Q&A Interview with Turing CMO Phil Walsh

In today’s tech world, the role of chief marketing officer covers many areas and is constantly evolving in terms of what the CMO can–and should–be accountable for. A modern CMO’s responsibilities include brand, experience, and growth, and the role is wider and more accountable than ever before. 

Turing recently hired its first CMO, Phil Walsh, and he shared with us some insights on what he’s working on, what he’s excited about, and where you might find him when he’s not working.  

Turing: Phil, please introduce yourself and what you’re responsible for at Turing. 

Phil Walsh: Sure. I’m the Chief Marketing Officer here, and I joined in May 2023. I’m based in Denver, Colorado, in the U.S. and I’m super excited to be here.  A fun fact about me is that when I’m not working, I like to play a lot of golf in the summer and do some snow skiing in the winter. 

The CMO owns all things related to marketing. My team takes care of our brand, content, and marketing technology. We’re the ones who are building the website, driving demand gen, and creating leads for our sales teams. We’re also out there doing events—whether it be building an agenda, driving attendance, or participating in an industry conference, we’re there getting the Turing name out there. 

I also lead a team of people who work on what’s called marketing technology. That’s all of the tech infrastructure that helps us track the buyer’s journey with us both digitally and in person. 

Turing: You mentioned the buyer’s journey. How much of that lies within marketing?  

Phil: It’s my belief as a marketing leader that about 60–70% of a person’s buying journey is before they talk to a sales rep. That includes reading digital papers, sharing on social media, Google searching for topics, exploring people’s websites, watching videos, and other things like that. But people still want to buy from people they know and trust. So there’s an aspect of getting face-to-face with prospective buyers. As Jonathan [Siddarth, Turing’s CEO] says, “we need boots on the ground.” So we participate in large industry conferences and small audience events, like a dinner, to properly share and pitch our offering. 

Turing: That’s great. Who would you say your team works most closely with at Turing?  

Phil: The natural link is between sales and marketing, right? So a lot of our work as a marketing organization is to feed the sales team. We also work quite a bit with our product team to make sure that the customer experience that clients and prospects have—whether it’s emails they get or what they see on our website—is tightly aligned with some of the products that we built and with our back-end data and tracking. 

We’ve also been working closely with our fulfillment team to make sure that our leads actually turn into matches. My team is also responsible for helping to drive supply, or more partner developers, into our network, which ties directly to advertising and being able to attract the right type of talent for our platform. 

Turing: What are you most excited about since you started here? 

Phil: I’m most excited about the way our message is being received in the market. We have a product offering in a trillion-dollar tech services market that is truly differentiated. We have the ability to disrupt an industry that’s been pretty stale and doing the same thing for 20-25 years. So I’m really excited about bringing AI and our vetting and matching platform to the tech services world. For sure. 

Turing: Given that Turing is a data-driven organization, how much of your marketing work would you say is dependent on data, compared to the qualitative element that some might typically think about in marketing? 

Phil: When I started my career, you used to have to put a campaign out, hope things would work, and maybe get some feedback a few months later. In today’s digital world, we literally know within seconds who opened our emails, who clicked on our ads, who’s been on our website—that’s really rewarding information. However, if you don’t do something with that data, then it’s all for nothing. 

Marketing is still somewhat of an experimental practice. Nothing is 100% sure. A lot of what we do is hypothesize. But we can quickly measure the impact of that work and decide if we want to continue to invest in it again in the future. 

One hundred percent of marketing is data-driven. You have to be able to track and measure what you’re doing. But there’s also a very creative aspect to marketing. There always will be. I want people who are creative thinkers. I want people who are bringing new ideas to the forefront. 

Turing: Last question for you, Phil.  What’s some advice you would give a new hire as they start their onboarding journey at Turing? 

Phil: I think the best piece of advice I can give is network. In the past, you may have been able to walk to the water cooler and have a conversation with somebody. You can’t do that in a virtual world. So you have to create that for yourself.  

Maybe push out of your comfort zone a little bit. It could still be digitally. 

Participate. Have your camera on. Be engaged. Don’t just be the person who’s a blank screen with your name on it and never speaks, only listens. I mean, it is important to listen and absorb, but make sure that you add value and participate in the conversation. Do that because that’s how people will get to know you. That’s how people understand your point of view.  

Turing: That’s great advice, Phil. And thank you very much. We look forward to seeing great work from you and the marketing team.