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How to Maximize Meetings for Maximum Sales and Marketing Impact · Sales Pipeline Radio

• 0:15
  All right.
• 0:15
  Welcome everybody to another episode of Sales Pipeline Radio.
• 0:19
  So excited to have you all here as we round out very
• 0:22
  quickly here, the end of 2023.
• 0:25
  My name is Matt Heinz.
• 0:27
  I'm your host here at Sales Pipeline Radio.
• 0:28
  Excited to have so many of you here joining live on YouTube and on LinkedIn.
• 0:33
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• 0:38
  your work day, middle of your work week.
• 0:39
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• 0:59
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• 1:02
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• 1:06
  Very excited for our topic today.
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  I know we usually only go Jessica, like 20 minutes or so, but I could go for a
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  couple hours on just all the different peeling back the onion on this report.
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  Jessica Gilmartin.
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  She is the CMO Chief Marketing Officer at Calendly.
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  Jessica, thanks for joining us today.
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  Thank you, Matt.
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  Awesome to be here and always excited to talk to you.
• 1:24
  We always have a great time.
• 1:26
  We do have a good time.
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  And I think it gets meaty very quickly as well.
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  I was super excited when I saw The State of Calendaring, a survey you guys
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  published, I think just last month.
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  And we'll put a link to that in the show notes.
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  I was so impressed not just about calendaring, it gets into AI,
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  it gets into productivity, it gets into how work gets done.
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  So I wanna dig into a lot of that.
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  But Jessica, maybe start with a little bit about yourself and then how that
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  how that research report came to be.
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  /Absolutely.
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  So I have been a Calendly CMO almost exactly a year.
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  So in January, it'll be a year, which is hard to believe.
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  It's gone very fast.
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  And I joined Calendly, mainly for the reasons that most people hopefully
• 2:03
  join companies , because I was wildly excited about the product.
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  Every time I have had a meeting scheduled with somebody that didn't
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  use Calendly, I was like, why are you not just using Calendly?
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  Why do we have to go back and forth eight times to schedule a meeting?
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  And so it's always amazing as a marketer, when you get to market and sell a product
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  that you love and passionately believe in and that millions of people also love.
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  And so that's been a really exciting part of this year and also getting
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  to work with a fantastic team.
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  So I feel pretty lucky to have this role.
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  I think one of the things that we talked about over the past few months
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  is most people know who Calendly is.
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  And I think what we're trying to do as marketing team is really help people
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  think about what Calendly could be and the many features that Calendly has and
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  the many ways that we can support people's actual productivity and helping people's
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  quality of life through more productivity better meetings, better scheduling.
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  And so that was really the impetus for The State of Scheduling , it
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  was like, gosh there's so much interesting information about
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  meetings that's the lifeblood of most of how we make our money, right?
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  That's the lifeblood of how we feed our family is usually through meetings.
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  And we figured there's probably better ways for people to do that.
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  And I think part of the reason that meetings have become the lifeblood
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  of a lot of B2B organizations, rightfully so because that's
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  where we get a lot of work done.
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  It can also be the bane of our existence because of how much time we spend in
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  meetings because of the inefficiency of certain meetings because of, to your
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  point, how long it takes sometimes just to get people coordinated to have a meeting.
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  Now I will say full disclosure.
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  I am a happy Calendly customer.
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  It was one of the catalysts that helped me move someone who was working as my
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  executive assistant into a different role in the organization for her to
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  be able to thrive and do other things as she built her career, because the
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  calendar just made it so much easier.
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  We literally schedule Sales Pipeline Radio guests using Calendly.
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  I have some meetings, phones, some meetings, Zoom.
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  I don't want this to be a commercial, but it's been really a huge change for me.
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  It was amazing to me looking through the data in this survey and this is
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  this 2023 State of Scheduling Report, what we saw and what the different
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  focus areas were around how much time people spend wasted time in meetings.
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  Talk a little bit about what you, what we found there and why it's so important.
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  Yeah.
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  So the people that we typically sell to and the people that kind of are
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  the most prolific users of our product are not surprisingly people like you,
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  solopreneurs, that have so many meetings; recruiters obviously spend huge amounts
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  of time with candidates; customer support folks that are meeting with
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  customers all the time; and salespeople.
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  And so these are people that really truly meetings is the lifeblood of their
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  work and the backbone of their work.
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  And so what we found is that the average person spends up to four hours a week
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  scheduling meetings, which is crazy.
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  When you think about how, what you can get done in four hours.
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  When I was thinking about it, I was like, British Bake Off is one of my favorite TV
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  shows, and I was like, I could watch four hours of British Bake Off a week versus
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  scheduling, and so there's just so many things that you could do with your time.
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  You could work out for four hours.
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  You could have four more hours of meetings.
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  So there's just an amazing amount of things that you could
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  do with all that wasted time.
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  So fundamentally, I think there's just this issue of wasted scheduling.
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  And then I think there's a lot of really interesting information about meetings
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  themselves and how the people that say that their meetings are better and more
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  productive, they generally are happier and their companies are more successful.
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  They believe their companies are more successful.
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  And so there's this really direct link between people feeling more
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  productive, being more productive, and having more productive meetings,
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  and actually seeing that success.
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  So I want people to go download this report.
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  As I found it, there were four habits that separated the successful
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  from the non successful teams that I found in the report.
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  One was just goal focused meetings.
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  The more successful teams, had meetings, but they have specific
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  goals for those meetings.
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  And if there weren't goals, they just didn't have them.
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  Two was just time management.
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  61 percent of successful teams block time to do work to get work done versus only 39
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  percent of teams that are less successful.
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  The anti meeting, right?
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  It's a meeting for yourself just to get stuff done so that was a second habit.
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  Third was relationship building.
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  Scheduling time and making time to build those workplace relationships,
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  especially in a virtual environment.
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  And the fourth, which I want to go a little deeper on is the
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  use of AI productivity tools.
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  52 Percent of successful teams were more curious about how those tools can drive
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  more meeting efficiency versus only 28 percent of those who were less successful.
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  So those were four habits that I pulled out.
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  And let's dig a little further on the AI side, because I think meeting
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  productivity, deciding whether you should have a meeting to begin with, who
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  should be in that meeting, who's going to get the most out of that meeting.
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  Boy, there's a lot of AI I can do for that.
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  And we're already seeing the impact that's happening.
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  Unpack that a little bit for us as well.
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  Absolutely.
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  And I think what's really interesting is I, and I'm curious your perspective,
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  it feels a little bit like we're at the peak of the AI hype cycle.
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  And so another thing that we saw in the survey was that virtually
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  everybody was really interesting and excited about AI so 90 plus percent
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  of people were really interested.
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  The majority have not actually used AI and so what I think is really interesting,
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  and I think we're on the cusp of us actually understanding how AI will be
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  used and incorporated and integrated within the tools that we already use.
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  So I believe that AI is just gonna be something that we gradually see over time
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  infuse more and more of the work that we're already doing, and more and more
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  of the tools that we're already using.
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  And so I don't know that we're going to see this huge movement away from our
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  existing tools and into new AI tools.
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  What I think is going to happen is all of the products and the technology and the
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  tools we're already using will just have more and more intelligent AI features.
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  And I think within a couple of years, it will be so ingrained in what we do,
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  we won't even realize it's AI anymore.
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  I think we're already getting there a little bit, right?
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  ChatGPT is just over a year old, at least in terms of being publicly
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  available, but AI is embedded in so many of the tools we use today to make them
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  smarter, to make them more intelligent.
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  That's only going to increase over time talking today on Sales Pipeline
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  Radio with Jessica Gilmartin.
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  She's the CMO at Calendly, and we're talking about a bunch of great concepts
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  and insights that came out of their 2023 State of Scheduling Report.
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  As you referenced earlier, 94 percent of go to market professionals reported
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  in the survey they're curious about a AI's impact on their job in 64%, the
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  majority, six out of 10, almost two thirds have yet to experiment at all
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  with new AI tools, including ChatGPT.
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  Why is that?
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  It's not just the hype cycle, right?
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  I think it's a reticence to even look into it.
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  What do you think is driving that?
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  I can just speak for myself, and also I speak to so many other
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  sales and marketing leaders.
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  I think it just feels really overwhelming, number one.
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  And I think there feels like a disconnect between what you hear in the news about
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  the possibilities and the excitement and all the expectations and what's
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  actually being delivered right now.
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  And so I think one of the things that we see is, my team spends huge amounts
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  of time thinking about AI tools, we examine them, we investigate them.
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  And a lot of times we leave feeling like this is a nice to
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  have, and there's the elements of it that are really interesting.
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  And we struggle to figure out what's the transformational workflows here.
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  What are the things that are actually going to drive such big business
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  value that we're willing to change or replace our existing workflows?
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  And I think that's where we're like stuck a little bit.
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  And there are a few tools that we're using.
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  There are a few AI tools that we're using that actually have been transformational
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  and we're willing to change our workflows, but I think those are few and far between.
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  And I think that's what most people are seeing.
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  I think so too.
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  And I think that, oftentimes like we get enamored with the status quo because
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  it's what we're comfortable with.
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  And when big changes come about, we worry about how that's going to disrupt,
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  not just our workflow, but our lives.
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  And yes, the people that I've seen lean in the most with AI, both in our company
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  and with clients and elsewhere are those that realize that robots are taking over
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  the things you didn't want to do anyway.
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  When I was an intern at a PR firm, thousands of years ago, one of my
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  jobs was to create briefing books for media tours that clients were
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  going on and it was a manual effort.
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  There was barely the internet at the time, right?
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  that just automatically is created.
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  No intern wants to actually spend their time doing that.
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  Everyone wants to spend their time on more creative things that require the human
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  brain, require creativity to get done.
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  I think this ties into meetings as well, because so often there are
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  things that are discussed in meetings.
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  There are meetings scheduled for certain things where the proverbial,
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  this could have been an email.
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  This isn't just about scheduling.
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  This is about the productivity of the meeting itself.
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  Is there a scenario, Jessica, where meetings could even be fun again?
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  Calendly just change our mission, which I'm really excited about
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  just a couple of months ago.
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  And our mission is to create a world where people actually love meetings.
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  And I love that mission because meetings have such a bad rep
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  because they in general, they're such a productivity killer.
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  And mainly because people typically don't think about the meeting experience.
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  They don't think about the pre meeting experience, the during meeting experience
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  and the post meeting experience.
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  And so I think that, that when I look at our schedules, people spend
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  20 to 30 hours a week in meetings.
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  It's an enormous amount of time on meetings.
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  And when you're spending the majority of your work week doing work that you
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  don't perceive as valuable, they're not fun and people don't want to do it.
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  And that's why people always say Hey, let's do less meetings.
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  But when you think about the meetings that are productive, you think about
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  the best meetings of your week where people come in with a clear agenda where
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  every the right people are in the room, you have very clear talking points.
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  You have clear action items.
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  You leave the meeting and everybody has clarity around what are next steps.
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  That is a beautiful meeting where you actually get things done.
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  And I think everybody would look at that and say, that's the gold standard.
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  That's what every single meeting should look like.
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  There is nothing worse than going to a meeting where you just go in, you're like,
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  wait a minute who's called this meeting?
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  Who's starting this meeting?
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  What's the point of this meeting?
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  You leave and you're like, who took notes for this meeting?
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  And that happens like way more often than it should, but it
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  still happens all the time.
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  How is the importance or role of meetings changed now that we're all
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  working from wherever now, right?
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  Some people going back to the office, a couple of days a week, maybe some folks
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  have that hybrid role, but a lot of folks are increasingly working remotely.
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  Meetings valuable from a productivity standpoint, they're valuable just in terms
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  of building a community at your company.
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  Taking a couple of minutes just to do small talk as you enter and exit
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  the room when we're doing Zooms, that isn't as natural as it used
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  to be, but talk about the role and the difference in doing meetings
• 12:03
  now, more virtually than in person.
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  So I think there's two flavors of meetings as I think about it.
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  There's the internal meetings and then there's external meetings.
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  So when I think about internal meetings...
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  my last company obviously went virtual during COVID, we came back to the office.
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  Calendly is 100 percent virtual.
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  And so I've seen both sides of it.
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  And I'd say there is a massive communications tax in being a fully
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  virtual company and it is unavoidable tax.
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  And I think the thing that you really have to think about with meetings, number one,
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  you're going to just have more meetings.
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  I don't think it's possible in a fully virtual environment
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  to have fewer meetings.
• 12:35
  One thing that we do a lot of at Calendly actually is we do a lot of async updates.
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  So we do, we use a third party recording tool and we just record a lot of updates.
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  And so for example, if we need a decision made, instead of calling a
• 12:48
  30 minute meeting, someone on my team will do a full presentation, record
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  it, send it out and ask for feedback.
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  That's a really great way to avoid a meeting.
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  And so we use it pretty heavily here.
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  I think another thing that we do a lot of is just really enforcing this idea that
• 13:03
  you have to have a very clear agenda.
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  You have to set a brief in advance, give people time to
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  collect feedback, share that.
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  And I think that helps a lot in reducing the friction of these
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  really massive amounts of meetings.
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  I think on the flip side with external meetings, you certainly,
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  you do this a lot, right?
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  You are constantly talking to customers and to prospects.
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  I think when you don't have that in person aspect, it does make it really hard.
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  It makes it much, much harder to form those personal connections and to
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  create this feeling of comfort and confidence in you when you're doing
• 13:39
  it through a tiny little screen.
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  It's harder, but it's still entirely possible.
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  You just have to be more intentional about it.
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  When we were all in the office and you knew you were going to bump into people
• 13:49
  through the hallway, you're going to bump into people in the kitchenette
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  getting coffee or having lunch, the team building happened on its own.
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  We have to be more intentional in a virtual environment now as well.
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  I think meetings, whether you're in person or virtual have
• 14:01
  taken on a life of their own.
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  And the default response in a lot of cases is, especially remotely, let's
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  do a meeting and figure this out.
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  It may not be a meeting.
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  Maybe it's a Slack thread.
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  Maybe it's someone who actually owns this problem comes up with a perspective
• 14:13
  first that you debate versus going in and just like hashing it all out.
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  I can see a future of meetings where the AI helps us determine
• 14:20
  if a meeting is even necessary.
• 14:22
  What's the outcome we're searching for?
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  What is the objective that we were trying to achieve and what is the
• 14:27
  right format to get that done?
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  If the meeting is the right format, they're likely as a way
• 14:32
  of running that meeting that makes it more productive, right?
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  Where maybe you've got AI listening in and saying you're all going
• 14:38
  down a rabbit hole, start focus back on the thing at hand.
• 14:40
  Seriously, I think about what this could look like to help us focus in
• 14:45
  the right place to, making meetings fun is one thing, but making them
• 14:48
  something that actually moves the ball forward productively for ourselves
• 14:52
  and for organizations, I think that's where we want to take this.
• 14:55
  I think to me, one of the biggest issues, too, is as you are working on these
• 14:59
  really gnarly problems that we have that you can't resolve in one meeting.
• 15:03
  That's where I'm excited about A.
• 15:04
  I.
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  Because so much of what happens is you lose a lot of the context from
• 15:08
  the previous meeting or you forget to bring somebody to the first meeting
• 15:12
  and then you have to start over again.
• 15:13
  And you may have a series of six or seven meetings.
• 15:16
  And you may have lots and lots of different people that are
• 15:18
  having different conversations.
• 15:20
  And so what I would love to see is, the opportunity for there to be threads of
• 15:24
  meetings and threads of conversations that all come together so that everybody
• 15:27
  has that same context coming into the meeting and you don't lose it.
• 15:30
  You don't have to start again constantly.
• 15:32
  And I feel like half of every meeting is just reminding everybody what you
• 15:36
  have talked about the previous time.
• 15:38
  Yeah, imagine if there was follow up.
• 15:39
  Imagine if there was accountability.
• 15:41
  Imagine if, you finish a meeting and what you needed to do immediately,
• 15:44
  automatically ends up on your to do list.
• 15:45
  Like scheduling link, imagine that.
• 15:48
  Yeah, exactly.
• 15:50
  Exactly.
• 15:50
  It's pretty awesome.
• 15:51
  I think, there's clearly in the data in the State of Scheduling Report, we saw
• 15:55
  some people that are, a little reticent to dig in on this, but And I saw someone
• 15:58
  told me, and I don't remember who it was.
• 15:59
  They said yeah, AI is coming for your job.
• 16:01
  It's going to give you a much better job.
• 16:03
  It is going to give you a much better experience.
• 16:05
  It's going to help you focus on the things you actually enjoy as part
• 16:09
  of your job that really challenges.
• 16:11
  It really lets you dig into what you are uniquely capable of doing and
• 16:15
  does the rest of it on your behalf to help you be more effective,
• 16:17
  efficient, and just happier too.
• 16:19
  So I think that the future is bright on that front.
• 16:22
  Jessica, thanks so much for joining us today.
• 16:25
  Where can people learn more about the 2023 State of Scheduling Report?
• 16:29
  Just go to calendly.Com and look at our resources section.
• 16:31
  We have that, and you can check in on LinkedIn where we are all over.
• 16:35
  And I really appreciate you taking the time to chat today.
• 16:38
  Oh my gosh, this has been exciting.
• 16:39
  So just really appreciate what you guys did with the report.
• 16:42
  Appreciate you joining what is actually Jessica, our last episode
• 16:46
  of Sales Pipeline Radio in 2023.
• 16:48
  We're going to be dark next week.
• 16:49
  I got family in town.
• 16:50
  We're going to be dark the week between Christmas and New Year's.
• 16:52
  We'll be back first week of January with our first episode of 2024 until
• 16:57
  then happy holidays to everyone.
• 16:59
  Hope you're spending time with family, friends, doing things you love.
• 17:02
  Thanks again, Jessica for joining us.
• 17:04
  We'll see y'all in the new year.
• 17:05
  This has been Matt Heinz on Sales Pipeline Radio.
• 17:07
  Take care.