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Why Insights Don't Change Sales Behavior (But Nudges Do) · Sales Pipeline Radio

• 0:16
  Matt Heinz: All right, we are back here on the Forrester B2B
• 0:19
  Summit show floor marketplace.
• 0:21
  We're getting towards the end of day one — it has been a good day, a long
• 0:24
  day, some really cool new content.
• 0:26
  If you're not familiar with the concept of go-to-market singularity,
• 0:29
  you're about to be — Forrester's been talking a lot about that.
• 0:31
  I love this as a unifying feature of trying to get all the
• 0:34
  go-to-market teams on the same page, working from the same playbook.
• 0:37
  I think Forrester's got some really good insights you're all
• 0:40
  gonna wanna check out on that.
• 0:40
  But we are here recording episodes of Sales Pipeline Radio.
• 0:43
  We're next to the giant boot here, Sanchit.
• 0:46
  We've made up some stories about this boot — one of them is that it predates
• 0:52
  the conference center, that they built the conference center around it.
• 0:54
  It's an ancient boot.
• 0:56
  Sanchit Garg: You can't move it.
• 0:57
  Once it's there, it's there.
• 0:58
  Matt Heinz: It's there.
• 0:58
  Look at the size of that thing, you can't move that.
• 1:00
  It was once worshiped by ancient cultures in the Phoenix
• 1:04
  area, and now it's still here.
• 1:07
  But enough about the boot — excited to have, in this episode, Sanchit Garg.
• 1:11
  He's the co-founder and CEO of Zime AI, a three-time
• 1:15
  founder, a behavioral scientist.
• 1:18
  And I'm excited to talk about Zime, a sales coaching platform combining
• 1:21
  generative AI with behavioral science.
• 1:24
  Thanks for joining us.
• 1:25
  Sanchit Garg: That's right.
• 1:25
  Thank you.
• 1:25
  Matt Heinz: Did I describe that well?
• 1:26
  How would you describe Zime?
• 1:28
  Sanchit Garg: I would describe Zime, like, helping companies
• 1:30
  who have complex go-to-market.
• 1:33
  They have technical products, their competitors keep changing, they're selling
• 1:38
  direct sales, channel sales, and it's so complex go-to-market, it's hard to
• 1:42
  drive behaviors, winning behaviors across hundreds of reps. How do you fit it in?
• 1:48
  You can't.
• 1:49
  That's where we come in — we simplify this complex GTM into winning
• 1:52
  behaviors across all the reps.
• 1:55
  Matt Heinz: So talk about why behavior science is so
• 1:58
  important to doing that well.
• 1:59
  There's a lot of coaching platforms on the market, a lot of AI-driven
• 2:02
  coaching platforms on the market.
• 2:04
  What makes the incorporation and integration of behavioral
• 2:07
  science so important?
• 2:08
  Sanchit Garg: Yeah.
• 2:09
  I think behaviors — you know, our insight is that insights don't lead to outcomes.
• 2:15
  It's execution.
• 2:16
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 2:16
  Sanchit Garg: It's behaviors.
• 2:17
  And driving behaviors is hard.
• 2:22
  I have a eight-year-old, and I can tell him to get me a glass of water
• 2:26
  — sometimes I get it, sometimes I don't.
• 2:28
  Now, you scale that to a thousand sales reps who have to sell a new AI product
• 2:33
  that you built, on the call do the right messaging, handle the objections
• 2:37
  well — they have to do trainings.
• 2:39
  It's a mess.
• 2:39
  Some reps will do it, some won't do it.
• 2:41
  It's like a gym — some will go, but the rest will not go, or not do it properly.
• 2:46
  You have no compliance either.
• 2:49
  That's hard, and that's where you need to get behavior science, to not bombard
• 2:53
  the reps with hundreds of insights, spray and pray and hope something works.
• 2:58
  It has to be the way they change behaviors.
• 3:00
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 3:01
  Yeah.
• 3:01
  And, well, I think that is so important, especially when you've got
• 3:05
  sales reps that are later in their career and kinda set in their ways.
• 3:07
  You remind me of my dad, who sold Caterpillar tractors for 35 years, and
• 3:12
  by the time he retired, he was being asked to update things in Salesforce.
• 3:15
  Sanchit Garg: Right.
• 3:15
  Matt Heinz: And he did not wanna update things in Salesforce.
• 3:18
  In your seat, just a couple people ago, was someone who works in a prefab
• 3:23
  concrete manufacturing business, where the top sales reps have been
• 3:27
  around forever and don't wanna use CRM, and see no reason to do it.
• 3:31
  And so behavior change is hard, status quo change is hard, for all of us.
• 3:37
  And the impetus for doing that, the catalyst for doing that, the reason
• 3:41
  we do it, is different — which is I think why you need to use a platform
• 3:45
  that can tap into behavioral science and the unique nature of each of
• 3:47
  us to get to where we need to go.
• 3:50
  Sanchit Garg: It has to be unique to us.
• 3:52
  It has to be in the flow of the work.
• 3:55
  So while I'm on a deal as a sales rep, the deal is unique — I am
• 3:59
  selling to a partner motion versus direct motion, there's a certain
• 4:02
  competitor, there's a certain product.
• 4:05
  You can't give me generic coaching — you have to give me
• 4:08
  contextual coaching before the call.
• 4:09
  Help me do a role play, if you want, in that context.
• 4:12
  But then after the call, put some compliance, put some accountability, make
• 4:16
  it gamified with leaderboards, SPIFs.
• 4:18
  Put top-down accountability with manager pipeline reviews
• 4:22
  on the same coaching inputs.
• 4:24
  Once you put all of these things together, what your top 10% reps
• 4:27
  do, that gets percolated, amplified to 80% of reps. The rest 20%, I
• 4:33
  don't have a answer to that yet.
• 4:36
  Matt Heinz: Well, we're gonna come back, talk more about Zime and sales coaching
• 4:39
  here in a minute, but I wanna go back a little bit, because I learned some things
• 4:41
  about you, and I think people's stories are so fascinating to me, especially
• 4:46
  when we learn something about ourselves and what we bring to the present and
• 4:51
  what that teaches the rest of us.
• 4:53
  You grew Travel Triangle to 45 million and 900 employees, and then had what you've
• 5:01
  described as your quarter-life crisis.
• 5:03
  Can you talk about what that was and what that taught you?
• 5:07
  Sanchit Garg: Yeah, it's a very funny moment, but essentially — I went to
• 5:12
  college, I was like, "I want to get a job, get a lot of money." And I got into
• 5:16
  Yahoo, and my first year was like, "I have enough money, that's fine, I want to put
• 5:21
  my name on the map." So I built a company — I was 30 year old, it scaled well.
• 5:26
  And I was wondering, "Okay, that check mark is done, now what's next?" And that's
• 5:31
  when I was really looking for some meaning to my life — what do I really want to do?
• 5:35
  Not just chase certain P&Ls, certain numbers, certain net worth, but really
• 5:42
  what adds meaning to my life — and that took me a lot of time to figure out.
• 5:47
  Matt Heinz: Well, and you wrote about this — you turned to quantum physics,
• 5:50
  astrophysics, meditation, consciousness studies, and that's been sort of a
• 5:54
  through line in your life as well.
• 5:56
  Talk about — was that a natural thing for you?
• 6:00
  Had you studied that before?
• 6:01
  Sanchit Garg: No, it was not natural for me.
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  What was natural for me was that I couldn't find my answers in the typical
• 6:08
  frameworks, or all the YC frameworks, or whatever frameworks you have in the world.
• 6:14
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
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  Sanchit Garg: So I had to explore things beyond what is available,
• 6:17
  and that's where I said, "Okay, let me see what is the biggest thing
• 6:20
  in the universe" — astrophysics.
• 6:22
  Where is the universe expanding to?
• 6:24
  If it's expanding, what does it get contained in?
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  The answers were not there.
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  Or the quantum physics — what's the smallest thing below an
• 6:32
  electron, when does it become light?
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  All of these questions, and then I — I come from India, so I went into ancient
• 6:40
  wisdom, got into meditation, read a few scriptures, and I started seeing
• 6:45
  that they were all converging to the same thing — sort of like, this reality
• 6:51
  is a perception, sort of a thing.
• 6:52
  You are here to enjoy the moments and do some good experience, but you don't
• 6:58
  have to worry about random things.
• 7:00
  You have to listen when you're talking to somebody, not interrupt.
• 7:03
  All of these insights were really shifting me from inside.
• 7:07
  And my go-to thing was that growth has to be inside, not outside — not net worth,
• 7:14
  but how you build your emotional fitness.
• 7:17
  And that's why I became so fascinated that I left my company, became a
• 7:21
  behavioral scientist, got my license as an executive coach, coached at
• 7:25
  NVIDIA and PayPal, but the mission was to really drive behaviors at scale.
• 7:30
  Matt Heinz: Such a great story.
• 7:33
  And, you know, I will say I have struggled with meditation
• 7:36
  mightily in my life and career.
• 7:39
  I try to do it, but I just get distracted — I'm not able, it's
• 7:44
  hard for me just to notice those thoughts and let them float by.
• 7:49
  But, you know, we're all on a journey.
• 7:50
  I think you've described meditation as a founder resilience tool.
• 7:56
  And I have found a lot of people I know that have stressful jobs rely on it
• 8:01
  on a daily basis to center themselves, and to not just help them get through
• 8:05
  the day, but just have a better perspective on what they're facing,
• 8:09
  in the job as well as just in life.
• 8:13
  Sanchit Garg: It is.
• 8:14
  It's the best tool that I have that has helped me operate as a founder.
• 8:18
  I often call founder — especially early-stage founder — the
• 8:22
  rejection handling machine.
• 8:24
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 8:25
  Sanchit Garg: Your investors, vendors, customers, employees — they
• 8:28
  all mostly say no to you till you find your PMF, and that's fine.
• 8:32
  But how do you not react to these circumstances around you,
• 8:36
  keep your balance, and say, "I'll try my best next day"?
• 8:40
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 8:41
  Sanchit Garg: That perspective requires you to build a strong core,
• 8:44
  and that's where meditation helps me.
• 8:46
  Matt Heinz: This is the best interview we've had so far
• 8:48
  here at Forrester B2B Summit.
• 8:50
  We're here with Sanchit Garg, he's a co-founder and CEO of Zime AI.
• 8:53
  So I wanna transition back into Zime and talk about something
• 8:57
  that — either you coined it or I can't tell — it's called nudge theory, and
• 9:01
  this is from behavioral economics.
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  I'd never heard of that before, and apparently it's a part of
• 9:06
  the core mechanism for Zime.
• 9:07
  Can you describe what nudge actually is and how it works in a sales context?
• 9:12
  Sanchit Garg: Yeah, I mean, if you see — how do we really change behaviors today?
• 9:15
  It's not by reading books, it's definitely not by watching two-hour
• 9:19
  videos or doing assessments.
• 9:21
  We change behaviors when they come to us in the flow of the work.
• 9:25
  Think of Google Maps — you're going from Palo Alto to San Mateo on a
• 9:30
  weekend, in traffic, it tells you, "You're at this intersection, go left."
• 9:33
  Matt Heinz: Mm-hmm.
• 9:34
  Sanchit Garg: "Go right." And you do that.
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  That's what the reps need — if you drive behaviors for a sales team,
• 9:40
  that's what the nudges they need.
• 9:42
  They're on a sales call — in the fifth call on this deal, this is
• 9:46
  what has happened in the past, this is what the top reps would
• 9:48
  do, this is what the playbooks are.
• 9:51
  And now, give them this so that they can do that.
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  And then, of course, you have to pair that nudge theory with
• 9:58
  accountability, leaderboards, gamification, top-down accountability.
• 10:03
  So bring all of it together to drive the real behaviors.
• 10:07
  Matt Heinz: I think a lot of sales enablement investments fail
• 10:11
  because of adoption problems.
• 10:12
  Sanchit Garg: That's right.
• 10:14
  Matt Heinz: And I think your approach seems to directly address that.
• 10:16
  I think I read somewhere that you say Zime can deploy in seven days.
• 10:20
  Sanchit Garg: That's right.
• 10:20
  Matt Heinz: What makes a Zime deployment so much more successful, so much
• 10:24
  faster than typical deployments?
• 10:26
  Sanchit Garg: It took us nine months when we took our first customer.
• 10:29
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 10:29
  Sanchit Garg: But then the AI model got trained for those nuances.
• 10:35
  I think the part here is — when a CRO joins a new company, they
• 10:41
  take, like, nine months to ramp up.
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  They have to understand, build their judgment about what makes
• 10:46
  them win a deal against a certain competitor, against a certain use case.
• 10:51
  How do their products work?
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  What integration are they good at?
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  What are the channel partners?
• 10:55
  Who are the case studies?
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  All of these things.
• 10:58
  This AI can get fine-tuned and ramped up in seven days now, because the model
• 11:02
  behind it has been trained for that.
• 11:04
  And once we have it, then we can apply behavioral science to not spray and pray
• 11:10
  and give a thousand insights to reps, but to tell them exactly, "Do this" — very
• 11:14
  prescriptive, coach-like behaviors.
• 11:19
  Matt Heinz: So you said you have an eight-year-old — what kind of lessons
• 11:23
  are you teaching your eight-year-old from what you have learned in
• 11:25
  your business and life so far?
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  I mean, it's everything from behavioral science to meditation.
• 11:32
  What are you sharing?
• 11:33
  Sanchit Garg: You know, my eight-year-old, he teaches me more than I can teach him.
• 11:38
  Matt Heinz: It sounds about right.
• 11:40
  Sanchit Garg: But, you know, he's fun, and he pulls me out
• 11:46
  during my day to play soccer.
• 11:48
  Matt Heinz: Mm-hmm.
• 11:48
  Sanchit Garg: I say no to him, but then I say yes to him, because he's persistent,
• 11:52
  and that's the best part of my day.
• 11:54
  But, you know, he's also an eight-year-old at this age where he's figuring out
• 11:59
  what social embarrassment means.
• 12:01
  He wants to go to his friends of his age group, not to family friends — for
• 12:06
  him, they're not so interesting.
• 12:08
  And I have to coach him and help him understand various perspectives of what
• 12:13
  it means to have a more broad mind.
• 12:16
  And I have to ask him questions, and I have to figure out why is he behaving a
• 12:21
  certain way, why is he having attitude.
• 12:23
  I think we come around sometimes, and we don't sometimes.
• 12:26
  But a guy — a eight-year-old — will listen to his dad in the last.
• 12:32
  Matt Heinz: Does nudge theory work as a parent?
• 12:33
  Sanchit Garg: No, it does not.
• 12:38
  Matt Heinz: Oh my gosh, this is the best.
• 12:39
  All right.
• 12:41
  Look, I mean, I love what you guys are building — it sounds like a
• 12:43
  really solid foundation, I love the traction that you're getting.
• 12:47
  There are tens of thousands of tools out here—
• 12:49
  Sanchit Garg: That's right.
• 12:49
  Matt Heinz: —like, what's on the floor here is just a microcosm of
• 12:51
  what's out there today, and I think it's really hard for any company
• 12:57
  to break through the clutter.
• 12:58
  Sanchit Garg: That's right.
• 12:58
  Matt Heinz: Even if you've got something that is really having an impact
• 13:02
  for folks, it's still noise until someone understands what you're doing.
• 13:06
  What are you finding that works to get through to companies?
• 13:09
  Sanchit Garg: Yeah, I think noise is real.
• 13:10
  If you do a cold outreach, it doesn't move the needle, because everybody's
• 13:15
  getting bombarded with 40 emails a day.
• 13:17
  But it's more like a personal connect — I go to events, and that's the best
• 13:22
  place, because I can speak to somebody for 15 minutes, and then they get it.
• 13:26
  But I can't just do a two-minute line and say, "Hey, I will drive coaching and drive
• 13:30
  your behaviors" — it doesn't work, because people are just numb to that messaging.
• 13:36
  But once they understand what's behind it — the vertical model built for their
• 13:41
  company, driving adoption — that's where they get it, and they start talking to us.
• 13:46
  So for us, events are working.
• 13:48
  For us, our referral network, our customer referrals — that kind of thing is working.
• 13:53
  We are very big on GEO SEO, because it's a whole new world.
• 13:57
  Matt Heinz: Mm-hmm.
• 13:57
  Sanchit Garg: The world is moving from SEO to GEO, and that's where the agents
• 14:00
  can deeply understand about us through our website and surface us upfront.
• 14:05
  That's where we are betting a lot.
• 14:06
  Matt Heinz: Well, and you've doubled down on cybersecurity as well, as
• 14:08
  an industry that has a specific need, where what you have built
• 14:11
  is custom-built for that audience.
• 14:13
  And it sounds like you guys have had success with some CRO breakfasts and
• 14:16
  some other just in-person events to sort of get in front of that audience.
• 14:19
  You know, I totally agree with you on GEO, digital channels — when you're trying to
• 14:24
  build trust with a CRO, with an executive in a cybersecurity company — if I had to
• 14:29
  use one word to describe a cybersecurity executive, I'd probably say cranky.
• 14:33
  Sanchit Garg: 100%.
• 14:34
  Matt Heinz: Distrusting, maybe.
• 14:35
  How important are those in-person motions to driving some trust
• 14:40
  and differentiation for you?
• 14:42
  Sanchit Garg: It's very important for us.
• 14:46
  We need to have a 20-minute sit-down with any CRO, and every CRO has
• 14:51
  this problem, that 10% of the reps are doing great, the rest are not.
• 14:54
  Matt Heinz: Mm-hmm.
• 14:55
  Sanchit Garg: And they've tried playbooks and trainings, and they just need to
• 14:58
  have, like, 15, 20 minutes to understand that the AI can now not just give
• 15:02
  insights, but actually drive execution.
• 15:05
  So it's important for us to sit with them in person — they see
• 15:08
  me up — that's what drives them to say, "Okay, let's do a pilot."
• 15:12
  Matt Heinz: Mm-hmm.
• 15:13
  Last question for you — you can tell I did a little of my homework here.
• 15:16
  I read somewhere that you play volleyball, but you described
• 15:19
  yourself as — and these are your words — "not naturally skilled at it."
• 15:23
  Sanchit Garg: Yes.
• 15:24
  Matt Heinz: Does that translate to soccer with your eight-year-old as
• 15:27
  well, or is that specific to volleyball?
• 15:29
  Sanchit Garg: I would think my eight-year-old has by
• 15:31
  now bypassed me in soccer.
• 15:35
  Two years before this, I would play at my less level, just
• 15:38
  to give him some motivation.
• 15:40
  Now I try my best, and he still beats me at the game, and I'm proud of it.
• 15:44
  Matt Heinz: Oh, I love that.
• 15:45
  This is the best interview yet today.
• 15:47
  Sanchit Garg, from Zime, Zime AI — where can people learn more about
• 15:50
  you, learn more about the company?
• 15:52
  Sanchit Garg: I think, about the company, it's about behaviors — we
• 15:56
  really believe behaviors can drive outcomes, not insights.
• 16:00
  And about me, I'm a behavioral science guy — if something, I
• 16:03
  know how to drive behaviors.
• 16:04
  That's it.
• 16:04
  Matt Heinz: I love it.
• 16:05
  Sanchit, thank you so much for this.
• 16:07
  Thank you, everyone, for listening.
• 16:08
  We'll be back for another episode here on the show floor shortly.
• 16:11
  Stay tuned.
• 16:11
  Sanchit Garg: Thank you, Matt.
• 16:12
  Bye.