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Bringing Modern B2B Marketing to Old-School Manufacturing · Sales Pipeline Radio

• 0:15
  Matt Heinz: All right.
• 0:15
  Welcome to a special series of episodes of Sales Pipeline Radio.
• 0:21
  My name is Matt Heinz, thanks so much for joining us.
• 0:23
  We are here live in Boston, Massachusetts — we are here at the Webflow
• 0:28
  Conference for the next couple days.
• 0:30
  Very excited to be here — boy, they got a lot of really interesting things going on.
• 0:32
  It's fascinating, always, to see in person what people are doing with AI as
• 0:38
  part of their message, what people are doing with AI as part of the conference.
• 0:42
  This morning I woke up, and despite the fact that, Courtney, it's late 2026 and
• 0:46
  all this AI stuff is happening, we're still putting flyers under hotel room
• 0:49
  doors — still getting the same door drops that I've been getting for years.
• 0:52
  Courtney Pierce: Hey, if it's not broke, don't fix it, right?
• 0:54
  Matt Heinz: Well, I mean, really — you think about the proliferation of content
• 0:57
  that is around us, and the proliferation of AI slop, and the fact that we still
• 1:02
  prioritize getting together in person.
• 1:03
  Courtney Pierce: Absolutely.
• 1:04
  Matt Heinz: And I think it's becoming more and more important, especially in
• 1:07
  the kind of work that we're doing, where you're selling into considered purchases
• 1:11
  — you've got a lot of people that are engaged, it's still a relationship
• 1:14
  business, trust and credibility is still a key part of making that work.
• 1:18
  Courtney Pierce: So true.
• 1:19
  Matt Heinz: Well, we'll just jump right into it.
• 1:21
  We've got a series of episodes we're recording here for Sales Pipeline
• 1:24
  Radio at the Webflow Conference, so thank you to Alice and Dave and
• 1:26
  the team for making this possible.
• 1:28
  If you're listening outside of the show and recording us as you
• 1:31
  do so, glad to have you here.
• 1:34
  And, very excited — our very first guest in the podcast
• 1:36
  booth here is Courtney Pierce.
• 1:37
  She's the senior vice president of marketing at Amtech Software, helping
• 1:41
  over 1,200 packaging plants worldwide.
• 1:44
  Courtney Pierce: Yes, I am.
• 1:45
  And thank you, Matt — it's so nice to be here.
• 1:47
  Matt Heinz: Oh, it's great to have you here.
• 1:49
  Great to have you as a part of our CMO Coffee Talk community — great to see you.
• 1:53
  We come and do our breakfast here on a regular basis, here in the Boston area.
• 1:56
  I'm really excited to talk about the work you've done over your career, and
• 2:02
  now applying that to packaging plants.
• 2:04
  I'm fascinated by how we are taking modern B2B marketing strategies
• 2:10
  and efforts, and applying that to more traditional industries.
• 2:14
  Courtney Pierce: Absolutely.
• 2:15
  Yeah, thank you, Matt.
• 2:17
  Definitely — the last 20 years I have spent in B2B technology, mainly
• 2:23
  focusing on demand generation.
• 2:25
  And then, in January this year, I joined Amtech Software, which is a
• 2:29
  40-year-old ERP technology company for both the packaging and labels industry.
• 2:35
  So we are really working with the backbone of the American economy.
• 2:40
  Although we are a global company, most of our customers are the plants who are
• 2:46
  making corrugated cardboard, or actually making those boxes that you receive on
• 2:52
  your doorstep every day, or they're making the labels of all the products that you
• 2:55
  see in the grocery store or at Target.
• 2:58
  So it's a really special group of customers that we're supporting.
• 3:04
  But so many of them are family-owned businesses that are on third-generation
• 3:09
  owners — so we're now working with the grandchildren of the folks that founded
• 3:15
  these plants, and it is very different from traditional B2B SaaS sales.
• 3:22
  It's been an exciting journey.
• 3:24
  Matt Heinz: So let's get into that a little bit.
• 3:25
  I think — a 40-year-old company selling software, but selling it to box plants.
• 3:30
  Courtney Pierce: Mm-hmm.
• 3:31
  Matt Heinz: Of the ABX playbook you've developed over the
• 3:33
  years, what has translated well?
• 3:36
  What are some things you had to take out?
• 3:37
  What are things that you've added to make it work in this industry?
• 3:40
  Courtney Pierce: That's a great question.
• 3:42
  A few things that have translated well is actually our digital approach.
• 3:46
  So when I joined back in January, there was sort of a belief among many of our
• 3:51
  long-tenured employees that none of these box plants are going to be on
• 3:56
  sites like LinkedIn, or using ChatGPT, or using Google to find technology — and
• 4:04
  the reality is that's just not true.
• 4:06
  Now that we're dealing with these third-generation plant owners,
• 4:10
  who tend to be on the younger side, they're very accustomed to
• 4:16
  being on these digital channels.
• 4:18
  And so that's one area where we've seen pretty incredible growth over
• 4:22
  the past eight months — investing in how we're showing up on LinkedIn, and
• 4:27
  how we're interacting with both our prospects and customers there, and then
• 4:31
  what our paid strategy is behind that.
• 4:34
  So that's been quite refreshing, that that's still a channel that's
• 4:38
  working for us, despite it being a completely different space.
• 4:43
  One of the things I would say I've definitely shifted since coming into
• 4:49
  the organization is how we're talking to our customers and prospects about value.
• 4:55
  Matt Heinz: Mm-hmm.
• 4:55
  Courtney Pierce: And so, taking a value strategy approach where we're focusing
• 5:00
  on those four pillars — cost reduction, revenue increase, risk reduction, or
• 5:07
  increased productivity — and making sure that we are positioning Amtech in
• 5:13
  such a way that we're addressing the concerns of our buyers through that
• 5:17
  lens, and really tying it back to their revenue and their cost model, as a way
• 5:23
  to start conversations versus just, "We're so great, we have the best ERP."
• 5:32
  Matt Heinz: It's taken us almost six minutes to talk about AI as
• 5:36
  part of this conversation, which—
• 5:37
  Courtney Pierce: Oh, that's a good thing, right?
• 5:37
  Matt Heinz: Which — oh, it's definitely a good thing.
• 5:39
  But I think what I like about the way you guys have incorporated AI
• 5:42
  into your messaging is you talk about AI-driven manufacturing starting
• 5:45
  with fundamentals, not algorithms.
• 5:47
  Can you unpack that a little bit and talk about what that means?
• 5:51
  Courtney Pierce: Absolutely.
• 5:52
  I mean, AI, certainly in the manufacturing space — while it's understood what AI
• 5:58
  does, I think applying it to how these plants are working on a day-to-day
• 6:03
  basis, there's still a learning curve that needs to be understood.
• 6:07
  What does that mean for me, and what does that mean for my plant?
• 6:10
  And so we've really framed it around our AI go-to-market focus, which is Amtech
• 6:17
  Intelligence — bringing AI into the tools that these plants are already using.
• 6:24
  So one area is around our cost and estimating, and
• 6:32
  building out proposals for their customers.
• 6:37
  Matt Heinz: Mm-hmm.
• 6:37
  Courtney Pierce: And so by making that more streamlined with AI, and
• 6:41
  making that easier for our customers to estimate and quote more quickly,
• 6:46
  they're able to see the benefits of AI more quickly, versus just
• 6:50
  AI-washing everything that we're doing.
• 6:53
  Matt Heinz: I mean, AI has such a great benefit to us all, but
• 6:55
  it's a means to an end, and I like the way you positioned that.
• 6:59
  We're talking to Courtney Pierce here — first episode of Sales Pipeline
• 7:02
  Radio in a warming podcast booth here.
• 7:05
  Courtney Pierce: Yes.
• 7:06
  Matt Heinz: There's air conditioning above us, but once you get two people in here,
• 7:09
  it starts to break down a little bit.
• 7:11
  We're still working out the kinks — we're gonna get it to all work.
• 7:14
  Courtney Pierce: Yeah, it's all good.
• 7:14
  Matt Heinz: But, excited to have you here as our first guest.
• 7:17
  I hope I get this right — so what I understand is that you've
• 7:19
  created an AI customer council.
• 7:23
  Courtney Pierce: Yes.
• 7:23
  Matt Heinz: Can you explain what that is and how that's benefited you?
• 7:26
  Courtney Pierce: It's been so beneficial for us — it's really the backbone
• 7:29
  of our AI roadmap, understanding how our customers are thinking about AI
• 7:34
  and how it can be applied to the ways that they're using our technology.
• 7:39
  And so that's actually a monthly virtual meeting that we have with a
• 7:46
  select number of customers, where we're talking to people across the plant — we
• 7:52
  have IT people in the conversation, we'll have plant managers, we'll have
• 7:57
  operations leads in those conversations.
• 8:01
  And it's an opportunity for us to share what we're seeing and what we're thinking
• 8:06
  about, and gauge their response and their reaction, and then also hear from them
• 8:11
  how they're using tools like ChatGPT
• 8:16
  in their day-to-day workflows, and how we could leverage some
• 8:24
  of the ways that they're already thinking about AI into our products.
• 8:28
  Matt Heinz: I love that.
• 8:28
  I love the fact you're actively getting your customers involved
• 8:30
  in that conversation, right?
• 8:31
  And getting that feedback and incorporating that directly,
• 8:35
  which is super important.
• 8:37
  Since — I sometimes think of the world as pre- and post-pandemic, right?
• 8:41
  Courtney Pierce: Mm-hmm.
• 8:41
  Matt Heinz: And so, post-pandemic, you have been agency side
• 8:44
  and you've been in-house.
• 8:44
  And so now, as you're in-house, and as you're starting to bring on more agencies
• 8:48
  as well, how do you think about the role of outside support for marketing functions
• 8:55
  in a world where AI is starting to chip away at some of those traditional roles?
• 9:01
  Courtney Pierce: It's, for me, it's still very important.
• 9:03
  I mean, I have a very small team, and so I need to depend on agencies to help
• 9:08
  us scale, especially in areas like new markets that we're entering this year.
• 9:14
  So we've actually — we continue to use agencies both from a creative
• 9:21
  perspective, as well as, we just recently relaunched the Amtech website,
• 9:26
  yesterday, and that was all through a partnership with a great creative and
• 9:32
  website agency that helped us do that.
• 9:35
  So it really helps us continue to operate at high volume and make sure that
• 9:42
  we're staying on brand and on message.
• 9:45
  So having agencies, again, for a very small marketing team, is
• 9:51
  critical to being successful.
• 9:53
  Matt Heinz: I mean, it allows you to scale, allows you to be flexible—
• 9:55
  Courtney Pierce: Absolutely — along the way.
• 9:56
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 9:58
  Courtney Pierce: Yeah.
• 9:58
  Matt Heinz: In an industry where you have long sales cycles and sometimes a
• 10:01
  skeptical buyer, what are parts of the job that you would never hand to AI?
• 10:05
  Courtney Pierce: Oh, that's a good question.
• 10:09
  I couldn't really imagine handing the entire sales process over to AI.
• 10:14
  I mean, it is so relationship-building — we've been working, some of our
• 10:17
  customers have been working with us for over 30 years, and they're still
• 10:22
  implementing new products and new offerings from Amtech, and so that
• 10:27
  relationship is just so critical.
• 10:30
  But it also
• 10:34
  — I think there's an opportunity, maybe, for AI to improve, and it's not
• 10:38
  there today, is how it differentiates Amtech from our competitors.
• 10:43
  And so I think if we were leaving that just up to AI, I don't trust that
• 10:48
  it would get it completely right and position us necessarily in the best light.
• 10:53
  And so we still need that sales touch, and that human touch, to make sure that we're
• 10:57
  understanding what our customers need—
• 10:59
  Matt Heinz: Mm-hmm.
• 11:00
  Courtney Pierce: —and then how we can deliver it for them.
• 11:02
  Matt Heinz: Fully agree with that.
• 11:03
  I think so many things in B2B are still very relationship-
• 11:08
  and trust-based businesses.
• 11:09
  Courtney Pierce: Absolutely.
• 11:10
  Matt Heinz: And if we can use the technology and data that we have
• 11:13
  around us to help us be smarter about having those conversations,
• 11:16
  and allow the people to really just lean into their skill set, right?
• 11:21
  Like, the best sales guys I know — the best salespeople I know in almost every
• 11:26
  industry that are working those long sales deals — they're not experts in CRM.
• 11:30
  Courtney Pierce: Right.
• 11:30
  Matt Heinz: They're not experts in social media — they're experts in relationships.
• 11:33
  They are masters at it, they've built a career around it.
• 11:36
  And so how do we help them accentuate and triple the impact of that?
• 11:40
  Courtney Pierce: Right.
• 11:41
  Matt Heinz: Right?
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  And I think that's our imperative — what's the job to be done, and
• 11:45
  what's the best resource to do it?
• 11:47
  And I think that's where you could start to separate the tools from the
• 11:50
  data, to the agents, to the people.
• 11:52
  Courtney Pierce: Absolutely.
• 11:53
  And, one example, just even this year, we've worked with Vista, who
• 11:59
  is the PE firm that owns Amtech, on our value strategy go-to-market, and
• 12:05
  they have an AI tool that allowed us to go through the process more
• 12:11
  quickly — although "more quickly" really was about an eight-week process.
• 12:16
  And there was very heavy human involvement that was needed across
• 12:22
  the subject matter experts within Amtech, to make sure that we were
• 12:26
  aligning how we are differentiating ourselves based on those value pillars.
• 12:33
  But what's great with AI now is that, now that we sort of have that basis in
• 12:38
  place, we're able to build that into marketing skills within Claude and create
• 12:45
  persona-based campaigns much more quickly.
• 12:49
  And what that does is it actually elevates our demand generation
• 12:53
  people, so that they're no longer just executing constantly
• 13:00
  and turning the dials on all of the different channels
• 13:03
  that we're showing up in.
• 13:04
  They are able to become much more strategic, because they
• 13:07
  can push things out to market—
• 13:09
  Matt Heinz: That's right.
• 13:10
  Courtney Pierce: —much faster.
• 13:11
  They can test much more reliably, and then adjust from there, versus the old
• 13:19
  way of doing things even two years ago—
• 13:24
  Matt Heinz: Not even that.
• 13:26
  Wow.
• 13:26
  Courtney Pierce: Eighteen months ago — take three months to create
• 13:29
  a campaign, take three months to execute it, and then on to the next.
• 13:33
  And then, 12 months later, you sort of look back and say
• 13:35
  what worked, what didn't work.
• 13:37
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 13:37
  Yeah.
• 13:37
  I mean, AI is definitely helping us be faster, right?
• 13:41
  I think speed to market is improved if you're using it well.
• 13:44
  But faster isn't the right measure — I think it's gotta be better, right?
• 13:47
  Courtney Pierce: Absolutely.
• 13:47
  Matt Heinz: I mean, so many of the measures I've seen, just even in the
• 13:50
  research we saw a couple weeks ago from Omar at Benchmarker, of how are you
• 13:53
  evaluating AI's impact — it was all some version of faster, quicker, less time.
• 13:59
  But you can't grow with less.
• 14:01
  You have to think about what are my objectives, what are the
• 14:03
  constraints I'm putting it against, and how am I better at those?
• 14:06
  Courtney Pierce: Absolutely.
• 14:07
  I mean, that has been a big focus for me as well — how do I tie it to
• 14:11
  pipeline creation and revenue creation—
• 14:14
  Matt Heinz: Mm-hmm.
• 14:14
  Courtney Pierce: —for Amtech — not just, "Oh, I could wait six months
• 14:18
  to hire someone on my team."
• 14:19
  Matt Heinz: All right, so you're less than a year in, so I think the training
• 14:22
  wheels are a little bit off, but — at this point, with a new company, with a private
• 14:29
  equity-backed organization, for other people that, over the next few months,
• 14:34
  are gonna be starting in new roles, potentially with private equity-backed
• 14:36
  companies, what are your recommendations to help them be more successful?
• 14:40
  Courtney Pierce: My first recommendation is, if you're not already part of a
• 14:45
  group like CMO Coffee Talk, to join, because as soon as I was hired by Amtech,
• 14:50
  one of the first things I did was post on there — how many other marketing
• 14:55
  leaders are currently working for a Vista company — and I have to say, that
• 14:59
  was a great way to unlock some knowledge before I even stepped in, before day one
• 15:05
  even began, so I could understand what it was like to work for that particular
• 15:09
  PE firm, what their expectations are.
• 15:13
  So I think that actually helped set me up for success in the first 30 days.
• 15:18
  Matt Heinz: Nice.
• 15:18
  Courtney Pierce: But, so I would make that a big recommendation.
• 15:22
  And then, similarly — this is, I'm sure, obvious advice — but just
• 15:27
  learn as much as you can about the industry or the market that you're
• 15:31
  entering into before you start.
• 15:34
  I listened to — there are a number of different packaging podcasts
• 15:38
  out there, which is so niche.
• 15:41
  Matt Heinz: Mm-hmm.
• 15:41
  Yeah.
• 15:41
  Courtney Pierce: But they do exist.
• 15:42
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 15:42
  Courtney Pierce: And so I listened to as many episodes as I could, so I really felt
• 15:46
  like I started to understand the market and the customers that we're selling to.
• 15:51
  Matt Heinz: We had a client years ago — God, probably now 10 years ago — in
• 15:54
  the Seattle area, and their entire business was basically bubble packaging.
• 15:58
  You know those envelopes that have the bubble wrap in it?
• 16:01
  Courtney Pierce: Yes.
• 16:01
  Matt Heinz: That's their entire business, and it was just fascinating to learn
• 16:04
  about supply chain, fascinating to learn about how they go to market.
• 16:09
  I mean, we live in a bubble sometimes, Courtney, 'cause for those of us that
• 16:14
  are more along the tech side, we think everything is in the cloud, and yet
• 16:17
  we're sitting here at a conference, and everything I'm staring at outside
• 16:20
  of this conference had to be made somewhere, had to be sold by someone—
• 16:23
  Courtney Pierce: Absolutely.
• 16:23
  Matt Heinz: —had to be delivered here somehow.
• 16:25
  And next week is gonna be a whole new set of stuff for whatever the
• 16:28
  next conference is coming here.
• 16:29
  Courtney Pierce: You're right.
• 16:29
  Matt Heinz: So much of the world is physical.
• 16:32
  Courtney Pierce: Absolutely.
• 16:33
  Matt Heinz: And I think we can't live without that, and it's
• 16:35
  fascinating to think about how we, as go-to-market leaders, can
• 16:38
  facilitate better outcomes there.
• 16:40
  Courtney Pierce: Yes.
• 16:40
  Matt Heinz: Right?
• 16:40
  For our companies, as well as for the customers and the end users — it's
• 16:44
  kind of like a good baseball umpire.
• 16:46
  You don't think about the things that are out there — that the coffee's available,
• 16:48
  the seating's good, the Wi-Fi works.
• 16:51
  It's all part of it.
• 16:52
  Courtney Pierce: Absolutely.
• 16:53
  Matt Heinz: Awesome.
• 16:54
  Courtney Pierce, SVP of Marketing at Amtech Software, thanks so much for being
• 16:57
  our first guest here, Sales Pipeline Radio, live at the Webflow Conference.
• 17:00
  Courtney Pierce: Thank you, Matt.
• 17:01
  Nice to be here.