Sue Ann Prentice, CMO of Fluke Corporation, shares her leadership philosophy, which is rooted in curiosity, continuous improvement, and a commitment to serving her team. She discusses the dual challenge of AI and outlines her core marketing focuses: driving growth, telling the brand story, and bringing company culture to life.
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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Stay Curious and Never Be Afraid to Be a Beginner. In a world of constant change, the key to growth is embracing new challenges like AI as opportunities to learn and experiment.
- A Leader’s Primary Role is to Serve Their Team. A CMO’s purpose is to help their people become the best versions of themselves by fostering a positive employee experience.
- The Dual Challenge of AI: Supercharge Experts While Nurturing Beginners. The key is to leverage AI’s power to enhance the skills of experienced staff without eroding the foundational problem-solving abilities of junior team members.
Tell us a little bit about yourself, your role, and how you got started.
My name is Sue Ann Prentice. I live in the United Kingdom, and I have the immense privilege of leading marketing at Fluke. For those who do not know Fluke, we are a global industry leader in test and measurement, and I am particularly proud to work for a brand known across the world for safety, innovation, and precision.
I grew up in South Africa and studied in Cape Town before moving to the UK. I was fortunate to get an incredible start to my marketing career at KPMG. So much of what I learned there—the foundational training, development, and growth opportunities—are things I can still trace back to 20 to 25 years later. That is how my journey began.
Was there anybody in particular who guided you through this journey?
Across my career, I have been fortunate to work with incredibly talented leaders and fantastic brands like Fujitsu and Atos. I have also had leaders who, perhaps at times, were not very good, and I have learned from them as well. All of those experiences have shaped me as a leader and as a marketer, and I would not change any of it.
What are some major dos and don’ts that you have learned in general?
Stay curious. That is my number one piece of advice. Curiosity is a special thing to have as a marketer and is what has allowed me to continue to learn and grow. Linked to that, never be afraid to be a beginner at something.
I have been a beginner at many stages in my life. Especially in marketing today, with all the innovation and challenges around AI, you have to stay on top of things and explore new avenues. Some people see challenges; I see them as opportunities to do new things, to innovate, and to experiment.
What do you think is the biggest challenge that marketers face today?
Again, I am going to use the word opportunity. AI is something every CMO is looking at. For me, the opportunity is to look at my brilliant, talented team and ask, “How can AI supercharge what they are doing every day?”
However, I also have to get the balance right. I have a mixture of people, including some who are early in their careers. The challenge is ensuring that AI does not erode experience, problem-solving, and creativity. We can’t just take the first answer AI gives us; we must maintain the deep thinking, research, and experimentation that builds expertise. It’s a balance between supercharging the experts and not eroding the human relevance of what we do.
What is your main marketing focus?
First and foremost, I believe I am here to serve my team and help people be the very best versions of themselves. Their growth and development are a huge part of what gets me out of bed with purpose.
As a marketing function, our focus is on three areas:
- Driving Growth: We are here to be the growth engine for our organisation. I am fortunate that marketing has a strategic seat at the table, and we add value to the business and our customers every day.
- Telling Our Brand Story: We have a special brand at Fluke, and it’s our privilege to bring its qualities of innovation, precision, and safety to life for our customers. For the customers we serve, having tools that ensure they get home safely to their families every day is paramount.
- Bringing Culture to Life: Culture belongs to each of us, but we help make it tangible and real for our people, partners, and customers. We partner across the organisation to ensure everyone, whether remote or in an office, feels our special culture.
What is the culture like at Fluke when it comes to teaming up with sales?
A bit of healthy tension between sales and marketing is a good thing; it keeps everyone hungry for success. Within Fluke, what guides us is how we show up for our customers in the very best way.
We have worked hard on what we call interlock and alignment. We know that when we get that alignment right, the magic happens. It takes work, partnership, and strong communication, but there are huge amounts of respect for the disciplines we each bring. The customer’s buying journey has changed so much, and it demands that sales, marketing, and product teams collaborate tightly.
Which marketing initiative has your sales department traditionally been more grateful for?
A recent example is our flagship annual customer event called Xcelerate. It is a multi-day event where we have the most investment. It was wonderful to recently hear our VP for customer success and other business leaders praise the marketing team for constantly looking at how to make the event better and deliver an even greater experience for our customers every year.
What advice would you give in terms of wielding the most success through marketing strategy?
You have to be very clear on what winning looks like. Define your goals and objectives, and make sure everyone is aligned with that. Very often, I’ll have conversations where someone says an initiative was great or didn’t work, and I’ll ask, “But why?” Their reason often doesn’t align with the goals we originally set.
Our culture at Fluke is very much around continuous improvement and Kaizen. When things are not working against your defined goals, our culture says it’s okay to fail fast, move on, experiment. Put countermeasures in place, and if they work, we scale them. If they don’t, we try something else. Unless you know what you are going after, it’s hard to know if you’re succeeding or how to improve.
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