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Your Buyers Aren't on Google Anymore. They're Asking AI · Revenue Problem Solvers

0:00
But I think you're finding with AI is that the numbers can
0:02
exponentially change to the point where you're getting a a
0:06
response rate that's unheard of, you know, because you're doing
0:09
it a new way. Welcome back everybody to the
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Revenue Problem Solvers Podcast, where we look to crack the code
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on growing your business by tackling the challenges to keep
0:17
revenue leaders up at night. I'm Carl Orbans and on today's
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episode it's going to be a fun one because we're going to dive
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into the topic of AI and revenue.
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But before that, today's podcast is sponsored by the great team
0:30
at Virtual Causeway. Traditional demand Gen. has
0:32
broken for a lot of teams that we talked to on the Revenue
0:35
Problem Solvers podcast. Now Virtual Causeway is helping
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fix that by shifting to from demand generation to demand
0:41
positioning. Instead of chasing form fills,
0:43
they engineer where and how your brand appears.
0:45
When buyers research through AI tools and even through peer
0:48
networks, the result becomes fewer cold motions or high
0:52
intent conversations and revenue teams actually spending time
0:55
with people who want to buy. You can check them out at
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virtualcauseway.com. Oh, and don't forget to mention
1:01
the show for a special rate. Now.
1:03
My guest today is a trend intelligence expert and
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innovation strategist and a two time founder.
1:12
My guest is Caitlin Rozanski. So Kaelin has spent her career
1:17
doing something most executives only claim to do.
1:20
She actually sees what's coming before it arrives from studying
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at the Fashion Institute in design of design and
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merchandising. She Co founded Ebco, AB2B
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innovation and trend consultancy that grew to serve some of the
1:33
largest brands in the world, including Starbucks, Procter and
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Gamble and Glaxo Smith Kline. At its peak, Ebco was named one
1:41
of Austin's 50 Companies on Fire and recognized as one of the
1:45
fastest growing firms in its space.
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Oh, she was also on Austin's Under 40, and she was also a
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finalist on Austin's Under 40. But when AI began to reshape the
1:56
business landscape, Caitlin made the decision most successful
1:58
founders resist. She stepped away from what she
2:01
built and started over, founding Hypersite Labs to apply trend
2:05
intelligence in an entirely new direction.
2:08
Caitlin, welcome to the podcast and thank you for joining us.
2:11
Yeah, Thank you. That was such a great intro.
2:13
Thanks for introducing me, Carl. My pleasure.
2:16
It was pretty fun to look into your background.
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And I was like, oh, she, she didn't even like, you know, as a
2:21
lot of founders like, oh, I went to Business School, I got an
2:24
MBA. I did this, but you took a
2:25
completely different route and it was a bit fascinating.
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So I had to find myself from going down a rabbit hole of, of
2:31
learning more about you. So anyway, so we'll leave that
2:33
alone, but to kick us off, could you give everybody a little bit
2:38
of context about your world? What industries or verticals do
2:41
you work in today? What are your selling motions?
2:43
What size companies to work with?
2:45
Yeah. So today I work at Hypersight
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Labs and we work mostly B to B with large corporations.
2:53
So I always say that it's either mid tier and up.
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So a mid tier company, I qualify as 500 million in revenue or
3:00
higher predominantly in CPG, but we also work sometimes in
3:05
pharmaceuticals or technology or digital subscriptions.
3:09
So it can really be a range of different categories, but I
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would say at least CPG is probably 50 or 60% of my
3:15
business. Nice.
3:18
And is there any reason that you jump into CPG so much?
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Like, do you, is your background pretty much there?
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Do you just understand the world or did you sort of stumble
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across it and be like, yeah, you know what?
3:26
I I can figure this out. Well, it's kind of interesting
3:30
that you said that 'cause you were mentioning I have a non
3:32
traditional background, so I studied fashion and product
3:35
development. And when you study fashion,
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everything is really based on trend forecasting.
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So you take trend forecasting classes.
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And I realized that in the CPG space, a lot of MBA programs
3:47
don't include trend forecasting. So they a lot of times spend
3:50
time on The Voice of the consumer or they'll spend time
3:53
to really analyze what are needs that are not being met.
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But they weren't really forecasting ahead and
3:59
proactively seeing well, how are larger cultural trends shifting
4:04
what people want. So I think CPG was just a more
4:07
natural Segway to go to from fashion.
4:11
Some other categories, they're a little bit more dense, like
4:15
technology, you have a lot of different forces playing into
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it. So I think CPG is just a natural
4:20
consumer of trends. Their products move really
4:22
quickly, similar to fashion. Which would make sense because
4:25
of the trending of when you launch a product and where it
4:28
goes and how far it goes. It it makes sense to me.
4:32
How is the connection point from the fashion world to CPG?
4:37
Because you have multiple skews, it goes to multiple places and
4:41
you can start to see whether or not it's being picked up.
4:43
Is that the connection? I believe so.
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I think also there's more seasonal skews.
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There is a faster buy cycle and repeat purchase cycle.
4:52
And then you also have more frequent consumers.
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So there's a lot of categories where we call them infrequent
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purchase categories like tires. So you don't see a lot of trends
5:01
in tires just because you don't have the same need to innovate
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as quickly or as on demand or like even like a category like
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paint, you have a lot of color trends.
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But beyond that, the products aren't changing as quickly as
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crackers or or candy because people are not outside buying
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paint every day. So there's just certain
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categories that they shift so quickly that I think a lot of
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times the trends are moving just as fast as fashion, especially
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if you look at the beverage category now, there's like
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thousands of skews, the candy category, any kind of impulse
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purchase. The one as soon as you're
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talking, I admittedly, I have a an energy drink beside me and I
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started look at thinking about all the skews that are happening
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there and how fast are coming out.
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And you know, Ghost is, is one of my favorites.
5:51
And they were just acquired. They were acquired for a billion
5:54
dollars by the Keurig Dr. Pepper and now they're starting to
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produce more flavors and they're coming out and, and how that's
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happening and where it's going through and some of the
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relationships that they had with sour patch, the sour patch ones
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are now going away, but they've got new ones.
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So how fast they're iterating and bringing it to market.
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And you know, some are going to be for a short period of time
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and then they do a anyway, sorry, we're way off of the
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topic, but if you can't tell, curious to to learn a little bit
6:23
about this, but but that that makes sense to me on the product
6:26
iteration and when you bring something out and how long is it
6:29
going to be there? And I'm sure that the trending,
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the trend analysis would probably come into play like
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this one's doing really well. We sold out faster.
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This should this should become a constant or this was just a a,
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you know, a short term, a short term offering, But I don't know
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if that's connected, but. Definitely is.
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And I would say what you're speaking to is even just a trend
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in food and beverage. So Ghost, a lot of their
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strategy was through licensing flavours, so licensing Sour
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Patch or licensing like Welch's or different types of branded
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flavor names. And they also brought nostalgia
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back into and kind of kid adult flavors into protein powder
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versus just being 100% clean and their formulation.
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So they took a different strategy and I mean that's kind
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of a trend in itself, just their whole business playbook.
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I, I agree with you. If they're across the whole
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supplement line, like now they have the Cocoa Puffs and they've
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got the, they had the Chips Ahoy, which has gone away.
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But the, the, how they're bringing those two together of
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like, oh, this is a treat that you had as a kid.
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Now that you're an adult and you're probably trying to put
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muscle mass or something on. Here's how they connect and it's
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actually good for it. But anyways, not to go down this
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path, Caitlin, but it's maybe one that we should have talked
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about because now you've got my, my mind racing.
7:46
So awesome. So let's sort of jump into the
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topic now that we're almost 8 minutes in.
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How we got to the topic today is I asked Caitlin, just like I
7:54
asked everybody, what's the successful revenue you should
7:56
have you LED or an existing challenge that you're solving or
7:59
have solved? And we had a really good back
8:01
and forth conversation and it really became clear it was, how
8:05
do you rebuild your revenue in the world of AI when you're
8:08
starting a new company? So this is a topic I can, I'm
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anticipating is going to go many ways today.
8:15
Caitlin, at what point did you know that the old playbook was
8:19
broken? And maybe sort of leaning into
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that a little bit, like what should we be thinking about how
8:24
to build a revenue engine today? Yeah.
8:28
I think this is a really loaded question and we can probably go
8:31
into different areas because when I was starting my new
8:34
company, one of the things I had noticed was I was starting to
8:37
have diminishing returns on some of my existing business
8:40
activities. So let's say, for example,
8:43
e-mail outreach or LinkedIn outreach, just the numbers were
8:46
going down quite a bit in terms of acceptances or responses or
8:50
people that were even generating any kind of initial interest.
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So one of the things that I did for the 1st about 6 to 8 months
8:58
of my business was I explored so many different AI tools to
9:02
really look at different ways that you could personalize,
9:04
reach out, but also how you could automate it in different
9:07
ways. So I found that there are just
9:09
so many interesting business models out there now.
9:12
They're almost like specialized agents that help you with
9:15
different activities across the business development process.
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I also started thinking of ways that I could build more
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community. So one of the things that I do
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is we have an innovation circle, and that's a club that we run.
9:30
It's bimonthly where we actually send a box of products out to
9:33
all of our clients. So we base it on a specific
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theme. So the first thing we did was
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around AI as AAI, as a connection catalyst.
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So we looked at different ways that like AI as a therapist, a
9:45
friend, an expert, a mentor, and gave people different dimensions
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and how they could think about using AI, which I think is sort
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of tangential to what we were just talking about is like, how
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do you sort of rethink your strategy?
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But we send that out every other month and then we do a hosted
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conversation about the topic. And then from there we allow
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people to network with one another.
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And so it becomes a group and a community where people can get
10:10
to know each other. They get a free box of products,
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which is always exciting. And then we get to learn about a
10:16
topic that maybe in their day-to-day job, they don't get
10:18
to explore everyday. So that's one of the things that
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I started doing that has been really kind of mega successful
10:25
in terms of getting referrals and terms of having people
10:29
understand my brand and the types of things that we offer at
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Hypersite. And then I would say it's also a
10:35
give. So it tends to cut through the
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noise of a lot of messaging that's out there.
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So I would say that's one of the things I have found successful
10:43
is to try to give in a lot of the reach out that I'm doing so
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that people actually want to interact and and have a reason
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to engage first before being asked for something.
10:54
It's interesting you've brought this up because there's multiple
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things that you just said that I think tie into place.
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The one and coming back to, like you said, the dimension
11:02
activities, we've seen a little bit about, we've heard a little
11:05
bit about that, right? Like you've got all these
11:08
different platforms that can automate and just make your
11:13
outreach and etcetera so much faster, right?
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So you can basically push play and watch it go.
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But we've also started to see this, this shift, in my opinion,
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we've started to see a shift into personalization because
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we're in a world of trust recession.
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Is this even real? And with, with some of these AI
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things of like, how do you make sure that it's real?
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And I like what you said of, you know, having giving a give and,
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and that box that you send out, like there's a actually virtual
11:43
Cosby, who's a sponsor of this. They have a partnership with a
11:46
company called culture with us. If you've ever heard of them.
11:48
And they, they set up these different events where they
11:50
actually send out a box. You get, you get certain things
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like it could be Lego and some drinks or it can be food and
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something else. But anyways, it's all around.
12:00
It's a package that should be kind of tailored towards the
12:03
industry. But then there's also a
12:05
presentation that happens. So that, and I've, I mean, I've,
12:09
I've been able to be part of some of them and they're
12:10
fascinating because it's something you get, you kind of
12:14
have that moment of it's an hour that you, you kind of set aside,
12:18
you learn about a topic, but you also have something that, you
12:21
know, you now have it on your desk where you keep looking and
12:23
go, you know what? That was part of Caitlin's
12:26
company. That was, I got that from
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Hypersight labs. I got a project here.
12:30
So anyways, I'm, I'm sort of like adding a couple of
12:33
insights. But when you send these out, is
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it do you try to tie it to a conversation or to a topic that
12:40
you want to to go into? Or how do you start to promote
12:44
these? These?
12:45
I don't I don't know what you call like what do you call these
12:48
boxes of fun? What do you call them?
12:50
Yeah, I call them innovation. I call it innovation circle.
12:53
And they're like discovery based boxes.
12:55
And so my business, because I cover so many different topics
13:00
and different trend areas, it's always hard for me to think
13:03
through like, well, what's a topic that's most relevant to
13:06
100 people, let's say, or 200 people.
13:09
But I try to find a more centralized anchor of different
13:12
things that people might be interested in that's more of a
13:14
universal trend or a macro trend.
13:17
So the first one we did was on AI because everybody's talking
13:19
about AI and different use cases.
13:22
The second one I'm going to do on texture because a lot of my
13:24
clients are in CPG, but essentially they're everything
13:29
in there is kind of stimulus that can inspire them.
13:32
So some of its tasting products, some of its products they can
13:36
look through visually, some of them are like little craft
13:40
activities to do. But I think it's great.
13:44
Also, like there's a huge trend around tactile right now because
13:46
of what you just said, that so much is automated and so much is
13:49
digital that anything you can do in person or tactile or more
13:53
sensorial is going to like cut through the noise quite a bit.
13:57
And so I think you're seeing kind of a resurgence of people
14:00
going back to things like round tables or in person networking
14:04
groups, any kind of community I was actually just part of.
14:08
So this is where I get my trend information.
14:10
A lot of it's adjacent inspiration is there are friend
14:14
groups now that you can pay to be a part of.
14:16
So I. Wait, there's friend groups that
14:19
you can pay to be a part of? And it sounds bad when you say
14:22
it like that, but it's so you can discover friends.
14:25
So they realize that there is a huge kind of loneliness
14:28
epidemic. A lot of adults don't have
14:29
friends. Adult friendships are
14:32
psychologically a lot harder to maintain than childhood
14:34
friendships. There's a lot of research on it.
14:37
And so as people have become more disconnected, they've
14:40
worked remote, they've lost touch of their high school
14:42
friends. There are these services now
14:44
where you can join a group and they curate it either based on
14:47
their life stage or your interest areas.
14:50
And then they'll introduce you to six or seven people that are
14:53
within that life stage, let's say.
14:55
So I joined one. I met a bunch of other women
14:58
kind of in their 30s, some of them business owners, some of
15:00
them parents. And you pay a fee to go on like
15:05
several dates with your friends, which is is kind of fun.
15:09
I was like, it kind of reminds you of dating.
15:12
It was really a really fun experience.
15:14
It lasted about six weeks. And I did, I did make friends
15:16
out of it, but it got me thinking that that's not very
15:20
dissimilar to what I'm doing with my innovation group.
15:22
It's like people want connection.
15:25
They want to do something a little more analog.
15:27
But all the while, all of us were targeted by this company
15:31
through ads. We all were on this app that
15:33
this company had created. So I think technology is still
15:36
part of the the connection piece.
15:39
But like you said about personalization, people want
15:42
things that feel more personalized to them and their
15:44
interests. And and even taking this one
15:48
step further, I like the word that you said connection.
15:50
So I wrote down connection because there's, there's,
15:54
there's two sort of things happening.
15:55
What I heard from you is you have a lot of diminishing
15:58
returns of like sending all those, those outreach, but then
16:01
you also have this new way of this innovation, the innovation
16:05
box and connecting the 2. So how are those two connected?
16:08
Are you doing anything different for the outreach to get these
16:12
innovation boxes? Or how do you get these
16:14
innovation boxes in front of people to at least be part of
16:18
your, I'm going to say your funnel?
16:21
Yeah. So a lot of my early stage
16:23
funnel is through LinkedIn and e-mail outreach and a lot of
16:27
those is through automated tools like we were talking about that
16:29
are AI assisted so that there is sort of a volume aspect that's
16:35
happening because not everyone is going to be interested.
16:37
And it's also targeting kind of a wider, wider pool of people.
16:43
So I use those tools to help with automation on LinkedIn and
16:46
emailing. But then in my first message,
16:48
I'm asking people if they want to be part of this innovation
16:50
community. It's free.
16:53
The goal is to network, to get a box of products and just to
16:56
learn more about a different topic.
16:58
And I've actually found really good returns on that message.
17:01
I mean probably 20% or more cold is saying yes to it, which is I
17:09
think very high given like you know, cold emailing can be like
17:13
3% or less. Yeah, agreed.
17:16
And even now with all the automation and how fast it's
17:19
going, and you know, I don't if if you spend 10 minutes on
17:22
LinkedIn, you're probably going to come across 10 different
17:25
posts that are like, oh, this outreach is garbage.
17:28
Oh, this is just AI. Can we stop this?
17:30
Right. Like it's, it's all over the
17:32
place and it's happening. And but if I can, maybe if we
17:36
can kind of talk a little more about the, the box.
17:38
So like when you get these boxes, do you get sponsors?
17:41
Do you pay for them yourselves? Like how?
17:43
How do you how do you compile this box of goodies to send to
17:48
people? And so part of the idea came
17:51
from because as a trend researcher, I'm constantly
17:54
learning about new products. So I tried to think of something
17:56
that was already in my wheelhouse that I wanted to do,
17:59
like something that I would do naturally on my own anyways,
18:03
which I think speaks to the authenticity piece.
18:05
So if there is something you're going to do that's tactile or
18:08
group related, maybe doing something that's natural to your
18:10
business model or would naturally fit into your
18:13
business. Because part of what I do in
18:15
general is I when I research for clients, I'm sending them
18:18
products or I'm learning about things through products.
18:21
So I'm able to do that on my own.
18:24
I just have to generate the theme and then effectively shop
18:27
for products that I feel do a good job of representing that.
18:31
From a trends perspective, I would say in terms of sponsors,
18:34
I don't have any sponsors yet. I think from a timing
18:38
perspective, I haven't quite figured out how how that would
18:40
work because it is every other month.
18:43
But another aspect is I thought of it as a business development
18:46
cost that even if I'm spending let's say, $20 a box, $30 a box,
18:51
that acquisition cost is still a lot less at the rate that I'm
18:55
getting it at. Which makes total sense because
18:58
you're, as you mentioned earlier on, you're working with
19:01
companies that are of of substantial size and that.
19:05
You're going to want to be so. Yeah, so somebody getting a $20
19:09
box and signing a contract review, I got to think you're in
19:11
a pretty good Cactel TV position on that.
19:16
But I'm always a kid. And the relationships are long
19:19
term. So even let's say, you know, you
19:23
have somebody in the club for a year, but that person's in that
19:26
role for five or six years, you know, so it's a good return on
19:29
investment for me. And I also think of conference
19:32
costs. So if you go to a conference
19:34
nowadays, let's say you have a booth and you speak at the
19:37
conference minimum we're talking is you probably just spent
19:41
$10,000. But to get to talk in front of
19:44
100 people that you personally have mailed, costing a fraction
19:48
of that I think is a very good investment.
19:52
That's a really interesting way to think about it because
19:54
effectively that's what you're doing, right?
19:56
You're holding your own mini conferences every other month.
20:00
Yeah, sort of like, I mean, and some people can say well, like a
20:03
webinar, but webinars now I feel like get pretty low attendance
20:06
in general. I think people have gotten
20:08
relatively fatigued of webinars unless you're doing them on
20:11
demand or you're doing a more personalized model.
20:15
So I have found that my, to your point about what's worked and
20:18
what hasn't from my past, I used to do a lot of webinars because
20:22
what I do is pretty conducive to talking about it, presenting
20:26
research, talking about trends. But I've actually had a really
20:30
hard time getting individuals to come to webinars.
20:33
And I wondered, you know, if the model has just changed quite a
20:37
bit. So that's why I'm doing it more
20:39
through this innovation box model versus doing traditional
20:42
webinars. There is a, there is a bit of a
20:46
digital fatigue. Do we want to call it that, that
20:49
that sort of happened, right? Because I agree with you,
20:52
webinars were all the rage for a lot for a long time because you
20:55
had a captive audience. You got to do all those things.
20:58
But by shifting the context is effectively what you've done to
21:02
talk about something different. And then I'm sure that there's a
21:05
pitch in there at some point of of what things happen.
21:09
And so going back to the challenge of that we talked
21:12
about is like rebuilding your demand Gen. funnel today.
21:15
So what I've heard from what I heard you say is you try to do
21:19
the typical cold outreach for e-mail and prospecting, but that
21:24
was getting you diminishing returns.
21:25
So then you shifted into some of these automate automation with,
21:31
with AI, with you know, the LinkedIn, the e-mail, you have a
21:34
volume aspect. What else have you looked at or
21:38
what are the things that you've seen be successful as you've
21:40
rebuilt your demand Gen. engine into an entirely new and new
21:45
way? Yeah.
21:47
Well, I think one thing that I mentioned to you was going on
21:50
podcasts. So I'm relatively new to this
21:52
space as well. But even though podcasts have
21:54
been around for let's say a decade or two at this point,
21:59
that's still another high growth area is sort of seeking out new
22:02
verticals for business development versus just relying
22:06
on on outbound outreach, but trying to generate some inbound
22:10
interest. So I feel like there are even
22:12
like specialized services now like we talked about where they
22:15
will just get you booked on podcasts and or get you in
22:19
publications. I even had somebody text me
22:21
yesterday that said they could get you media placement, like by
22:25
using an AI tool, they're going to get you on like 50 a month.
22:29
So you're just seeing sort of these astronomical claims in the
22:32
age of AIAI, like just the amount of volume and quantity
22:35
that AI can reach. So I think that's something
22:38
interesting that I've noticed. There's a lot more specialized
22:42
tools out there. There's almost a tool for
22:44
anything you could imagine. I almost think if you have like
22:47
a business problem or you're wanting to do lead generation a
22:51
certain way, if you just Google that with the tool name or ask
22:54
ChatGPT, what are 5 tools that help me get on podcasts or five
22:59
tools that help me with PR, you're going to find something
23:02
that you probably never knew existed.
23:05
That's what I've been finding the last month or two.
23:07
That's interesting. The, the, I know we talked a
23:09
little bit about the podcast side of things and I, I didn't,
23:12
I haven't connected the, the two between demand Gen. and, and how
23:16
it's building. I, I admittedly, I, I think I
23:19
probably told the story, but I started this podcast out of a
23:22
couple of different reasons. One, when I started doing, you
23:26
know, building my own business and stepping out of my own.
23:28
So we said you got to build your own, your own brand.
23:31
And I was like, Oh, no, I, I can write content, but I just as
23:35
much as I can, it's not something that I truly enjoy.
23:39
And so they said, why don't you just do a podcast like Carl,
23:41
you've got a mic, you've got a camera, like you're curious,
23:45
just you'll figure it out. And so for me, I've been doing
23:50
the podcast and it's been, it's been a lot of lessons learned
23:53
and I get a chance to learn from founders like yourself or other
23:55
senior leaders and how do they look at a problem.
23:59
And that's really where this came from is because on a, on a
24:03
pavilion CRO roundtable, somebody had a question and
24:08
said, how do you solve it? And then all of a sudden there's
24:10
these answers going through and I was like, this is amazing.
24:13
So the podcasting, the podcast is an interesting one as as
24:17
you've started to shift. And so how is that translating
24:20
into your funnel? Like do you, is it the using
24:24
podcasts, using the outreach? Is it coming in?
24:26
Are you doing cold calling? Are you sending videos?
24:29
Like what else are you starting to look at that's maybe you you
24:33
didn't do previously that is generating pipeline?
24:38
Well, and I want to just say one quick thing about podcasting and
24:40
then I'll I'll share some of the other tools I'm using.
24:43
So one thing I found interesting is so Leonardo DiCaprio just did
24:46
his first podcast last year. And so I thought that was super
24:50
interesting that even like a mega a list actor just did his
24:53
first podcast. And it was partially because
24:56
they were saying in Movies Now an actor cannot sell a movie
24:59
alone on their name anymore just because of the attention
25:03
economy. They're saying with just people,
25:05
you know, so many options for people to stream, that people
25:10
will not go see a movie just because it's Jennifer Lawrence
25:13
or just because it's Denzel Washington or Leonardo DiCaprio.
25:17
And so they said there's this big shift in Hollywood where
25:20
they're doing a lot of grassroots marketing now,
25:23
similar to even politicians do this.
25:25
Like, you know, with even the last campaign we saw, they were
25:28
going on like the Joe Rogan podcast.
25:30
They were doing a lot more grassroots kind of boots on the
25:33
ground type digital efforts. And you're seeing that now with
25:37
movies. Like they'll have tons of reels
25:40
of actors kind of talking back and forth more authentically,
25:43
less about the movie and more about themselves.
25:46
And so I thought that was super kind of an interesting trend
25:49
because I see that in our space too.
25:50
It's about what are kind of all these little touch points you
25:54
can have that feel more authentic because if you are
25:56
going to automate everything else to your point, you have to
25:59
have something that feels personalized.
26:02
And so I think we're going to see a lot of automation and a
26:05
lot of a lot of these tools. So some of the ones that I'm
26:09
using, like I do use a LinkedIn, a LinkedIn tool that helps with
26:13
automation on that end. But you can actually put in
26:16
custom voice notes from yourself, which is still amazing
26:19
to me that an AI tool can customize every voice note or
26:22
every video that you send to a client or a prospect that sounds
26:27
like you're speaking to them directly.
26:29
OK. Is that a LinkedIn specific?
26:32
Because I know Vidyard was one of the companies I saw that did
26:35
their the digital, what is it? Digital avatar is what they
26:39
called and I I know there's some other ones.
26:42
Keenan has talked a lot about it with Gap selling and how he's
26:45
built his own thing. How are you doing that?
26:49
Do you have to train the model? Do you have to give it like a
26:52
lot of void? Like how long does it take you
26:54
to prepare that? It's actually pretty seamless.
26:57
So the tool just walks you through, you do a couple
26:59
different rounds of talking to it directly about what you do,
27:02
the type of content you'd want it to say, the type of message,
27:05
and then it formulates a strategy.
27:07
And then based on that, it uses the person's profile to
27:10
customize it a bit further. So in some ways, we're kind of
27:14
talking about to kind of like counter trends, like what's
27:17
personalizing it, but it's also in a way it's also at the same
27:22
time doing kind of mass, mass automation for you.
27:27
So it's interesting. They're like the two trends
27:29
really coming together, which I feel like you see a lot in AI.
27:34
There is a big push of personalization.
27:36
When I, when I was at Salesforce, we had John Barrows
27:39
and he's actually been on the podcast and he taught us this
27:43
ability of what or you know, So what who cares is sort of, but
27:49
it was like, why you why now I ask?
27:51
And it was all around personalization and he called it
27:56
the basho method. And we started to do that.
28:00
But here's the, it took a long time to write those and then we
28:04
started to see become a little bit easier and, and etcetera.
28:07
So anyways, on that, now that you have all those
28:11
personalization and people are expecting personalization of
28:13
that show me, you know me. But then they're also seeing it
28:17
as a, OK, how creepy is this going to look and how far do you
28:22
take it? So yeah, there's a question in
28:26
here of like, how much personalization do you put in
28:28
it? And also, as you're using the
28:30
video, is it getting a better response rate than that of the
28:35
emails? So I'm in a few groups of these
28:39
like LinkedIn automations and they do find better results when
28:42
you use a video or a voice note. So they have tested it pretty
28:45
extensively across their clients and they do find that people
28:49
will respond more. So I think to your point about
28:52
this uncanny valley, I think we've started to get over that a
28:56
bit. I think if people are getting
28:57
something that's relevant to them and they're interested in
29:00
the offer, that's not dissuading them from responding.
29:04
I think before, you know, trying to guess that copy that somebody
29:07
might be interested in and trying to position it a certain
29:10
way without all this data, you were just probably hitting not
29:13
hitting the mark as much as you wanted to because a lot of these
29:16
tools are getting much better results than doing it manually.
29:21
So I think it also shows that users having a better experience
29:24
too. That's, that's cool.
29:28
What else have you seen as your shift so from your previous
29:32
demand Gen. and you're building your funnel up, you've you've
29:34
talked about using AI, you've talked about personalization.
29:37
What are the other Aha's that you've started to come across as
29:41
you've rebuilt your engine? So one of the things, and I, I
29:44
like this term, which you probably heard a lot like, I
29:47
like it because it's kind of what you don't want to do is
29:48
spray and play or spray and pray not play.
29:52
Although you might be on to something with the spray and
29:55
play with the audio or the video.
29:57
So you might be on to something, Caitlin.
29:58
Yeah, totally. But the, the praying that people
30:03
are going to respond to something very generic and very
30:06
auto automated I think isn't working as well.
30:09
And so that's why you see so many of these tools now
30:12
personalizing based on yourself and then based on the end
30:15
person. So it's kind of personalization
30:16
two ways. So I feel like that's something
30:19
that I've, I tried to avoid is just before you would think of
30:23
it like, and you hear there's a lot in sales, like it's a
30:25
numbers game, like you're going to send out 1000 and you're
30:28
going to get 20% of that and then 2% of that.
30:30
And then one, and that's just the numbers, but I think you're
30:33
finding with AI is that the numbers can exponentially change
30:37
to the point where you're getting a response rate that's
30:40
unheard of, you know, because you're doing it a new way.
30:44
And also we don't have market fatigue on some of these newer
30:46
business models yet. So to your point, there could
30:49
just be some early mover advantages that are happening
30:52
with a lot of these spaces right today.
30:55
But then I feel like the tools keep getting smarter.
30:57
So it's kind of an interesting like catch up period where I
31:01
don't know if it'll ever catch itself because it seems like the
31:03
tools are learning based off the users as well.
31:07
Verse before you were having a lot of, I feel like people get
31:11
fatigued because they were getting too many emails so they
31:13
stopped responding. But now the tools are actually
31:16
learning from the users and adjusting in real time based off
31:19
of that. So I think that's kind of
31:21
interesting. I wonder if it'll kind of get to
31:23
the point where there's just so many different mixed methods
31:26
happening that it's almost like less fatigue over all across the
31:29
entire industry. I, I like where you're heading
31:33
with this. And then there's also a question
31:35
in here of how is how is what you're doing now influencing
31:38
your hiring plans or your growth plans for the company?
31:42
Traditionally, we've seen SDRS, BDRS, but now it sounds like
31:45
you've got a pretty cool AI tech stack that is starting to open
31:48
up these doors. So how are they connected?
31:51
Well, you know it's interesting. So at my last company, we had
31:55
more senior sales roles there and in this company, I feel like
31:59
it's allowed me to have more entry to mid level roles open
32:05
because I now need somebody to run the tools themselves and
32:11
also track all this data that we're getting.
32:14
So there is somewhat, I don't want to say data fatigue on my
32:17
end, but I do have a lot of data to manage because there's a lot
32:20
of things happening like at a pretty high quantified level.
32:25
So for example, even the innovation circle that I was
32:29
mentioning, you know, if you have thousands of messages going
32:32
out, you're getting 20% of people responding.
32:34
Then it becomes a bit of a data entry problem of, well, how do
32:38
you keep track of all these people?
32:39
Make sure they're getting a welcome e-mail, make sure that
32:42
they're all getting invited correctly, make sure they're
32:44
being followed up with for a call to get on a one-on-one
32:48
discovery call, and then after the session to make sure that
32:51
they're also getting some type of communication.
32:53
So I found that there's a lot more of like an SDR type role
32:57
that's needed with a lot of these tools and maybe multiple
33:00
SDR roles just because of the volume of data.
33:05
I don't think I connected the two of the mid, the level of
33:08
seniority that it would be required today to run some of
33:13
the sales cycles versus what was required because previous you
33:16
had, if you're working in the enterprise, the enterprise is a
33:19
different whole. It's a whole different motion.
33:20
You need to understand so many different components.
33:23
How do you operate inside of a business handling procurement?
33:26
You know, what are the sales cycles look like in terms of the
33:28
MSA and all the legal terms and all these other things?
33:31
And like how do you handle yourself and there's a business
33:33
acumen inside side of things. Yeah.
33:36
And then and now with having some, it's interesting with
33:39
these tools and cuz traditionally having enterprise
33:42
sales, you would have an SDR or BDR also helping you to break
33:45
into accounts. But now it sounds like from what
33:48
I'm hearing from you is look, I only need like a mid level
33:51
person that can have some of the conversations.
33:53
I don't need them to be super experienced because I guess I
33:56
mean those are tools that can form them.
33:58
Yeah, I would say that's accurate.
34:00
And then I mean, I'm also utilizing myself.
34:03
So I think it depends kind of on the business structure.
34:06
You probably still need a product expert or somebody who
34:08
specialized in presenting the product at an enterprise level.
34:13
But I do feel like overall the tools are taking a lot of, let's
34:19
say you hired somebody to build your A strategy for you.
34:22
Like I think now the person you're hiring is probably
34:26
putting together a tech stack for you, which is just as
34:30
important. So I'm sort of playing that role
34:31
in my company, putting together the tech stack.
34:34
So I need more mid or entry level individuals.
34:37
But if you were looking to develop your own tech stack, I
34:40
think that's where you would need a more senior level
34:42
individual. Now that you're so it's like
34:47
you've effectively built a team of let's say agents.
34:51
Is that fair to say? Like you're building a team of
34:53
agents to help you go through. How has that shifted your time,
34:56
either one the time to value to you or maybe it's the time to
35:00
funnel the metrics. So time to win, time to pipeline
35:04
creation. Like how has that shifted for
35:06
you from the previous way you were building a funnel?
35:09
Yeah. Well, I think before, like I
35:11
remember we would like I would spend all day emailing
35:15
individuals and there was sort of a sense of satisfaction in
35:17
that because you would, you know, get it or yes answer or
35:21
you get like yes, let's connect. And so you'd send out 100 emails
35:25
throughout the day. It all felt very like personal,
35:27
felt very time consuming though, let's say, right.
35:30
And you'd never do it as much as you should do it.
35:34
Now. I feel like there's so much
35:36
happening at once that it's digging back through that data
35:40
to see where there's opportunities.
35:42
So I sent out a newsletter through this.
35:45
It's kind of part of my strategy of I, I have a bunch of
35:49
different emails that are going out right now based on the
35:51
different offerings I have, but I sent out a more value based
35:53
e-mail. Well, I had to go through all
35:56
the like, who was clicking, who was thinking about booking a
35:59
call 'cause there was just like an enormous amount of data that
36:02
was captured in that. And so that's what I was
36:05
speaking to, to even like the mid level roles or the entry
36:09
level roles, like ideally following up with all of those,
36:11
those individuals or figuring out what, what did people like
36:15
about what they were reading? Like I had some people click
36:18
like 40 times on it. You know, so you're wanting to
36:20
understand like is this, you know, active intent.
36:24
So I haven't found some like tools that completely do
36:27
everything. Like it seems like these tools
36:29
are more specialized, like they're not able to take the
36:32
human component out completely. So there's still just a lot of
36:35
data management to do. So I think in the past, I would
36:38
have structured my time. It was a little more one to one
36:41
of how I was managing everything.
36:43
But maybe you had way less opportunities.
36:45
Today there's a lot of opportunities and it's like,
36:47
where do you focus your time? Yeah, that that's an interesting
36:52
way you said it. And so there the question there
36:55
is like is your, is your team size substantially, you know,
37:00
smaller and now you're handling many more conversations
37:04
effectively going into that full sales site, the full sales cycle
37:07
mentality, but using AI and using some of these agents to
37:11
help you build it. I don't know if there's if
37:14
there's a connection there for you on how you're on how many
37:18
people you're looking to to hire.
37:19
Or maybe the other thing too is when you're building the funnel,
37:23
what's your, what is the point for you now that you're going,
37:27
you know what, I need to hire somebody.
37:29
Yeah, those are great questions. So for me, the team size is less
37:34
than it was previously. However, when I entered this
37:38
business, I had that as a vision for the business overall with
37:41
just all the new AI tools coming out as I wanted to be smaller.
37:45
So I didn't spend a lot of my time on management which I had
37:48
previously done. So I think depending on your
37:51
goals around team and culture that that could be very variable
37:55
depending on the type of company.
37:57
But I think in general, I think people are trying to do more
38:01
with less and more tools to offset that.
38:04
I have seen that as a general trend right now with a lot of
38:07
reorganizations that have happened like post COVID, the
38:11
COVID era will say like they're trying to restructure now to be
38:15
more efficient and leverage a lot more tools and kind of
38:18
retrofit the business a bit. And then what was your second
38:22
question? And now I'm how is it?
38:27
How is it change? Like when are you actually going
38:29
to hire somebody new? So as you're using these agents,
38:32
you're building your funnel like it was there was simple, I'll
38:35
say simple math previous of like when you have to hire a new
38:39
person because you look at funnels and opportunities.
38:41
But now with having these agents, are you looking at the
38:44
hiring plans and when you need to hire somebody new differently
38:48
than you did maybe in five years ago?
38:51
Yeah, I would say I'm, I'm, well there's a couple things I'm not
38:54
just jumping to over hiring as much to compensate for an issue
39:00
versus looking at the tools that are available first.
39:03
So I think the tools can help compensate for issues now versus
39:08
if you know, in the past, you might, if you wanted to hire
39:10
somebody, you know, very old school, you might hire somebody
39:12
for the Rolodex or because they have a lot of connections in
39:16
that's in that industry or they're a top competitor.
39:19
But now it's a what tool can I use that can get me in front of
39:23
the right people versus thinking of it as I have to hire somebody
39:27
who's going to give me access. So I think that's a big shift in
39:30
thinking. And then for me, it's when I
39:33
have enough revenue. It's not a question of when I
39:36
have enough revenue to hire. It's is this is this becoming
39:40
overwhelming for me to manage myself?
39:42
And I think that's the question people are going to be asking
39:44
themselves is if the revenue is there supported, is it just, is
39:48
it the new role that was boring from using all these tools?
39:52
Or are you looking at the revenue per headcount
39:54
drastically different than you did previously?
39:56
Yeah. Well, I was going to say that
39:58
'cause I think I told you this maybe the first time we talked,
40:00
but they're supposed to be the first person $1 billion company
40:04
in the next few years. And they're sort of making a bet
40:06
on what, you know, what type of industry it will be.
40:09
But it wouldn't surprise me if it's in the B to B SAS space or
40:14
just because it's got to be something that's automated.
40:17
That's a company of agents or tools and then it'll be one
40:23
person running it and the person will probably do it just for
40:25
that accolade, I'm sure. But I think the point is you
40:28
don't have to think of it as revenue per head anymore because
40:31
you almost have a bunch of, you know, basically clones or agents
40:35
that are working on your behalf. If it if Jason Lemkin is is ever
40:41
listen to this and and I hope it would be great if he did, but
40:45
he's somebody who has talked about the founder of saster, how
40:50
he's using all agents and that's where he's made the distinction
40:53
and he's not hiring people anymore because of the cost of
40:56
it. So he might be the first billion
40:58
dollar person it well, I think he has a bigger team, but that
41:01
would be the amount of data you'd have to sort through going
41:04
back to the things you talked about, the amount of data you'd
41:07
have to source through from doing this would be fascinating.
41:10
But if you're a trend, if you're a trend analysis expert like
41:15
yourself, it's probably an area you get really excited about.
41:19
Somewhat like I think for me, I'm I definitely love
41:22
qualitative data. Quantitative data is something
41:26
I'm becoming passionate about with AI, but I still have an
41:29
advocate for using, using humans and AI like I did on our first
41:35
innovation circle. We actually talked about this,
41:37
the things that AI accelerates in and the things that humans
41:40
accelerate in, humans accelerate at saying what the finishing,
41:44
what the stopping point is, where AI will just kind of
41:46
aerate and aerate and iterate and like never end.
41:49
And also humans are better at judgement currently.
41:52
So which might seem surprising, but I think having judgement on
41:57
on a strategy or having judgement on a final call on
42:01
something. So I still advocate for for
42:04
both, but I think it's definitely reduces like the team
42:07
size, as I mentioned. And also one of the more
42:10
positive aspects that people don't talk about is it enables
42:12
almost anybody to become an entrepreneur or a founder.
42:16
So I think our economy is going to decentralize a lot and become
42:19
not as consolidated. Like there will be a lot of
42:22
small businesses because of AI, which is actually the more
42:25
positive part, right? Like there might be not as many
42:27
big companies or companies that have 5000 employees, but if
42:31
everybody has the ability to earn themselves and create
42:34
something in their passion, I think that's, you know,
42:36
inherently more positive. I just looked at the timer
42:40
almost 43 minutes in and I said we get you out of here in an
42:42
hour and I've got a page of notes already and we've got to
42:45
get to the wrap up. But I wish we would have dug
42:47
into this topic because this is a fascinating one on the gig
42:51
economy and the decentralization and etc.
42:53
So maybe we maybe I got to try to get you on another time and
42:57
we dig. Into this topic.
42:59
All right, so let's let's try to get you out of here.
43:02
Caitlin, apologies it it was longer than you probably
43:05
expected. But I like to ask everybody at
43:07
the end of the conversation, everybody likes new.
43:09
Everybody's different. When you do both at the same
43:10
time, it cannot just cause friction or uncertainty.
43:13
So for somebody thinking about starting their own company and
43:16
rebuilding their demand Gen. Funnel What are two or three
43:20
actionable items or actionable things you would tell them to
43:23
look at or to do on Monday morning to put them on a path
43:26
for either growth or success? Yeah.
43:30
So I would say it depends on if they're just starting out versus
43:33
having maybe an established business.
43:35
But if they were regrowing, I would look at where they
43:37
previously got clients from and look at any tools that are in
43:41
that space. So something as simple as going
43:43
on AI and asking it to give you tools that would help you
43:46
automate outreach or inbound or outbound on LinkedIn or e-mail
43:52
marketing and really just getting smart on what's out
43:54
there because even if you're the most well read person, there are
43:58
so many tools that are launching every single day with AI now.
44:02
I really like going on Appsumo. Have you been on that website?
44:05
I have gone on actually that's how I found my calendar.
44:08
Link is through Appsumo. Yeah, they're great.
44:11
They have a lot of great tools that are offered by earlier
44:15
stage businesses typically. So you can really see what's
44:17
emerging in terms of new sales tools.
44:20
They always have a lot of sales and revenue generation tools.
44:23
So even if you go on there, I guarantee you'll find 5 other
44:26
companies that do with something similar.
44:28
Whether it's everything from a calendar Booker to, you know,
44:31
something that does your custom one-on-one videos that you can
44:34
send out on LinkedIn to something that will clone you
44:36
and, and do live presentations as you, there's just so many
44:40
different things you can see. So it really gives you a sense
44:42
of the landscape. So I think having a sense of the
44:44
landscape of what has shifted in your space since you last
44:49
developed tools around that would be very beneficial.
44:54
Because even for me, I started thinking like there's this book
44:58
that Adam Grant wrote that's called, it's kind of like things
45:01
you don't know that there's things that you know that you
45:06
don't know that you should know. And the whole idea is the
45:08
concept that we all have to realize.
45:11
There's things we don't know that if we knew it would benefit
45:13
us. And so his idea is that some, at
45:16
some point as adults, we just start thinking we know
45:18
everything and we stop learning. So I think that's been the
45:21
biggest thing with AI for me is just always kind of like
45:24
relearning what's out there because every month it seems to
45:27
shift a bit. So I think learning about new
45:30
tools and your most predominant channels would be the best part.
45:35
And then just testing. So trying out different tools,
45:37
there's so many times I'm paying for like a $200 test on the tool
45:42
just to see if it works better than what I have currently, or
45:45
just to have kind of different tools running at the same time
45:49
to see what works better. Because there might be a part of
45:52
your tech stack where maybe it's a small portion of it, but it
45:55
does a really specific role or function that you wouldn't have
45:57
known without testing it. So I would say to kind of play
46:02
like we were talking about earlier, spray and play.
46:04
This would be the play part. Play with a lot of different
46:06
tools. And that's happening, right?
46:09
Like you can see the way that people are building the tech
46:12
stack now, which is also another interesting trend that that I, I
46:15
personally have seen. I'm not nearly as as much of A
46:18
trend expert as you, however, like the trend of multi year,
46:22
multi year agreements are almost becoming a thing of the past
46:25
unless it's a core component to your strategy or to your
46:28
technology. And now with these new tools,
46:31
that month to month and that churn ratio.
46:34
And it's gonna be fascinating to watch how this goes about
46:37
because what some people used last year for their tech stack
46:41
is drastically different even a couple months later.
46:44
Cuz they're doing month to month and they're testing and you know
46:47
what works or doesn't work. Yeah, that is, that is really
46:51
interesting 'cause I pretty much do all month to month just so I
46:53
can try different tools out. And I was thinking even
46:56
something as simple as my profile picture.
46:58
You know, you used to get head shots done, let's say that's
47:01
kind of old school. And then you used to like go to
47:03
conferences to get your headshot done and then you just use your
47:07
phone and now there are tools. There's like 50 companies you
47:11
can get a professional headshot with AI in like 5 minutes,
47:14
right? Yeah.
47:15
Like you just think about how that disrupted an entire
47:17
industry. Like who would go get a headshot
47:19
now? Yeah, you can use AI and a lot
47:22
of the two, a lot of them are are using different, different
47:26
tool. Actually Marco Jack, I can't
47:27
remember what what his is called, but he was a he was a
47:30
classmate of mine in one of the Pavilion CRO roundtables.
47:32
He started an entire company on AI headshots and making it.
47:36
Different, yeah. That's why they say that, that
47:38
this is the time of the greatest opportunity.
47:40
Like it's just the beginning. Because even something like
47:43
that, like pretty much any industry, could be disrupted by
47:47
a different tool. It's a crazy time that we're
47:50
living in. So anyways, I we could talk.
47:53
I feel like we could talk for hours, Caitlin, but I know
47:55
you've got something else. If somebody wanted to kind of
47:58
learn a little bit more about your pick the conversation up,
48:00
where would you suggest you know for them to to connect with you?
48:06
So definitely hypersitelabs.com. So you can come visit me here,
48:10
sign up for a call to learn more, or even if you just enjoy
48:12
the podcast and you want to talk, feel free to sign up for a
48:15
call. Awesome.
48:18
This is the I've. I've had one.
48:20
As Caitlin mentioned, we had one short conversation and today
48:24
we've had a little bit longer one and it's gone almost 50
48:28
minutes. So I've really enjoyed allowing,
48:32
I've really enjoyed the conversation.
48:33
You allowing me to learn from you and you know how, how, what
48:36
your world looks like because it's not something I spend a lot
48:39
of time in, right? And I feel like we could do this
48:42
again. And hopefully we do get a chance
48:44
to spend a little bit more time because I think there's a lot
48:46
more. But I appreciate you spending
48:48
the time with me and, and talking to me.
48:49
And let me ask you all the questions I did today.
48:51
Yeah, thank you so much. It was a great conversation.
48:54
Awesome, so that's going to wrap up another episode of Revenue
48:57
Problem Solvers. Obviously want to say thank you
48:59
to Caitlin for sharing these incredibly invaluable insights.
49:02
And if you can't hear, there were some strategies you can put
49:04
into action. Remember, success leaves clues
49:07
in every revenue problem has a solution.
49:09
Sometimes you just need the right conversation to find it.
49:12
Until next time, it's Carl with the Revenue Problem Solvers
49:15
helping tune your obstacles into opportunities.
49:17
Thank you for investing your time with today.
49:18
We'll see you on the next episode.