2023 Women of Influence honoree: Aimee Schuster, Bandwidth Strategy
How would you quickly describe your job and what you do to someone you just met?: I’m an expert at marketing the invisible, having spent the last 25 years helping B2B organizations like Miller Heiman Group, DLA Piper and Homefinder.com build, advance and energize their lead-generation programs. I founded Bandwidth Strategy, a fractional CMO and COO consultancy, to help growth-stage organizations drive the right leads into the funnel that result in closed-won business. Using my experience and a bit of humor/improv (honed as a student at Second City), I help create a common language among the all-too-often warring factions of sales and marketing.
The attributes I look for in a candidate when hiring are: Responsibility, proactivity and curiosity.
The best advice I’ve received for career development is: Take improv. It was the absolute best career and life training, and I recommend it to almost everyone I work with.
A tip I’ve learned that’s helped me with networking is: Just say yes. As an introvert, I naturally gravitate toward alone time and/or staying at home. I try to say yes when an invitation comes my way despite my instinct to say no. While I routinely dread going, I am always happy, fulfilled and excited that I said yes.
What is the biggest challenge facing your industry and/or company, and how should that challenge be addressed?: I’ve heard from more than one CEO, “I like for marketing and sales to have healthy tension. It’s good for business.” I think the hardest part of that statement is the thin line between “healthy” and “hostile” tension. I see cleaner funnels, increased lead velocity and quicker revenue growth by dialing down the tension and increasing the communication between marketing and sales. As I’ve written, I advise my clients to tackle the following five questions to overcome sales and marketing misalignment in a B2B environment:
- Do you have a shared language? Define key terms and align on their meanings to avoid misunderstandings.
- Do you have service-level agreements? Agree on response times and establish systems for lead handoff and monitoring.
- Do you have agreed-upon prospect titles? Understand the specific roles and titles that both sales and marketing teams target.
- Is there consistent reporting from marketing to sales teams? Create dashboards to provide a single source of truth and foster collaboration.
- Do sales teams provide consistent feedback to marketing teams? Maintain ongoing dialogue and hold regular summits to ensure alignment and adapt to changing dynamics.
Do you serve as a mentor for someone? If so, how do you fill that role?: At any one time, I offer two gratis mentorship slots to anyone who is interested in a long-term coaching relationship. A slot is one hour of consulting time once a month. I usually support women entrepreneurs, CMOs or sales practitioner who need either marketing, sales, operations or career advice. I also founded the 1871 WMNtech Leaders four-month accelerator and mentoring initiative devoted to cultivating the next generation of women-identifying leaders. We’ve supported 130 women across 50 companies to help develop their professional selves and succeed in Chicago tech startups.
Do you have a mentor yourself? If so, what do you get from that individual?: I have a few, and they are incredible at career advice and, my most recent passion, angel investing.
What’s the biggest challenge facing women who want to take on leadership roles, and what can be done to address that?: I recently wrote an article for Fast Company in which I describe what I see as one of the biggest challenges for women: the loss of social capital in the post-pandemic world. Pre-pandemic, there was no shortage of challenges for women in business: pay inequity, a lack of C-suite roles and minimal board-of-directors representation. Any progress we’ve made in these areas is largely because of the social capital we gained through face-to-face networking, lunches, coffees, events and water-cooler conversations that I participated in for the bulk of my career. All of these efforts created the social capital that helped me in my job at the time but clearly helped me even more in the totality of my career.
What mistake do young professionals make, and how would you advise them to avoid it?: As a young person in today’s economy, I would push hard to find an organization that offers an in-person or hybrid-work option. Use IRL meetings to build relationships with collaborators and mentors so you can learn and fail and grow in your career. Create networks of women and men who will help you succeed over time. The mistake would be thinking that a virtual, Zoom-only world is an easy solution. You will have a much harder road to travel in the future.
Are you working from home, from the office or a mix of both?: A mix.
What time-management strategies or lessons-learned do you use to manage your schedule and meet your obligations?: As someone who has to context-switch between clients, I use a couple great tools: Shift, a desktop app for streamlining and collaborating across accounts and workflows, is huge to help me keep my email streams from crossing; and, Toggl, which is incredibly easy to use for time-tracking across clients.
As we approach the end of 2023, you’ll consider this to have been a good year professionally if — what?: As a result of being at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade shooting in 2022, a ”good year” in 2023 (or any year) is the perspective that life can be short. Work with the people who lift you up; don’t work with people who drag you down. I’m incredibly blessed to have had a great 2023 with wonderful clients and a healthy family, and for that I am thankful.
What’s the biggest challenge facing the Chicago business community that needs attention as we look ahead to 2024?: The nexus of office vacancies and the growing influx of refugees arriving from other states and across our borders. We have too many people on the streets and too many spaces being underutilized.
What charities/foundations/causes do you regularly support or volunteer with?: 1871 WMNtech Leaders and Jewish United Fund Uptown Cafe.
What book have you read recently that you’d recommend?: “The Puma Years”
What’s the farthest from Chicago you’ve traveled?: South Korea. My sister was teaching English there and I went to visit her. We also traveled to Japan
What’s something about you that would surprise your fellow Women of Influence honorees?: I’m an introvert who presents as an extrovert. I would much rather be marketing other people than marketing myself.
How would you quickly describe your job and what you do to someone you just met?: I’m an expert at marketing the invisible, having spent the last 25 years helping B2B organizations like Miller Heiman Group, DLA Piper and Homefinder.com build, advance and energize their lead-generation programs. I founded Bandwidth Strategy, a fractional CMO and COO consultancy, to help growth-stage organizations drive the right leads into the funnel that result in closed-won business. Using my experience and a bit of humor/improv (honed as a student at Second City), I help create a common language among the all-too-often warring factions of sales and marketing.
The attributes I look for in a candidate when hiring are: Responsibility, proactivity and curiosity.
The best advice I’ve received for career development is: Take improv. It was the absolute best career and life training, and I recommend it to almost everyone I work with.
A tip I’ve learned that’s helped me with networking is: Just say yes. As an introvert, I naturally gravitate toward alone time and/or staying at home. I try to say yes when an invitation comes my way despite my instinct to say no. While I routinely dread going, I am always happy, fulfilled and excited that I said yes.
What is the biggest challenge facing your industry and/or company, and how should that challenge be addressed?: I’ve heard from more than one CEO, “I like for marketing and sales to have healthy tension. It’s good for business.” I think the hardest part of that statement is the thin line between “healthy” and “hostile” tension. I see cleaner funnels, increased lead velocity and quicker revenue growth by dialing down the tension and increasing the communication between marketing and sales. As I’ve written, I advise my clients to tackle the following five questions to overcome sales and marketing misalignment in a B2B environment:
- Do you have a shared language? Define key terms and align on their meanings to avoid misunderstandings.
- Do you have service-level agreements? Agree on response times and establish systems for lead handoff and monitoring.
- Do you have agreed-upon prospect titles? Understand the specific roles and titles that both sales and marketing teams target.
- Is there consistent reporting from marketing to sales teams? Create dashboards to provide a single source of truth and foster collaboration.
- Do sales teams provide consistent feedback to marketing teams? Maintain ongoing dialogue and hold regular summits to ensure alignment and adapt to changing dynamics.
Do you serve as a mentor for someone? If so, how do you fill that role?: At any one time, I offer two gratis mentorship slots to anyone who is interested in a long-term coaching relationship. A slot is one hour of consulting time once a month. I usually support women entrepreneurs, CMOs or sales practitioner who need either marketing, sales, operations or career advice. I also founded the 1871 WMNtech Leaders four-month accelerator and mentoring initiative devoted to cultivating the next generation of women-identifying leaders. We’ve supported 130 women across 50 companies to help develop their professional selves and succeed in Chicago tech startups.
Do you have a mentor yourself? If so, what do you get from that individual?: I have a few, and they are incredible at career advice and, my most recent passion, angel investing.
What’s the biggest challenge facing women who want to take on leadership roles, and what can be done to address that?: I recently wrote an article for Fast Company in which I describe what I see as one of the biggest challenges for women: the loss of social capital in the post-pandemic world. Pre-pandemic, there was no shortage of challenges for women in business: pay inequity, a lack of C-suite roles and minimal board-of-directors representation. Any progress we’ve made in these areas is largely because of the social capital we gained through face-to-face networking, lunches, coffees, events and water-cooler conversations that I participated in for the bulk of my career. All of these efforts created the social capital that helped me in my job at the time but clearly helped me even more in the totality of my career.
What mistake do young professionals make, and how would you advise them to avoid it?: As a young person in today’s economy, I would push hard to find an organization that offers an in-person or hybrid-work option. Use IRL meetings to build relationships with collaborators and mentors so you can learn and fail and grow in your career. Create networks of women and men who will help you succeed over time. The mistake would be thinking that a virtual, Zoom-only world is an easy solution. You will have a much harder road to travel in the future.
Are you working from home, from the office or a mix of both?: A mix.
What time-management strategies or lessons-learned do you use to manage your schedule and meet your obligations?: As someone who has to context-switch between clients, I use a couple great tools: Shift, a desktop app for streamlining and collaborating across accounts and workflows, is huge to help me keep my email streams from crossing; and, Toggl, which is incredibly easy to use for time-tracking across clients.
As we approach the end of 2023, you’ll consider this to have been a good year professionally if — what?: As a result of being at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade shooting in 2022, a ”good year” in 2023 (or any year) is the perspective that life can be short. Work with the people who lift you up; don’t work with people who drag you down. I’m incredibly blessed to have had a great 2023 with wonderful clients and a healthy family, and for that I am thankful.
What’s the biggest challenge facing the Chicago business community that needs attention as we look ahead to 2024?: The nexus of office vacancies and the growing influx of refugees arriving from other states and across our borders. We have too many people on the streets and too many spaces being underutilized.
What charities/foundations/causes do you regularly support or volunteer with?: 1871 WMNtech Leaders and Jewish United Fund Uptown Cafe.
What book have you read recently that you’d recommend?: “The Puma Years”
What’s the farthest from Chicago you’ve traveled?: South Korea. My sister was teaching English there and I went to visit her. We also traveled to Japan
What’s something about you that would surprise your fellow Women of Influence honorees?: I’m an introvert who presents as an extrovert. I would much rather be marketing other people than marketing myself.
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