Latest / The Prompt / Ep. 555 | Driving growth with smarter AI and stronger CX strategies

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Ep. 555 | Driving growth with smarter AI and stronger CX strategies · The Prompt

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  This is on base your one stop shop for solving your most
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  pressing B to B go to market challenges.
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  Each week, host Chris Moody and Paul Gibson talk to sales and
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  marketing leaders to get you in depth insights and creative
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  strategies to set your revenue teams up for success.
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  Hey, everyone, welcome back to the Home Based Podcast.
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  I'm your host, Chris Moody, and today I'm very excited.
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  I have two guests with me, Phil and Tina, and we're going to
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  talk about driving growth with smarter AI and CX strategies.
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  Thank you both for joining us today.
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  Welcome to the show. I'm going to start with you,
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  Tina, and then we'll kick it over to Phil.
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  But the first question we love to ask is for you to tell us a
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  little bit about your journey and what led you to what you're
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  doing today. Yeah, absolutely.
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  So I started my journey in digital marketing and I've come
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  across a lot of different technology.
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  And throughout the technology, I've identified that I really
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  love the operation set of things.
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  I love getting in the back and using technology to connect
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  processes and people. And that has gotten me to where
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  I am today, which is really protecting the customer
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  experience and continuing to drive technology to provide
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  efficiency. Awesome.
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  And let's kick to you, Phil. I'm less interesting.
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  I am a senior millennial, so I'm 44 years old.
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  I started my career back with Coca-Cola and I went through
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  seven years of their management development program before I
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  decided that consumer packs good was not for me.
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  I liked not working on holidays and I started doing things like
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  startups, scale UPS, transformation companies.
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  But by and large last 20 years I've been running go to market
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  teams of some sort and fashion building revenue systems, which
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  led me to task us where I do a lot of that for a lot of
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  different companies at scale so. Outstanding.
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  Yeah, I am 42 so, you know, I try to explain to my kids, you
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  can remember not having the Internet and you can remember
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  the C DS to have the Internet. And then I was also coding
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  Myspace pages. So that was how I learned web
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  design. You know all the dumb things
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  that we did to get to where we're at now Well, we we talked
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  a lot before we hit record. I had to stop myself because we
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  were talking about AI and how it's changing the expectations
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  and reshaping the market. I'd love for you each to answer
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  this and I'll I will just throw it out there and let you fight
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  over who jumps in first. But why do you think leaders
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  should prioritize rethinking their go to market strategies
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  right now to stay competitive? I'll go, Tina, you want to fast
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  follow on that? Tina and I talk about this all
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  the time, right, Because we have we have to talk to lots of
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  different companies who are thinking about things
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  dramatically different on one call to the other.
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  But writ large, I think right now is a unique time where it is
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  you think back to the.com below, just going back to dating
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  ourselves a little bit, right, likethe.com era and then came
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  Cloud and then the rise of SAS. But this is a little bit
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  different, right? It just feels a little bit more
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  impactful, a little bit maybe more chaotic, little Wild West.
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  And I think leaders right now are scrambling to figure out
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  what is the right fit and best solution for them in their
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  spaces. And, you know, it's like
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  everybody's looking for a silver bullet, but there really is
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  none. It's going to be different for
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  everybody. And like I said, I'm hearing
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  different answers from different people, from different companies
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  and different spaces. So it's fun, it's exciting, but
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  if you don't like change, you're in the wrong era.
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  Yeah. And to follow on that, as you
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  know, I have experienced a lot of different technologies.
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  I I've been running operation for different kind of
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  technologies for over 15 years now and it changes so fast.
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  And I feel like there's been many times where companies are
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  like uncertain of the changes that are happening, but if
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  they're not coming along with how things are changing and how
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  the environment is changing, they're really, really quickly
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  going to start falling behind. And then at some point, they're
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  going to have to catch up. And then it's just like super
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  chaotic. So to rethink your GTM strategy
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  right now, when AI is still kind of new and there's a lot of room
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  to experiment and test things and do kind of like try and
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  error, this is the perfect time to rethink how you can start
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  incorporating the AI into the GTM strategies.
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  Perfect. And yeah, the next question, I,
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  I want you both to jump in and Tina, we'll start with you.
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  You talked about OPS earlier too.
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  I think there's a, a lot of parallels to how things are
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  changing here. But what are some of the biggest
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  misconceptions organizations have about using AI and sales
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  and how do we avoid those? And I'll, I'll preface that
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  before you jump into that, I will bring it back to just to
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  make sure I don't ramble, but we've seen the billboards for
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  AISDRS and AI sellers and you've seen the LinkedIn post of all
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  the guides to book all the meetings automagically, right?
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  Like I, I think sometimes we're, we're sold a false bill of goods
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  and some of these instances maybe we're not.
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  But I I'd love for you to cover what you think are those
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  misconceptions and how we make sure we don't have, we can avoid
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  them for sales. Yeah, absolutely.
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  So Phil said this a little bit earlier.
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  I think the biggest misconception is that AI is the
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  silver bullet that's going to come in.
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  It's going to fix everything. It's going to drive all these
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  meetings. It's going to be so incredible,
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  right? But the truth is that they AI
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  actually needs a lot of data and it needs clean data in order to
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  be able to drive all of that efficiency and be able to do all
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  those things that we wanted to do.
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  And so if the CRM is super messy, if sales is not following
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  the processes that are in place right now, if they're not
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  putting in their activities, then all the AI is going to do
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  is just amplify this dysfunction that's happening right now.
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  It's not going to be able to deliver all of the things that
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  we expected to if the data just isn't there for it to be able to
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  like learn and get feedback from it.
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  And that's the other misconception I think that is
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  out there about AI is that AI runs on its own.
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  Like you just turn it on. It's just going to do its thing.
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  It's going to be so magical. But in Operations, we know that
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  actually AI needs humans in the loop.
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  It needs humans to give it feedback and needs it for
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  training and needs. The AI needs a lot of data and a
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  lot of feedback, and humans in the loop help the AI learn and
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  get better at the things that we wanted to do.
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  So those are my two big misconceptions that I see out
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  there. Clean data and you definitely
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  need a human to help make that AI run efficiently.
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  What about you, Phil? You seen any other ones?
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  She just opened like 5 Pandora's boxes in that point on it.
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  You know, I just kind of want to add some at build on what she
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  said. And I think the data is
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  critical, right? So we, we've been training AI
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  models for companies before AI was the hottest topic around
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  right at our company, but we're fortunate to serve in that
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  paradigm right now. But you know, she just said data
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  is critical. You can't just like put it into
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  a black hole and it'll figure it out.
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  Maybe it'll like take some like learnings from if it's like
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  trained on some other person's models, but like it doesn't know
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  your product doesn't know your customer base.
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  You have to teach it that. And for all.
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  I mean, it's great as CRM is like how many of us have
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  struggled just getting sales people to put in call notes and
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  things of that nature. God forbid if you're out there
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  in the wilderness and you haven't got any call recordings
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  to train it on. Like you need some data pool
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  data like to teach this thing to utilize the the power that it
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  can't have. The other thing though, I think
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  it Tina also aptly said was like this is has to be a forcing
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  function for you. If you have not built out your
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  CX journey, if you have not thought about every step in your
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  go to market process, how do you really know where you should be
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  applying AI to enhance and up level things that are working or
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  fix things that aren't? So I think it forces us as
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  revenue leaders to really step back, kind of take a 0 based
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  approach to Christy. We were talking about before we
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  hit record, right? Like a lot of people just have
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  to step back and say, if I were to rebuild this thing all over
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  again from the ground up, what would it look like?
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  I think that's a healthy exercise.
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  Go to Aspen for a couple days with your C-Suite and go get
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  that done. Like this is a great time to do
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  it and then add AI into that. I think that that's really going
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  to empower the the org, the future, not the ones who are
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  just trying to slap it in because I got to make something
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  work for the next board meeting. Yeah, definitely not a bolt on.
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  I am with you on that. And you know one thing that
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  comes up a lot, Phil, I, I will kick this one to you.
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  And then Tina have a different question for you.
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  But for AI adoption, we've often seen concerns about losing the
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  human touch. And I know that that's a
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  differentiator for some of the content driven AI platforms to
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  say you can keep your brand voice in the authenticity.
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  But I'm curious how you both seen organizations maintain
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  authentic customer connections while they continue to automate
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  and embrace more AI. So how do we make sure we don't
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  lose that personal touch? Number one, I think you got to
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  start by actually knowing your customer so understand what they
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  really want. Are they going to want to hear
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  an AI voice generated thing when they call in your on your 800
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  number? Are they going to want to
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  interact with an AI chat bot? Does your product fit to that
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  ICP? Maybe generationally, there's a
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  difference You've got to really think about like where this
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  should be applied to not interrupt that workflow.
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  The other thing I think, you know, in terms of what we've
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  been seeing at our company is it's not necessarily replacing
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  human labor. It's changing and evolving the
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  way that labor takes place and actually allowing for humans to
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  do more strategic, more interesting work and kind of
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  deflect what we used to call like deflection of menial
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  administrative quick Q and a kind of knowledge based stuff
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  that doesn't need a human operator to solve for.
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  And you know, we just said, you know, senior millennials, we're
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  OK with looking it up on our own and watching the two-minute
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  YouTube video to like figure out how to fix it ourselves.
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  We're cool with that, right? Like you get some generational
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  changes might be there, but you know, I think it's allowing now
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  we're seeing shifts in investment strategies for
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  companies to take what was an allocation and budget line for
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  their human go to market capabilities and invest that
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  into better serving and understanding enterprise
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  customers or emerging accounts, right?
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  And just triaging the rest with some level of AI.
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  So I think there's like a scalability almost like a lever
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  or knob that you kind of TuneIn and to where how often you apply
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  AI to make sure that you're serving your customers in the
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  best way, at least for now, Asterisks, asterisks, asterisks.
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  Who knows what tomorrow will bring, but for now, that's how I
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  see it playing out for the least the next few months.
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  Perfect. And Tina, I'm I'm curious about
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  alignment. You talked about the changing go
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  to market strategy and this might be a case where Phil was
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  saying some things we don't have to embrace as much AI.
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  But I I'm curious with alignment, it's always
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  difficult. I think we don't normally talk
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  enough to each other across all departments.
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  But what are some of the examples or routines or shared
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  KP is that you think are helping to bring sales, marketing and
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  customer success together? Yeah, alignment is a really big
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  topic. I've talked about alignment a
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  lot at a couple of conferences. And so marketing and, and sales
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  alignment is always crucial because, you know, things are
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  always kind of changing and the two different departments are
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  doing different things. And the missing point is always
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  like that, that constant communication.
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  But really the communication has to be speaking the same language
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  and then like making sure that there's a common KPI that we can
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  all like rally again so that we can work together to, to meet
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  our respective goals. So my main points about
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  alignment have always been opportunity and pipeline data.
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  So use the opportunity and pipeline data to speak the same
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  language so that you can accomplish the same goals.
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  But it's not just about the revenue itself.
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  It's taking a deeper dive into that data and then being able to
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  tell stories about it, like what kind of trends are we seeing?
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  What do we see is working? You know, Phil said that early,
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  like understanding a customer and the journey that they're
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  taking so that you can make that sales funnel from like end to
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  end. You can use personalization, you
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  can use like all of these different touch points to really
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  make sure you're making an impact.
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  And if marketing and sales and customer servers aren't looking
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  at the same data together, then they're always going to be
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  thinking about the strategy differently.
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  They're going to think that, oh, you know, marketing's just
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  thinking about MQLS and sales like not following up on these
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  MQL's and you know, customer service is not doing the, the
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  upselling that we wanted to. But it's because we're all
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  looking at different data and we're not speaking the same
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  language even though we're trying to go after the same
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  goals. So really aligning on on the
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  data is, is key. And I will share my favorite
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  ritual. My favorite tip about driving
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  that alignment is creating customer journeys.
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  So from end to end, showing what a real customer journey looks
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  like. It's awesome to see like, hey,
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  we've all driven like X amount of revenue.
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  It's so awesome, but when you break it down to 1 customer and
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  then you see, hey, this customer like engage with these ads, they
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  came to this event, they downloaded this piece of
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  content. Sales reach out here and here
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  and here and here's the things that worked and didn't work.
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  Then you can rally the whole company around it.
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  The subject matter experts see how their content is working,
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  marketing sees like all their strategies working, sales sees
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  how they're coming into the play and what's being effective.
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  And so everyone can rally around this customer journey end to
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  end. And that's what you can then use
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  to start talking about like how do we scale this out?
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  How do we now work together to make this even bigger and
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  better? And how do we all continue
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  growing our revenue in this way. And here's like how you all
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  impact this journey and how we all work together to.
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  I love that I I'm curious the customer journey.
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  That's so much fun. In my head.
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  I see the the gift for the meme, you know, all the post its and
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  the lines and the yarn and the push pins, right?
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  Like, well, this led to this because it's never linear.
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  So I love that. What about if we if we move
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  higher up in the funnel when we're talking about the lead
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  where we had on this before we hit record to sales is used to
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  catching the leads, right? Like give me the hot ones.
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  Are you seeing any examples where intelligent lead scoring
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  and AI tools are starting to change how cells works leads?
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  And if so, what are your favorite examples that you've
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  seen? And we could start with you,
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  Tina and and Phil, if you have anything on this one you can
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  jump into. Yeah, so you know what's funny?
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  When Salesforce first introduced the Einstein behavioral and lead
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  scoring, it was like, it seemed like so long ago.
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  And I remember within like the community, everybody was so
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  like, I don't know about it, you know, because we have this like
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  crazy, like really like complex lead scoring model that like all
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  these people sat in a room and they defined like who what touch
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  points are going to get how many points, you know, And when I had
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  and I implemented it, I was just so pleasantly surprised by how
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  well the AI did because the AI just took the objective out of
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  lead scoring. So, yeah, all of these people
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  sat in a room and they were like, yeah, this white paper is
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  going to get 10 points and then this event is going to get 50
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  points. But that's just like us thinking
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  that these are the the touch points that are really valuable.
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  The AI doesn't think about it. The AI would have did it just
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  looked at all the data it had available in in the CRM and
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  looked at all the touch points and looked at the sales touch
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  points. It looked at what touch points
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  kept showing up when deals were getting closed.
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  And so it gave the importance on these touch points based on what
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  continued to show up, what was really working towards getting
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  to that close deal. And I just thought that like
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  that was really fascinating. And it makes so much sense
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  because things always changing in the market.
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  We know that customer during is always changing.
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  We know that like customers are coming in from all kinds of
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  different angles. And it's really hard for us to
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  really say like this white paper is so valuable when different
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  customers have different things that they value.
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  So letting the AI execute on it, crunch all the numbers and take
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  all the data into consideration and then score the leads based
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  on that, I think was just like brilliant.
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  And when we implemented it, we saw this rate change and the AI
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  surfacing the hot leans that were really ready at this point
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  to convert and talk to someone in sales.
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  And I'll be to our team. They just loved that they used
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  this lead score and it really helped them Dr. efficiency and
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  like how they're following up. They could get out more
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  personalized messages because they knew that they had less
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  people that they were following up on based on knowing that
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  these are the people on the market right now.
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  And we saw a 30% increase in our conversions.
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  So I'm all for the AI and and lead scoring and letting the AI
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  crunch the numbers and who's really interested right now
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  based on all the signals that it has in front of it?
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  Yeah, I love that. And, and Phil, I'm going to kick
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  this into you, but I, I envisioned the demand Gen.
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  leaders slouched over. That was a bit of a gut punch,
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  right? We've been in the room, we
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  figured out the point system. We've all done the whiteboard
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  exercise, the spreadsheet exercise.
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  So that's just one example of a process that could completely
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  change with AI. So I'm curious what challenges
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  you're seeing across all of your accounts that you're helping
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  when teams are facing AI driven processes and they're coming in
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  and being introduced, How do you overcome the roadblocks that
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  could exist with traditional process or we've always done it
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  this way, your cells is always work this way to really unlock
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  that value we can get through driving things with AI.
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  Yeah, one of the best things you can do for your frontline
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  sellers. Just make things easy for them,
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  right? Don't make them hunt for it.
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  Don't make them try to go figure out the algorithm.
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  Just give them the information on a silver platter and let them
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  go do what they do. But I will, I will say, if it's
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  of any comfort to any of the listeners of this podcast, you
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  know, there are some blue chip stocks out there that have not
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  even gotten to level 1 of lead scoring yet, which is like
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  firmographic, you know, demographic information and then
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  trying to score that start there.
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  But what one of the best things about AI is, and particularly
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  for sellers, is it can do a lot of deep cuts on your ICP, right?
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  So like you got to start thinking into level 2.
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  You know, it's not just does this person have a certain title
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  and they have this certain function, you know, it's really
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  who is that person? So now it's like all the traits
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  that a great seller has and being able to like understand
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  and look across the room and it's this person analytical or
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  they relationship based or, you know, are they cautious?
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  All those kind of like, you know, personographic data points
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  that a good seller can just like pick up on instinctively.
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  Now, not every case, but a lot of cases, if you let AI do its
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  thing, it can extract and understand like, OK, we need to
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  present the information about this product in this way at this
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  kind of meeting. You just have to prompt it the
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  right way. So I think what's best, the one
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  of the best things for organizations to do right now is
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  to get their workforce just AI native.
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  And it's going to take some effort because you're going to
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  have early adopters, you're going to have those who resist
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  and they're just going to have those who wish they could get
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  started but don't even know how. You have to handhold.
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  It's going to be a process. I think, you know, personally, I
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  think back to like 12 years ago when I joined a meet and like an
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  old school media company, right, Selling print ads in magazines.
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  We're going through the digital revolution.
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  The amount of work it took over two or three years to get that
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  workforce just to understand digital tools like the emerging
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  digital ads and things like that, it feels the very much
• 20:35
  same way. So best thing you do is get
• 20:37
  everybody AI native so that when you do roll out these process
• 20:41
  changes that have AI embedded in them, it's not going to look
• 20:45
  like it's written in a completely foreign language to
• 20:47
  them. I love that one a lot.
• 20:49
  I would spilled on the AI native notion there because that's
• 20:53
  actionable. We could start that immediately
• 20:56
  for both of you. We're going to start with Phil
• 20:58
  and then we'll kick to you Tina. But for the leaders tuning in
• 21:01
  today that needs something actionable that they can start
• 21:04
  working on immediately to improve pipeline, elevate that
• 21:08
  customer experience, so we can nail the customer journeys, Tina
• 21:12
  on our whiteboard, let's call it a whiteboard.
• 21:14
  I don't know what we call it digitally digital whiteboard,
• 21:16
  but as we're embracing more AI as in our go to market strategy,
• 21:21
  what are some of those actionable steps?
• 21:23
  And you hit on AI native Phil. So I think that's a great one we
• 21:26
  can put on the list. What else would you recommend?
• 21:29
  And then we'll pass to Tina. Yeah.
• 21:30
  I think just going out there and understanding what are all the
• 21:34
  different tools and use cases that are available to you and
• 21:36
  being familiar with that first. I mean, there's, you know, still
• 21:40
  as revenue up. Yeah, I'm not preaching out
• 21:42
  there like this is for me too. There's still a lot to learn in
• 21:46
  terms of what tools are even out there.
• 21:47
  Right. Like you think of that little
• 21:49
  cartoon of like the medieval sword fighter guy, and he's
• 21:53
  about to go into battle and there's a machine gun salesman
• 21:55
  over here and he's like, but wait, you know, I don't have
• 21:58
  time to talk to you. I've got a battle.
• 22:00
  Like go figure out like what? What ammo you have because
• 22:03
  there's a lot of cool stuff. Don't be afraid to take demos in
• 22:06
  meetings. I would encourage people every
• 22:09
  SDR out there listening. Please don't blow me up for
• 22:12
  saying this, but I encourage you to take like a demo a week and
• 22:15
  just learn to be honest. Like just tell them you're
• 22:17
  wanting to learn more about products and tools and you're
• 22:20
  just exploring the landscape. You could start with some of the
• 22:23
  bigger, larger, you know, sales enablement companies that are
• 22:26
  out there now what they're doing, but keep up to date.
• 22:28
  What you thought you knew about familiar tools even a year ago
• 22:33
  is now expired info. So like, learn up, start with
• 22:37
  the tools. Then there's coursework that you
• 22:38
  can go take out there that you can research on your own.
• 22:42
  There's still a little bit of black hole in terms of like
• 22:44
  certifications and like trainers out there for AI again, because
• 22:48
  everybody's trying to learn, so nobody's an expert.
• 22:50
  So also give yourself a little reprieve.
• 22:53
  You don't have to know everything, but before you like
• 22:55
  force your sales force to do something, go out and learn what
• 22:58
  maybe it's the best thing for you first so that you can teach
• 23:01
  downstream. So Tina, I don't know if you
• 23:04
  have anything to build on that, but I'm sure you too.
• 23:07
  I definitely want to add the data hygiene part.
• 23:10
  If you don't yet have a good data strategy, this is the time
• 23:15
  where you absolutely have to have one and you should start
• 23:18
  one right away. Before I implemented the AI lead
• 23:23
  scoring model, we had to go through this huge data cleansing
• 23:27
  through from our CRM so that the AI could draw some meaningful
• 23:33
  insights for us and could really look at the right leads and be
• 23:37
  able to like pick out real gem spas.
• 23:39
  And not just that, we had to make sure that it did do that so
• 23:43
  that we can build trust with our sales team that we were giving
• 23:46
  them the right kind of leads. And so they hate the data
• 23:50
  hygiene and having good data strategies is really important.
• 23:54
  And I would say that's like the first action to take is figure
• 23:58
  out what that is. Make sure that you have rigor
• 24:01
  around it, standardization and you really understand like what
• 24:05
  is keeping the data clean? I would say that's that's number
• 24:08
  one. Or like how you enhance your
• 24:10
  data, right? You got to have more data so
• 24:12
  that the AI can do better things.
• 24:14
  So data enhancement is should be part of that strategy.
• 24:18
  And the other one is just experimentation.
• 24:20
  Like, you know, we've talked about this before, like at this
• 24:23
  point, almost every tool out there has some kind of AI
• 24:27
  feature capability. And so don't be afraid, turn it
• 24:31
  on, try it out, test it out and kind of like figure out what are
• 24:36
  some of the different use cases that you can use for it.
• 24:39
  But definitely just just start experimenting with it.
• 24:41
  And the more you experiment with it, I think the more open you're
• 24:45
  going to get to using AI and you're going to figure out some
• 24:47
  really creative ways to incorporate it into your
• 24:50
  day-to-day so that you can drive more efficiency with the things
• 24:53
  that you love to do. And then using the AI to help
• 24:56
  you with some of the things that you might be struggling with on
• 24:58
  a day-to-day. Great suggestions.
• 25:01
  I love that. I have a couple very quick
• 25:03
  questions before we get into the really fast one.
• 25:06
  I call that the lightning round right at the very end.
• 25:08
  But Phil, one more quick one from you.
• 25:11
  How do you utilize sales performance metrics to adapt
• 25:14
  your sales strategies in real time?
• 25:16
  One of the first things you have to understand is you can metric
• 25:20
  everything to death and all you're going to end up with at
• 25:23
  the end of the quarter is a Pretty Little dashboard that
• 25:25
  told you nothing. You really have to understand
• 25:27
  what you're trying to drive at. So if customer acquisition is
• 25:29
  your aim or if it's customer retention, just find out what
• 25:33
  your North Star metric is and don't just align your sales team
• 25:36
  and the sales team's comp plan to that.
• 25:38
  Get the entire go to market apparatus lined up around that.
• 25:41
  That includes marketing like Tina was talking about busting
• 25:44
  down silos. Like marketing should not just
• 25:47
  be part of the act with classic acquisition funnel.
• 25:50
  They have to be part of that bow tie model end to end, right?
• 25:53
  So this is that moment in time, I think with all the back
• 25:57
  dynamics going on in the background where you can really
• 25:59
  fall off the thought around what go to market is in the 1st
• 26:04
  place. Not these like independent
• 26:06
  little silos of teams, but how do I apply these different
• 26:09
  metrics and really focus on the metrics that matter?
• 26:12
  Dashboard those, get everybody aligned on what those metrics
• 26:16
  are and then push hard on fast on those.
• 26:19
  And don't be afraid to like, like this isn't an old editor's
• 26:23
  trick, right? When you're writing an article
• 26:24
  or something like that, it's like, first kill all your
• 26:26
  darlings. Like don't be afraid to leave
• 26:28
  some metrics on the chopping block that just might not matter
• 26:31
  or just might not be the core movers.
• 26:34
  There's kind of like vanity metrics, right?
• 26:35
  Like, yeah, whole time or like that's all well and good, but
• 26:39
  like at the end of the day, keep your customer and the customer
• 26:43
  journey map that you built that we talked about earlier at the
• 26:46
  core and build the metrics around that and then build tiers
• 26:50
  and layers on top of that. Otherwise your your sale, you're
• 26:53
  going to ask for what you get. If you need to ramp up calls,
• 26:56
  you're going to get a bunch of calls, but not a lot of
• 26:58
  performance, right? Like the sales team is going to
• 27:00
  give it to you if you ask for it, but it might not be the
• 27:03
  quality you want. So, but if you're focused on
• 27:06
  tier ones first, drive those tier twos can happen later.
• 27:10
  You can start to do fine tuning later.
• 27:12
  But that's my biggest advice for anybody thinking about KPIs is
• 27:16
  keep it simple, stupid. Focus on the metrics that
• 27:19
  matter, drive hard on those, align your organization to that,
• 27:23
  and then you can build on top of that foundation.
• 27:25
  And that's how you'll get those incremental improvements over
• 27:27
  time. Kill Your Darlings and the brain
• 27:30
  went to Game of Thrones. Even episode one for someone you
• 27:33
  think is the main character. And then it's like dead.
• 27:35
  And then we're not going to talk about the Red Wedding.
• 27:38
  OK, Tina, very quick one for you.
• 27:41
  What do you think is the single biggest challenge in marketing
• 27:45
  today? Yeah, so tough.
• 27:49
  That was a brutal 1, Chris. Yeah, I know.
• 27:51
  It's it's one of restraint. You can only pick one thing, but
• 27:55
  you don't even have to elaborate.
• 27:57
  You can just say here's the toughest thing.
• 27:59
  Well, I will elaborate on this one.
• 28:01
  So I had the honor of talking at a couple of industry events now
• 28:06
  and afterwards I'll get people come to me and they tell me, Oh
• 28:10
  yeah, this really resonates with me.
• 28:12
  We're really struggling with us and it is always alignment
• 28:15
  between marketing and sales. There are still some silos,
• 28:19
  there's so some bridges that need to be building.
• 28:21
  There's a lot of trust that needs to be built up.
• 28:24
  And I feel like with the AISDRS out there, it's become even a
• 28:29
  little bit of a bigger topic. Like there's some fear, you
• 28:32
  know, between the different teams of how marketing might
• 28:36
  implement the AISDR. So I think that's still one that is a big
• 28:40
  pain point that that's a big challenge for B2B marketers.
• 28:44
  Great answer. See, she crushed it, Phil.
• 28:47
  See, she was good. I'm.
• 28:48
  Worried about it? All right.
• 28:52
  This is the lightning round, so think of this family feud.
• 28:55
  Even if you want to shout them same time, it's OK.
• 28:57
  Or you can pitter patter take turns.
• 28:59
  I have a couple quick questions to close this out.
• 29:01
  We like to ask them on every single episode to try to compile
• 29:04
  lots of cool recommendations. The first What are your favorite
• 29:08
  tools or technology you're using today?
• 29:10
  Say lean data. I love lean data.
• 29:12
  It's super customizable, like you can route leads, you can
• 29:15
  enhance your data. It keeps your data clean.
• 29:18
  It's like it does so many things.
• 29:20
  I just absolutely love lean data.
• 29:22
  I still love zoom info. For me everything starts at data
• 29:27
  and then goes from there. And there's a lot of different
• 29:29
  solutions for different categories that I have favorites
• 29:32
  for. But if you don't have a good
• 29:34
  data vendor helping you with someone like the block and
• 29:36
  tackle things we've talked about it, like the podcast, you know,
• 29:39
  particularly brought it up, your goose is cooked.
• 29:42
  I mean, you're going to throw bad process on top of bad data
• 29:45
  and bad things will happen. So start with that one or one of
• 29:49
  the ilk. But that's a good, you know,
• 29:52
  blue chip to trust on. Definitely.
• 29:54
  I mean, look, we have tons of joint customers for that reason,
• 29:57
  right? The more the merrier.
• 29:59
  OK, what about good reads? Now we we're generous with
• 30:02
  reads. It can be book, blog,
• 30:03
  newsletter, podcast. What inspires you?
• 30:06
  I love Atomic Habits and James Clear also has a newsletter.
• 30:11
  It's a really quick read and ask very insightful questions, so
• 30:15
  that's my favorite one right now.
• 30:18
  Nothing new for me, typical millennial.
• 30:20
  I do very little reading anymore.
• 30:22
  It's a lot of like podcasts listening and quick snippets and
• 30:25
  short form of all kinds. But I do go back to one I got in
• 30:28
  college. Just classic Robert Cialdini
• 30:31
  influence, science and practice. You know, the salesperson to me
• 30:34
  always comes back to how do I understand the human at the end
• 30:39
  of the line? How do I understand the
• 30:40
  customer? What makes them tick?
• 30:42
  What's in our reptile brains that make us do XY and Z?
• 30:46
  Always super fascinating to me. And it's that fine line between
• 30:49
  influence and manipulation that sometimes salespeople walk
• 30:52
  right? So your ethic base has to be
• 30:54
  really strong. But I'm always fascinated with
• 30:57
  what makes people tick. Anecdotally I saw like this
• 30:59
  really funny like meme. I think it had like 2 profiles.
• 31:03
  Both go people were 65 years old.
• 31:06
  Both lived in the UK. Both were multimillionaires,
• 31:09
  both want their marriages and divorces.
• 31:12
  You know, if you're a lead scorer then they probably have
• 31:13
  the same score. But how you treat those people
• 31:15
  would be very different way because one person was King
• 31:18
  Charles and one person was Ozzy Osbourne.
• 31:21
  So coming back and then really understand the psychology of ICP
• 31:26
  formation, marketing and sales can take you a very long way in
• 31:30
  your career. Perfect.
• 31:31
  Yeah, Two timeless examples there by both of you.
• 31:34
  Great job. Last one before we get to the
• 31:37
  most important question of all. Same question but for people who
• 31:40
  inspires you in the B2B space. So I love Stefan Spencer.
• 31:45
  He runs a podcast called Marketing Speak and he has all
• 31:48
  kinds of different people that come on, but it comes from an
• 31:52
  SEO background. So he's always thinking about
• 31:55
  like people behavior and how it's like impacting the way that
• 31:58
  people are searching and looking for things.
• 32:00
  I just, I find them very fascinating and inspirational.
• 32:04
  And I do love Sarah Magner. You know, she's like the Rev OPS
• 32:08
  guru out there. She's also sharing tips and
• 32:11
  she's a great follower and super inspirational.
• 32:14
  Yeah, I like Jason Limpkin a lot.
• 32:17
  Big SAS to her fan in that space.
• 32:19
  I think he's just really plugged in, has a lot of interesting
• 32:22
  guests, very consumable information.
• 32:24
  I also like some of the new kids on LinkedIn, LinkedIn Content
• 32:28
  Warriors. There's a guy, Brian Lamanna,
• 32:30
  Kyle Coleman, of course, very cool to follow and listen to.
• 32:34
  So anybody that's actually giving very practical advice and
• 32:37
  not, you know, theologian style, I love that because look, as a
• 32:41
  go to market leader, you're busy, busy, busy.
• 32:44
  You need to consume information very fast.
• 32:46
  And I just don't have a lot of time for big poetic stories like
• 32:50
  give me the information fast and furious and let me go use it
• 32:53
  right. So I love the stuff like that.
• 32:55
  Perfect. And Phil, based on that the the
• 32:58
  brevity, maybe you answered the very last question.
• 33:01
  How can everyone get in touch with both of you after this
• 33:04
  episode? Honestly you can find me pretty
• 33:06
  easily in my e-mail. It's phil.hernandez@taskus.com.
• 33:11
  I do a lot of go to market services solutions for companies
• 33:14
  looking to outsource their teams and also on LinkedIn.
• 33:17
  I'm pretty easy to find there too and quick search you'll find
• 33:21
  me. My LinkedIn is usually up to
• 33:22
  date. Awesome.
• 33:23
  And what about you, Tina? Yeah, LinkedIn.
• 33:26
  LinkedIn is the best way to connect with me and I I love
• 33:30
  following people who are kind of similar space to just learn from
• 33:33
  them. So I'm always looking for new
• 33:35
  connections. Well, you both crushed it.
• 33:37
  Thank you so much for joining me on the show today.
• 33:40
  You did a great job of the pitter patter sharing, not
• 33:42
  talking over each other. So I see the alignment here.
• 33:46
  Tina's my secret weapon. Like she and I work very closely
• 33:49
  together and we're always picking each other's brains and
• 33:52
  going to conferences. So we've we've fast become very
• 33:55
  good friends in the in the last year and a half or so.
• 33:57
  Half of LA. Standing well, Thank you both.
• 34:00
  Have a great rest of your day. Thank you, Chris.
• 34:02
  Bye. Thanks for joining us for On
• 34:05
  Base. If you enjoyed this episode,
• 34:07
  please be sure to share, rate, review and subscribe on Spotify,
• 34:11
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• 34:14
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• 34:17
  based experience platform built for sales and marketing
• 34:20
  alignment.