Latest / The Prompt / Ep. 543 | The GTM Playbook Rewritten: AI, Agents, and Demandbase 4.0
Transcript
- 0:01This is on base your one stop shop for solving your most
- 0:04pressing B to B go to market challenges each week.
- 0:07Host Chris Moody and Paul Gibson talked to sales and marketing
- 0:10leaders to get you in depth insights and creative strategies
- 0:13to set your revenue teams up for success.
- 0:18Hey everyone, welcome back to the home based podcast.
- 0:20I'm Miros Chris Moody, and today we're thrilled to have Gabe
- 0:23Rogel with us to talk about how AI agents are reshaping go to
- 0:27market and demand base 4 point O Gabe, thanks for joining us
- 0:31today and welcome to the show. It's great to be here, Moody.
- 0:34You're OK if I call you Moody, right?
- 0:36Oh yeah, that's perfect. Well, it's good to see you too.
- 0:38And I know we have a bunch to talk about.
- 0:40The first thing I just said, demand base 4.0.
- 0:44I'd love for you to talk about the defining shift behind that
- 0:47and what we're starting to leave behind.
- 0:50Yeah. We, you know, really believe
- 0:52that we're moving into a whole new phase of not just demand
- 0:54based, but really the account based go to market.
- 0:56And we called out phase four because there's been three
- 1:00previous phases that are roughly been four years apiece.
- 1:03And there's a huge shift happening right now.
- 1:06And I think the defining change is really that we're going away
- 1:09from the phase of like kind of monolithic closed platforms that
- 1:15think of an account based go to market as something that can be
- 1:18achieved with kind of 1 technology to more open flexible
- 1:22technologies. So that that's one.
- 1:24Another defining shift is that it's kind of the relationship
- 1:27between the power of the technology behind APM and how
- 1:32manual it is. So being able to make the most
- 1:36powerful aspects of account based technology accessible,
- 1:40quicker time to value through what I call assisted automation,
- 1:44which is really agentic advances in technology and AI modeling.
- 1:50It's really awesome. I just came back from an event,
- 1:53actually flew overnight and slept about 45 minutes.
- 1:57But there are lots of conversations around open and
- 2:01transparent and flexible and how that's coming to life because of
- 2:06how this is happening at Demand Base.
- 2:08I'm curious, what are some of the biggest lessons you've
- 2:11learned going from Demand Base one point O all the way through
- 2:15three-point O that's helping us to build 4 point O?
- 2:19There's a lot of them. I mean, I think the the biggest
- 2:22is that to be successful with an account days go to market, you
- 2:27have to think of it as a strategy and not a tactic,
- 2:30right? You know, if you click down into
- 2:32what that that means, it means it's not just leads, it's not
- 2:38just a marketing thing. You know, it's not just one
- 2:42technology. It's really an organization's
- 2:46approach, starting at the executive level, to align your
- 2:51resources to the accounts that drive the greatest lifetime
- 2:55value. And that's why enlisting all of
- 2:58those resources, whether they're people, processes, or
- 3:02technologies, to to kind of all be moving in the same direction
- 3:05is so important. And that's why, you know, we
- 3:07keep hitting on the technologies that do this have to be open and
- 3:11flexible and kind of automated in certain ways in order for our
- 3:16customers and in order for all of us that have a go to market
- 3:19to realize the potential of an account based go to market.
- 3:22Yeah, I, I love that, Gabe. And I'm curious, if you had a
- 3:26soapbox and you could shout from up on a hill about the biggest
- 3:30pain point in the market that you think we are solving that
- 3:34other folks aren't talking about, what would that be?
- 3:36I think it's the relationship between scalable because every
- 3:41business changes over time. You know, we see, you know, you
- 3:45change through growing you, you change through moving into new
- 3:48markets, you change through new technology advances that we're
- 3:51all dealing with now. Now being able to handle that
- 3:55scale while still being integrated with the tech stock.
- 4:00And I think there's kind of been this development of two
- 4:04different camps where you have, on the one side, black box
- 4:08monolithic platforms that kind of try to help you scale ABM.
- 4:13And on the other side, you have what I call light ABM or what
- 4:16some people call unbundled ABM, which is really about how do you
- 4:20put like the components and pieces of ABM together so that
- 4:25it's integrated across your tech stack.
- 4:27And the reality is at different phases of your development, you
- 4:30have to do both. And what we're really trying to
- 4:33to solve for is how do you both scale and grow, but also
- 4:39integrate with all these different technologies in ways
- 4:43where the the sum is greater than the parts.
- 4:45So it's kind of bringing together the best of dedicated
- 4:49platform type technology that's open with the ethos of kind of
- 4:54the unbundled, open, flexible and working together in a
- 4:57friendly way into a powerful way to grow your your go to market
- 5:01through every phase of your business.
- 5:04Yeah, now that's good. I, I love the soapbox questions
- 5:06too. You hit the passion point and
- 5:09you really start to find that anyone who's been to an event
- 5:12lately or has been to demandbase.com or follows demand
- 5:16base on LinkedIn has seen conversations happening about
- 5:20agent base. And if they weren't on the
- 5:23LinkedIn live with you and Chad, what would you describe agent
- 5:27base as to someone who doesn't know what agent base is?
- 5:30Agent Base is a framework for our customers that has a unified
- 5:35approach to assisted automation and it's a technology that sits
- 5:39upon our unified data layer, which brings in first and third
- 5:43party data for us to rapidly scale and roll out agents to our
- 5:47customers. And over time, I think this
- 5:50framework that we built, you know, again, on top of our
- 5:53unified data platform, which brings together first and third
- 5:56party data and gives you a complete view of your accounts,
- 5:59buying groups, people not only will enable demand base to roll
- 6:03out agents, you know, more quickly, but also, you know,
- 6:06it's, it's our vision that that'll help other companies
- 6:09develop internal agents for themselves to utilize this this
- 6:13unified data platform. So it's super exciting.
- 6:16Like that a lot. And look, we all love to talk
- 6:18about the art of the possible, whether that's personally,
- 6:21professionally. What does Agent Base help enable
- 6:24folks to do that wasn't possible previously?
- 6:28I really think of it, you know, kind of going back to what I was
- 6:31saying earlier about what going into phase four of of the
- 6:35account base go to market, you know, what are the two things I
- 6:37talked about? We're leaving behind monolithic,
- 6:39you know, black box platforms and we're leaving behind the
- 6:43idea that the most powerful aspects of the account base go
- 6:45to market are kind of manual and complex.
- 6:48So I'm super excited because I think, you know, what agents can
- 6:52do is take those really powerful aspects of platforms and kind of
- 6:59democratize them. And so some of those things are
- 7:02like building segments and really powerful ways.
- 7:05You know, in the past you've had to kind of go in and kind of
- 7:08architect, engineer across your first and third party data, You
- 7:12know, what are the most powerful segments to drive revenue and in
- 7:16specific ways, like just prompt based building of audiences, you
- 7:20know, making things much quicker journey stages.
- 7:23That's like how do accounts go through your funnel, like what
- 7:27behaviors have to happen for them to move to the next stage
- 7:30and what automations happen? You know, that has been complex,
- 7:34making that much more accessible through automation.
- 7:38And then you know, what's the next action?
- 7:40How are you orchestrating across your text stack?
- 7:43Again, it's been about like kind of creating rules based
- 7:46approaches. You might see like kind of
- 7:48people kept talking about work flows and kind of graphs and
- 7:51putting things together. You know, that all should be,
- 7:54you know, done through agents, you know, with human oversights
- 7:58in ways where value comes much more quickly.
- 8:01So, you know, I'm really excited that the most powerful aspects
- 8:05of account based technology now you can realize quicker, realize
- 8:10the value quicker through, you know, agentic advances.
- 8:14I think everyone loves getting rid of the tedious and manual
- 8:17task. How close do you think we are to
- 8:20a truly autonomous go to market? You know, I, I don't necessarily
- 8:25believe in a fully, you know, autonomous go to market, you
- 8:31know, in that every, if we're defining it as like every aspect
- 8:35of the go to market just just runs one, because I don't think
- 8:39that the technology will be, you know, will even be possible to
- 8:43be there for several years. But two, I think there's aspects
- 8:47where AI even even down the road is going to be super strong, you
- 8:52know, notably like making the tedious, like you said, not, you
- 8:56know, kind of just magic and, and and and happen.
- 8:59But there's going to be aspects where, you know, humans and
- 9:02we'll talk more about this, you know, are always going to be
- 9:05important. You know, the kind of the
- 9:06creative aspect, you know, the, the kind of the, you know, just
- 9:10what the machine just doesn't know from human relationships,
- 9:13you know, all those sorts of things.
- 9:14So I really think of it as assisted automation, you know,
- 9:18that that's what we want. We want to make, you know, the
- 9:21all the things that AI can do well, free us up for all the
- 9:26things that, you know, humans can do well.
- 9:29So I'm not a believer in a fully autonomous go to market, but I
- 9:32think it could be much more autonomous than it currently is.
- 9:35Yeah. It leads me to the conversation
- 9:39around are we adding new roles are or getting rid of people
- 9:44with things like this? Do you think Agent Base is
- 9:47helping to enable new roles or new responsibilities, or does it
- 9:51replace some of the existing ones that may exist in an org
- 9:53chart today? I think it's a nuanced question
- 9:57because if there's not necessarily going to be new
- 10:01roles, you know, that are just going to be a, you know, we're
- 10:04working with agent base or we're working with, you know, agents,
- 10:08you know, from regardless of, of, of where they come from.
- 10:11I think it's more about enabling current roles.
- 10:15You know, there might then be some ability to to be more
- 10:19efficient with the resources you have.
- 10:21But you know, I think in my mind, efficiency maybe although
- 10:26incredibly important and kind of obvious in the benefits of, of
- 10:31agents, I guess in some ways have been, has been overplayed
- 10:35in that or overemphasized in the sense why don't we emphasize
- 10:40expansion and growth as much as we're emphasizing efficiency,
- 10:44right? So if we have the same roles and
- 10:47they and they can be more productive, why don't they use,
- 10:49we use those added productivity to grow more, right?
- 10:53And so I think I think everybody's kind of currently
- 10:55hitting on, you know, yes, we can make things more efficient
- 10:57because we're enabling current roles.
- 10:59But I think the unlock is going to be, and I think agent base
- 11:01can help with this is like, let's enable current roles.
- 11:04Yes, maybe there's efficiency, but now there's so much more
- 11:07productive. Let's really focus on how we
- 11:10grow more. Yeah.
- 11:11I, I think that's such an important point because it does
- 11:15seem like most of the use cases default to efficiency and save
- 11:19time and it's not always a growth mindset.
- 11:22I think that's a really important point, and a lot of
- 11:25our listeners have probably seen billboards about not hiring
- 11:30humans, whether that's on LinkedIn or in San Francisco or
- 11:33other cities. Let's talk about SDRSII know
- 11:37that there are several companies that are doing AI agents as SDRS
- 11:44and trying to replace some of that function.
- 11:46I'm curious your stance. Do you think that's the future
- 11:50of an SDR, and if So, what does that look like?
- 11:54Well, First off, I think, you know, going back to the theme of
- 11:58like certain aspects of AI and and the AI go to market being
- 12:02over and emphasized and maybe therefore missing where even
- 12:07greater benefits could be utilizing AII think what, you
- 12:11know, just as in like kind of the efficiency conversation we
- 12:14just had, the focus on SDRS has been kind of over emphasized,
- 12:19you know, because it's it's kind of a race to that, you know, use
- 12:23case. Because let's be honest, it
- 12:25seems obvious, right? In the sense that if we think of
- 12:29SDRS as just being emailing, you know, really all we have to do
- 12:33is essentially, you know, kind of e-mail, either inbound
- 12:37interest or e-mail outbound prospecting.
- 12:40You know, then, hey, we're going to automate the SDR and there's
- 12:44a certain component that e-mail is a component.
- 12:46And I'm certainly making emails quicker for, for SDRS is
- 12:50important and you know, kind of making, you know, doing all the
- 12:54spell checking and, and doing much more than that.
- 12:56But that's not all an SDR does, you know that where is that
- 13:00really going? If we're saying it's about
- 13:02e-mail, are we just creating spam machines?
- 13:04I mean, you can see a lot if you research, you know, how these
- 13:07SDR, you know, there's a lot of benefit from AAI assisted SDR
- 13:11flat out. And I'm a big fan of a lot of
- 13:13the companies that do that. So I don't want to make it seem
- 13:15like I'm not, but the amount of emails going out right now and
- 13:20the response rates from e-mail, you know, I think just a few
- 13:23years ago, you know, you if you were a good STR, you know, or
- 13:26you could get 5 to 7% response rate, you know, nail companies
- 13:30are happy with like sub 2% response rate.
- 13:33So is all of this focus really making us better?
- 13:37Is it really enabling growth more?
- 13:41And so kind of going back to my overall theme, I don't know if
- 13:45we should think about it in terms of we're limiting STRS,
- 13:48it's how are we making great SDRS or how are we producing
- 13:54more great SDRS, right? And great SDRS are creative,
- 13:58they form relationships, you know, they've become more
- 14:01data-driven. So there's an aspect, you know,
- 14:04that that's important. And then going back to my
- 14:06initial point here, why are we just focusing on this use case
- 14:09so much to go to market? What about the things I was
- 14:12mentioning around? How about core account based use
- 14:15cases? Like, how do our audiences get
- 14:17better? How does our measurement of how
- 14:19we're moving through the final get better?
- 14:21How does orchestration get better, not just through SDRS,
- 14:24but through all channels? And I, I want us to be spending
- 14:27more time thinking, you know, focusing on that, you know, at
- 14:30demand base, but also, you know, as, as stewards of of our go to
- 14:34market, you know, because there's so much upside there.
- 14:37Yeah, that was a really great response.
- 14:39It just makes me think about the best outreach I receive, and it
- 14:44is always a human that's taking the time to get to know me and
- 14:49spending time to build a relationship and doing something
- 14:52creative. And that stands out.
- 14:54And I think many of us are already able to detect when AI
- 14:58is assisting or creating content by itself.
- 15:02The same thing is going to happen to outreach, to your
- 15:04point. So when everyone's doing it, you
- 15:07create the sea of sameness again.
- 15:09And then I, I think the human touch is going to stand out even
- 15:12more, which is kind of a segue into the risk that you may see
- 15:18with the rise of AI agents. What are some of the risks that
- 15:21you think exists and how should companies prepare for them?
- 15:25Well beyond maybe like, you know, kind of the privacy risks
- 15:29that I think a lot of people talk about in terms of like what
- 15:32what data becomes usable to AII think data accuracy and it is a
- 15:38risk or or kind of hallucinations is another way to
- 15:42put it. And then fragmentation of the go
- 15:45to market. So on, on the first point, you
- 15:47know, we don't talk enough about how dirty most CRMS are and and
- 15:53data foundations are for most companies.
- 15:55We see it over and over again. And if you, you know, think
- 15:59about that in terms of like how does an agent work?
- 16:02It works by, you know, utilizing data in, in language models,
- 16:07right? And if you're utilizing data
- 16:09that is inaccurate, you're kind of exponentially increasing the
- 16:14impact of that inaccuracy. So without, you know, until I
- 16:18see as much focus on data accuracy as there is on AI and
- 16:22agents, I think there's going to be an imbalance and potentially
- 16:26negative impact for companies. And then on the second point, it
- 16:30kind of goes to what we were saying about spam and e-mail.
- 16:32But like, if you think about an account based go to market, you
- 16:36know, you're selling complex solutions, you're trying to
- 16:38align all your marketing functions, you know, your sales
- 16:41functions, your customer success functions, your OP functions,
- 16:44and you're bringing in all these kind of point type agents to do
- 16:48different kind of aspects of it. If they're not all kind of
- 16:52interoperable or working together, then you get this kind
- 16:56of instead of the focus, you know, laser on the, you know,
- 17:00the same message to the same account to drive to drive it
- 17:03forward. You're getting like everything
- 17:05is playing out and the chances are that your marketing message
- 17:07is going to align with your STR and sales message and the data
- 17:11through Rev OPS is going to be the same.
- 17:13It becomes worse. And so I sometimes think of it
- 17:16as the issue that you have, you know, you everybody has marking
- 17:19automation and sales automation. They're kind of two at their
- 17:22worst two separate spam machines that are not coordinated in any
- 17:28way. Imagine that exponentially
- 17:30amplified with all these agents fish crossing.
- 17:33And so I think unfortunately there's a danger that the go to
- 17:36market has become become become more fragmented, therefore less
- 17:39efficient. Yeah, I want to pull in the
- 17:42thread of data accuracy and data integrity and it makes me think
- 17:47about trust. What do you think the role of
- 17:50trust will be in the next generation of go to market
- 17:52systems? Well, trust will be
- 17:56foundational, right? Because I believe at the
- 18:00foundation of your go to market. If you're, if you've got a
- 18:02complex go to market, you know you're selling B to B complex
- 18:06solutions. It's about alignment, right?
- 18:09It's about alignment of your technology, alignment of your
- 18:12resources because you are trying to focus where there's the
- 18:15greatest lifetime value of your customers.
- 18:18You know, that's the whole point of an account based go to
- 18:20market. And how do you get alignment?
- 18:22You get alignment through trust. You know that we, we, we've all
- 18:26have seen horror stories of, you know, sales and marketing not
- 18:29aligning because they don't trust each other.
- 18:31They don't trust, maybe sales doesn't trust, you know,
- 18:35marketing saying they're being successful because they're
- 18:37generating leads or opportunities.
- 18:39And for some in some reason that they're, you know, when they get
- 18:41to sales, they don't seem like real opportunities, right?
- 18:44That's a classic scenario, but it's just one example of where
- 18:48you don't have trust, you know, things breakdown and so you know
- 18:53that's what goes down. You know, it goes back to what
- 18:55we were saying at the outset of what is phase 4 all about for a
- 18:58county's going to market and for demand base.
- 19:00It's all about being open, flexible, transparent so that
- 19:04you know, the functional areas can have more trust and the the
- 19:08gentic solutions that work off of our platform and data can be
- 19:12more trusted so that the end result is a more efficient and
- 19:17effective and rapidly growing go to market.
- 19:20So. So trust is is absolutely
- 19:23foundational. I'd love that point too.
- 19:25I mean, it makes you think of Jodie Lieba and her quote that
- 19:29we have on slides, right? I don't.
- 19:31Everyone sells to come to me and say, why did you pick this
- 19:33account if you don't trust everything that you're doing?
- 19:37That's going to be the question. And no marketer wants to hear
- 19:40that. No seller wants to ask that.
- 19:42We all know the pain of that and you know the pain.
- 19:45Let's talk about pain for a minute.
- 19:47I, I have spent weeks as an analyst with lots of people
- 19:53painstakingly arguing over the meaning of account based to
- 19:57figure out that single definition on a slide.
- 20:00And lots of weeks of my life went into those debates.
- 20:04As we use AI and all the tools that orbit AI to decide what's
- 20:10relevant in our go to market strategy, how does that change
- 20:14the meaning of account based? My definition of that, and I
- 20:17don't know if this solves the pain that you just had, if
- 20:19you're willing to accept it, because it's probably, you know,
- 20:22misses something. But the way I think about it is
- 20:25it's aligning your go to market resources to the accounts with
- 20:28the greatest lifetime value. And I don't think agents change
- 20:33that. But it what it does though, is
- 20:34it expands, you know, if you go back to that, that definition,
- 20:38what does aligning go to market resources mean?
- 20:41What do resources mean, right? So if you flashback like 20
- 20:45years, what were the resources that you're aligning?
- 20:49You were probably aligning, you know, sales, marketing.
- 20:53SDR wasn't even really a function yet.
- 20:55It was just starting to be a function.
- 20:57You know, you had CRM, you know, there was no marketing
- 21:00automation, right? So that's what it meant to
- 21:03align. You know, 10 years ago it was
- 21:06aligning that plus SDRS, you know, maybe starting to align
- 21:11customer success, which was just coming into play.
- 21:13Marketing automation was certainly around, you know, five
- 21:16years ago. It's that, you know, with
- 21:18account based platforms, more data assets and now that
- 21:23definition of resources expands to include agents.
- 21:27And so now we have to think about going back to the what I
- 21:30was saying about the risk of agents, how do we make sure that
- 21:33they're not going off in all different directions and they
- 21:35truly are account based so that they're aligned to the accounts
- 21:38that matter most. And so I think it's it's an.
- 21:40It doesn't change the definition in my mind, but it expands the
- 21:44things you have to align. I love that.
- 21:47And I think you're uniquely positioned to answer this
- 21:50question well because you think a lot about the future of demand
- 21:54base, the future of go to market, the future of revenue
- 21:57teams. How do you see the role of go to
- 22:00market teams changing in the next three years and how are you
- 22:03helping demand base prepare for that shift?
- 22:06You know, in a way the functions are are coming closer together,
- 22:11which I guess is natural given we've been beating, you know,
- 22:14we've been beating the drum about alignment.
- 22:16And so if you play that through, you know, you can almost think
- 22:19of marketing sales as the distribution element of a
- 22:24company, right. And what is the fundamental
- 22:27thing that that distribution, you know, kind of element of a
- 22:31company has to do? I think it's aligning around
- 22:33pipeline creation. I think historically there's
- 22:36been, you know, if you go back years, it's kind of like
- 22:39marketing is focused on leads, marketing qualified leads, and
- 22:44then you have sales qualified leads, you know, you have
- 22:46opportunities and then you have sales focused on bookings.
- 22:51Actually, you know, as I talked to more executives, as I, you
- 22:54know, as we as the members try to help companies with their go
- 22:57to market, it's not leads that's the issue because you're really
- 23:01not trying to just go for people, right?
- 23:04You're really trying to go after the accounts that matter and
- 23:06buying groups. And it's not necessarily
- 23:08bookings because you know, most companies do a pretty good job
- 23:13in the sense that their win rate, they know their win rate
- 23:15and they can kind of dial that up a point or two, but you kind
- 23:18of know what your win rate is. The problem is the amount of
- 23:21pipeline you have, the more the go to market as a whole is
- 23:26focusing on pipeline, the more unified it's going to be and the
- 23:31more growth there's going to be. And I think there's going to be
- 23:34an agentic component to that, which is what we talked about,
- 23:37like making everything kind of that's tedious, more automated.
- 23:42And then there's going to be the humid component, which is going
- 23:44to be the creativity, which is going to be the insights, which
- 23:50is going to be the human being good at the human relationships,
- 23:54whether they're, you know, kind of asynchronous or synchronous,
- 23:57right? You know, saying what are we
- 23:59doing? I think as we build out our
- 24:00technology, that's what we're like really hell bent on solving
- 24:03is, you know, outcome based kind of interaction with our
- 24:07platform. Like you're setting in goals,
- 24:09we're helping to produce pipeline.
- 24:11And so I think the functions coming together and rallying
- 24:14behind pipeline and technology that drives pipeline, I think
- 24:17it's going to unlock so much. What part of the traditional go
- 24:20to market playbook do you think is obsolete?
- 24:22And I'm curious, for whatever you think is obsolete, why is
- 24:26everyone still doing it? It kind of goes back to the the
- 24:29previous answer in part, you know, I, I think weeds are are,
- 24:35you know, I don't know if obsolete is the right word, but
- 24:38just about obsolete. You know, there's, there's,
- 24:40there should be white tertiary and I, I think last touch
- 24:43attribution as well. And I'm talking about in, in
- 24:46complex B to B because it's just two.
- 24:50There are two. The reason both why they're
- 24:53don't work and also because the reason why people still rely on
- 24:57them, probably especially less touch attribution is because
- 25:00they're simple, right? You kind of can say, Hey, I put
- 25:04in X amount of money and I got Y amount of leads and you know Z
- 25:09amount of kind of less touch from different channels.
- 25:13But the big problem is you're dealing with complex
- 25:17organizations that you're selling to over long periods of
- 25:21time. And if you think about
- 25:23optimizing towards those simple metrics, then you have no
- 25:29visibility into all the things that you should be doing
- 25:33earlier. And if your competitors are,
- 25:35then you're kind of optimizing yourself out of existence by
- 25:39kind of going to that endpoint. And so I, I've been trying to
- 25:43like hammer the, the kind of the death net death nail into that
- 25:48for a while. Those things, but they still
- 25:49exist. And I think we've got to make
- 25:51those obsolete, at least in terms of being primary measure.
- 25:55Great points there And another thing we've talked about for
- 25:57multiple decades now, personalization.
- 26:00I I'm curious what your thoughts are on personalization and if
- 26:04there may be something we should focus on instead.
- 26:07I actually think that personalization is underrated.
- 26:11So I, I think it, it should remain, but that goes back to is
- 26:16it like AI personalization only, you know, utilize, or is it AI
- 26:21plus human? You know, the best outreaches
- 26:24I've ever seen have been thoughtful and personalized,
- 26:28right? I mean, ultimately humans buy
- 26:31and they buy because the message resonates, you know, and ever
- 26:35and whatever and then resonates differently for for different
- 26:38people. So I think personalization is,
- 26:41is something that will always be important.
- 26:44However, I think what's underrated is maybe should be
- 26:48into your kind of original question.
- 26:50What which should be emphasized more is who are you
- 26:53personalizing to? Because if you're personalizing
- 26:57to the wrong type of buyer, then it's a bad thing to personalize
- 27:02to them because you're spending more times in the sales cycle.
- 27:06You might be selling products to a company that ultimately will
- 27:08churn. So I think just as much as we
- 27:11focus on personalization, we have to focus on understanding
- 27:15our ICP and being very disciplined and focusing on the
- 27:19ICP or you're wasting time and you're you're selling to bad
- 27:22customers. Yeah.
- 27:23I love that. And look, you've heard my rant.
- 27:26Hey, I've talked about it a lot on episodes, how marketers chase
- 27:29shiny objects. I do think sometimes our
- 27:33profession is very quick to jump to something new before we
- 27:37conquer what we're already doing, whether that's
- 27:39personalization, marketing automation, account based,
- 27:42right? Like we're on to the next before
- 27:45we actually master it. So some great clarifying points
- 27:48there. If you could radically reinvent
- 27:51one part of the go to market today, what would it be?
- 27:55Well, I think I can say this and maybe I have a bias for saying
- 27:57it because my background is sales.
- 27:59With sales. I think in most organizations,
- 28:02especially enterprise organizations that sales
- 28:05departments have advanced the least in the last 15 to 20
- 28:09years. It might be different in kind of
- 28:11small technology companies, you see more advances.
- 28:14But you know, we work a lot with enterprise and mid sized
- 28:16companies and I think they're still sales people just coming
- 28:21in too late. Sales people still kind of
- 28:25where's the lead, you know, wanting everything to be warm.
- 28:28You know, where as I mentioned earlier, like sales and
- 28:32marketing are should be coming together more as the
- 28:34distribution kind of engine of a company around pipeline.
- 28:38And that means being much more data centric or signals.
- 28:42And you're a lot about signals. But you know, what does that
- 28:45really mean? It means you have to get earlier
- 28:48in the process. And that may mean you're
- 28:50reaching out to people that aren't as warm as they were 20
- 28:54years ago, but that's the way people buy now.
- 28:57They buy without late, you know, they buy later, you know, with
- 29:01kind of moving through more and more of the sales cycle before
- 29:04they get to a salesperson. We've known that for so long and
- 29:06I just feel like sales teams haven't been held accountable to
- 29:11that and not and it's really hurting, you know, their ability
- 29:15to. Great stuff.
- 29:17All right, we have one more question, Gabe, before we go
- 29:19into the Lightning round. I know we have tons of stuff to
- 29:22do today. I'm sure CE OS aren't busy at
- 29:24all these days. So all right, the last question
- 29:28before we hit the quick hitters, what is something you believe
- 29:32about the future of go to market that most CE OS would disagree
- 29:35with? I think that you have to invest
- 29:38more in marketing. You know, I think if you go back
- 29:41to what we were saying about and expand it that so much, what AI
- 29:46is talking about is efficiency. So much of what, you know, the
- 29:50focus on the last three years in the macro environment has been
- 29:54about efficiency and margins, you know, rightly so, coming
- 29:58after growth at all costs. But enterprise value, economic
- 30:01value comes from growth. And I don't think a lot of CE OS
- 30:06give marketing the voice it needs to adequately evaluate,
- 30:12you know, how do you hit your pipeline plan and you know,
- 30:16going back to where the real value of people are going to be,
- 30:19you know, positioning, brand relationship building, you know,
- 30:24events, field marketing, all that stuff.
- 30:26It's not just leads or last touch create, you know,
- 30:30opportunity creation and measure that like in that way.
- 30:33And so, you know, I, I would advocate for CE OS that, you
- 30:37know, we have to continue to invest more.
- 30:39And I've seen data recently that there's a huge correlation
- 30:42between the amount you grow and what percentage of your overall
- 30:47revenue you spend back on marketing.
- 30:49The more you spend, the more you grow.
- 30:51And so that that's yet another soap.
- 30:53Yeah, and the crowd goes wild. I think everyone's going to love
- 30:56that answer. We'll clip that and push that
- 30:58out. Social.
- 31:00All right, lightning round, very quick answers here.
- 31:03Favorite tools or technology that you're using?
- 31:06This might not be quick because people might not know what it
- 31:08is, but have you ever heard of zettle casting?
- 31:11No, so zettle casting. This is more of a tool, but it
- 31:15can be a technology is a note taking system.
- 31:19It was based on, there was a German sociologist, Nicholas
- 31:22Lehmann, who was incredibly prolific, had all this kind of
- 31:26advances in sociology. And when they went back and, you
- 31:29know, looked at how he was doing things, he basically created
- 31:32these, you know, system of note cards.
- 31:34That's what zettle casting is like notes and in a slip box and
- 31:37he put them in a box. And the way he took notes was
- 31:40instead of being linear, it's like here's the point, here's
- 31:42the point, Here's the point. He found what the essential
- 31:45ideas are and instead of kind of in every book, you know, I'm
- 31:50going to have the linear notes, he connected those essential
- 31:53ideas between what you read and he absorbed and he linked them.
- 31:57And you can do that, you know, kind of in the non digital way.
- 32:02You can do it in the offline way or digitally.
- 32:03So there's tools like Obsidian and others that work with the
- 32:07zettle casting system, but there's a lot of power in this
- 32:09kind of zettle casting. Tool of that.
- 32:12Can't wait for the LinkedIn posts on that link.
- 32:14AI. We're looking forward to that.
- 32:16Good reads, favorite books, blogs, newsletter, podcast.
- 32:20Yeah, I mean, I'm, and it's like really into, I mean, this might
- 32:23be a little old school, but HBR, Harvard Business Review, I've
- 32:27got their compilations, you know, they have them around
- 32:30decision making, you know, like agile project management, like
- 32:35anything that you can, you know, AI.
- 32:37And the, the reason that I like them is these HPR compilations
- 32:41is because if you get a business book now most of them have this
- 32:44formula. Here's one idea.
- 32:46I'm going to stretch it out over 300 pages by being repetitive
- 32:50and having little stories because I think I'm Malcolm
- 32:52Clodwell and I just like, I read it for about like, you know, 30
- 32:57minutes. I'm like, Oh my God, the fluff.
- 32:59So these, the HHPRS are kind of like they, they take out all the
- 33:02fluff. So I love that.
- 33:04What about good people? Who inspires you in the B2B
- 33:07space? That's a tough one.
- 33:09You know, I think, I mean, I think all those the, the CE OS
- 33:12advancing, you know, kind of obviously Salesforce, you know,
- 33:17Benioff, you know, but the, the people that are being really
- 33:20daring and bold to move forward, you know where, where we're
- 33:24going. And I and I just love to see
- 33:26companies. I think Salesforce does a good
- 33:28idea, good job of this of like moving so quickly to take
- 33:32advantage of market opportunities.
- 33:35And I really aspire to kind of move fast to serve customers.
- 33:39And I think, you know, Salesforce does a great job of
- 33:42that. Last question, Gabe, most
- 33:44important one how can everyone get in touch with you after this
- 33:47episode? LinkedIn Connect with me on
- 33:49LinkedIn. All right, well, you crushed it
- 33:51today, Gabe. Thanks so much for all your
- 33:53time. Thanks for joining us for On
- 33:56Base. If you enjoyed this episode,
- 33:58please be sure to share, rate, review and subscribe on Spotify,
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