesperson's job, if you have salespeople, is going to be much harder, or attracting people into your shop or whatever your mode of, you know, kind of offering your services will be way harder. So, these two things actually work really closely together that you need a great brand. And I know brand is a little bit of a soft expression in many businesses. Right. But really, when I think about brand, I think about, you know, what is the story and the reason for a customer to believe that you are the best solution to whatever problem they have. And that's your brand. Okay. And that brand, you know, will live in terms of, you know, how you show up online, certainly a big part of most businesses today, but also in terms of, you know, even the conversation we're having right now, Gene. Like, how do you as an entrepreneur show up? How does your sales team show up? How does the person at the cash register or the salesperson in the store actually show up and talk? And what is the personality and the attitude you want from those employees? How do you represent the way you work as a team or not? Right. All are going to play into that brand experience for the customer, which will ultimately say, hey, I paid a lot of money on advertising, and you're probably doing digital advertising, so you can see your click. So it's not like the old days where you took out a newspaper ad and you kind of assume people were coming in because of the newspaper ad. Now you can see the click. I can see the sign-up. I can see that whole thread. But I can tell you that experience will increase the effectiveness of all of that advertising and spend you're doing. And that's where these two things really come together. One much more tangible. So a lot of people focus on the leads. Right. The one a little softer. But that, that to me is what really drives conversion rate, engagement. And even better, Gene, when you get your organic, hey, Gene, I just signed up for this great service or hey, Gene, the favorite brand I'm looking at right now is this little company called credit.ai. They're amazing, right? Like, what a cool brand experience that is that they're creating evangelists. And then guess what? They didn't have to pay for that. They earned that because of the great job they're doing in terms of their brand and how they're making the customer feel.

Gene Marks (13:33)

Yeah. You know, so my takeaway from what you're saying is, I mean, it's not just about generating leads. It's not just about sending out email campaigns or, like you're saying, having Google ads or, you know, an online presence, but, you know, it's about how your company operates, right? I mean, you know, and my, I have a really good friend, Jason, that he's like a sales consultant, and his whole thing is that everybody's in sales. You know, whether you're, you know, on the finance team, whether you're in the shop or whatever, you have any interactions not only with customers, but also with the products and services that you're providing. You're representing the company and you're in sales because it all in the end. And I think you're given a very similar message, like everybody's in market in a company, right? I mean, you can spend all of this money and all of this time trying to generate leads and getting work in, but if the product or service that you're going to deliver sucks, or if the attitude that you're bringing or the perception that you're bringing is bad, people, you know, all the marketing in the world is not going to help that, is it?

Jason Rose (14:29)

It's not. You might get that first lead in, but if they go out and they give you a bad review or, you know, don't tell their friends about the experience, every lead you get is going to be a struggle. Whereas if you do the reverse and it's an amazing experience, that person is out there telling their friends and, you know, kind of giving you referrals. I mean, man, that marketing dollar just gets amplified over and over and over again.

Gene Marks (14:51)

I couldn't agree with you more. Let me talk about Paychex, because Paychex is a service company, you know, I mean, at its core, you know. We have a lot of people that are watching or listening to this that are they're running service businesses, and they might be very small and they're in different fields. Maybe it's an architectural firm or an engineering firm or landscaping firm, but at its core, it's services like Paychex performance in the HR world. So, as somebody who's leading marketing at a company like this, what are your plans? What are you doing to generate leads, to generate a better brand, to keep Paychex out there as a leading HR company? And I'm hoping that some of the things you say can then be translated to even much smaller organizations as well. What are you doing?

Jason Rose (15:37)

Oh, 100%. So I think it really comes down to a few things. First and foremost, team. You got to have the best people. I know we're going to talk about AI a little bit later. The best AI in the world isn't going to help you if you don't have a great team. Right? So first and foremost, you know that focus as an entrepreneur or the leader of a large team on making sure I have the best players on the field at any given time. So that's number one, full stop. Number two, I would say it really is kind of ensuring that you have a strong perspective on how you want to show up. Right. What do you want to represent for your service? What are the key attributes of that? That's something we call like your positioning and messaging. So you really want to make sure that you understand what you want people to say and how you want to be perceived. So, really making sure you've got that foundational core message down. And why is that important? Well, that's really important because whether you're running a 10-person company or a 20,000-person company like Paychex, you need to have, like you said, everybody's in sales and marketing Gene, so you want everybody kind of saying the same thing. Because if Gene shows up and says, hey, Paychex does this and Jason shows up and I say Paychex does something else, and then you've got a third person and a fourth person, well, then you're going to be extremely inconsistent. You won't have control over, you know, what that message is and what your brand shows up as. So, you know, again, making sure you've got that core story, that core principle of what your company stands for and the thing you want your employees, your website, your digital advertising, etc., etc., saying so that it's consistent, it's just the same repetition over and over again. And for those entrepreneurs out there, you are going to be supercharged by your story because it's your story. But you'll probably get tired of saying the same thing over and over and over again. But you have to remember the person on the receiving end or the company that you're trying to pitch or sell to, it's probably the first time they're hearing your story. So just keep that passion alive. You know, you want that energy and enthusiasm for what you're doing. At the same time, you want to be ruthlessly consistent in terms of how you deliver it, because it's that repetition that actually builds the brand, builds the experience over time. So I think that is extremely important. And then Gene, you get into all the stuff, right? You've got your content, you've got your website, you've got what you're doing around what we call earned media or search engine optimization, which is how people just find you without paying. They find you organically, it's called, and they come in, and you don't pay anything for that traffic. SEO, search engine optimization, is one of my favorite tactics because you are literally building the brand as you do that, because people are finding you based on the value of the content you're providing. And then you look at your paid tactics. Okay, so we're getting X amount organic. Well, I want to get even more through my paid channels, and those two loops should reinforce each other. Right. My great consistent content with great, consistent paid advertising should yield a huge amount of leads and a great deal of revenue for whichever company you're trying to run.

Gene Marks (18:37)

Okay, that's great. Let's talk a little bit. I mean, you really specialize in digital marketing. I mean, I know that's like your expertise. Talk to me a little bit about SEO. What kind of advice would you be giving a business owner about SEO? What have you learned about it, and where do you think it's going? Because obviously, you know, AI is going to have an impact. Will we even be Googling things, you know, in a few years from now, will everything be... ChatGPT just announced they're coming out with their own browser, you know, and the other AI platforms are following similar. So, talk to me a little bit about what you've learned about SEO from the aspect of what a business owner can learn about it as well.

Jason Rose (19:15)

Yeah, so what I would say is the answer's a little more complicated than it was a year ago. And just like everything in marketing, I think we're seeing just a continued set of innovation and changes in terms of how customers want to engage. Right. Like really, at the end of the day, marketing is all about meeting the customer where they are and where they would be most receptive to whatever product, service, or message that you want to deliver to them. Right. So search engine optimization, obviously, Google has, you know, mid to high 80s, you know, kind of search, you know, kind of market share. So yeah. So obviously, number one, how am I showing up in Google? How am I, you know, both getting that organic ranking, which is in the middle of the page, as well as the paid on the side. Now I will say the complication is now is the something called the AI overview. So you've, I'm sure everybody's seen you type in something now you get a little AI summary at the top before you even get certain results.

Gene Marks (20:12)

People are clicking, people are clicking, you know, less now through to links there because they're getting that overview. It's a challenge to businesses. Right?

Jason Rose (20:21)

Huge challenge. Right. Because before, you could measure the clicks, you could measure both on the organic and the paid side. Now people are reading the AI summary and kind of getting what they need and moving off. Now it's not all doom and gloom. People who read the AI summary and then eventually click through actually convert to that opportunity into revenue at a much higher rate. Right. So the medium of commerce hasn't changed. Right. They're still going to buy online, they're still going to reach out to your sales team again, depending on the type of service or product that you're offering. But the way in which they're doing their journey now has changed. They're not just clicking through and reading your content, they're getting an aggregate now of content from these AI chatbots and then they're choosing where they want to go. So I think rather than in the old days, you would put in HR, HR solutions for small business as a Google search, and you'd see us and all the other well-known companies out there, and you click on Paychex and you go check them out, and then you click on number two and you go check them out. You click on number three, go over there, you get the idea. So, there's three clicks there. I went off to these three different companies to have a look. Now I get an AI overview that says these are the big players in HCM. Here's what Paychex does, here's what vendor number two does, here's what vendor number three does. You read those, and you go, wow, the Paychex one is, sounds like it's probably the best fit for me. So now I'm only going to click on paychecks and go over there, which means those other two companies never got the click.

Gene Marks (21:45)

Yeah. By the way, if I can interrupt you, like I never thought, I never thought of that. I mean, you're absolutely right. Like everybody has been screaming and yelling about oh my God, we're going to get less traffic on our websites. And I guess your point is like with this AI overview now, yeah, you'll be getting less traffic, but it'll be much better traffic because people will have read and done a little bit of the research beforehand. So if they're clicking through to your website, they're that much more interested in what you've got to say. It's a really great point.

Jason Rose (22:13)

Yeah, absolutely. Well, and because AI hasn't replaced the product yet, I think that could happen. But for now, we're seeing it on the front end of the journey. But I see AI obviously is impacting products. AI is changing the way people consume not only the content, but also the underlying service or product as well. So I think that is a huge sea change in terms of, you know, that search paradigm. But I will say this, Gene, there's a lot of consistency with the old search paradigm and the new AI paradigm in that content still matters. The AI is reading the same content that the human would have and building summaries based off of that. So, again, you need great content, you need that consistent story, and you need that strategy for showing up in search engine optimization, there's something called GEO, which is generative engine optimization, which is more your ChatGPT or whatever. Frankly, I think there's just a ton of overlap and commonality in terms of how those two things work. I can get into the nitty-gritty details, but I'm sure that probably I'd be a little overload for a lot of folks on the podcast today. But, you know, and then, so content is still king, and it's just how it's being surfaced is different. And you want to make sure that you're still representing your company, your service, your product in the best way possible. And then the AI agents will come along, summarize it, and hopefully, based on the quality of your content, you'll still get the click on the other side.

Gene Marks (23:35)

Okay, so that's, that's search and SEO, and I think you made some great points there. Talk to me about your thoughts about paid ads. I mean, just so you know, I've had horrible experiences with paid ads. I mean, like, we, you know, my company sells, we sell like a few CRM applications, and we will go out there and, you know, put money into paid ads. But like, the vendors that make these CRM applications, and we know who they are, they dominate the space, you know, people are looking for a CRM solution out of a, from a company, and even in Philadelphia, I'm on page four of the results, which nobody ever gets to because the vendors have dominated it all. So, is it a viable option, paid ads for smaller companies? You know, can it work? What are your thoughts? What has been your experience with paid ads?

Jason Rose (24:17)

Well, so, yeah, you can imagine we could have spent the whole podcast on this, you know, as a topic. And I think really it kind of comes down to first, you know, making sure your advertising experience is as consistent as possible. I'll go back to it. If you've got something that says I've got the best CRM for Philadelphia. You know, and you know that you drop down to the page, and the page is just generic, it says nothing about Philadelphia, it doesn't give you any indication that, you know, that ad for a Philly CRM that I just clicked on connects with that page and you're just talking about generic CRM, that's going to be a fail. Like you're, you're not going to convert as well, etc., etc., etc. It kind of goes back to that whole consistency point I've been making all along. So, the first thing is get your house and order. Make sure that whatever ad copy or what you want to stand for as an organization is translating through to the landing page. That's where the person's going to land when they click through on the ad. Or you know, the AI summaries usually have a link as well. So make sure you've got consistency between the content and what the person clicks on. So that's number one. So you just want to make sure that that value chain is unbroken. Number two then is the tactics. Right, like, so how do I compete with like these, you know, Fortune 500 companies that have all the deep pockets in the world? Well, guess what, if you're looking, you're an entrepreneur in Philadelphia and you want most of your, you know, clients to come from, you know, within a two- or 300-mile radius of that, which by the way that that's a pretty significant, you know, population you're talking about there, so maybe not the best example. But, but, but the idea being, you know, you can geofence these things. So you could say I only want people from what within this area, which again will increase the hit rate but also reduce the cost, cost of those ads in many ways because you're not competing then on, on such a large stage, so to speak. And then there's a whole set of long tail terms. Like I said, CRM may be dominated and super expensive to pay for, you know, from an advertising. But CRM Philadelphia maybe not. Right? And if that's what your client base is looking for, then you can actually capture a disproportionate amount, maybe even pay a little bit more for that because you know, your content is going to be bigger than the big person content and will resonate better with that customer that's going to look for, want to buy local, right? And I think for a lot of the entrepreneurs out there on the call today, you know, you are the most civically minded, locally orientated people in the country. Right. And a lot of your customers are as well because they appreciate your local perspective to what you're doing. And I think that becomes a differentiator, something that makes you different from some of the big national folks out there that you can geofengine and then you can get more specific in some of the search terms that are relevant either to where you live or the specialty that you have in your business that will differentiate you from some of those bigger players with the super deep pockets.

Gene Marks (27:04)

Jesus, Jason, this is great stuff. Okay, I have more for you. You mentioned earlier in this conversation about building that team that you want to have. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about people. All right, first of all, say I'm running a business, I'm at a certain size, it's now time. I'm like, you know what, I can't do this on my own. I need to bring in a marketing person. Maybe it's a marketing manager, VP of marketing, but I need to bring in a marketing person. What do you look for? Who's a good marketing person to you? What kind of person would you hire?

Jason Rose (27:35)

So, first of all, curiosity, energy, just a willingness to get stuff done. I think I look at marketing as a discipline, and it's about storytelling, it's about how you show up. Right. So, I don't start with technical marketing skills like oh, have they run Google ads before? All this stuff, they've made it super easy. They're basically consumer-grade products. So there's nobody that has a Ph.D. in Google advertising. Right? There's no such thing. Right. Basically any marketer you hire will have been pretty much self-taught. They'll go out, they'll do the online stuff, everything like that. So, first off, I don't rule out people from any discipline who have curiosity, a passion for your business. Right? Because they're the ones that are going to understand your customer. They're going to understand what resonates like that curiosity for what the customer needs, and then being able to just take and get it done. Okay, hey, we need a website. How can I take that understanding of my customer and who I'm trying to attract, translate it into the website, figure out, and just bootstrap like how do I, you know, set up campaigns? How do I measure success? All of these things are consumer-grade tools. They're, they may seem daunting from the outside Gene, but I gotta tell you, once you get into them, they want, they want your advertising money. So, they're going to make it as easy as possible for you to figure out who your target market is, how you're going to bid in those auctions, and then, you know, eventually activate those ads. And then you pair that with just somebody who's passionate about your brand, about your customer, and get them to build the content that I think will then resonate and kind of fulfill that value chain that we've been talking about throughout the call. So that's, that's kind of what I look for. Of course, depending on the scale of organization, you're going to get more and more senior resources, and then there's a whole other set of things. But I will also revert back. A lot of what I've just said revolves around culture, the way you want to show up as an organization, who you want to work with, and when you don't get the leads, if we want to use that, how are they going to handle the situation? What are they going to be like to work with? How are they going to react? What are their plan A, B, C, D, E to really help make your business successful? And that, I think, is also a really important part of the mix here.

Gene Marks (29:42)

Any advice on how you would evaluate somebody like that? Say you hired that person, and it's a year later, and you want to, you know, is this person doing a good job or not? What are your thoughts on the metrics you would use?

Jason Rose (29:55)

Oh, yeah, absolutely. So first off, I mean, all the businesses have some sort of goal in terms of what they're striving for in terms of sales, customers coming through the door, or clicking through online. So that's the hard baseline, right? Like, are you kind of achieving the traffic goals? And that could be physical traffic or online traffic that you're looking for. And then is that traffic converting through to sale? Like I said, I always go back, all the way back to revenue. So, how are they influencing and impacting the revenue of the company? And I gotta tell you, it's interesting. Like, even at, like really large organizations, people go like, well, Jason, how do you measure marketing success? And I go, is my CEO happy, and is my head of sales happy? And they go like, they're expecting, like, oh, what, you know, what's your Google ranking, and what's your CPL, and what's your ROI? Believe me, you gotta have all of those things in place to make your CEO and your head of sales happy. But at the end of the day, if you do it all and the person's like, Jason doesn't get the business, he's not a part of the team, he's not helping my sellers every day, it's not going to matter because that salesperson, that CEO, is going to have the biggest impact on your performance and how you're working together as a team. So ultimately, you know, all the metrics in the world will be hollow if your CEO and your head of sales aren't happy.

Gene Marks (31:08)

Right.

Jason Rose (31:09)

And again, depending on your company setup, that could be you as the entrepreneur or whoever. But at the end of the day, you got to feel good about what you're doing, and you got to be driving the results for the business.

Gene Marks (31:18)

Yeah. You know, what I'm getting for you there is that if you, I hope you're with Paychex for the next 50 years, but like, if you, you leave Paychex and you go and you join a startup and it's a CEO that's hiring you to come in as a marketing, you know, what I'm getting from you is like, your approach would be like, okay, what do I need to do to make the CEO happy? Like, what is the CEO? What's their objectives? What do they want? And it's your job as a marketing person to come through and implement those objectives. Right? So, it sounds like the earliest questions you would ask.

Jason Rose (31:47)

Absolutely. Where are we going? What's our strategy? You know, how do you work together as a leadership team or as a team, depending on the scale of the company? I mean, these are all the questions that I ask when I evaluate a company, and, you know, really understanding those objectives. And then it's like, all right, well then, you know, how much revenue, how much pipeline do we need to get the business? What's your sales cycle like? Where do your customers generally go to get information about this topic? Right. So there's a whole bunch of tactics that come out of that high-level strategy and cultural fit. But really it's, you know, again, you know, am I going to be able to work well with these folks? Are we going to be a great team, and are we going to have fun doing it? Because at the end of the day, even when you're super successful, but you're miserable in terms of the people and the work you're doing, it doesn't feel good. It's not a great situation. So you want both, you want to be super successful and have a great time doing it with great people.

Gene Marks (32:36)

All right, fair enough. All right, crystal ball time. So you mentioned again early in this conversation that, you know, your job has changed so much. The technology has changed, you know, in the 20 years you've been doing this. So, let's look ahead. I mean, you know, say, how do you think your job is going to be different? You can't go beyond five years. I mean, nobody can. But just, you know, over the next five years, how do you think things are going to evolve? Obviously, AI and technology are going to be a big part of that. So give me your thoughts on where you see things going.

Jason Rose (33:03)

Well, I think that I'm going to start with a couple of things I think are just going to be dead consistent. And that really goes back to my last answer, right? Understanding and aligning with the people you work with and having a great time working together is still going to be as important as ever. I don't think AI or any of the big technology shifts are ever going to replace that need for a strong company culture, good fit, and alignment to a company's organization and the strategy and direction. So right there, I think, bar none, those things remain consistent. The how I think is going to change drastically. Like I talked about, you know, if we talked a year ago, AI overviews, taking over click traffic, and thinking about quality wouldn't have been on anybody's radar screen, right? This is literally in the last 12 months, and now it's just the way search has gone, right? It's not going there, it's already gone there, and that's only going to continue to evolve. So I think, you know, understanding and leveraging AI to really help and augment that overall company vision, goal, and culture is going to only amp up. I think we're just going to see more and more reliance on it. I mean, if there's anything really important I need to write right now, I write it all up, I throw it into ChatGPT. It makes it a little bit better, and away I go. So, I have that AI kind of writing assistant now off to the side that's just become a part of my day-to-day. And I think these things are going to just continue to evolve. Now, you know, when I'm doing a presentation, guess what? I get a whole bunch of design recommendations right within my PowerPoint tool. And I go, I like the way that one looks. Whereas before I'd spend hours trying to figure out what the design of these things should be. So I think all that work gets more efficient and effective, you know, and I think it's just. But at the end of the day, your customer is still going to be a human being. Right now, we hear about agentic AI, but ultimately, they're always in service of a person or a company with a need. You know, they're not just buying for their own need. So, you know, again, I think at the end of the day, it's still about people. It's about meeting that customer requirement, and how are you making them feel through that sales cycle or in providing the service that you're doing. And those things won't change. They'll be super consistent as we go.

Gene Marks (35:08)

All right, that's great. I'll end with one thing, Jason. I mean, you've been doing this for a while. You've learned a lot in the marketing space. Tell me about what you've learned over the past 20 years. When you were an accountant to start with, and now here you are as a VP in charge of marketing at a publicly held company. What have you learned about the marketing profession that you think would be of value for business owners that are also looking to either get into the profession or hire somebody in that profession?

Jason Rose (35:42)

Yeah, I think it's having a service mindset. Right. Like, marketing really is a service organization to the business. We represent the products, the services. The teams that are delivering those services. And really making sure that you've got that strong understanding of what we stand for, what is our culture, how do we want to deliver that service, and then how do we make it ruthlessly consistent? So, it's an interesting balance, Gene. And, you know, marketing is a tough profession because on one hand, you're in service of the organization, and the other hand, you're striving for what I call ruthless consistency. So that doesn't mean, hey, Gene, like, I got this amazing message and story for THRIVE, and here you go. And the next day, I hear you talking, and you're not using it. I'm going to go like, hey, Gene, like, what the heck? We agreed that was the right story. What's going on there? So, you're in service, but you're also like, hey, you know what? I'm adding value. And I know I'm adding value when we're hitting that consistency and you're using my service. And when people stray off of that, that's when you've got to get them back on the path. So as a marketeer, it's striking that balance. Okay, wait a minute. I thought Jason was here in service of me. And that's true 100%. But at the end of the day, my job is to make us all consistent. So, I also have to have the hard conversations that say, Gene, you're not living up to our standards, you're not being consistent, and I need you to do that. So that's always a tough balance to act. A tough balancing act. Right?

Gene Marks (37:03)

Great. I love it. One final question. I'll let you go. So, say you've got all the money in the world, you're all happy. This is many years from now. You leave this company, you're going to start up your own business, your own small business. What business would you start?

Jason Rose (37:17)

Oh man, that's a great, great question. My wife and I have been looking at kind of different health-related businesses, so she's gotten into hyperbaric treatments. I'm actually in Lake Tahoe right now. It's 6,300 feet vertical. So, you know, that type of service that helps people, you know, really have a healthful and mindful life would be the type of business that I think I would be going into.

Gene Marks (37:40)

That is great. That is great. Well, Jason, thank you. Great conversation. I learned a whole lot. I know our audience learned a whole lot as well. And this is the advantage of bringing somebody that's got the kind of experience that you have in the marketing area to share with our with the business owners that are listening and watching us. So, I really want to thank you very much for sharing your information.

Jason Rose (38:01)

It was my pleasure, Gene, anytime. Really nice seeing you.

Gene Marks (38:03)

Thank you. Do you have a topic or a guest that you would like to hear on THRIVE? Please let us know. Visit payx.me/ThriveTopics and send us your ideas or matters of interest. Also, if your business is looking to simplify your HR, payroll, benefits, or insurance services, see how Paychex can help. Visit the resource hub at paychex.com/worx. That's W-O-R-X. Paychex can help manage those complexities while you focus on all the ways you want your business to thrive. I'm your host, Gene Marks, and thanks for joining us. Till next time, take care.

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