Latest / Sales Pipeline Radio / Driving Growth Through Retention and Expansion (and How AI can Help)

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Driving Growth Through Retention and Expansion (and How AI can Help) · Sales Pipeline Radio

• 0:16
  Matt: All right.
• 0:17
  Welcome everybody to another episode of sales pipeline radio.
• 0:20
  I'm your host, Matt Heinz.
• 0:21
  So excited to have you here as we are well into the second half of January, 2025,
• 0:27
  can't believe it's going by so quickly.
• 0:29
  Hope many of you out there are staying warm and off to a
• 0:33
  great start for the new year.
• 0:35
  If you're watching this episode live on LinkedIn or YouTube, we're really
• 0:38
  excited to have you here today.
• 0:39
  You can be part of the show.
• 0:40
  If you want to join us and make a comment, you can have a comment, a question,
• 0:44
  a rebuttal, a rant, it all counts.
• 0:47
  If you've got something to share, please do so in the comments.
• 0:50
  We will see those.
• 0:51
  We can reference those.
• 0:52
  We can bring those up on screen as well.
• 0:54
  Make you part of the show.
• 0:54
  So thank you very much for being part of this.
• 0:56
  If you're listening or watching on demand, very excited to have you here.
• 1:01
  Thank you so much for downloading and listening to the show.
• 1:04
  Every episode of Sales Pipeline Radio can always be found past, present,
• 1:07
  and future on salesPipelineRadio.com.
• 1:10
  Very excited to have with us today our guest, the Founder and CMO
• 1:14
  of Bold GTM, Anastasia Pavlova.
• 1:16
  Anastasia, thanks so much for joining us.
• 1:18
  Anastasia: Thank you.
• 1:19
  It's been a quite a pleasure, Matt.
• 1:22
  I'm a big fan.
• 1:23
  I've known you for over a decade now and a big part of the CMO Community.
• 1:29
  So really looking forward to this conversation.
• 1:32
  Matt: I appreciate you being here.
• 1:33
  There's so many things we could talk about going way back to even
• 1:37
  marketing automation, Marketo days, there's so many things we can do.
• 1:40
  We try to keep these 15, 20 minutes.
• 1:42
  A couple of things I really want to focus on.
• 1:43
  And one of those is B2C lessons for B2B.
• 1:47
  I think there's so many things we just kind of take for granted as the
• 1:50
  precedence of how we do B2B marketing.
• 1:52
  You've got quite a background in the consumer space.
• 1:56
  And we'd love to have you unpack a little bit of some of the lessons
• 1:59
  that you still carry today around how B2C marketing success has
• 2:04
  impacted you on the B2B side as well.
• 2:07
  Anastasia: Yeah, thanks for this question.
• 2:08
  So I did start my career almost 20 years ago in B2C Tech and it was before
• 2:15
  marketing automation and those lessons are very relevant today because it sort
• 2:20
  of takes us back to the fundamentals.
• 2:22
  It's putting customers first at the center is really understanding their
• 2:27
  needs and pain points and focusing on retaining those customers first
• 2:32
  and driving the the customer value.
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  And you can only do that if you understand the customer needs and really then use
• 2:39
  creative marketing tactics to engage them.
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  So I think those are some of the most important lessons.
• 2:46
  Matt: As much as we struggle so much in B2B with data and with reporting
• 2:50
  and attribution, it often feels like our consumer marketing counterparts
• 2:56
  are just so much further ahead than we are in terms of leveraging data
• 3:00
  to create insights and next steps.
• 3:02
  What are some lessons from the consumer world you think can be
• 3:05
  translated, especially around data, around insights, around analytics that
• 3:09
  can make us better as B2B marketers?
• 3:11
  Anastasia: Well, one important consideration is segmentation.
• 3:14
  It's really diving deeper into demographics, firmographics, behavior,
• 3:21
  and creating cohorts of customers to solve real problems, right?
• 3:27
  So many customers, whether it's B2B or B2C, they struggle with churn.
• 3:32
  It's kind of a common phenomenon, but churn is a symptom of bigger
• 3:36
  issues and problems, and it could be poor onboarding or lack of usage.
• 3:42
  So, that's where marketers can really understand the usage data and apply very
• 3:48
  targeted campaigns to drive usage back up.
• 3:53
  Matt: Let's tug that thread a little further, because oftentimes
• 3:55
  in B2B, we talk a lot about acquisition, net new pipeline.
• 4:00
  I feel like there's a far greater focus heading into 2025 on customer
• 4:05
  retention, customer expansion.
• 4:08
  I facetiously sometimes say I see more marketers now focusing on
• 4:12
  a number, not a newsletter when it comes to customer marketing.
• 4:16
  What are some things you're seeing in your work with companies that
• 4:19
  it's working or that are trends for focus areas for B2B marketers around
• 4:23
  driving retention and expansion?
• 4:26
  Anastasia: Well, I think retention is the new acquisition.
• 4:28
  So particularly these days where the costs of acquiring new
• 4:32
  customers are skyrocketing, right?
• 4:35
  So inevitably customers again, need to think about the entire customer journey
• 4:41
  and apply very data driven creative ways to engage customers, right?
• 4:48
  We know that acquiring a customer costs 60-70% more than retaining existing ones.
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  And so what can we do in terms of retention?
• 4:55
  So, again, understanding that the churn is a symptom.
• 4:58
  Focus on onboarding stages first.
• 5:01
  So how can we provide all the tools that we need for the customers to
• 5:04
  be successful in the first, 30, 90 days and reduce this time to value.
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  Then if we're seeing that customers are not using our product, that's
• 5:14
  a huge warning sign that they are going to churn in the near future.
• 5:19
  So marketers need to get creative in how they engage the customers.
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  And very often it's really providing tools and tips and contextual help within the
• 5:30
  product or emphasizing the successful customers that are doing it well.
• 5:35
  And you can use a variety of channels for that.
• 5:37
  And it doesn't have to be paid channels.
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  Matt: I think the advantage you have when you're working with existing
• 5:42
  customers is you don't have to go find them or search for them.
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  Like you should have a regular relationship with them.
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  You should have the opportunity to engage pretty quickly.
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  Despite that, I think sometimes we get too creative in terms of the questions we ask.
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  We talk a lot about net promoter score and are you satisfied?
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  Are you happy?
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  I don't know if you were on the CMO Coffee Talk session last Friday, but
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  Latane who was the CMO for a long time.
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  She's been the Chief Revenue Officer [at 6sense] for the past
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  year and what they've done is they've just gone back to customers
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  and asked a very simple question.
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  Are you going to renew?
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  Is this a yes or no?
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  And there's no wrong answer, right?
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  Yes is great, but knowing that the answer is no is also helpful.
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  Okay, why?
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  what's not working?
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  Can we work on that?
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  Can we fix that?
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  And if it's not fixable, at least you know in advance where you might have some churn
• 6:29
  risk or churn guarantee in some cases.
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  There's some value in having that clarity, right?
• 6:34
  I think that value on both sides to say, where are we at and how do
• 6:36
  we make this relationship better?
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  Anastasia: Yeah, I know.
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  And when I was at OneLogin, we spend a lot of time on really monitoring
• 6:43
  the early warning signals for renewals and we had various tracks
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  with executives on how to anticipate potential risks with with customers.
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  But I think asking these questions up front is is really a shortcut
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  to to get into the answers quickly.
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  I mean, companies need to really have ongoing conversation
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  with with their customers.
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  And that's what customer success teams need to be doing.
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  We know that those teams are very lean right now as many teams are
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  and the idea is that marketing needs to work very closely with
• 7:20
  customer success teams, right?
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  Back at OneLogIn I had my customer marketing team split into two focus areas.
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  Part of that was really focused on retention and alignment with CS.
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  And they were measured on the same goals as CS team was.
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  And the other half was really focused on sales and driving account based marketing
• 7:41
  strategy and expansion strategy, which included target customer accounts.
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  And so customer success is now being kind of labeled as a problem child,
• 7:51
  but I think there is a huge opportunity to rebrand them as a revenue driver.
• 7:56
  And again, that's where they can partner with marketing and marketing can provide
• 7:59
  programmatic support with the help of AI.
• 8:02
  Whereas the customer success team can focus on really providing white glove
• 8:06
  service to tier one and tier two accounts.
• 8:10
  Matt: Talking today on Sales Pipeline Radio with Anastasia Pavlova.
• 8:13
  She's the Founder and Fractional CMO at Bold GTM.
• 8:17
  And it's been fun to watch your evolution and career, Anastasia, as
• 8:21
  well, from the time we worked together in Marketo to leadership roles you
• 8:25
  played at OneLogin and elsewhere.
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  And now as a fractional CMO for growth companies, I know you're doing a lot
• 8:30
  of work with managed IT, a lot of work with cybersecurity companies.
• 8:33
  How are they leaning into the AI opportunity?
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  I feel like we are in a post experimentation-- well, that's not true.
• 8:40
  We're still doing a lot of experimentation as AI evolves, but
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  I almost said post experimentation.
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  Cause this is not tinker time anymore.
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  There are full rollouts of go to market motions that are dramatically
• 8:52
  increasing agility, speed to market, predictivity for organizations.
• 8:56
  What are one or two examples that you're seeing work with your clients
• 8:59
  and in the field of where AI is having a real difference for marketers?
• 9:03
  Anastasia: Yeah, I'll give you a couple of examples.
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  One is from a client that I worked with their IT services company and
• 9:11
  cyber security and IT services.
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  And with AI enablement of the go to market team, we were able to launch
• 9:19
  campaigns in a fraction of the time.
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  So it was really a matter of weeks as opposed to months.
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  And so I helped them shift their entire strategy from lead gen focus
• 9:29
  to target account based go to market.
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  And they had real focus in three verticals.
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  And so we methodically attacked one vertical at a time and AI
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  played a huge role in this.
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  So it was everything from doing research on ideal customer profile on personas,
• 9:48
  both technical and non technical really outlining the pain points and mapping
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  value proposition to that, doing interviews with the subject matter
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  experts within the company, and then taking those insights and translating
• 10:01
  them into longer form content.
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  And then doing testing across all the subject lines for
• 10:07
  ad campaigns and creative.
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  And so what that enabled us to do, this whole process really enabled us
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  to launch email nurture campaigns, and BDR sequences, ads on LinkedIn
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  and Google targeted content hubs.
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  In a matter of weeks for the first vertical, and then
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  we went on to the next one.
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  So from financial services to bio pharma and professional services, a matter of
• 10:31
  weeks, and we overachieved on on pipeline goals in a matter of four to five months.
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  So that is a very specific example where AI has worked really well
• 10:42
  for efficiencies and effectiveness.
• 10:45
  But it's also interesting to see companies that are smaller that are building
• 10:49
  AI first or AI native tech stacks and reimagining the entire processes with
• 10:58
  AI, and that's where I really get excited because it's so much more difficult for
• 11:03
  more established companies and bigger companies to turn the ship and they're
• 11:08
  reliant a lot on AI tools that are available in the platforms that they use.
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  So whether it's Einstein, in Salesforce or any other AI capabilities in marketing
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  automation or other tools that they use.
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  They're kind of at their mercy.
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  Matt: So isn't that just always the case, right?
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  you know, It's far harder to pivot than it is to start with some blue
• 11:30
  ocean and start with a clean slate.
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  I think about back in the days when we started to move towards a
• 11:35
  tighter and broader digital play in marketing when the internet really
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  became critical mass a long time ago.
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  A lot of companies struggled with making that pivot from analog marketing 30 second
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  TV ads to doing digital advertising.
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  It sounds old school, but that was a thing that pivot and that
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  resistance, that pivot was a thing.
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  Certainly saw that I mean, marketing automation, right?
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  I mean, back in the Marketo days, you saw a lot of companies that if they were
• 11:59
  just getting going, building a marketing automation platform as the hub of their
• 12:03
  programs, it was kind of a no duh moment, but moving companies from batches and
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  to a more nuanced program-- different.
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  And we can sit here in 2025 and say, well, if all you're doing is batching
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  people into programs and doing some arbitrary lead scoring and not paying
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  attention to intent signals for buying committees and buying journeys the way we
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  know to do today, we continue to evolve.
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  Right?
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  And I think the jobs continue to change, but smart people evolve with it.
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  Talk a little bit about in your career and especially in your work today as a
• 12:34
  fractional CMO, the importance of change management and culture management as
• 12:39
  we continue to reinvent what selling and marketing is and how it's done.
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  Anastasia: Oh, it's absolutely critical.
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  You can't really accomplish much without it.
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  So bring the entire C suite and leadership team on board is the
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  first step in getting to progress.
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  And sometimes the leadership teams, they're so stuck in their old ways that
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  it's really challenging to open their eyes, but by bringing examples from what's
• 13:04
  working outside the companies and doing baby steps and pilot programs, what I
• 13:09
  think makes it makes a big difference.
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  I'm still surprised how many companies tinker with AI in some pockets of the
• 13:16
  organization without having an AI czar or a committee or cross functional team
• 13:21
  that really tries to get together and bring best practices to the rest of
• 13:27
  the organization and at least surface some of the successes and use cases.
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  And that's what I try to evangelize with all my clients.
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  And there's plenty of resources on how to do it in companies that are doing it well.
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  And I think that that's kind of the first step.
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  So recognizing that AI is an enabler, it's not going to take your job, but people
• 13:47
  who are using AI will take your job.
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  So it's important to have the leadership team endorse that and
• 13:55
  empower the people who are raising their hands to be the drivers of
• 13:59
  change within the organizations, right?
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  And I think for the go to market teams, it's where the biggest opportunities lie.
• 14:07
  So with marketing, customer success, sales teams, BDR teams, they can be
• 14:12
  the pioneers and the beneficiaries of AI strategies and practice.
• 14:18
  Matt: Isn't it fascinating to watch the adoption curve of all kinds of
• 14:22
  innovations and technologies, right?
• 14:23
  It always feels like whatever we're facing right now is new and could
• 14:26
  be different and could break the mold and break what we're used to.
• 14:29
  I'm a huge baseball fan and it's fascinating to me that when radio
• 14:34
  became a thing a hundred years ago, baseball owners didn't want their
• 14:37
  games on the radio because they wanted people to come to the game.
• 14:40
  And then all of a sudden everyone listened to the radio, oh, wow, they listened to
• 14:43
  the radio, they want to come to the game more often and we're getting more revenue.
• 14:45
  So yeah, put it on the radio.
• 14:46
  And then TV came along and said, no, no, no, we don't want our games on TV
• 14:50
  because they'll stop coming to the game.
• 14:51
  And so it's that old thinking that it worked and it's not old.
• 14:56
  It's just it's proven in a different mode when other technology innovations didn't
• 15:00
  exist, that innovation curve and helping, allowing ourselves to think differently
• 15:05
  about things way easier said than done.
• 15:07
  And I feel like we're there with AI as well.
• 15:08
  A lot of fear, a lot of uncertainty, a lot of wanting to hold on to what we know.
• 15:12
  Which is, you know, the cat's out of the barn, right?
• 15:15
  Like we can't unknow what we now already know about what AI is capable
• 15:19
  of doing, let alone what's going to be announced this afternoon, tomorrow,
• 15:22
  next week, it's moving so fast.
• 15:25
  Anastasia: It's moving at a light breaking speed and it's certainly
• 15:29
  exciting to participate in this wave.
• 15:31
  You and I have been around the block for a few years, so it's
• 15:34
  not the first wave for us.
• 15:36
  And so adapting and adopting this new technology is really key.
• 15:40
  It will be fascinating to see what impact AI is going to continue having
• 15:46
  on SaaS which is where you and I have a lot of business in and so AI is going
• 15:51
  to be basically creating software for us and that's fascinating to watch.
• 15:56
  I am an advisor and mentor at UC Berkeley here, Startup Accelerator
• 16:05
  and we just released a new cohort of entrepreneurs and with their startup
• 16:11
  ventures that got funded and most of them are focused on AI applications.
• 16:17
  It's here and it's here to stay.
• 16:19
  And so we need to embrace it and drive the change forward.
• 16:23
  I'm really excited about using all the tools and helping companies
• 16:27
  drive efficiencies and, effectiveness in their go to market strategies.
• 16:32
  Matt: We're not old Anastasia.
• 16:33
  We're experienced and wise.
• 16:34
  That's the pivot.
• 16:35
  That's the angle I choose...
• 16:36
  over the years we've seen people that are digital natives that are mobile natives
• 16:40
  that are just used to this, that didn't have to pivot and we're well into what
• 16:44
  I would consider the AI natives, right?
• 16:46
  Like the kids that you have in The Accelerator in Berkeley where they've
• 16:50
  been playing with from the beginning.
• 16:51
  It is part of the initial set of tools.
• 16:54
  And it's going to be exciting to see what they come up with.
• 16:56
  What they innovate.
• 16:57
  It's not all going to work.
• 16:58
  It's not all going to be successful.
• 16:59
  It's not all going to launch, but this is how we learn.
• 17:01
  I'm excited for you being at the front end of that, being able to see that
• 17:05
  firsthand, it's going to be pretty cool.
• 17:07
  Anastasia this has been awesome.
• 17:08
  I know we've covered very quickly, a lot of ground here.
• 17:10
  If people want to learn more from you and more about you, where should they go?
• 17:14
  Anastasia: Well, I'm definitely on LinkedIn or send me an
• 17:17
  email at info@boldgrm.com.
• 17:20
  Matt: Awesome.
• 17:20
  Awesome.
• 17:21
  Anastasia.
• 17:21
  Thanks so much for being here with us today.
• 17:23
  Thank you everyone for listening and watching another episode of
• 17:26
  Sales Pipeline Radio in the books.
• 17:27
  Look forward to seeing you all next week for more of the same.
• 17:31
  My name is Matt Heinz.
• 17:32
  Thanks again for joining us on Sales Pipeline Radio today.
• 17:34
  We'll see you next time.
• 17:35
  Take care.