Learn B2B SaaS Marketing

Must-Have Skills for a B2B SaaS Demand Generation Manager

by 

Lauren O'Bryan

Last updated: June 11th, 2024

Finding the right B2B SaaS demand generation manager for your company who can elevate your marketing strategies and drive demand for your B2B SaaS is a challenge many marketers face. Knowing the key demand generation skills required for this role is what can make a difference in your search for the perfect candidate.

At Powered by Search, we have quite a lot of experience in this area. So, we’ll outline not just the must-have skillset you need to prioritize when recruiting but also how to recruit, shortlist, and interview so that you get the best candidate.

Responsibilities of a B2B SaaS Demand Generation Manager

A demand generation manager’s goal is to create interest and raise awareness, engagement, and conversion of a company’s products or services. This involves implementing a range of strategies and tactics to build customer demand, and it doesn’t end with acquiring the leads – it extends to nurturing these leads through the sales funnel until the point of conversion.

Because many enterprise B2B SaaS products often have long sales cycles, a demand generation manager is ideal for fostering long-term customer relationships.

Demand generation managers in B2B SaaS often require a deep understanding of the target audience, their pain points, and the solutions they seek. Consequently, they create content to address customer pain points while positioning the company as a thought leader and trusted advisor in the industry.

The roles and responsibilities of a demand generation manager are incredibly varied, therefore, the skills to look for in candidates are also varied. Let’s see what they are.

What Are the Must-Have Demand Generation Manager Skills?

To thrive in this role, your ideal candidate should possess a unique combination of technical expertise and interpersonal skills.

The hard skills to prioritize when recruiting include the following:

• Data analytics: Candidates must know how to crunch the numbers and use data analytics software and techniques to analyze customer data.
• CRM software proficiency: Experience with CRM software is another key skill for managing customer data and campaigns.
• SEO: A demand generation manager is not a content creator by any stretch, but they do need to have a solid understanding of SEO principles to effectively drive organic growth.
• PPC: PPC advertising is likely to be part of your business growth strategy, and while it’s a PPC specialist’s job to manage ads, your demand generation manager should know how to integrate these efforts for maximum value.
• Email marketing: Experience with email marketing and related tools should also be prioritized, given that email marketing is a key tool in building brand awareness and generating demand.
• ABM techniques: Your demand generation manager will eventually need to adopt ABM strategies to nurture customers through the sales funnel. This includes personalizing messages and identifying key accounts to target.

Hard skills are easy to assess – the candidate simply needs to demonstrate their expertise and proficiency in those areas. Soft skills, on the other hand, are harder to assess, but they can make all the difference between a competent and an exceptional demand generation marketer. To evaluate these skills, use situational and behavioral questions.

When interviewing candidates, pay attention to the following soft skills:

• Strategic thinking: Building and adapting long-term plans and strategies to suit the changing market requires a strategic mindset.
• Communication skills and emotional intelligence: Strong communication skills and emotional intelligence are critical in understanding and responding to customer needs and navigating team dynamics.
• Creativity and problem-solving: A marketer who isn’t quick on their feet and cannot think outside the box will not be capable of driving growth amid multiple challenges and hot competition.
• Leadership skills: The ideal candidate should know how to foster a culture of collaboration and openness among team members, align teams, and facilitate communication and data sharing.

Structure the interview process and use a standardized scoring system. To avoid any interviewer bias when only one person is interviewing, interviews can be arranged as either a small panel or a series of interviews.

The Powered by Search B2B SaaS Demand Generation Specialist

At Powered by Search, we are always interested to hear from talented demand generation professionals who share our passion for excellence. Our goal is to lead the SaaS marketing industry and to do that, we need an exceptional team.

Working with us gives you the freedom to drive the marketing pipeline and revenue growth for our clients. We also understand that a balanced work-life is crucial for productivity, which is why we embrace remote work and prioritize our team’s well-being. If you’re interested, apply to be part of our dynamic team and help us shape the future of SaaS marketing.

How to Get the Right Person for the Role

Recruitment is tough, and hiring the wrong person for the job can waste valuable time and resources. This is why we’ve developed a hiring process that has helped us in the past and will help you find the ideal person for the job.

Our tried and tested process for assessing job candidates, which we call talent-trajectory fit, will help you make the best hiring decision for your company. More specifically, it’ll help you find the talent that aligns with your business trajectory.

You start by identifying the role’s functions based on business revenue targets. To do this, you need to understand exactly how the demand generation manager can contribute to the revenue targets.

Place a high priority on demonstrable skills but an equal priority on the integrity and mental fortitude displayed by candidates. A strong passion and drive for the role counts for just as much as hard skills.

Finally, once you’re sure the candidate has the skills and displays the personality traits required to excel, perform a reference check to confirm their qualifications and fit.

Read our post to get the full picture of our talent-trajectory fit method.

Alternatives to Hiring In-House

Hiring in-house staff is often the first thing that comes to mind, but you can also engage a marketing agency or an individual consultant. Naturally, there are some positives and negatives to each option, and it all depends on what your company needs.

When hiring in-house, bringing a new employee up to speed takes time. However, the time is well-invested because all that experience and knowledge built up over time remains within the team. Hiring in-house can also be an asset when it comes to developing long-term customer relationships. But, all too often, companies need to implement their marketing strategy fast, and hiring in-house is not the ideal solution in this case.

Engaging an Agency

Choosing the services of a marketing agency as opposed to hiring in-house has several major incentives.

Engaging an agency is typically perceived as expensive, but if you factor in recruiting costs and other overheads incurred when adding a full-time employee, the value for money can work out better when choosing a marketing agency.

The reason agencies provide greater value is because you’re not just getting the services of one person but the whole team. Over time, with the ebbs and flow of business, you can increase or decrease your reliance on the marketing agency as needed. At different growth stages of business, you can engage different marketing professionals in the team who have the specific skills and experience you need.

A Consultant or an Agency

So, which is the better choice for your business, a marketing agency or a consultant? Do you need a full marketing team for strategy development and implementation or do you simply require a specialist to guide one portion of overall marketing operations?

A consultant is a good choice if you already have a functional marketing team that has both the capacity and resources to implement your strategy but lacks the expertise. Whereas a marketing agency provides a more flexible solution, enabling you to increase and decrease resources as needed.

Wrapping Up

In the competitive field of B2B SaaS demand generation, recruiting the best talent will help you grow your business, get on top, and stay there. The range of demand generation marketer skills we recommend includes a combination of key hard and soft skills, which can be assessed through well-designed interview questions.

Once you have your all-star demand generation manager, you can start implementing your growth strategy. But before you do that, assess your baseline. Take our SaaS scalability score self-assessment to understand where your business sits against the competition.